Early life
De Palma, whose background is Italian Roman Catholic, was raised in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania and New Jersey in various Protestant and Quaker schools. The fissure between the Catholic and Protestant ethic is exemplified in De Palma's cinema, where the grand guignol exists alongside the status quo, where the normal is made epic and the extraordinary deflated into the mainstream.
Enrolled at Columbia as a physics student, De Palma became enraptured with the filmmaking process after viewing Citizen Kane and Vertigo. He switched majors and enrolled at the newly coed Sarah Lawrence College in the late 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 discovery Robert De Niro resulted in The Wedding Party, codirected with Leach and producer Cynthia Munroe. The film was shot in 1963 but remained unreleased until 1969, when De Palma's star had risen sufficiently within the Greenwich Village filmmaking scene, though De Niro's remained low enough for the credits to display his name as "Robert Denero". Various small films for the NAACP and The Treasury Department followed.
Early efforts Greetings and Hi, Mom! (starring De Niro) espouse a Leftist revolutionary viewpoint common to their era. These films (and the 1968 slasher comedy Murder a la Mod) contain experiments in narrative and intertextuality, reflecting De Palma's stated intention to become the "American Godard." Hi, Mom!, in its Be Black, Baby sequence, parodies cinéma vérité, championed by the documentary movement of the late 1960s, while simultaneously providing the audience with as visceral and disturbingly emotional an experience as fiction film can provide, and remains a significant touchstone in interpreting De Palma's filmography.
Career beginnings and highlights
In 1976, after several small, studio and independent released films that included stand-out's Sisters and Obsession, a small film based on a novel called 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 Stephen King's source novel 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 stars Sissy Spacek and John Travolta had gained considerable attention for previous work in, respectively, film and episodic sitcoms. Carrie became a hit, the first genuine box-office success for De Palma. Preproduction for the film had coincided with the casting process for George Lucas's Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope, and many of the actors cast in De Palma's film had been earmarked as contenders for Lucas's, and vice-versa. 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 sci-fi 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 The Untouchables and Mission: Impossible, the thematic complex thrillers for which he is better known. For many film-goers, De Palma's gangster films, most notably Scarface and Carlito's Way, pushed the envelope of violence and depravity, and yet greatly vary from each other in both style and content and also illustrate De Palma's evolution as a film-maker. In essence, Scarface's excesses contrast with the more emotional tragedy of Carlito's Way. Both films feature Al Pacino in what has become a fruitful working relationship.
Themes and critical opinion
His works explore themes of suspense and obsession, along with gender identity. He is famous for his extensive use of split screen, split-diopter and process shots, and long tracking shots. His films also frequently feature characters changing their hair colour from blonde to brunette and vice versa.
Critics of De Palma accuse him of being misogynistic and of emphasizing technical aspects of storytelling at the expense of human stories. These views, along with the charge of 'ripping off' various filmmakers, is slowly fading from mainstream critical analysis of De Palma's work, as the complexities of his montage and mise en scčne come into focus. Emerging views of De Palma compare him less and less with modernist filmmakers like Alfred Hitchcock and more with transgressionists such as Luis Buńuel and Jean-Luc Godard and to traditions ranging from Surrealism, Postmodernism to the theater of the Absurd.
Director Trademarks
- Split screen
- Split Diopters
- Many Alfred Hitchcock homages, using similar locations and camera techniques, and using a "long take" which is usually complimented by a series of elaborate tracking shots or dolly movements. The latter is an homage to Hitchcock's Rope (1948) and Under Capricorn (1949).
- Has commissioned Hitchcockian compositions for his films, and worked with composer Bernard Herrmann, who worked with Alfred Hitchcock until a falling out during the production of Torn Curtain (1966)
- Doppelgängers (or evil twins), and "femmes fatales" appear frequently in De Palma's films.
- Often shoots "tense" moments without any widening lens or zoom. When coupled with his trademark extended shot, it creates a feeling the viewer is in the scene.
Filmography
Feature Films
* The Wedding Party (1963)
* Murder a la Mod (1967)
* Greetings (1968)
* Hi, Mom! (1969)
* Get to Know Your Rabbit (1971)
* Sisters (1972)
* Phantom of the Paradise (1974)
* Obsession (1975)
* Carrie (1976)
* The Fury (1978)
* Home Movies (1979)
* Dressed to Kill (1980)
* Blow Out (1981)
* Scarface (1983)
* Body Double (1984)
* Wise Guys (1985)
* 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)
* Capone Rising (TBA)
* The Blue Afternoon (TBA)
* Toyer (TBA)
* Phantom of the Paradise (TBA)
Short Films
* Icarus (1960)
* 660124: The Story of an IBM Card (1961)
* Wotans 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)
* Dionysus in '69 (1969)
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