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Brian De Palma

Brian De Palma, 2007

Born Brian Russell De PalmaSeptember 11, 1940 Newark, New Jersey, U.S.

Residence Manhattan, New York

Occupation Film director, screenwriter

Years active 1960–present

Spouse(s) Nancy Allen (1979–1983)Gale Anne Hurd (1991–1993)Darnell Gregorio-De Palma (1995–1997)

Children 2

Brian De PalmaFrom Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Brian Russell De Palma (born September 11, 1940) isan American film director and screenwriter. He was partof the New Hollywood wave of filmmaking.

In a career spanning over 40 years, he is best known forhis suspense, psychological thriller and crime films. Hedirected successful and popular films such as thesupernatural horror Carrie, the erotic crime thrillerDressed to Kill, the thriller Blow Out, the crime dramasScarface, The Untouchables and Carlito's Way, and theaction spy film Mission: Impossible.

Contents

1 Early life2 1960s and early career3 Transition to Hollywood4 Trademarks and style

4.1 Themes4.2 Camera shots

5 Personal life6 Legacy7 Criticisms8 Filmography

8.1 Feature films8.2 Short films8.3 Documentary films

9 References10 External links

Early life

De Palma, who is of Italian ancestry, was born in Newark, New Jersey, the son of Vivienne (née Muti) andAnthony Federico De Palma, an orthopedic surgeon.[1] He was raised in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania andNew Hampshire, and attended various Protestant and Quaker schools, eventually graduating from Friends'Central School. When he was in high school, he built computers.[2] He won a regional science-fair prize fora project titled "An Analog Computer to Solve Differential Equations".

1960s and early career

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Enrolled at Columbia as a physics student, De Palma became enraptured with the filmmaking process afterviewing Citizen Kane and Vertigo. De Palma subsequently enrolled at the newly coed Sarah LawrenceCollege as a graduate student in their theater department in the early 1960s, becoming one of the first malestudents among a female population. Once there, influences as various as drama teacher Wilford Leach, theMaysles brothers, Michelangelo Antonioni, Jean-Luc Godard, Andy Warhol and Alfred Hitchcockimpressed upon De Palma the many styles and themes that would shape his own cinema in the comingdecades. An early association with a young Robert De Niro resulted in The Wedding Party. The film, whichwas co-directed with Leach and producer Cynthia Munroe, had been shot in 1963 but remained unreleaseduntil 1969, when De Palma's star had risen sufficiently within the Greenwich Village filmmaking scene. DeNiro was unknown at the time; the credits mistakenly display his name as "Robert Denero." The film isnoteworthy for its invocation of silent film techniques and an insistence on the jump-cut for effect. DePalma followed this with various small films for the NAACP and The Treasury Department.

During the 1960s, De Palma began making a living producing documentary films, notably The ResponsiveEye, a 1966 movie about The Responsive Eye op-art exhibit curated by William Seitz for Museum ofModern Art in 1965. In an interview with Gelmis from 1969, De Palma described the film as "very goodand very successful. It's distributed by Pathe Contemporary and makes lots of money. I shot it in four hours,with synched sound. I had two other guys shooting people's reactions to the paintings, and the paintingsthemselves."[3]

Dionysus in 69 (1969) was De Palma's other major documentary from this period. The film records ThePerformance Group's performance of Euripides' The Bacchae, starring, amongst others, De Palma regularWilliam Finley. The play is noted for breaking traditional barriers between performers and audience. Thefilm's most striking quality is its extensive use of the split-screen. De Palma recalls that he was "floored" bythis performance upon first sight, and in 1973 recounts how he "began to try and figure out a way to captureit on film. I came up with the idea of split-screen, to be able to show the actual audience involvement, totrace the life of the audience and that of the play as they merge in and out of each other."[4]

De Palma's most significant features from this decade are Greetings (1968) and Hi, Mom! (1970). Bothfilms star Robert De Niro and espouse a Leftist revolutionary viewpoint common to their era. Greetingswas entered into the 19th Berlin International Film Festival, where it won a Silver Bear award.[5] His othermajor film from this period is the slasher comedy Murder a la Mod. Each of these films containsexperiments in narrative and intertextuality, reflecting De Palma's stated intention to become the "AmericanGodard" while integrating several of the themes which permeated Hitchcock's work.[6]

Greetings is about three New Yorkers dealing with the draft. The film is often considered the first to dealexplicitly with the draft. The film is noteworthy for its use of various experimental techniques to convey itsnarrative in ultimately unconventional ways. Footage was sped up, rapid cutting was used to distance theaudience from the narrative, and it was difficult to discern with whom the audience must ultimately align."Greetings" ultimately grossed over $1 million at the box office and cemented De Palma's position as abankable filmmaker.

