De Palma at the 2011 Deauville American Film Festival | |
Born | September 11, 1940 (age 78) Newark, New Jersey, U.S. |
---|---|
Residence | Manhattan, New York City, U.S. |
Alma mater | Sarah Lawrence College |
Occupation | Film director, screenwriter |
Years active | 1960–present |
Spouse(s) | Gale Anne Hurd (m. 1991; div. 1993) |
Children | 2 |
Brian Russell de Palma (born September 11, 1940) is an American film director and screenwriter. With a career spanning over 50 years, he is best known for his work in the suspense, psychological thriller, and crime drama genres. His prominent films include mainstream box office hits such as Carrie (1976), Dressed to Kill (1980), Scarface (1983), The Untouchables (1987), and Mission: Impossible (1996), as well as cult favorites such as Sisters (1973), Blow Out (1981), Body Double (1984), Carlito's Way (1993), and Femme Fatale (2002).[1]
De Palma is often cited as a leading member of the New Hollywood generation of film directors.[2] His directing style often makes use of quotations from other films or cinematic styles, and bears the influence of filmmakers such as Alfred Hitchcock and Jean-Luc Godard.[2] His films have frequently garnered controversy for their violence and sexual content,[1] but have also been championed by prominent critics such as Roger Ebert and Pauline Kael.[3][4]
- 4Trademarks and style
- 5Collaborations
- 9Filmography
Early life[edit]
De Palma, who is of Italian ancestry, is the youngest of three boys and was born in Newark, New Jersey, to Vivienne (née Muti) and Anthony Federico DePalma, an orthopedic surgeon.[5] He was raised in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania and New Hampshire, and attended various Protestant and Quaker schools, eventually graduating from Friends' Central School. He had a poor relationship with his father, and would secretly follow him to record his adulterous behavior; this would eventually inspire the teenage character played by Keith Gordon in De Palma's 1980 film Dressed to Kill.[6] When he was in high school, he built computers.[7] He won a regional science-fair prize for a project titled 'An Analog Computer to Solve Differential Equations'.
1960s and early career[edit]
Yatra movie u torrent free download hd. Enrolled at Columbia as a physics student, De Palma became enraptured with the filmmaking process after viewing Citizen Kane and Vertigo. De Palma subsequently enrolled at the newly coed Sarah Lawrence College as a graduate student in their theater department in the early 1960s, becoming one of the first male students among a female population. Once there, influences as various as drama teacher Wilford Leach, the Maysles brothers, Michelangelo Antonioni, Jean-Luc Godard, Andy Warhol, and Alfred Hitchcock impressed upon De Palma the many styles and themes that would shape his own cinema in the coming decades.
An early association with a young Robert De Niro resulted in The Wedding Party. The film, which was co-directed with Leach and producer Cynthia Munroe, had been shot in 1963 but remained unreleased until 1969, when De Palma's star had risen sufficiently within the Greenwich Village filmmaking scene. De Niro was unknown at the time; the credits mistakenly display his name as 'Robert Denero.' The film is noteworthy for its invocation of silent film techniques and an insistence on the jump-cut for effect. De Palma followed this style 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 Responsive Eye, a 1966 movie about The Responsive Eyeop-art exhibit curated by William Seitz for MOMA in 1965. In an interview with Gelmis from 1969, De Palma described the film as 'very good and 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 paintings themselves.'[8]
Dionysus in 69 (1969) was De Palma's other major documentary from this period. The film records The Performance Group's performance of Euripides' The Bacchae, starring, amongst others, De Palma regular William Finley. The play is noted for breaking traditional barriers between performers and audience. The film's most striking quality is its extensive use of the split-screen. De Palma recalls that he was 'floored' by this performance upon first sight, and in 1973 recounts how he 'began to try and figure out a way to capture it on film. I came up with the idea of split-screen, to be able to show the actual audience involvement, to trace the life of the audience and that of the play as they merge in and out of each other.'[9]
De Palma's most significant features from this decade are Greetings (1968) and Hi, Mom! (1970). Both films star Robert De Niro and espouse a Leftistrevolutionary viewpoint common to their era. Greetings was entered into the 19th Berlin International Film Festival, where it won a Silver Bear award.[10] His other major film from this period is the slasher comedy Murder a la Mod. Each of these films contains experiments in narrative and intertextuality, reflecting De Palma's stated intention to become the 'American Godard' while integrating several of the themes which permeated Hitchcock's work.[11]
Greetings is about three New Yorkers dealing with the draft. The film is often considered the first to deal explicitly with the draft. The film is noteworthy for its use of various experimental techniques to convey its narrative in ultimately unconventional ways. Footage was sped up, rapid cutting was used to distance the audience 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 a bankable filmmaker.
After the success of his 1968 breakthrough, De Palma and his producing partner, Charles Hirsch, were given 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 on De Niro's character, Jon Rubin, an essential carry-over from the previous film. The film is ultimately 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 into this formal, material apparatus itself.
