Rank Brian DePalma's Films

For some reason I've never seen Casualties of War, Raising Cain or Home Movies.

the rest are terrible.

Your list makes me think

a) I like Brian De Palma but I'm not exactly crazy about him
b) I don't like ranking things, mostly because I have a bad memory. There are three or four films there that I've seen and can't remember anything about.

That's crazy talk.

I think the Untouchables if a bit ordinary except for two or three good scenes.

I could conceivably watch several individual scenes from Untouchables on loop 50-60 times in a row and not get bored. I know that the casting on its face is terrible but there's just something about it that I find totally fascinating. I sometimes wish they would recast Costner as Ness for a story about the Torso killings, actually. Oh well. Untouchables 2 is supposedly going ahead in 2006, wtf.

I somehow remembered that Ryuichi Sakamoto did the score for "Snake Eyes" but I forgot that DePalma directed it. Anyway, it was crap.

What if the Oscars were on and she kept wanting to flip to Dr Phil>

thankyewverymuch.

fwiw I am a huge fan of Ellroy's writing, at least the LA Quartet (thoe the Kennedy assassination one is also genius)

Carrie
Scarface
Femme Fatale
Carlito's Way
(big dropoff)
Mission: Impossible
The Untouchables
Snake Eyes
Mission to Mars

of what I've seen, best to worst

Dressed To Kill
Blow Out
Casualties Of War
The Fury
Carrie
The Wedding Party
Femme Fatale
Hi, Mom!
Phantom Of The Paradise
The Untouchables
Snake Eyes
Mission: Impossible
Sisters
Carlito's Way
Greetings
Body Double
Scarface
Raising Cain
Mission To Mars
Bonfire Of The Vanities

(heh. There was a joke going 'round among '70s film critics: "Brian DePalma: A Director by Pauline Kael").

Dressed To Kill
Blow Out
Femme Fatale
Carrie
Casualties of War
The Fury
Mission: Impossible
The Untouchables
Scarface
Carlito's Way
Raising Cain
Sisters
Obsession

(still need to screen Phantom of the Paradise and Snake Eyes.)

The opening credits of Sisters is great, what with the Herrmann score and pictures of embryos...rest of the film = eh

01. The Fury (1978)
02. Hi, Mom! (1970)
03. Femme Fatale (2002)
04. Carrie (1976)
05. Dressed to Kill (1980)
06. Carlito's Way (1993)
07. Phantom of the Paradise (1974)
08. Mission to Mars (2000) -- I guess it's sorta De Palma's A.I.
09. Raising Cain (1992)
10. Body Double (1984)
11. Casualties of War (1989)
12. Sisters (1973)
13. Blow Out (1981)
14. Mission: Impossible (1996)
15. Snake Eyes (1998)
16. The Bonfire of the Vanities (1990)
17. The Untouchables (1987)

Need a fresh look at both Obsession and Scarface. Have Greetings, The Wedding Party, and the French disc of some early De Palma shorts (and Dionysus) sitting on my desk, as of yet unwatched.

I guess I agree with this. I'm only kinda excited for Black Dahlia, but (in turn) much more excited for that than I am for the Untouchables sequel.

I didn't like it all, largely because Craig Wasson was unbearable to watch.

the newest rep house in Manhattan has been doing a retro w/ lots of 35prints, and i was semi-sorry to miss Greetings and maybe Casualties of War.

Wasson doesn't bring much to Body Double, no argument there. best described as "functional"

Looking at the Wiki on Body Double, I'd forgotten this -

Body Double is referenced repeatedly throughout the Bret Easton Ellis novel American Psycho as the favorite film of the protagonist serial killer Patrick Bateman.[citation needed] He mentions that he has seen the film 37 times and rents the tape of it from a video store several times in the story. He also repeats scenes from the film to the reader or to other characters.

