Twist and Shout
There is no
easy approach into the work of Brian De Palma. The director, known for his
hyper-stylized thrillers and grand-scale epics, often revels in the slick
perversity for which he’s routinely attacked. Blunt preoccupations with sex and
death (often at the same time), along with a darkly comic streak and a
worldview that teeters on the edge of nihilism, result in a repeatedly
uncomfortable viewing experience. You’re invited to watch, but feel dirty for
doing so. De Palma Suspense—a new series at the BAMCinematek April
8-20—focuses only on the films that thrill and chill.
It opens
with the introductory chapter of the director’s compulsions, Sisters
(April 8). Danielle (Margot Kidder), a struggling actress and model living in
Staten Island, brings home a guy she met on a hidden-camera prank-show and
introduces him, fatally, to her twin sister Dominique. A murder occurs, the
nosy neighbor catches a glimpse while looking out her window and the narrative
spins wildly toward an operatic crescendo. Here, the obsessions are already
fully formed: castration, role reversal and voyeurism are all present and
teased out in ways that echo through the rest of De Palma’s career.
Alfred
Hitchcock provides the obvious reference point and bald elephant in the room.
The appropriation of visual and narrative motifs from the celebrated auteur (so
many you lose count after a while) cause critics to look down on De Palma as a
hack slinging imitations, but it’s what the director does with these signs and
symbols that makes his work unique; in short, the infusion of a manic energy
and a comic irreverence for the genre conventions essential to his work.
A device the
director returns to often is the idyllic opening which turns tragic, and is
flipped around one more time: the character wakes up from a dream or the scene
is revealed to be a movie within the movie. Other times, the horror becomes the
catalyst that springs the film into motion. The most famous is undoubtedly Carrie
(April 10), with its now infamous opening scenario of female innocence turned
horror. Less known is Obsession (April 12), made the same year as the
previously mentioned film but steeped in an altogether different atmosphere.
The story, written by Paul Schrader, opens with a flashback of the perfect
nuclear family, which the director quickly unravels with unnerving glee. This
story of betrayal and second chances is intensified by the architecture of New
Orleans and Rome, which tower over the characters and close in on the frame.
The biggest
surprise of the BAM series is Raising Cain (April 18), a film that
deserves a bigger audience. John Lithgow, a De Palma regular, is Carter, the
over-loving father with a sketchy past, twisted family dynamic, and a plan that
involves stealing children for a child-psychology experiment. It’s the most
self-consciously ridiculous film the director ever made, and also the most
fun—the impious handling of his own well-worn tropes is refreshing, and it
proves a synthesis of the director’s obsessions up to this point, much more
than the self-serious Femme Fatale (April 19), also playing in the
series. The only film that comes close is an early oddity, the overzealous
rock-opera Phantom of the Paradise (April 9), a retelling of Phantom
of the Opera that has developed a cult following over the years but manages
to unfortunately stay out of most serious discussions of De Palma’s work.
This comedic bend, subversive and cynical, is also
dark and disturbing. This will be Brian De Palma’s lasting influence on the
cinema; when the director says, “I’m a real gallows humorist,” it’s easy to
believe him. So don’t worry: in The Fury (April 11), when a character’s
head fantastically explodes into a million pieces, it’s all right to laugh.
We’ll all be right behind you.