Hey, everyone. "Moriarty" here with some Rumblings From The Lab.
Every now and then, it's a real pleasure to read something that hits the in-box, and that was definitely the case with this article by our man in Gotham, Mr. Beaks. We've enjoyed his work here before, but when he recently wrote me to say that he wanted to cover a Brian De Palma retrospective that's underway at the American Museum For the Moving Image right now, I was delighted. I, too, know the specific combination of shame and defiant pride that is being a Brian De Palma fan. Friends of the Labs have no doubt heard me rant about the man on one occasion or another. I look forward to reading more of Mr. Beaks' pieces as the month progresses and more De Palma films are presented. For today, enjoy this first giant slice of chocolate cake, in which Beaks writes at length about one of my very favorite movies by any director, BLOW OUT. A bit of trivia to add to his mention of that great flashback in BLOW OUT to John Travolta's past with the police. That scene was actually created for PRINCE OF THE CITY when De Palma was set to direct that with Travolta starring. When he left the film, he kept the sequence, and ended up putting it into the BLOW OUT script. And then he got to see CASUALTIES in 70MM?!? Man, I'm on the wrong coast this month. Anyway... enough of me. Here's Beaks. Enjoy. I know I did.
The audience was in a rage.
Boos cascaded from the back of the theater, accompanied by derisive hoots, hollers and the occasional half-filled bag of popcorn. Fights broke out. A woman fainted. The theater manager strode angrily up and down the aisle, assuring his paying customers that he would get to the bottom of this. Okay, so the last few didn’t happen, but so violent was the reaction to Brian De Palma’s RAISING CAIN, little would have surprised me. As my friends plotted to break into the projectionist’s booth in order to burn the negative, I reclined in my seat, watched the end credits, and thought to myself, “Brian De Palma is a genius.”
Since that moment, and even before it, the brickbats I have weathered in defense of De Palma have been harsh and delivered with perverse relish. I’m often amazed just how much cineastes and casual moviegoers alike love to hate De Palma, citing their distaste for his tendency towards gratuitous violence, perceived misogyny, and, most egregiously, his predilection for paying homage to Alfred Hitchcock. Those that are willing to recognize his proficiency behind the camera will often dismiss his pictures as the work of a “cold technician.” Then, there’s the man himself, who hasn't made it easy for us by making back-to-back misfires like SNAKE EYES (a great set-up squandered) and MISSION TO MARS (a horrible, by-committee screenplay originally assigned to Gore Verbinski, made worse by De Palma’s stylistically heightened approach.) He’s also, like many of the great filmmakers of the 70's, been dogged by accusations of being “difficult,” which is industry parlance for being cursed with an intellect.
If, as of late, times have been difficult for De Palma’s admirers, then the American Museum for the Moving Image (www.ammi.org) couldn't have chosen a more propitious moment than now to present “The Responsive Eye: A Brian De Palma Retrospective,” which began last Saturday and will continue throughout the month of May. While there are a few notable omissions from his oeuvre – don’t bother to feign shock at the absence of BONFIRE OF THE VANITIES – the series does run the gamut from his rowdy, anti-establishment late 60’s comedies – GREETINGS and HI, MOM! – to, yes, MISSION TO MARS (I'll lay some serious money on this being the most sparsely attended film of the entire series.) As an unabashed fan of the man’s work, but one who has, with painful reluctance, joined in the chorus of disapproval with regards to his baffling, latter day failures, I have been itching at the opportunity to come to terms with my love/hate relationship with De Palma. And while I've seen all of these films, with the exception of the 1962 short “Woton’s Wake,” which kicked off the retrospective, more than once, I’m going to attempt to arrive at a better understanding not only of each work, but of how it relates back to De Palma’s fixed interests in paranoia, doubles and voyeurism. It is also my hope that I will be able to dispel, once and for all, this patently ridiculous notion that the man is nothing more than a hack plundering the collective filmographies of, to name a few obvious influences, Alfred Hitchcock, Jules Dassin, Michelangelo Antonioni and Michael Powell. Rather than address this persistent issue all at once, I will instead tend to each instance of homage in the context of the reviews, since I do believe he has been guilty of laziness on more than a few occasions; however, I must warn you that in some cases, I believe that De Palma has surpassed his source inspiration, and expanded upon, be it emotionally or intellectually, ideas explored by his cinematic forebearers.
