Throughout the fabled auteur era of ‘70s cinema, no other director found weaker critical assessment and Academy acceptance than he deserved than Brian DePalma. I think there are two reasons for this:
- DePalma wore his Hitchcockian inspiration on his sleeve so obviously that you’d think he’d raided Hitchcock’s shirt drawer.
- Kink. Of all the great ‘70s directors, DePalma (even more so than Paul Schrader) was a bit of a freak.
The many stories, books, and articles about Hitchcock reveal that he carried more than a little of his own kink around. The difference is Hitchcock was part of the studio system/censorship era. It would not be until Hitchcock’s next-to-last film Frenzy in 1972, that ol’ Hitch could let his freak flag fly in telling the story of a pervy British strangler.
DePalma never had such constraints, and how one feels about that may impact their view of DePalma’s oeuvre. No matter how much one might find DePalma’s work derivative of “The Master of Suspense,” no one could question his talent. It was his taste that critics and Academy voters seemed to take issue with. Maybe that’s fair. DePalma is one sick puppy, but sick puppies have their place.
Still, thinking about the accolades that came the way of his contemporaries: Scorsese, Spielberg, Cassavettes, Ashby, Friedkin, Lumet, Kubrick, and Coppola, and even Michael Cimino, it’s clear that DePalma was seen as existing on a stoop below that crowd. Understanding why DePalma may have been less palatable to the cinematic cognoscenti doesn’t change the fact that he belongs among the names listed in that last sentence. Of all of those directors, DePalma is the only one who was never nominated for an Oscar.
However, awards alone don’t define a filmmaker’s career, and DePalma has made several good to great movies.
On this, DePalma’s 84th birthday, I rate his top seven.
- Body Double (1984): Good lord, am I starting with this one? Starring the far-from-well-known Craig Wasson and the surging Melanie Griffith Body Double is an extremely dirty rip of Hitchcock’s Rear Window. A housesitter in a remarkably unique home (it’s almost like a mini-space needle) in Los Angeles, plays a game of Peeping Tom with a woman who (for whatever reason) puts on a nude dancing show every night from her apartment across the way. Wasson (who has at least a passing resemblance to Bill Maher) may feel a little guilty about watching the woman disrobe and strut through the homeowner’s telescope, but not bad enough to leave the telescope be.
He feels even worse when on one given night a man breaks into her apartment and using a massive drill gun and quite literally (and oh, how I hate to use that word) murders her by drilling her into the floor of her rental. What follows is one embarrassed and guilty of conscience (in more ways than one) man’s search to uncover her killer.
Along the way, the man meets a porn star who goes by the name of Holly Body (Griffith) as his search takes him through the seedy underbelly of Los Angeles. It must be said that Griffith’s intro to the film is something to behold. While filming a porn scene, the ‘80s New Wave Brit band Frankie Goes To Hollywood pops through a second-story door and lipsync the entirety of their only top ten hit in the states, “Relax.” A song whose actual lyrics are:
Relax, don’t do it
When you want to come
I can’t make that up, and neither could anyone other than DePalma. On a not exactly side note: cries of misogyny dogged DePalma throughout his work on film. Body Double would likely be submitted as exhibit A for those who would make such a claim.
- Casualties of War (1989): An outlier in DePalma’s resume, Casualties was a casualty of its own being a Vietnam War film that was too late for the era in which he came to fame (when Coming Home, The Deer Hunter, and Apocalypse Now all won Oscars) and too late for the mid-‘80s renaissance of the Vietnam War movie led by Oliver Stone. It’s a damn shame though, because DePalma’s straightforward telling of a real-life incident during the war when American GIs abducted, raped, and murdered a young Vietnamese woman. The film starred Sean Penn (effective, but a little DeNiro-heavy in influence) and Michael J. Fox.
Much was made of Fox’s supposed miscasting, but you’ll never convince me that Fox didn’t do his career-best work here. As the conscience-driven and deeply conflicted military “grunt” who refuses to take part in the war crime–even if he doesn’t stop it, Fox becomes the moral center of the film.
Despite being threatened to be eaten alive by Penn’s scenery-chewing, Fox holds the line. There are two scenes in the film that have always stayed with me. One involves Fox’s effort to report the crime to a superior (played by Ving Rhames in one of the great single-scene performances ever), who explains to him in the harshest of terms about the unfairness of the world, about being turned away from a whites-only hospital while a family member was giving birth. “It’s horrible” Rhames seems to be saying, but such is life, and Fox would be better off keeping quiet. Fox has few lines, but his horrified expression matches the misery of Rhames’ story.