It's been a long time since I've seen it - remember a longish, near-silent sequence with some 360 degree pans that is DePalma at his best. Do remember that it was v badly received in the UK for its misogyny/violence against women, and it only limped out on home video three years later. According to the Melon Farmers site:

Holly (Melanie Griffith)'s line of dialogue regarding what she won't do in porn films is cut: I will not shave my pussy. No fist-fucking. Absolutely no coming in my face

Agree that Sisters ain't all that great. Wise Guys, otoh

I'm a big fan of his technical skill, but I think the Hitchcock stuff all gets a bit much. Not unlike Argento, he clearly knows what he's doing with a camera but often seems to have no idea, or doesn't care, what to do with his actors or about the script. But I love when his films come together, whether as sheer Hollywood entertainment (Untouchables, Mission Impossible, Carrie) or as meta exercise (Femme Fatale). Not sure I like any of his films quite as much as I like "The Devil's Candy," which really gets to the heart of a guy working his ass off to make a total mess.

Raising Cain is super silly and Lithgow is fantastic. Saw the screening a week ago, was not disappointing. Expect a total mess, though, and just go for the ride.

Also regarding Craig Wasson there's something about his dopey aloofness that works for that movie, especially when things get even more absurd in the final act. I love that he basically only did Body Double and A Nightmare on Elm Street 3!

and that big Arthur Penn flop, that was written by the Breaking Away guy

(well not 'big', it was a low-budget prestige film)

and almost every TV series from 1975-'97

sisters fucking rules, you maniacs.. but i say this as someone who rates phantom of the paradise in his top 3. if you like phantom you'll like sisters.

I like Phantom a lot although man do I wish the music was better. A rare Paul Williams 70s sdtk failure imo

A rare Paul Williams 70s sdtk failure imo

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bE2m355-JRo

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bE2m355-JRo

Raising Cain not bad in toto, tho BdP's refusal to do a 'Patty Duke' shot with the Lithgows was too obvious. and the Davidovitch-Bauer scenes were mostly painful. (otoh, how often does Frances Sternhagen get a headbutt?)

didnt know the Psycho riffs went that late

Bauer not getting naked was a problem.

Saw The Fury for the first time a couple weeks ago and lol every time Cassavettes was onscreen I thought "Dude looks miserable. Must've needed that check."

"Body Double" is great, dopey fun.

I love that he basically only did Body Double and A Nightmare on Elm Street 3!

Don't forget his dual role/full frontal in Ghost Story!

I like The Fury but I have to rematch it for the purpose of introducing it at a local art house's early De Palma retrospective and don't feel like it. Maybe I can pay Eric H to summarize it for me.

watched Femme Fatale last night - didn't love it, but it had enough of DePalma's verve and audacity to keep things interesting, or at least ludicrously entertaining. Big chunks of it strain credulity but no surprise there.

saw that the Fury is on Netflix streaming, so that's next!

Esoteric movie prop I wish I owned: one of the prom ballots from Carrie, preferably the one Carrie and Tommy fill out.

Just saw the doc, and it makes a very strong case for DePalma as an eccentric filmmaking savant, less of a case for DePalma as the maker of great films.

Considering a double bill of Vertigo/Body Double at the Castro for my birthday

I have never really gotten into DePalma, but I like this Chris Randle essay on spectatorship in his work: http://reallifemag.com/night-visions/

“I certainly wouldn’t go see [my films],” De Palma once told an interviewer. “But there’s a difference between being the marionette and being the puppet master. One is a director because one wants to be the master.” He plans meticulous images, filling in plot and motivation like plaster, but you can only direct a scene with perfect control until it leaves your storyboard, and De Palma has always been self-conscious about the fakeness of the blood, the strings binding the puppet. Like Walker Evans, who hid his Contax in his coat as he rode the subway, releasing the shutter via handheld cable, or Diane Arbus, who fantasized about creeping through the bedrooms of strangers to capture them while they slept, De Palma used to sit in the front row during test screenings and watch the audience, caught between spectator and tableau. No matter how far photography advances, it never satisfies the desire to make images in secret.

I loved the doc. It also really made me want to go back and rewatch all the films on my list above up to 14 (minus Scarface and the Untouchables which I've seen enough).

I tried to watch carlito's way last night but gave up after 20 minutes. Much love for p much everything pre-wise guys tho

Does anyone have any idea how I can track down the insanely elusive Body Double soundtrack (it was issued on CD in 2007 but is out of print and doesn't show up *anywhere*)?