These traits come to the fore in Hi, Mom!'s 'Be Black, Baby' sequence. This sequence parodies cinéma vérité, the dominant documentary tradition of the 1960s, while simultaneously providing the audience with a visceral and disturbingly emotional experience. De Palma describes the sequence as a constant invocation of Brechtian distanciation: 'First of all, I am interested in the medium of film itself, and I am constantly standing outside and making people aware that they are always watching a film. At the same time I am evolving it. In Hi, Mom! for instance, there is a sequence where you are obviously watching a ridiculous documentary and you are told that and you are aware of it, but it still sucks you in. There is a kind of Brechtian alienation idea here: you are aware of what you are watching at the same time that you are emotionally involved with it.'
'Be Black, Baby' was filmed in black and white stock on 16 mm, in low-light conditions that stress the crudity of the direct cinema aesthetic. It is precisely from this crudity that the film itself gains a credibility of 'realism.' In an interview with Michael Bliss, De Palma notes '[Be Black, Baby] was rehearsed for almost three weeks.. In fact, it's all scripted. But once the thing starts, they just go with the way it's going. I specifically got a very good documentary camera filmmaker (Robert Elfstrom) to just shoot it like a documentary to follow the action.' Furthermore, 'I wanted to show in Hi, Mom! how you can really involve an audience. You take an absurd premise – 'Be Black, Baby' – and totally involve them and really frighten them at the same time. It's very Brechtian. You suck 'em in and annihilate 'em. Then you say, 'It's just a movie, right? It's not real.' It's just like television. You're sucked in all the time, and you're being lied to in a very documentary-like setting. The 'Be Black, Baby' section of Hi, Mom! is probably the most important piece of film I've ever done.'
Transition to Hollywood[edit]
In the 1970s, De Palma went to Hollywood where he worked on bigger budget films. In 1970, De Palma left New York for Hollywood at age thirty to make Get to Know Your Rabbit, starring Orson Welles and Tommy Smothers. Making the film was a crushing experience for De Palma, as Smothers did not like many of De Palma's ideas.[12]
After several small, studio and independent released films that included stand-outs Sisters, Phantom of the Paradise, and Obsession, a film based on the 1974 novel Carrie was released, directed by Brian De Palma. The psychic thriller Carrie is seen by some as De Palma's bid for a blockbuster. In fact, the project was small, underfunded by United Artists, and well under the cultural radar during the early months of production, as the source novelBy Stephen King had yet to climb the bestseller list. De Palma gravitated toward the project and changed crucial plot elements based upon his own predilections, not the saleability of the novel. The cast was young and relatively new, though Sissy Spacek and John Travolta had gained 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 nominations for their performances. Preproduction for the film had coincided with the casting process for George Lucas's Star Wars, and many of the actors cast in De Palma's film had been earmarked as contenders for Lucas's movie, and vice versa.[13] The 'shock ending' finale is effective even while it upholds horror-film convention, 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.
The financial and critical success of Carrie allowed De Palma to pursue more personal material. The Demolished Man was a novel that had fascinated De Palma since the late 1950s and appealed to his background in mathematics and avant-garde storytelling. Its unconventional unfolding of plot (exemplified in 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 has yet to appear onscreen (Steven Spielberg's adaptation of Philip K. Dick's Minority Report bears striking similarities to De Palma's visual style and some of the themes of The Demolished Man). The result of his experience with adapting The Demolished Man was The Fury, a science fiction psychic thriller that starred Kirk Douglas, Carrie Snodgress, John Cassavetes and Amy Irving. The film was admired by Jean-Luc Godard, who featured a clip in his mammoth Histoire(s) du cinéma, and Pauline Kael who championed both The Fury and De Palma. The film boasted a larger budget than Carrie, though the consensus view at the time was that De Palma was repeating himself, with diminishing returns. As a film, it retains De Palma's considerable visual flair, but points more toward his work in mainstream entertainments such as Mission: Impossible, the thematic complex thriller for which he is now better known.
For many film-goers, De Palma's gangster films, most notably Scarface and Carlito's Way, pushed the envelope of on-screen violence and depravity, and yet greatly vary from one another in both style and content and also illustrate De Palma's evolution as a film-maker. In essence, the excesses of Scarface contrast with the more emotional tragedy of Carlito's Way. Both films feature Al Pacino in what has become a fruitful working relationship. In 1984, he directed the music video of the Bruce Springsteen's single 'Dancing in the Dark'. The 1980s were denoted by De Palma's other films Dressed to Kill, Blow Out, Body Double, and The Untouchables.
Later into the 1990s and 2000s, De Palma did other films. He attempted to do dramas and a few thrillers plus science fiction. Some of these movies (Mission: Impossible, Carlito's Way) worked and some others (Raising Cain, Mission to Mars, The Bonfire of the Vanities) failed at the box office, as did Femme Fatale, though this has since developed a cult status amongst cinephiles.