The second scene is more philosophical. As Fox explains to another GI a code of humanity must be maintained. Fox points out that everyone is acting like because they could die at any moment it doesn’t matter what they do. And then he follows up by stating why he thinks that way of living, even in war, is the wrong way to live, or die. “I’m thinking that’s wrong,” Fox continues. I think (because we could die at any moment) “what we do matters more.” Casualties is essentially a battle of wills between Fox’s empathetic soldier and Penn’s Rubicon crossing platoon member. DePalma’s film offers no simple answers, and one can see (at least to an extent), both perspectives. From my safe seat in the theater, I went with Fox. Casualties of War is the most undervalued film of DePalma’s career.
- Scarface (1983): It is reasonably questionable to ask whether Scarface is a classic or a piece of trash. Maybe it’s a cheat, but I choose both. As Tony Montana, a Cuban refugee released from Castro’s jails and boat lifted to Miami to live a life of malfeasance, Al Pacino is a pure force of nature. I’m sure his exaggerated Cuban accent is unlike any Cuban who ever walked the earth, but it’s certainly consistent.
DePalma’s gangster epic (loosely based on Howard Hawks’ 1932 film of the same name) is a grand quinol of blood, guts, cocaine, and every excess a wildly egotistical gangster might partake of. The flash and dash of Scarface became an ‘80s time setter. A style over substance marker that was adopted on television by Miami Vice, and led to an era of superficial pleasures like Top Gun and Lethal Weapon—entertaining films both, but if serious film folk thought the auteur era ended with the flop of Cimino’s Heaven’s Gate (a pretty damn good movie in hindsight), it was Scarface that threw the final shovelful of dirt on that period of classic filmmaking.
I understand that it can be hard to look beyond the iconography of Scarface and see the eventual phenomenon (the film was a critical and box office disappointment upon release) as a film instead of pop culture fabric, but the early parts of the film explaining Castro’s cleverly insidious decision to subvert a humanitarian effort by opening up his jails and sanitariums is decidedly compelling.
And when the film eventually sets aside any pretense of greater aims (probably during the infamous chainsaw scene), there can be no denying the ferocious skill of DePalma’s direction, Pacino’s gonzo commitment to his role, or the coming out party of Michelle Pfeiffer who plays Montana’s wife, a coke-snorting ice queen with bangs that look steel cut.
Is Scarface a great movie? The battle continues to rage in my head. I just know it’s really…something.
- The Untouchables (1987): DePalma’s thrilling take on the old television show starring Robert Stack, made a star of Kevin Costner as G-man Elliot Ness, won Sean Connery a Best Supporting Actor (finally putting “Bond, James Bond”) to rest, and gave Robert DeNiro one hell of a colorful role as the infamous Chicago gangster Al Capone. The film was a smash at the box office and seemed poised to be a major Oscar contender. However, when the names were called up Hollywood Yonder, only Connery scored a major nomination (the film was recognized for score, art direction, and costume design). DePalma and the studio must have been pleased with having a huge hit, but The Untouchables appeared to be a perfect vehicle for his first nomination.
Hell, DePalma should have received a special award for the extraordinary shootout scene on a long stairwell, with a baby carriage carrying an infant bouncing down each step caught between a shootout between Ness and Capone’s men. The sequence starved the brain of oxygen; it was so prolonged and dynamic.
- Carrie (1976): An adaptation of Stephen King’s novel of the same name, Carrie is on the shortlist of the best films ever made from a King tome. The basic premise: a sheltered teen whose radically religious mother stands in the way of her living a full life, and Carrie’s outsider nature (making her a prime target for bullying) could have made for a compelling drama without any supernatural aspects. Throw in Carrie’s advancing telekinetic powers, and, well, now you really have something. It would be a bridge too far to call the film subtle (this is a movie that begins with a slo-mo shower scene in a girls’ locker room), but it is excruciatingly patient. From the moment we meet Carrie (a brilliant Sissy Spacek), and certainly, when her genuinely nuts mother (Piper Laurie is a no-holds-barred performance) comes into the picture, we know there will be no happy ending.
The ending that does come is one of the more famous in horror film history. The class heartthrob (William Katt) takes Carrie to prom. They win King and Queen. It’s a moment that should (or at least could) be a turning point in Carrie’s life, but a cruel joke involving a bucket of pig blood doesn’t just humiliate and terrorize Carrie, it removes all of her inhibitions in terms of using her powers. The body count that follows includes the innocent and the guilty alike. Carrie has had enough, and DePalma stages her “enough” with extraordinary verve. The film earned a leading actress Oscar nom for Spacek, a supporting nod for Laurie, and helped launch the careers of John Travolta, Amy Irving, and Nancy Allen. Carrie’s success, like that of The Untouchables, left DePalma overlooked when the nominees for best director were named. Carrie is now considered an unshakable horror classic –just a step or two below The Exorcist.