I am pretty sure I recently saw an LP copy of this at Lost Weekend in SF

It's never had an official LP release so it might have been a bootleg! Weirdly it's one of Pino Donaggio's most sought after scores but it's only ever been issued once on CD by Intrada in an edition of 3,000, and it never shows up anywhere. There's a compilation CD from Milan that is a sort of "best of" his scores for DePalma, but it doesn't contain any of the key cues (namely the excellent Tangerine Dream rip-off "Telescope").

do you mean a physical copy? or just a download

Big fan of the Lovelock Pino Grigio edit, which I think is Steve Moore from Zombie?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EhV2PKli1S8

x-post - I'd be thrilled with just a download; the CD rarely pops up and when it does it goes for hundreds of dollars.

That Steve Moore cut is great.

x-posting from detrius thread: http://reverseshot.org/features/2305/two_cents_2017

Worst De Palma Critic: De Palma

Take it from a staunch Brian De Palma addict: Brian De Palma is the person you least want to hear talk about le cinéma de Palma. Sitting awkwardly before a fireplace mantle in Noah Baumbach and Jake Paltrow’s talking-head doc, the now enormous De Palma holds court, going through his films chronologically, one by one, relating some terrific anecdotes, and overall being a surprisingly genial guide. The result is an aesthetically impoverished documentary about a great visual thinker—a disconnect hard to get over—but more detrimentally, his perspective on his own work’s merits is mostly tied to financial success (as is the case with many American filmmakers, including Spielberg). Thus, De Palma reiterates that his greatest accomplishments are benchmarks Carrie, Dressed to Kill, Scarface, The Untouchables, and Mission: Impossible, while such relative box-office disappointments as The Fury, Raising Cain, and Femme Fatale get short shrift—especially the latter, which barely rates any screen time even though any true De Palma fan knows it’s a career-defining masterwork. There’s a purity of vision and concept to Baumbach and Paltrow’s approach for sure: wind up the man and let him talk. But if there’s any filmmaker whose work is worthy of a more dialectical approach it’s De Palma, one of our most hotly debated, divisive directors. Like any artist, his work benefits from considered, serious criticism. (If you really care about De Palma, read Chris Dumas’s brilliant recent book Un-American Psycho, an engaging and endlessly revealing political and aesthetic study.) De Palma provides us with a rare home visit with an elusive figure, but its anti-critical approach left me thirsty. —MK

It seemed to me from the documentary that he was prouder of Blow Out and Casualties of War than almost anything he'd ever done, and both of those were commercial flops.

xxp i think this works? http://download-soundtracks.com/movie_soundtracks/body-double-soundtrack-by-pino-donaggio/

That Reverseshot take does not seem accurate to me.

Also Femme Fatale is p bad

(iow Clemenza otm)

I got a massive virus warning from that download-soundtracks site - a million questionable pop-ups started launching and my computer was huffing and puffing.

Fair enough, I guess, but it's frustrating when you're happy to buy something that has been available before but isn't anymore!

Maybe Death Waltz or one of those companies will reissue it someday...

xp yeah IIRC the film he seemed proudest of was Carlito's Way which was hardly a box office smash so basically agree with everyone above that Reverse Shot seems to suck at watching films. I felt like all the films got pretty equal time and if anything De Palma seemed pretty ambivalent about some of the most successful stuff which was more work for hire than personal.

I idly got around to watching the rest of Carlito's Way last night and conventional wisdom seems m/l correct to me - it takes a bit too long/is excessive given the plot/material but what does work works really well and there are a number of bravura scenes that are top tier De Palma, esp the ending sequence and the final shot where the advertisement comes to life.

loved the documentary! i mean i didn't know about the De Niro/film school stuff so that was fascinating. i liked how he said even he didn't want to sit through Casualties.. in the editing room as it was so grim.

Whoa.

http://www.hardcasecrime.com/books/bk160/cover_big.jpg

wtf?!

Just watched Obsession for the first time on TCM. I dug it.