Brian De Palma Imdb
A more political controversy erupted in a later movie from De Palma, Redacted (2007), which had the subject of American involvement in Iraq, including the committing of war atrocities there. It received limited release in the United States and grossed less than $1 million.
In 2012, his film Passion was selected to compete for the Golden Lion at the 69th Venice International Film Festival.[14] In 2015, he was the subject of a documentary film, De Palma.[15]
In 2017, De Palma began shooting the thrillerDomino in Málaga,[16] and then they moved to shoot in Almería at the airport, the bullring and the port.[17] The film will star Nikolaj Coster-Waldau, and walk-on actors were selected at the Estadio de los Juegos Mediterráneos.[18] After the first take, which was shot in the bullring,[19] filming had to be cut short due to a lack of extras. Additionally, the leading female character was changed from Christina Hendricks to Carice van Houten.[20] When the shoot finished, De Palma moved to Denmark.[21]
When he went to shoot Domino in Almería, he received a star at the Almeria Walk of Fame,[22] as did Nikolaj Coster-Waldau.[23]
Trademarks and style[edit]
Themes[edit]
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 before going on to direct a different genre, but would always return to his familiar territory. Because of the subject matter and graphic violence of some of De Palma's films, such as Dressed to Kill, Scarface and Body Double, they are often at the center of controversy with the Motion Picture Association of America, film critics and the viewing public.[2]
De Palma is known for quoting and referencing other directors' work throughout his career. Michelangelo Antonioni's Blowup and Francis Ford Coppola's The Conversation plots were used for the basis of Blow Out. The Untouchables' finale shoot out in the train station is a clear borrow from the Odessa Steps sequence in Sergei Eisenstein's The Battleship Potemkin. The main plot from Rear Window was used for Body Double, while it also used elements of Vertigo. Vertigo was also the basis for Obsession. Dressed to Kill was a note-for-note homage to Hitchcock's Psycho, including such moments as the surprise death of the lead actress and the exposition scene by the psychiatrist at the end.[2]
Camera shots[edit]
Film critics have often noted De Palma's penchant for unusual camera angles and compositions throughout his career. He often frames characters against the background using a canted angle shot. Split-screen techniques have been used to show two separate events happening simultaneously.[2] To emphasize the dramatic 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 long takes lasting for minutes without cutting. Split focus shots, often referred to as 'di-opt', are used by De Palma to emphasize the foreground person/object while simultaneously keeping a background person/object in focus. Slow-motion is frequently used in his films to increase suspense.[2]
Collaborations[edit]
Actors[edit]
Actor | Murder a la Mod | Greetings | The Wedding Party | Dionysus in '69 | Hi, Mom! | Get to Know Your Rabbit | Sisters | Phantom of the Paradise | Obsession | Carrie | The Fury | Home Movies | Dressed to Kill | Blow Out | Scarface | Body Double | The Untouchables | Casualties of War | The Bonfire of the Vanities | Raising Cain | Carlito's Way | Mission: Impossible | Snake Eyes | Mission to Mars | Femme Fatale | The Black Dahlia |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
F. Murray Abraham | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Nancy Allen | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Vito D'Ambrosio | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Steven Bauer | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Richard Belzer | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Robert De Niro | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Kirk Douglas | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Kevin Dunn | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Charles Durning | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Dale Dye | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||
William Finley | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Dennis Franz | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Allen Garfield | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Keith Gordon | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Gerrit Graham | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Melanie Griffith | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Luis Guzmán | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Donald Patrick Harvey | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Gregg Henry | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Amy Irving | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Al Israel | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Clifton James | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||
John Leguizamo | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||
John Lithgow | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Mark Margolis | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Jared Martin | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Michael P. Moran | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Al Pacino | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Sean Penn | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Ving Rhames | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Angel Salazar | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Jennifer Salt | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Pepe Serna | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Gary Sinise | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Mike Starr | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||
John Travolta |
Cinematographers[edit]
|
|
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Personal life[edit]
De Palma has been married and divorced three times, to actress Nancy Allen (1979–1983), producer Gale Anne Hurd (1991–1993), and Darnell Gregorio (1995–1997). He has one daughter from his marriage to Hurd, Lolita de Palma, born in 1991, and one daughter from his marriage to Gregorio, Piper De Palma, born in 1996.[citation needed] He resides in Manhattan, New York.[24]
Legacy[edit]
De Palma at the 2008 Toronto International Film Festival
De Palma is often cited as a leading member of the New Hollywood generation of film directors, a distinct pedigree who either emerged from film schools or are overtly cine-literate.[2] His contemporaries include Martin Scorsese, Paul Schrader, John Milius, George Lucas, Francis Ford Coppola, Steven Spielberg, John Carpenter, and Ridley Scott. His artistry in directing and use of cinematography and suspense in several of his films has often been compared to the work of Alfred Hitchcock.[2][25][4] Psychologists have been intrigued by De Palma's fascination with pathology, by the aberrant behavior aroused in characters who find themselves manipulated by others.[26]
De Palma has encouraged and fostered the filmmaking careers of directors such as Mark Romanek and Keith Gordon. Filmmakers influenced by De Palma include Quentin Tarantino,[27]Ronny Yu,[28]Don Mancini,[29]Nacho Vigalondo,[30] and Jack Thomas Smith.[31] During an interview with De Palma, Quentin Tarantino said that Blow Out is one of his all-time favorite films, and that after watching Scarface he knew how to make his own film.