And, who knows..... maybe this time around, I'll actually like MISSION TO MARS.
“Woton’s Wake” – 1962
Of the many short films made by De Palma in the 60’s, it’s hard to imagine there being a more fitting piece than this 30-minute oddity to get things started. Filmed without sound for a mere pittance – we know this because the balladeer crooning over the short’s opening credits informs us so – at Sarah Lawrence College, the girl's school which De Palma, an oft-accused misogynist, was lucky enough to attend, “Woton’s Wake” is a wild affair that suggests an aesthetic in gestation. Clearly taking his cue from the French New Wave tandem of Truffaut and Godard, De Palma opens the film with a shot of a bookcase containing most of the major cinema texts of the day (e.g. “4 Screenplays by Bergman,”) with the tome farthest to the right aflame. The rest of the film concerns the exploits of Woton, an ugly, murderous troll who, through intense passion, creates a woman, and then proceeds to chase her all over the campus. So, this isn't the most controlled, nuanced film in the De Palma canon, but it is filled with countless, playful allusions to, among others, THE SEVENTH SEAL, HIROSHIMA MON AMOUR, BATTLESHIP POTEMKIN, KING KONG and, most amusingly, Rupert Julian’s THE PHANTOM OF THE OPERA.
GREETINGS – 1968
Budgeted at $43,000 and going on to gross over $1,000,000, this is the film that elevated De Palma to prominence, and constitutes his first exploration of voyeurism, paranoia and political cover-ups that would later come to profound fruition in BLOW OUT. Here, however, everything is played strictly for laughs, as we follow a trio of counterculture goofballs, Robert De Niro, Gerrit Graham, and Jonathan Warden, who traipse around Greenwich Village devising ways to avoid being sent to Vietnam. Individually, they pursue their own obsessions: De Niro, in a nod to Michael Powell’s PEEPING TOM is a budding voyeur who cons women into acting out his fantasies, Graham is a JFK conspiracy buff so caught up in his theories that he uses a woman’s naked body to map out the improbable magic bullet theory forwarded by the Warren Commission, while Warden is attempting to rebound from a failed relationship by engaging in computer dating with disastrous results.
Unlike De Palma’s later films, the allusions here are verbalized rather than re-staged (e.g. when Graham explains his plan to blow up stills from the Zapruder film, his girlfriend shoots back that she saw the same thing in BLOW UP, and that he needn't bother because there’s nothing there in the first place,) which befits the picture’s ragtag approach; however, despite the lack of any technical polish, the framing is deceptively elegant, as evinced in a party scene where, in the foreground, a drugged-out hippie drones on almost incoherently, while, off to the left of the frame and in the background, we slowly become aware of a beautiful blond. When she exits the room, De Niro has is revealed. Like us, he's been watching her all along. There is also a nicely staged scene at the bookstore where De Niro and Graham work that, four years later, De Palma would've certainly split-screened.
Frankly, this all played out much more enjoyably then I remembered, but it was all merely prelude to.....
BLOW OUT – 1981
A failure upon its release, and still infuriatingly dismissed to this day, BLOW OUT is De Palma’s second tango with VERTIGO, by way of BLOW-UP and THE CONVERSATION, and his first “serious” film. It is also an undeniable masterpiece and perhaps the most underrated film of the 1980’s.
