7. “Mission: Impossible” (1995)
With “The Untouchables,” De Palma remade a classic television series, and would go on to repeat the trick with “Mission Impossible,” spawning both his biggest hit and a franchise . The production was notoriously difficult, with constant script revisions (by heavy hitters like David Koepp and Robert Towne) and incessant micromanaging from Tom Cruise, who in addition to being the world’s most powerful movie star was also the film’s producers. Rumors persisted that the director and Cruise didn’t get along and that by the end of the tumultuous post-production period, De Palma had removed himself entirely (he also refused to do press for the film). And yet, while like “The Untouchables” it feels like the director is a hired gun, it’s unmistakably a De Palma movie, and even more so than his previous blockbuster. There are a number of Hitchcock nods, mostly to “Notorious” (especially during a sequence at the beginning set at a lavish party) and Hitchcock’s fascination with trains (the movie’s breathless climax happens on the Channel Tunnel train), but furthermore, there are suspense set pieces that only De Palma could have pulled off with that this degree of wit, humor, and technical expertise. It’s easy to point to the sequence where the team breaks into CIA headquarters at Langley as not only the highlight of the film but perhaps the entire franchise; this is pure De Palma: Cruise being lowered in from the ceiling, the schlubby CIA agent who constantly runs back and forth from the sealed room, the trouble Cruise’s partner has in the air duct above him. There’s also some clever unreliable narrator stuff going on too, and in general, without the director’s sense of suspense and playfulness, we wouldn’t be getting “Mission Impossible 6” next year. Those who claim that it’s watered down De Palma aren’t paying attention. This is his ‘Mission;’ decide to accept it.
6. “Scarface” (1983)
A 1983 retelling of the 1933 Paul Muni gangster classic, De Palma takes on the American dream and renders it absurd (and violent) in the form of Cuban immigrant Tony Montana (Al Pacino). The gangster genre has long been a useful way to dissect the American dream, especially for those ethnic immigrants shut out of the mainstream capitalist system who found access to financial success by turning to crime. Written by Oliver Stone in the wake of a fierce cocaine addiction, the film is like the effect of a line of fresh powder snorted in a Miami club bathroom: colorful, bright and bloody. Pacino disappears into Tony, his accent thick and unwieldy, his eyes wild. He is unhinged and unpredictable, a man who lives by the motto he sees on a Goodyear blimp: the world is yours. An exquisite Michelle Pfeiffer represents his ultimate trophy: an icy blonde white woman, whom he gets how he gets everything in his life — with copious amounts of cocaine. But while Tony’s creeds and lifestyle are often aped in rap videos as an aspirational way of life, make no bones about it, “Scarface” is an absolute satire of the fallacy that is this particular American Dream. At the moment when Tony throws a tantrum in a fancy restaurant, sipping expensive wine, surrounded by his drug-addled trophy wife and his best friend Manny (Steven Bauer), he realizes that all that he’s worked (and killed) to attain is utterly empty and meaningless. Tony Montana is capitalism’s existential crisis. The epic scope of the film, the South Beach sun-blasted, saturated colors, the brutal violence, and Pacino’s over the top, but brilliant, performance have co-mingled to create a gangster classic that wasn’t embraced upon release, but has since imprinted itself on our collective unconscious.
5. “Sisters” (1973)
De Palma’s affection for all things Hitchcockian first came out with this terrific little low-budget shocker, the film that more or less laid the groundwork for his career after its release. “Sisters” is like a game of cinematic Mad Libs, only with Hitchcock’s films. You can fill in the blanks with references to his work: the ludicrous pop-psychology and murder scenes are all “Psycho”; a multi-tiered, creepy nightmare sequence near the climax is reminiscent of “Vertigo”; elsewhere there’s a sequence straight out of “Rear Window”; and over it all is Bernard Herrmann’s wonderfully batshit score. Yet De Palma also has fun subverting Hitch’s tropes, ultimately crafting a cautionary tale about modern women — diametrically represented by Margot Kidder’s sexy French model and Jennifer Salt’s smart, driven and bullheaded journalist — subjugated by men who refuse to take them seriously, and the harmful side effects that can result. When Kidder, here playing a Siamese twin who survived the separation surgery while her more disturbed sister died, meets a nice young man on a game show, things go from good (casual sex!) to very very bad (stabbing!) in a hurry, and it’s up to the reporter in the building across the street, played by Salt in a role and storyline heavily indebted to Barbara Stanwyck’s “Witness to Murder,” to solve the case. The director’s tendency to fall into camp histrionics doesn’t always gel with his subject matter, but the crazy/silly/fun strange brew of “Sisters” and its use of giallo techniques and plotting and the surprisingly deft protofeminist leanings for what is in many ways an arty exploitation horror genre piece, proves a perfect match. It’s as stylish as anything in his filmography (love, love, love the use of split screen here), often funny as hell, and on a few occasions brutally violent (seriously, that first murder is tough to watch, even by today’s gore standards). It’s flat-out one of De Palma’s best.