Happy 83rd birthday perv-ish suspense director

It's Brian De Palma's 83rd birthday, so here are my rankings pic.twitter.com/tlpGPS5Q2P

— Eric Henderson (@ephender) September 11, 2023

Hollywood Suite here (a four-channel thing you get with basic cable) has Carrie on 281, Scarface on 282, and Snake Eyes (followed by Raising Cane) on 283. That's a lot of fulminating on 282/3.

My own list.

Just watched Obsession for the first time on TCM. I dug it.

I'm not a DePalma fan, but that's the one I like best. It's not his most technically accomplished film, but it may embody his work better than anything else he's done, in a way that can be seen as critical of his vision (or lack thereof).

DePalma's harshest critics argue that DePalma thinks he's Hitchcock even though he lacks Hitchcock's genuine fascination with human behavior (or what makes us human). Some claim he's more interested in duplicating Hitchcock's films than creating anything personal himself. One of DePalma's favorite films is Vertigo, and Obsession is obviously heavily inspired by it. Some may even dismiss it on the grounds that it's DePalma trying to remake Vertigo, just as Sisters was a pastiche of other Hitchcock films.

If you believe there's a lot of truth to that, I would say that even though Obsession repeats the same approach, the context makes it far more engaging. Mirroring Scottie's relationship to Madeleine, here is DePalma fixated on a film that he not only adores but is compelled to reproduce as closely as he can, short of a straight up remake. If it seems too close to a rip-off, that's the point - it's not lack of imagination so much as a perpetual compulsion on DePalma's part, telegraphed by a scene in Obsession when one of the main characters is working on an art restoration - she wonders if she should try holding on to an original element of the work that is very degraded, and her suitor tells her to "hold on to it." The character is obviously echoing his own inability to let go of the wife he's lost (and will try replacing with a lookalike), but this could apply to DePalma's filmmaking in Obsession. De Palma even gets Hitchcock's longtime collaborator Herrmann (who scored Vertigo and already scored Sisters for DePalma) to once again do the score here, and to drive the point home, DePalma even used Vertigo's score as a temp track in order to convince a producer to let him hire Herrmann.

At worst, you can say it sounds like an exercise in trying to replicate a film that DePalma could never approach, giving us a hollow thriller instead of a true, disturbing masterpiece with a deeply felt tragedy. Scottie trying to revive Madeleine through his relationship with another woman could even be thought along the same lines - that is, what's going on between Scottie and Judy is the result of necrophilia instead of a great love. But Judy really is in love with Scottie and there's a terrible yet honest sadness in how she allows Scottie to do something so awful to her. I'm not moved by Obsession the way I am by Vertigo, but I find it compelling for what it sees in Vertigo and what it regurgitates.

And thanks to Herrmann, Obsession does have real feeling - his score articulates beautifully what's going on between the two romantic leads. The best is when Robertson goes back and follows her after work. Not a word is exchanged, he stays behind her. It builds to a marvelous peak, when she goes into her home and he comes out on the street. Watch as he walks and pulls up, and how the music shifts and subtly augments that moment. His back's to you and he's in long shot, but with that bit of walking in synch with that perfect music, you can feel Robertson's heart begin to flutter. And then the killer is when we fade to a shot that drifts down from a ceiling to Robertson, who's in the foreground of a deep focus shot. As that camera floats down, listen to those soft, stray notes plucked on the soundtrack. When we finally land on Robertson (seen in profile, deep in thought), you can feel his mind miles away, thinking only of her.

Watch that scene alone and without music - what's going on is still clear, but you don't feel the intoxicating pull that's swallowing him up. It could be a cold case of stalking that elicits no empathy. That changes with Herrmann's score.

One more thing about the film - Paul Schrader's screenplay originally called for a Patti Page song, "Changing Partners," to be played during Michael’s opening dance with his wife and daughter, but the rights would have cost about $15,000. Schrader said “the money thing that hurt me most in the movie was that I lost (the song), because that to me was just everything that the movie was about… ‘I’ll keep changing partners till you’re in my arms again.'” In its place, Herrmann composed a waltz theme that recurs at the end, when De Palma’s camera swirls around the reunited father and daughter.

Here's the recording in question and as much as I like Herrmann's score (a masterpiece in itself), this feels pretty perfect, with a sense of humor that puts it on par with Kubrick's musical choices IMHO.