John Travolta, in what would be his last great performance for over a decade, plays Jack, a “B” movie soundman who happens to record a car wreck that claims the life of the leading candidate for President of the United States. He becomes personally involved in the accident when he dives into the water to save the passenger of the vehicle, Sally (Nancy Allen,) a seemingly sweet-natured young woman who, it turns out, was part of a scheme to blackmail the candidate by capturing him in some incriminating photographs. When Jack is told by the candidates people to keep quiet about this matter out of respect for the deceased's wife and children, he suspects a cover-up and begins to pour over his recording. What doesn't follow for Jack is the sound of the tire blowing out. As he investigates further, he discovers, by ingeniously syncing up the sound with photographs of the accident (taken by Sally’s partner-in-blackmail and printed frame-by-frame in a magazine ala the Zapruder film,) that a third party was involved, and that what was once an accident, may have actually been an assassination.
Where the film begins to veer off from BLOW-UP and intersect with VERTIGO is in a bravura flashback sequence, when we learn about Jack's tragic past. Before he was slumming on low-budget slasher films, Jack worked for the police department as a hot-dog surveillance expert where he wired undercover cops sent in to break up mob activity; that is, until one of his wires shorted, causing the officer to be found out and subsequently murdered. Like Jimmy Stewart in VERTIGO, Jack is a haunted man who is morbidly obsessed with rectifying his mistake.
This was the maturation many said De Palma was incapable of achieving, and when he did, nobody seemed to notice. Perhaps they were turned off by the slow build (a criticism often leveled at VERTIGO,) or the late introduction of Burke (John Lithgow,) the homicidal wildcard and strangulation fetishist who represents the final element of the conspiracy. Taking these possible shortcomings into account (and, really, they’re integral to the effectiveness of the film as a whole,) they are easily offset by De Palma's fluid cinematic sense. Like all of his 70's films, there is a movie-mad heart beating steadily throughout, and once the film reaches its final set piece at the Liberty Bell celebration, De Palma is clicking on all cylinders. As Jack scrambles in slow motion to save Sally from Burke, it is, in essence, Kim Novak slipping through Jimmy Stewart’s hands drawn out for an excruciating eternity; an endless, overwhelming sense of loss that transcends its inspiration and rises to operatic proportions. We've already witnessed Burke’s efficiency with his garrote and we know Sally is doomed, but as Pino Donaggio’s score crescendos, we are given one last glimmer of false hope as Jack is able to stop Burke from plunging his ice pick into Sally’s chest. Sadly, this is only his post-mortem signature, and once again, Jack literally has blood on his hands as he cradles Sally's lifeless body under fireworks in a touching nod to Minnelli's SOME CAME RUNNING.
The denouement to BLOW OUT is as elegant a coda as I've ever seen in any movie, and may have supplanted Cassavetes-go-boom in THE FURY for my favorite ending in a De Palma film. Jack has finally found his "great scream," but now it carries dual significance. Having been pressed into service for a mindless slasher film, the likes of which will dominate the Reagan 80's - an eight year span during which Americans will diligently bury the skeletons of Watergate, the JFK Assassination and Vietnam - Sally's scream now represents a last crying out of outrage.
Lucky for us, De Palma doesn't let corpses lie.....
CASUALTIES OF WAR – 1989 (Presented in 70mm)
As with BLOW OUT, this is a film that must be seen in its proper widescreen format, preferably in the theater, or not at all. While at its core, it appears to be a fairly small-scale drama set against the Vietnam War, the implications of this shocking true story are far reaching. Forgive me for veering into political territory here, but it is also apparent that, in light of former Senator John Kerry’s admissions of inadvertent atrocities committed under his command in Vietnam, many of us are still too ready to dismiss these horror stories as the unfortunate, but somehow unavoidable byproduct of warfare. While war is inherently dehumanizing, Vietnam was different not because our involvement was a mistake (our policy of the day was “containment,” and it did see us through the Cuban Missile Crisis,) but that our approach was so poorly thought out. As the slaughter of our troops continued, only those who could not hide behind a college deferment, or their rich fathers’ machinations, were drafted, which negatively impacted morale, and led to either intense frustration, or, in the case of Sean Penn’s character, Meserve, gradual dehumanization. He’s almost there at the outset of the film, but a tiny shred remains. This is wiped out, though, when Brownie, an easy-going Sergeant with whom Meserve has served throughout his tour, is killed by VC snipers. From this point on, we will witness only echoes of Meserve’s humanity, but make no mistake, he is no longer among the living.