After the success of his 1968 breakthrough, De Palma and his producing partner, Charles Hirsch, weregiven the opportunity by Sigma 3 to make an unofficial sequel of sorts, initially entitled Son of Greetings,and subsequently released as Hi, Mom!. While "Greetings" accentuated its varied cast, Hi, Mom! focuses onDe Niro's character, Jon Rubin, an essential carry-over from the previous film. The film is ultimately

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significant insofar as it displays the first enunciation of De Palma's style in all its major traits – voyeurism,guilt, and a hyper-consciousness of the medium are all on full display, not just as hallmarks, but built intothis formal, material apparatus itself.

These traits come to the fore in Hi, Mom!'s "Be Black, Baby" sequence. This sequence parodies cinémavérité, the dominant documentary tradition of the 1960s, while simultaneously providing the audience witha visceral and disturbingly emotional experience. De Palma describes the sequence as a constant invocationof Brechtian distanciation: “First of all, I am interested in the medium of film itself, and I am constantlystanding outside and making people aware that they are always watching a film. At the same time I amevolving it. In Hi, Mom! for instance, there is a sequence where you are obviously watching a ridiculousdocumentary and you are told that and you are aware of it, but it still sucks you in. There is a kind ofBrechtian alienation idea here: you are aware of what you are watching at the same time that you areemotionally involved with it.”

"Be Black, Baby" was filmed in black and white stock on 16 mm, in low-light conditions that stress thecrudity of the direct cinema aesthetic. It is precisely from this crudity that the film itself gains a credibilityof “realism.” In an interview with Michael Bliss, De Palma notes “[Be Black, Baby] was rehearsed foralmost three weeks... In fact, it's all scripted. But once the thing starts, they just go with the way it's going. Ispecifically got a very good documentary camera filmmaker (Robert Elfstrom) to just shoot it like adocumentary to follow the action." Furthermore, "I wanted to show in Hi, Mom! how you can really involvean audience. You take an absurd premise – "Be Black, Baby" – and totally involve them and really frightenthem at the same time. It's very Brechtian. You suck 'em in and annihilate 'em. Then you say, "It's just amovie, right? It's not real." It's just like television. You're sucked in all the time, and you're being lied to in avery documentary-like setting. The "Be Black, Baby" section of Hi, Mom! is probably the most importantpiece of film I've ever done."

Transition to Hollywood

In the 1970s, De Palma went to Hollywood where he worked on bigger budget films. In 1970, De Palmaleft New York for Hollywood at age thirty to make Get to Know Your Rabbit, starring Orson Welles andTommy Smothers. Making the film was a crushing experience for De Palma as Tommy Smothers didn't likea lot of De Palma's ideas.[7]

After several small, studio and independent released films that included stand-outs Sisters, Phantom of theParadise, and Obsession, a small film based on a novel called Carrie was released directed by Brian DePalma. The psychic thriller Carrie is seen by some as De Palma's bid for a blockbuster. In fact, the projectwas small, underfunded by United Artists, and well under the cultural radar during the early months ofproduction, as Stephen King's source novel had yet to climb the bestseller list. De Palma gravitated towardthe project and changed crucial plot elements based upon his own predilections, not the saleability of thenovel. The cast was young and relatively new, though the stars Sissy Spacek and John Travolta had gainedconsiderable attention for previous work in, respectively, film and episodic sitcoms. Carrie became a hit,the first genuine box-office success for De Palma. It garnered Spacek and Piper Laurie Oscar nominationsfor their performances. Preproduction for the film had coincided with the casting process for GeorgeLucas's Star Wars, and many of the actors cast in De Palma's film had been earmarked as contenders forLucas's movie, and vice versa.[8] The "shock ending" finale is effective even while it upholds horror-filmconvention, its suspense sequences are buttressed by teen comedy tropes, and its use of split-screen, split-diopter and slow motion shots tell the story visually rather than through dialogue.