Critics who frequently admire De Palma's work include Pauline Kael and Roger Ebert, among others. Kael wrote in her review of Blow Out, 'At forty, Brian De Palma has more than twenty years of moviemaking behind him, and he has been growing better and better. Each time a new film of his opens, everything he has done before seems to have been preparation for it.'[3] In his review of Femme Fatale, Roger Ebert wrote 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 Bonfire of the Vanities), but look at the range here, and reflect that these movies contain treasure for those who admire the craft as well as the story, who sense the glee with which De Palma manipulates images and characters for the simple joy of being good at it. It's not just that he sometimes works in the style of Hitchcock, but that he has the nerve to.'[4]
Criticism[edit]
Julie Salamon has written that De Palma has been accused of being 'a perverse misogynist' by critics.[26] De Palma has responded to accusations of misogyny by saying: 'I'm always attacked for having an erotic, sexist approach - chopping up women, putting women in peril. I'm making suspense movies! What else is going to happen to them?'[32]
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.'[33]
Filmography[edit]
Feature films[edit]
- Murder a la Mod (1968)
- Greetings (1968)
- The Wedding Party (1969)
- Hi, Mom! (1970)
- Dionysus in '69 (1970)
- Get to Know Your Rabbit (1972)
- Sisters (1972)
- Phantom of the Paradise (1974)
- Obsession (1976)
- Carrie (1976)
- The Fury (1978)
- Home Movies (1979)
- 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)
- 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)
- Domino (2019)
Short films[edit]
- 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)
- Dancing in the Dark (1984)
Documentary films[edit]
- The Responsive Eye (1966)
- De Palma (2015)
Bibliography[edit]
- De Palma, Brian; Lehman, Susan (May 16, 2018). Les serpents sont-ils nécessaires? (in French). Translated by Esch, Jean. Paris: Payot & Rivages [fr]. ISBN2-7436-4445-1. OCLC1037152284.
References[edit]
- ^ abRose, Steve. 'Steve Rose Talks to Director Brian De Palma'. The Guardian. Retrieved June 18, 2018.
- ^ abcdefghMurray, Noel; Tobias, Scott (March 10, 2011). 'Brian De Palma | Film | Primer'. The A.V. Club. Retrieved 2012-02-03.
- ^ abKael, Pauline (July 27, 1981). 'Blow Out: Portrait of the Artist as a Young Gadgeteer'. New Yorker. Retrieved 2012-02-03.
- ^ abcEbert, Roger (November 6, 2002). 'Femme Fatale (2002)'. Chicago Sun-Times. Retrieved 2012-01-14.
- ^'Brian De Palma Biography (1940–)'. Film Reference. Retrieved 2012-01-14.
- ^Clark, Ashley. 'Brian de Palma: 'Film lies all the time … 24 times a second''. The Guardian. Retrieved June 18, 2018.
- ^Kenigsberg, Ben (August 30, 2013). 'Brian De Palma talks about his stylish new remake, Passion'. A.V. Club. Retrieved October 26, 2014.
- ^Gelmis, Joseph (1970). The Film Director as Superstar. Garden City: Doubleday & Company, Inc. p. 24.
- ^Knapp, Lawrence (2003). Brian De Palma Interviews. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi. p. 26.
- ^'Berlinale 1969: Prize Winners'. berlinale.de. Retrieved March 6, 2010.
- ^Brody, Richard. Everything Is Cinema: The Working Life of Jean-Luc Godard. p. 323.
- ^Salamon, p. 26.
- ^'Almost Cast: Who Lost Iconic Roles?'. Life. Retrieved December 4, 2011.
- ^'Venezia 69'. labiennale. Archived from the original on July 28, 2012. Retrieved July 28, 2012.
- ^David Rooney (September 8, 2015). ''De Palma': Venice Review'. The Hollywood Reporter. Retrieved April 28, 2016.
- ^A. Gómez, Víctor (May 5, 2017). 'Brian de Palma y un Lannister, rodaje en Málaga'. La Opinión de Málaga (in Spanish). Málaga. Retrieved August 25, 2017.
- ^EFE (June 19, 2017). 'Brian de Palma rodará el thriller 'Domino' en Almería'. ABC (in Spanish). Almería. Retrieved August 25, 2017.
- ^Cabrera, Miguel (June 19, 2017). 'Brian de Palma busca figurantes para el rodaje en Almería de 'Domino''. ABC (in Spanish). Almería. Retrieved August 25, 2017.