- Blow Out (1981): Speaking of Travolta and Allen, DePalma brought his two Carrie co-stars back as leads for a loose take on Michelangelo Antonioni’s Blow-Up. In Antonioni’s film, David Hemmings plays a photographer who may have (or may not have) accidentally taken a photo of a murder taking place. DePalma flips the concept, making Travolta a sound man who records a noise that he swears is a gunshot while attempting to capture some ambient noise in the dark Los Angeles evening. A car accident occurs at the same time as Travolta’s recording, and his insistence (which is largely disregarded by authorities) leads him to Allen and down a tragic rabbit hole.
It was difficult not to put Blow Out at number one, but probably not as hard as it was for DePalma to see this brilliant paranoid masterpiece (with shades of Chappaquiddick) struggle to find an audience when it debuted. Blow Out is a profoundly disturbing film, and John Lithgow’s performance as the heavy isn’t just his scariest, it may well be his best.
1.Carlito’s Way (1993): As if to prove that he and Pacino had learned nothing from having this very Italian-American actor play a Hispanic gangster in Scarface, the director and leading man reteamed once more with Pacino playing Carlito “motherfucker to the max” Brigante–a recently released Puerto Rican convict trying to go straight and hopefully reignite old passions with his old girlfriend (Penelope Ann-Miller—better than some might remember). Of all the films on DePalma’s CV, not one has the heart and emotion of Carlito’s Way. I don’t know whether it was by accident (Pacino and Miller are very sexy and romantic together), or with intent, all I know is that Carlito’s Way reaches its inescapable conclusion in a heartwrenching fashion. I don’t mean to say that the actors and the story don’t matter to DePalma, but much of his filmmaking life has been about form (fabulous form) over human connection.
And maybe that’s why Carlito’s Way is my first choice. DePalma, hardly a warm and fuzzy type, married genuine sentiment to his technical proficiency. It’s almost admirable that DePalma and Pacino reunited to tell a story of a Latino gangster after suffering from all the heat they took for Scarface. I do recall an interview with John Leguizamo an actual Puerto Rican (who plays Carlito’s eventual adversary, Benny Blanco) being asked about Pacino playing a character of his own background, and Leguizano replied something to the effect of, He’s Al Pacino. He can do whatever the fuck he wants. Legend has its privileges, I suppose. Beyond that identity discussion, it’s simply true that Carlito’s Way is one bang-up gangster flick that for whatever reason has been relegated to second-tier status. There was some Oscar buzz for Sean Penn who plays Carlito’s attorney who fancies himself (to his detriment) as a player in the crime world himself. With his dyed red hair permed hair and smarmy grin, Penn threatens to steal the film out from under Pacino.
Alas, Pacino was deep into his second prime. Carlito’s Way was his first film after a banner 1992 when the already legendary actor was nominated twice during that turn around the sun—as Supporting Actor in Glengarry Glen Ross and Scent of a Woman in the Leading category (resulting in the only Oscar win of his storied career). He was just two years from starring across from the other greatest actor of his generation, Robert DeNiro, in Michael Mann’s cops and robbers masterpiece, HEAT.
Penn, in one of his finest performances, could not plunder the film from the ever-present and fully engaged Pacino. The classic (or clichéd, depending on how you look at it) storyline of pulling off one last score and escaping “the life” feels both familiar and fresh. When time runs out, for the first time, we experience something more than shock and horror from a DePalma film. We feel human pain and grief. I did not see that coming from DePalma, and I’d never see it again.
PostScript: A part of me wanted to fill the seventh spot with the wonderfully ludicrous Femme Fatale that played almost like a parody of a DePalma film, but was so audacious that I was left grinning from ear to ear due to the sheer foolishness of the film when the lights came up in the theater (I’m probably one of four people who saw it in a movie house). Mission Impossible is certainly DePalma’s most successful film, but aside from that extraordinary computer chip heist scene in which Tom Cruise is suspended from a rope through a vent, it’s the least DePalma DePalma film on his ledger. It’s also overlong and ultimately not satisfying as a spy thriller. DePalma’s early horror film Sisters (starring Margot Kidder as someone other than Lois Lane) was creepier than hell, even if it feels a little dated now. Call it DePalma’s dress rehearsal. Speaking of dresses, DePalma’s serial killer film Dressed to Kill has a number of magnificent set pieces, but one can’t help but feel a bit queasy at the revelation of the killer being a “cross-dresser.” At a time when it was so easy to make villains of the LGBTQ community, Dressed to Kill, despite its effectiveness (and an extraordinary cameo by Angie Dickinson in what one might call the Janet Leigh/Psycho role) can’t quite overcome its dated and misguided sensibilities. I also know that some in the DePalma cult are huge fans of The Phantom of the Paradise. A truth that I have never been able to get my head around.
Then again, at the end of the day, the only list that really matters is your own.
Phantom away, if you must.
Ps. Noah Baumbach and Jake Paltrow’s documentary DePalma is well worth seeking out. Trailer below.