5 Movies / July 5 starting at 8 p.m.
From improvisatory comedy to classic horror films and thrillers, Brian De Palma has established himself as one of the screen’s foremost stylists, and one of his films in particular is the subject of TCM’s podcast The Plot Thickens: Season 2 - The Devil’s Candy. Drawing on influences as disparate as Andy Warhol, Jean-Luc Godard and, of course, Alfred Hitchcock, he’s created a body of work — 32 narrative features to date along with shorts, documentaries and music videos — among the most distinctive in modern cinema.
Along the way, he brought Robert De Niro to the screen for the first credited time (in 1968’s Greetings), introduced Martin Scorsese to De Niro and screenwriter Paul Schrader and helped George Lucas write the opening scrawl for the first Star Wars film. Along with De Niro, De Palma also fostered the careers of John Lithgow (in Obsession, 1976); Sissy Spacek, John Travolta, Amy Irving and Nancy Allen (in Carrie, 1976); and Melanie Griffith (in Body Double, 1984). He has been honored with awards from the Berlin and Venice Film Festivals and Amnesty International (for his 2007 political thriller Redacted) while also receiving a record six nominations for the Razzie Award for Worst Director.
The Newark, NJ, native was studying physics at Columbia University when he fell in love with film after seeing Citizen Kane (1941) and Vertigo (1958). While earning an MA in theater from Sarah Lawrence College, De Palma shot his first film in 1963, The Wedding Party (1969), co-directed with Sarah Lawrence professor Wilford Leach and fellow student Cynthia Munroe and starring De Palma’s friend De Niro along with Jill Clayburgh and De Palma regular William Finley. Because of a dispute with financial backer Stanley Borden, the film was held from release until after De Palma’s comedy, Greetings brought attention to De Palma and De Niro.
De Palma moved from comedy to suspense for the first time with Sisters (1972), starring Finley, Jennifer Salt and Margot Kidder. This was also the first of two De Palma films (along with Obsession) scored by Bernard Herrmann, one Hitchcock’s key collaborators. De Palma’s first major hit was the Stephen King adaptation Carrie, which brought Spacek and Piper Laurie Oscar nominations. He scored another major hit with his remake of Scarface (1983), starring Al Pacino, followed by the equally successful The Untouchables (1987), which brought Sean Connery an Oscar. He also helped launch Tom Cruise’s Mission: Impossible film franchise in 1996, though he declined an offer to direct the 2000 sequel.
De Palma’s films are distinguished by a variety of techniques, including the use of split-screen, long pans, tracking shots and unusual angles. He is also noted for quoting generously from other directors, most notably Hitchcock, whose Vertigo inspired both Obsession and Body Double. Others he has cited as inspiration include Michelangelo Antonioni, whose Blowup (1966) is reflected in De Palma’s Blow Out (1981), and Sergei Eisenstein, whose Battleship Potemkin (1925) is referenced in the staircase shoot out of The Untouchables.
TCM presents five of De Palma’s films, including three network premieres:
The Bonfire of the Vanities (1990, TCM premiere), the subject of season 2 of TCM’s The Plot Thickens, was derided by critics on its initial release and considered a box-office bomb. The adaptation of Tom Wolfe’s novel now seems prescient in its depiction of a racially charged trial in which stock-broker Tom Hanks is accused of running over two young Black men after getting lost in the South Bronx. Nevertheless, its costly and turbulent production has become almost as legendary as the novel for which it’s based on, as detailed by author Julie Salamon in her recount The Devil's Candy: The Bonfire of the Vanities Goes to Hollywood. The film also stars Bruce Willis, Griffith, Morgan Freeman and F. Murray Abraham.
Obsession draws on Hitchcock’s Vertigo as inspiration for its tale of a real estate developer (Cliff Robertson) whose wife (Geneviève Bujold) and daughter are killed after being kidnapped. Years later, he meets a young woman (Bujold) who could be his wife’s twin, only for her to be kidnapped too. Lithgow co-stars in this twisted tale written by Paul Schrader.
Sisters marked De Palma’s move into the thriller genre, but it still maintains his roots in satirical comedy in a very funny send up of dating shows. This one, however, ends with the male suitor murdered, as witnessed by a reporter (Salt) who lives across the street. Her attempts to crack the crime uncover dark secrets at a mental hospital run by Finley. Kidder and Charles Durning co-star.
Blow Out (TCM Premiere) stars Travolta as a sound engineer whose outdoor effects track uncovers a political assassination. He sets out to uncover the killer with the help of a call girl (Allen) who had been hired to help blackmail the victim, a presidential hopeful.
Body Double (TCM Premiere) brings together bits of Rear Window (1954) and Vertigo in the story of an unemployed actor (Craig Wasson) whose claustrophobia gets in the way of his obsession with a beautiful woman he spies on with a telescope. When he sees her murdered, he tracks down the killer through a porn star (Griffith) hired to set him up as a witness.