- ^Rodríguez, Marta; Barrios, Juan Antonio (July 11, 2017). 'Brian De Palma rueda ya en la Plaza de Toros'. La Voz de Almería (in Spanish). Almería. Retrieved August 25, 2017.
- ^Rodríguez, Marta (July 18, 2017). 'El misterio del rodaje de 'Domino', de Brian de Palma'. La Voz de Almería (in Spanish). Almería. Retrieved August 25, 2017.
- ^Martínez, D. (July 17, 2017). 'Brian de Palma abandona Almería y se lleva el rodaje de 'Domino' a Dinamarca'. Diario de Almería (in Spanish). Almería. Retrieved August 25, 2017.
- ^'De Palma recibe un homenaje en Almería'. Faro de Vigo (in Spanish). July 17, 2017. Retrieved August 25, 2017.
- ^Europa Press (July 14, 2017). 'Brian de Palma y Nikolaj Coster-Waldau tendrán su estrella en el Paseo de la Fama por el rodaje de 'Domino''. La Información (in Spanish). Almería. Retrieved August 25, 2017.
- ^Thompson, Anne (August 30, 2013). 'Brian De Palma Q & A: 'Passion,' McAdams vs. Rapace, Sex Tools UPDATED (New Trailer)'. Indie Wire. p. 2. Archived from the original on October 26, 2014. Retrieved October 26, 2014.
- ^Rainier, Peter. 'The Director's Craft: The death-deifying De Palma'. Los Angeles Times Calendar. Archived from the original on March 25, 2008. Retrieved December 26, 2007.
- ^ abSalamon, p. 27.
- ^Fitzmaurice, Larry (August 28, 2015). 'Quentin Tarantino: The Complete Syllabus of His Influences and References'. Vulture.
- ^Hammond, Stefan, Wilkins, Mike (August 19, 1996). 'Influenced+by+Brian+DePalma'&source=bl&ots=yTdRXhJpAN&sig=zag3XT9xKS1DGdgBSUyMf9b0M8g&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjz6Lnl_L3LAhUBfCYKHZefCA4Q6AEIHjAA#v=onepage&q='InfluencedbyBrianDePalma'&f=false Sex and Zen & A Bullet in the Head: The Essential Guide to Hong Kong's Mind-bending Films. Touchstone. pp. 201-202. Archived at Google Books. Retrieved March 13, 2016.
- ^Topel, Fred (November 11, 2004). 'Behind-the-Scenes of 'Seed of Chucky'. MovieWeb.
- ^Hatfull, Jonathan (August 25, 2014). 'FrightFest 2014 Day 4 review: killers, singers and demons'. SciFiNow.
- ^Wien, Gary (October 19, 2014). 'Infliction: An Interview With Jack Thomas Smith'. New Jersey Stage.
- ^Caputi, Jane (June 15, 1987). The Age of Sex Crime. Popular Press. p. 92.
- ^Thomson, p. 257.
Bibliography[edit]
- Thomson, David (October 26, 2010). The New Biographical Dictionary of Film: Fifth Edition, Completely Updated and Expanded (Hardcover ed.). Knopf. ISBN978-0-307-27174-7.
- Salamon, Julie (1991). Devil's Candy: The Bonfire of the Vanities Goes to Hollywood (Hardcover ed.). Houghton. ISBN0-395-56996-6.
Further reading[edit]
- 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[edit]
Wikimedia Commons has media related to Brian De Palma. |
- Brian De Palma on IMDb
- Brian De Palma bibliography (via UC Berkeley)
- Brian De Palma (director) (1966). The Responsive Eye (Motion picture). De Palma documentary film available online.
Retrieved from 'https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Brian_De_Palma&oldid=903550185'
Brian De Palma has used the Italian film composer Pino Donaggio on and off for over 40 years, ever since their first (and still greatest) collaboration, “Carrie,” in 1976. Donaggio, with his lushly purple neo-Bernard Herrmann dissonant extravagance, is to De Palma what Angelo Badalamenti has been to David Lynch: a composer of rapturous dread-infused melodies that evoke a kind of meta-romantic Old Hollywood delirium. Yet to hear the unmistakable sounds of yet another lavishly orchestrated Donaggio swoonfest laid over the flat, static expository scenes of the choppy benumbed “international” police thriller “Domino” is to watch De Palma trying to create cinematic fire out of burnt-out match sticks.
There are legendary examples of directors claiming that their work was cut to ribbons by clueless producers: the 1954 George Cukor version of “A Star Is Born” (though in that case, the studio-butchered rendition is actually better), or Jonathan Demme’s “Swing Shift.” But what are we to make of a movie like “Domino,” which De Palma has claimed was taken away from him and re-edited — yet the version that’s been put into theaters, and mostly dumped to VOD, is such a limp assemblage of cop-movie conventions that it’s hard to imagine what any version of this film could have added up to.