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The financial and critical success of Carrie allowed De Palma to pursue more personal material. TheDemolished Man was a novel that had fascinated De Palma since the late 1950s and appealed to hisbackground in mathematics and avant-garde storytelling. Its unconventional unfolding of plot (exemplifiedin its mathematical layout of dialogue) and its stress on perception have analogs in De Palma's filmmaking.He sought to adapt it on numerous occasions, though the project would carry a substantial price tag, and hasyet to appear onscreen (Steven Spielberg's adaptation of Philip K. Dick's Minority Report bears strikingsimilarities to De Palma's visual style and some of the themes of The Demolished Man). The result of hisexperience with adapting The Demolished Man was The Fury, a science fiction psychic thriller that starredKirk Douglas, Carrie Snodgress, John Cassavetes and Amy Irving. The film was admired by Jean-LucGodard, who featured a clip in his mammoth Histoire(s) du cinéma, and Pauline Kael who championedboth The Fury and De Palma. The film boasted a larger budget than Carrie, though the consensus view atthe time was that De Palma was repeating himself, with diminishing returns. As a film it retains De Palma'sconsiderable visual flair, but points more toward his work in mainstream entertainments such as TheUntouchables and Mission: Impossible, the thematic complex thrillers for which he is now better known.

For many film-goers, De Palma's gangster films, most notably Scarface and Carlito's Way, pushed theenvelope of violence and depravity, and yet greatly vary from one another in both style and content and alsoillustrate De Palma's evolution as a film-maker. In essence, the excesses of Scarface contrast with the moreemotional tragedy of Carlito's Way. Both films feature Al Pacino in what has become a fruitful workingrelationship. In 1984, he directed the music video of Bruce Springsteen's song "Dancing in the Dark".

Later into the 1990s and 2000s, De Palma did other films. He attempted to do dramas and a few thrillersplus science fiction. Some of these movies (Mission: Impossible, Carlito's Way) worked and some others(The Bonfire of the Vanities, Raising Cain, Mission to Mars) failed at the box office. Of these films, TheBonfire of the Vanities would be De Palma's biggest box office disaster, losing millions. Another latermovie from De Palma, Redacted, unleashed a controversy over its subject of American involvement in Iraq,and supposed atrocities committed there. It received limited release in the United States.

In 2012, his film Passion was selected to compete for the Golden Lion at the 69th Venice International FilmFestival.[9]

Trademarks and style

Themes

De Palma's films can fall into two categories, his psychological thrillers (Sisters, Body Double, Obsession,Dressed to Kill, Blow Out, Raising Cain) and his mainly commercial films (Scarface, The Untouchables,Carlito's Way, and Mission: Impossible). He has often produced "De Palma" films one after the other beforegoing on to direct a different genre, but would always return to his familiar territory. Because of the subjectmatter and graphic violence of some of De Palma's films, such as Dressed to Kill, Scarface and BodyDouble, they are often at the center of controversy with the Motion Picture Association of America, filmcritics and the viewing public.[10]

De Palma is known for quoting and referencing other director's work throughout his career. MichelangeloAntonioni's Blowup and Francis Ford Coppola's The Conversation plots were used for the basis of BlowOut. The Untouchables ' finale shoot out in the train station is a clear borrow from the Odessa Stepssequence in Sergei Eisenstein's The Battleship Potemkin. The main plot from Rear Window was used for

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De Palma at the 2009 TorontoInternational Film Festival

Body Double, while it also used elements of Vertigo. Vertigo was also the basis for Obsession. Dressed toKill was a note-for-note homage to Hitchcock's Psycho, including such moments as the surprise death of thelead actress and the exposition scene by the psychiatrist at the end.[10]

Camera shots

Film critics have often noted De Palma's penchant for unusual camera angles and compositions throughouthis career. He often frames characters against the background using a canted angle shot. Split-screentechniques have been used to show two separate events happening simultaneously.[10] To emphasize thedramatic impact of a certain scene De Palma has employed a 360-degree camera pan. Slow sweeping,panning and tracking shots are often used throughout his films, often through precisely-choreographed longtakes lasting for minutes without cutting. Split focus shots, often referred to as "di-opt", are used by DePalma to emphasize the foreground person/object while simultaneously keeping a background person/objectin focus. Slow-motion is frequently used in his films to increase suspense.[10]