De Palma appears to be implicating the Army’s indifference towards their own soldiers’ rapidly eroding morale and humanity as a key contributor to crimes like the kidnapping, rape and eventual murder of the Vietnamese girl, played bravely by Thuy Th Le, who, amazingly, made her acting debut with this film and has not been heard from since. When Eriksson (Michael J. Fox in an unfairly derided performance) goes to his superiors to report the crime, their chief concern is avoiding an international incident and keeping a good soldier in the field, while attempting to guilt Fox into withdrawing his charges in light of the fact that Meserve saved his life (depicted in a thrilling, expertly staged sequence at the beginning of the film.)
Knowing as we do his roots in the counterculture of the 1960’s, credit De Palma with taking such an even-handed approach to the material, while muting his style so as not to detract from the gravely serious tone; although, I could've done without the Powell-esque moment where we assume Clark’s (Don Harvey) POV as he stalks Meserve from outside a latrine. It’s a cheap suspense trick completely out of place within the context of the film.
CASUALTIES OF WAR is strong medicine, but would most likely have been embraced had it been made by anyone other than De Palma. The stigma of misogynist that has stuck with him since DRESSED TO KILL (more on that when DTK is screened) sabotaged any chance for widespread critical acceptance for this film. How else to explain why such a masterful, undeniably powerful film was so unceremoniously dismissed? Now, the onus lies with Columbia (or Criterion?) to re-issue this film and repair its wrongfully damaged reputation.
THE UNTOUCHABLES – 1987 (Presented in 70mm)
Finally, a popcorn film! Okay, while it is true that, upon its release in 1987, the film was criticized for being excessively violent - and that’s for once a fair statement - this is at heart an old-style gangster film re-imagined by De Palma and screenwriter David Mamet, and a bloodless gangster film is one for which I have little use. I have nothing but fond memories of THE UNTOUCHABLES, coming as it did at a pretty unhappy point in my childhood. It was easy to lose yourself in such a richly imagined film, with sumptuous production design and art direction, from Patrizia von Brandenstein and William A. Elliot respectively, Stephen H. Burum’s gold-hued cinematography and, of course, Giorgio Armani's sleek suits. Again and again I dragged friends to see this grandly entertaining film so I could thrill to Ennio Morricone's stirring score one more time, and learn a thing or two about how to stage a gunfight (if nothing else, the Chicago train station shoot out did compel a thirteen year-old boy to rent POTEMKIN for the first time.)
Some have asserted that the collaboration between writer and director in this case is a fundamental mismatch; that De Palma’s sympathies lie with Capone, while Mamet sides with the straight-arrow, law and order philosophy espoused by Ness and Malone. I couldn't disagree more. For me, this is almost like STAR WARS with tommy guns. Ness, Capone, Malone, Nitti..... these are all archetypes, and the film is structured by De Palma so that you root for the lawmen. Given, the tracking shot detailing the lovingly recreated opulence of Capone’s digs within the Lexington Hotel makes a grand case for the thug life, and De Niro’s over-the-top portrayal of the infamous crime lord is first-rate villainy, but the film still belongs to the Untouchables, especially Connery, whose Oscar-winning performance represents the movie’s soul.
Next weekend, the line-up is SISTERS and RAISING CAIN on Saturday, and CARRIE and HI, MOM! on Sunday. Mother's Day. I think De Palma would appreciate that.
Got opinions? Leave 'em on the talk back, or let me have it right here, baby!
Faithfully submitted,
mrbeaks