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Brian De Palma’s “Domino” was a troubled production story for the ages: underfunded, shot by the seat of its pants, and cut to ribbons without the director’s approval or supervision. But that’s the least of the issues with the final product. There’s little indication this low-rent, high-minded terrorism shlock ever had any hope of being a better film than the version now making its way to VOD and a few sad movie screens. Too much of the material is intact to suggest that some kind of late-career masterpiece has been lost along the way, and too many of De Palma’s fingerprints are still visible to believe that additional money or context would have yielded a substantive thriller that’s more than the sum of its parts.
On the contrary, the most damning thing about “Domino” is that it reaffirms what all but the filmmaker’s most deluded fetishists have long since concluded: The world has caught up with Brian De Palma — his fascination with voyeurism and violence have been sublimated into the stuff of everyday life — and the guy is basically just circling the drain. After all, few things could be more damning than a De Palma movie that has more references to his own work than it does to Alfred Hitchcock’s.
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“Domino” boasts exactly one compelling idea, but it’s an idea that De Palma has done well to anticipate, and one that he explores with all his signature relish: This is a movie about terrorism as a burgeoning form of cinema, and about terrorists as a sinister new breed of filmmakers. Just ahead of its time when it was shot — and all too familiar by the time of its release — De Palma’s latest ruminative genre effort looks at how an old preoccupation is being transformed by new ways of seeing.
No mere riff on the power of propaganda in the digital age, “Domino” is rather a kind of cheeseball reckoning with a world in which physical violence has become secondary to visual violence, where the death toll of a terrorist attack can seem less important than how it’s disseminated. Primacy is subservient to virality; the theatrical experience is just a marketing campaign for streaming content. This may not be the future De Palma wanted, but it’s the one he’s been preparing us for.
However, it’ll take an enormous amount of goodwill for audiences to take that seriously, because “Domino” packages its director’s focal point inside layers upon layers of basic cable trash, even as it boasts a premium cable cast. Pointlessly set in the summer of 2020 (as if to declare its own prescience), the film stars “Game of Thrones” actor Nikolaj Coster-Waldau as Christian, a Copenhagen police officer who makes the fateful mistake of leaving his gun at home when he and his much older partner Wold (Thomas W. Gabrielsson) respond to a domestic violence call one night. Instead of an abused spouse, the two cops find a cache of explosives and the mangled corpse of an unidentified man. They also find the blood-spattered killer, Ezra Tarzai (De Palma alum Eriq Ebouaney), who slashes Wold’s neck in a stairway brawl and flees from the unarmed Christian.
At the end of the “Vertigo”-inspired chase that ensues across the city roofs, Ezra is abducted by a black ops CIA team (headed by Guy Pearce), who have very specific plans for their new detainee. It seems that Ezra, hellbent on assassinating the ISIS unit that murdered his father, has followed the jihadists to Denmark in an effort to deal with them more efficiently than the American government ever could. And the CIA, instead of just saying “thank you,” has for some reason decided to kidnap Ezra’s family in order to force him to… do the same thing that he was already doing anyway? Whatever — the clock is ticking and terrorist attacks are imminent.
After Wold succumbs to his wound, Christian feels compelled to do some avenging of his own. Along with his grief-stricken new partner, Alex (“Game of Thrones” co-star Carice van Houten), the Copenhagen police officer begins to pursue the terrorists on his own, following them from one poorly shot Western European country to another as we’re left to assume that “jurisdiction” has too many syllables for a conversation about it to fit into an 80-minute film.
“Domino”
How the various plot threads knot together — or don’t — is proof enough that “Domino” has been desecrated somehow. De Palma isn’t exactly known for the clarity of his storytelling, but he’s never been quite this sloppy when left to his own devices. Scenes crash into each other like bumper cars, and the movie feels paced at random, leaving the consistency of Pino Donaggio’s swooning orchestral score to hold the movie together even as the music ignores what’s happening on screen (often to amusing effect).
The characters are just as messy, and all of them feel cut off at the knees. Christian is a blank page who almost never mentions his guilt over Wold’s death, and Pearce’s CIA agent sports a Southern accent so broad that it tips the entire movie towards satire (his only stated motivation is that he’s afraid that media organizations like Vice might report on America’s inability to thwart terrorists). Ezra is semi-compellingly caught between a rock and a hard place, but “Domino” couldn’t have any less interest about that; in a film where all of the white people are grieving heroes and all of the brown people are maniacal terrorists, the only black guy on screen is neither of the above or much of anything else — he’s a glorified plot point who occasionally gets to elbow people in the face. Ezra is unique in that it’s possible to imagine a version of this movie in which he’s an actual character worth caring about, but this is not the version.
De Palma makes his presence known at unpredictable intervals as “Domino” begins to assume form around his pet obsessions. You can feel him in the long zoom that locates Christian’s forgotten gun, and he’s unmissable in the flurry of split-diopter shots that — when compared to the ersatz versions recently seen in Richard Shephard’s “The Perfection” — serve as good reminders that De Palma is easier to criticize than he is to imitate.