Personal life

De Palma dated actress Margot Kidder in the early 1970s. He has been married and divorced three times, toactress Nancy Allen (1979–1983), producer Gale Anne Hurd (1991–1993), and Darnell Gregorio (1995–1997). He has one daughter from his marriage to Gale Anne Hurd, Lolita de Palma, born in 1991, and onedaughter from his marriage to Darnell Gregorio, Piper De Palma, born in 1996. He resides in Manhattan,New York.[11]

Legacy

De Palma is often cited as a leading member of the New Hollywoodgeneration of film directors, a distinct pedigree who either emergedfrom film schools or are overtly cine-literate.[10] His contemporariesinclude Martin Scorsese, Paul Schrader, John Milius, George Lucas,Francis Ford Coppola, John Carpenter, and Ridley Scott. His artistryin directing and use of cinematography and suspense in several ofhis films has often been compared to the work of Alfred Hitchcock.[10][12][13] Psychologists have been intrigued by De Palma'sfascination with pathology, by the aberrant behavior aroused incharacters who find themselves manipulated by others.[14]

De Palma has encouraged and fostered the filmmaking careers ofdirectors such as Quentin Tarantino, Mark Romanek and KeithGordon. Tarantino said – during interview with De Palma, that BlowOut is one of his all time favourite films, and that after watchingScarface he knew how to make his own film. Terrence Malickcredits seeing De Palma's early films on college campus tours as avalidation of independent film, and subsequently switched his attention from philosophy to filmmaking.

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Critics who frequently admire De Palma's work include Pauline Kael and Roger Ebert, among others. Kaelwrote in her review of Blow Out, "At forty, Brian De Palma has more than twenty years of moviemakingbehind him, and he has been growing better and better. Each time a new film of his opens, everything hehas done before seems to have been preparation for it."[15] In his review of Femme Fatale, Roger Ebertwrote about the director: "De Palma deserves more honor as a director. Consider also these titles: Sisters,Blow Out, The Fury, Dressed to Kill, Carrie, Scarface, Wise Guys, Casualties of War, Carlito's Way,Mission: Impossible. Yes, there are a few failures along the way (Snake Eyes, Mission to Mars, The Bonfireof the Vanities), but look at the range here, and reflect that these movies contain treasure for those whoadmire the craft as well as the story, who sense the glee with which De Palma manipulates images andcharacters for the simple joy of being good at it. It's not just that he sometimes works in the style ofHitchcock, but that he has the nerve to."[13]

Criticisms

Julie Salamon has written that "[De Palma] was: a perverse misogynist."[14] De Palma has responded toaccusations of misogyny by saying: "I'm always attacked for having an erotic, sexist approach-- choppingup women, putting women in peril. I'm making suspense movies! What else is going to happen to them?"

David Thomson wrote in his entry for De Palma, "There is a self-conscious cunning in De Palma's work,ready to control everything except his own cruelty and indifference."[16]

Filmography

Feature films

Murder a la Mod (1968)Greetings (1968)The Wedding Party (1969)Hi, Mom! (1970)Dionysus (1970)Get to Know Your Rabbit (1972)Sisters (1973)Phantom of the Paradise (1974)Obsession (1976)Carrie (1976)The Fury (1978)Home Movies (1980)Dressed to Kill (1980)Blow Out (1981)Scarface (1983)Body Double (1984)Wise Guys (1986)The Untouchables (1987)Casualties of War (1989)The Bonfire of the Vanities (1990)Raising Cain (1992)

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Short films

Icarus (1960)660124: The Story of an IBM Card (1961)Woton's Wake (1962)Jennifer (1964)Bridge That Gap (1965)Show Me a Strong Town and I'll Show You a Strong Bank (1966)

Documentary films

The Responsive Eye (1966)

References

Notes

Carlito's Way (1993)Mission: Impossible (1996)Snake Eyes (1998)Mission to Mars (2000)Femme Fatale (2002)The Black Dahlia (2006)Redacted (2007)Passion (2012)

1. "Brian De Palma Biography (1940–)" (http://www.filmreference.com/film/80/Brian-De-Palma.html). FilmReference. Retrieved 2012-01-14.

2. Kenigsberg, Ben (August 30, 2013). "Brian De Palma talks about his stylish new remake, Passion"(http://www.avclub.com/article/brian-de-palma-talks-about-his-stylish-new-remake--102271). A.V. Club.Retrieved October 26, 2014.