And then, of course, there’s the violence. The movie’s first terrorist attack is also its most nauseating. In a massacre that would seem tactless and exploitative if wasn’t shot before the Christchurch mosque shootings were live-streamed on Facebook, a nervous terrorist attacks a film festival red carpet with a machine gun that’s mounted with iPhones pointing in each direction, allowing for a split-screen feed of both the killer and her victims.
In its own terrible way, this image, which is framed by a glaring “Femme Fatale” reference, is the natural endpoint of De Palma’s lifelong exploration into the space between committing bloodshed and capturing it on camera: The violence of the act is conflated between the barrel of the gun and the lens of the iPhones, and the terrorists — much like the film itself — are more concerned with the horror the attack represents than they are with the havoc it causes. In effect, the two are one and the same, though the truly laughable CGI used to galvanize that idea has a way of dampening its power.
Set in a half-empty Almería bullring the production wasn’t able to fill with extras, the film’s ridiculous operatic climax takes things to a higher level by introducing a drone into the mix, and we can only hope that life doesn’t imitate art at some point in the near future (drone-based terrorism is already a thing, but not quite like this). It might, of course. The trouble isn’t that “Domino” is bad, but that it’s unnecessary; now that we’re all living in a Brian De Palma movie, there doesn’t seem to be any reason for him to keep making them.
Grade: C-
Saban Films will release “Domino” in theaters and on VOD on May 31.
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Nikolaj Coster-Waldau stars as Christian, a Danish cop who, as the story opens, goes with his older partner, Lars (Soren Malling), to respond to an alleged domestic disturbance. They quickly catch the apparent perpetrator (Eriq Ebouaney) as he is trying to leave, but when Christian heads upstairs to investigate further, he realizes that he left his gun at home and is force to borrow Lars'. He quickly discovers evidence of much more than a domestic dispute but by the time he gets back to Lars, the man they caught has slipped his bonds, slit Lars’ throat and jumped out the window to escape via the rooftops. Christian gives chase but both plummet to the ground, and he thinks he sees a couple of strange men dragging the suspect away.
It turns out that the suspect is actually Ezra Tarzi, a Libyan who is in pursuit of ISIS leader Salah Al Din (Mohammed Azaay) in order to avenge the murder of his father. The people who nabbed Ezra at the scene turn out to be CIA and the agent in charge (Guy Pearce) forces Ezra to continue his pursuit of Al Din and do the dirty work that the US government is prevented from doing, going so far as to imprison his family to force him to comply. While Al Din and his comrades set off to wreak havoc via a brutal suicide attack that they plan to broadcast on the Internet, Ezra goes off in pursuit while he, in turn, is being followed by Christian, who has already been suspended from the force because of the misplaced gun. Meanwhile, another Danish cop named Alex (Carice van Houten) also has deeply personal reasons for wanting to bring down Lars’ killer.
The key problem with “Domino” is that the screenplay by Petter Skavlan never quite clicks together. Granted, one does not normally go to a Brian De Palma film for the airtight narratives, but this one, either by nature or by the result of unfortunate last-minute edits, just doesn’t work. The notion of the multiple pursuits is reasonably clever but not much is done with it—there are too many scenes that just start and stop so abruptly that they leave you wondering if you somehow missed something. The characters are also given only the most perfunctory bits of development and the ones that do stand out do so mostly because of the personalities of the actors: Ebouaney (who was a menacing presence in De Palma’s “Femme Fatale”) is fairly electrifying and Pearce is clearly having fun chewing the scenery as the CIA sleaze. On the other hand, van Houten can be a striking screen presence (as she showed in Paul Verhoeven’s “Black Book”) but is hampered here by a character who seems to have been the possible victim of the editing, while Coster-Waldau is bland as the largely ineffectual hero.
These are flaws, to be sure, and they might have indeed sunk many an ordinary movie. However, “Domino” is still a Brian De Palma film, and those who still thrill at the very sound of that phrase will find a lot to enjoy here. Many of the obsessions he has explored throughout his career are on display in 'Domino,' both dramatic (voyeurism, mistrust of authority, a fascination with technology and the various ways in which it can be manipulated) and cinematic (including split-diopter shots and gorgeous deployment of slow motion at key moments). Although the script is largely straight-faced throughout, there are a couple of moments of De Palma’s trademark dark humor, including a bit in which a character analyzes a brutal torture video to note all the cinematic techniques being deployed with the fervor of someone taking note of every frame of a new trailer for some upcoming blockbuster. And, of course, there are the big set pieces—including an early rooftop chase that provides thrills and a tip of the hat to “Vertigo,” a terrorist attack that Al Din directs from afar as if he was a filmmaker himself and a climactic confrontation at a bullfight in Spain that takes up much of the final third. In that last scene especially, cinematographer Jose Luis Alcaine (who has shot most of Pedro Almodovar’s films as well as De Palma’s “Passion”), editor Bill Pankow, and composer Pino Donaggio combine their considerable talents to create a thrilling display of sound and vision that distinguishes them from the largely forgettable CGI melanges that currently dominate the multiplex scene.
“Domino” is not a De Palma classic on the level of “Dressed to Kill” or “Blow Out,” and it doesn’t reach the heights of such recent masterworks as “Femme Fatale” or the absurdly overlooked “Passion.” However, though it may ultimately go down as second-tier De Palma, his second tier beats the hell out of the top-level efforts of most filmmakers. The great Howard Hawks once famously stated that “A good movie is three good scenes and no bad ones.” “Domino” certainly contains the requisite three good scenes and they are so good that I found it easy to forget, or at least forgive, the ones that do not quite work. This is not a great Brian De Palma film in the end, but its best moments will remind you of just how great he can be.
“I had a lot of problems in financing [the film]. I never experienced such a horrible movie set. A large part of our team has not even been paid yet by the Danish producers. The film is finished and ready to go out, but I have no idea what its future will hold, it is currently in the hands of the producers. This was my first experience in Denmark and most likely my last.” These are the words of director Brian De Palma, nearly a full year before this week’s release of “Domino.” There are few directors that cinephiles are aching to return to form more than Brian De Palma, but unfortunately, his string of misfires continues with this picture. However, there are enough glimmers of his electrifying, trademark style that there’s hope De Palma may have another great movie left in him yet.
The rather workmanlike script by Petter Skavlan (“Kon-Tiki,” “The 12th Man”) follows Christian (Nikolaj Coster-Waldau), a cop who embarks on a mission to capture the man who killed his partner Lars (played by “Borgen” and “The Killing” star Soren Malling, who is thoroughly wasted here) during an arrest gone wrong. Along for the ride is Alex (Carice van Houten), a fellow officer, who has her own personal attachment to the case and reasons for vengeance. The twist: the murderer is a person of interest to the CIA, embodied by the wildly Southern-accented Guy Pearce, who is having the most fun out of anyone in the cast. The killer becomes a pawn in a cat-and-mouse game where the interests of local and global politics are at odds. While that’s certainly a compelling idea, neither Skavlan or De Palma seems particularly invested in exploring its timely relevance, a fact the director himself leans into.
“….the whole political aspect will be very little exploited, the film was more for me a new opportunity to explore a visual narrative,” De Palma explained last year. “In the film, terrorists are obsessed with the idea that their actions are instantly visible live on the Internet or on TV.”
To that the end, “Domino” — which for no particular reason is set in 2020 — is a much more grounded picture than fans of De Palma might be used to. The film’s backdrop of viral terrorism does see De Palma applying his trademark split-screen technique to a mass shooting sequence that’s streamed live online. Aside from that, the director doesn’t break any new narrative or visual ground. However, it’s a moment that’s grimly clever and could have been impactful, had De Palma been given the resources to pull it off more effectively.
Watching “Domino” is an exercise in seeing De Palma working with a budget that seems to have been evaporating during production. From shoddy studio sets to chintzy digital effects, the filmmaker fights a losing battle against low production values that undermine him every step of the way. The film feels defeated before it even really gets rolling, and it’s a shame, because there are flashes of De Palma trying to make his mark in a situation he simply couldn’t win. “Domino” is peppered with De Palma’s familiar flourishes: wide shot-to-slow zoom close-ups; split diopter shots; the aforementioned split screen; and an elaborately staged (if somewhat goofy), ticking clock climatic final sequence, that bounces effectively between two locations. These are suggestions of a much better film, had the director been had half the chance. However, De Palma isn’t completely absolved from responsibility for the film’s shortcomings.
Nancy Allen
Filmmakers have made better from far worse circumstances, and outside of the film’s setpieces, De Palma doesn’t seem to have given a damn. The director inspires some astonishingly wooden acting from Coster-Waldau and van Houten, who seem at a loss about the motivations of their characters. And while Pearce leans into his smarmy CIA executive with absolute, wildly entertaining glee, he manages to survive “Domino” mostly because he decided to act in an entirely different movie than everyone else. Tonally, the film is off balance too. De Palma enlists his frequent collaborator Pino Donaggio for the score, but the composer is simply the wrong the choice. Donaggio’s lush orchestration — which at its best in De Palma’s films, builds operatic tension that releases into ecstatic climaxes — is entirely at odds with the dour story that attempts to reflect contemporary, geopolitical realities.
De Palma tries to have it both ways with “Domino.” He tackles a movie that’s clearly inspired by the current climate of terrorist extremism, but attempts to deflect any criticism on that front by saying that he’s not making any kind of statement about the subject matter at all. The film’s half-hearted politics — which do make a statement, regardless of intent — are perhaps less egregious than a movie that’s simply going through the motions for the bulk of its running time. Certainly, De Palma deserved a better hand than what he was dealt, but audiences also deserve at least modicum of effort from the filmmaker, even if he’s working in the most trying of circumstances. [D]