3. Gelmis, Joseph (1970). The Film Director as Superstar. Garden City: Doubleday & Company, Inc. p. 24.4. Knapp, Lawrence (2003). Brian De Palma Interviews. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi. p. 26.5. "Berlinale 1969: Prize Winners"

(http://www.berlinale.de/en/archiv/jahresarchive/1969/03_preistr_ger_1969/03_Preistraeger_1969.html).berlinale.de. Retrieved March 6, 2010.

6. Brody, Richard. Everything Is Cinema: The Working Life of Jean-Luc Godard. p. 323.7. Salamon, p. 26.8. "Almost Cast: Who Lost Iconic Roles?" (http://www.life.com/gallery/61531/image/2661928/almost-cast-who-

lost-iconic-roles#index/53). Life. Retrieved December 4, 2011.9. "Venezia 69" (http://www.labiennale.org/en/cinema/festival/lineup/off-sel/venezia69/). labiennale. Retrieved

July 28, 2012.10. Murray, Noel; Tobias, Scott (March 10, 2011). "Brian De Palma | Film | Primer"

(http://www.avclub.com/articles/brian-de-palma,52964/). The A.V. Club. Retrieved 2012-02-03.11. Thompson, Anne (August 30, 2013). "Brian De Palma Q & A: 'Passion,' McAdams vs. Rapace, Sex Tools

UPDATED (New Trailer)" (http://blogs.indiewire.com/thompsononhollywood/brian-de-palma-interview-transcribed?page=2). Indie Wire. p. 2. Retrieved October 26, 2014.

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Wikimedia Commons hasmedia related to Brian DePalma.

Bibliography

Thomson, David (October 26, 2010). The New Biographical Dictionary of Film: Fifth Edition,Completely Updated and Expanded (Hardcover ed.). Knopf. ISBN 978-0-307-27174-7.Salamon, Julie (1991). Devil's Candy: The Bonfire of the Vanities Goes to Hollywood (Hardcovered.). Houghton. ISBN 0-395-56996-6.

Further reading

Bliss, Michael (1986). Brian De Palma. Scarecrow.Blumenfeld, Samuel; Vachaud, Laurent (2001). Brian De Palma. Calmann-Levy.Dworkin, Susan (1984). Double De Palma: A Film Study with Brian De Palma. Newmarket.

External links

Brian De Palma (http://www.imdb.com/name/nm361/) at theInternet Movie DatabaseSenses of Cinema: Great Directors Critical Database(http://www.sensesofcinema.com/2003/great-directors/de_palma/)Photos and discussion around the director (https://secure.flickr.com/groups/doubledepalma/)Literature on Brian De Palma (http://www.virtual-history.com/movie/person/66/brian-de-palma)Brian De Palma bibliography (http://www.lib.berkeley.edu/MRC/depalma.html) (via UC Berkeley)Hi, Brian ! Brian De Palma's Community(https://plus.google.com/u/0/communities/105428171484401408969)

Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Brian_De_Palma&oldid=675027340"

Categories: 1940 births American film directors American film producersAmerican male screenwriters American film directors of Italian descentAmerican people of Italian descent Columbia University alumni Living peoplePeople from Newark, New Jersey Sarah Lawrence College alumniSilver Bear for Best Director recipients Venice Best Director Silver Lion winners Horror film directorsWriters from New Jersey English-language film directors

12. Rainier, Peter. "The Director's Craft: The death-deifying De Palma"(http://web.archive.org/web/20080325222433/http://www.calendarlive.com/movies/cl-ca-depalma24sep24,0,6512079.story). Los Angeles Times Calendar. Archived from the original(http://www.calendarlive.com/movies/cl-ca-depalma24sep24,0,6512079.story) on March 25, 2008. RetrievedDecember 26, 2007.

13. Ebert, Roger (November 6, 2002). "Femme Fatale (2002)" (http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=%2F20021106%2FREVIEWS%2F211060301%2F1023&AID1=%2F20021106%2FREVIEWS%2F211060301%2F1023&AID2=). Chicago Sun-Times. Retrieved 2012-01-14.

14. Salamon, p. 27.15. Kael, Pauline (July 27, 1981). "Blow Out: Portrait of the Artist as a Young Gadgeteer"

(http://www.criterion.com/current/posts/1830-blow-out-portrait-of-the-artist-as-a-young-gadgeteer). New Yorker.Retrieved 2012-02-03.

16. Thomson, p. 257.

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