4. ”Blow Out” (1981)
No matter what you think of De Palma’s oeuvre as a whole, it’s impossible to deny the raw power of “Blow Out.” An uncanny bouillabaisse of influences including everything from Antonioni’s “Blow-Up” to the JFK assassination, the movie concerns a B-movie sound technician (John Travolta, in his all-time best performance) who accidentally records a political assassination and gets involved in a dark conspiracy involving a young call girl (Nancy Allen, of course) and a contract killer (John Lithgow, of course again), who lets his work get away from him. “Blow Out” oscillates wildly in terms of tone and genre, too. Ostensibly, it’s a thriller, but it’s also a movie-world satire about low-budget filmmaking, and a celebration of the transformative power of cinema, all nestled inside regular De Palma themes of voyeurism, sexuality and political unease. But it’s chief pleasure is that if “Blow Out” is consumed with the mechanics of filmmaking, then the filmmaking in “Blow Out” is beyond exquisite. From the opening prologue, a phony slasher movie sequence that is giddily over-the-top, this is De Palma working at an astonishing technical level. It is, in its weird way, subtler than most of De Palma’s thrillers but just as dazzling, maybe more so (even Pino Donaggio‘s score feels delicate and understated). There are showy moments, of course, like the sequence where Travolta realizes his tapes have been erased, all captured by a single swirling camera movement, but it’s all in service of a deceptively simple story of growing paranoia and sexual unease. “Blow Out” culminates in what is undoubtedly De Palma’s most downbeat ending; (SPOILER) not only does the beautiful girl get horribly murdered but our “hero,” racked with guilt, who has been recording the entire moment, ends up utilizing it for one of his tacky B movies. In De Palma’s world, even real-world tragedy can be fodder for movie magic. [A]
3. ”Carlito’s Way” (1993)
While “Scarface” gets the lion’s share of the love, when it comes to Brian De Palma crime epics starring Al Pacino, we’d pick “Carlito’s Way” any day of the week. It’s the tale of Carlito Brigante (Pacino), a Cuban-American gangster freed on a technicality by his lawyer (an unrecognizable Sean Penn), who tries to resist being pulled back into a life of crime, and sets about attempting to reconnect with a former flame (Penelope Ann Miller), while legitimately running a Harlem discotheque. Twenty minutes into the movie, during a dizzying sequence set inside a seedy pool hall (one of the director’s best ever set pieces), you can feel De Palma setting the film apart from “Scarface.” But the moments aside, it also boasts some of the very best performances in any of the director’s films, particularly the unstoppable trifecta of Pacino, Penn and Miller. The movie’s emotional complexity, too, cannot be overstated. De Palma is a filmmaker who frequently comes under fire for being too “cold” and “calculating,” more interested in camera movements than character motivations. But he takes you on a journey with Carlito, one that you cannot help but get swept up in. When Carlito meets his fate at the end of the movie, it’s the most heart-tugging moment in any of De Palma’s films since the end of “Blow Out.” The aforementioned pool hall sequence, when he’s trapped in a tiny bathroom, armed with an empty pistol and unsure of what’s on the other side of the door actually spawned the movie’s poster, because it so perfectly sums up the character’s struggles in a single image: you can feel him getting tugged towards crime while he simply tries to keep to the shadows, out of everyone’s way. It’s a sprawling, multi-layered tragedy, elegantly told by De Palma and screenwriter David Koepp (who would become an essential collaborator for De Palma during this period), and maybe the director’s last truly great film. [A]
2. ”Phantom of the Paradise” (1974)
It’s kind of shocking to think of “Phantom of the Paradise” as coming before “Carrie,” since it reeks of the wildly creative, endlessly self indulgent spectacle usually associated with a filmmaker cashing in all of their chips and goodwill following a sizable hit. “Phantom of the Paradise” is that kind of singularly outrageous passion project, but one that came before the director had any kind of quantifiable success (Also of note: its gonzo mix of horror and musical elements predates “The Rocky Horror Picture Show” by a full year.). A winky combination of “The Phantom of the Opera” and Faustian legend that sees singer Winslow (William Finley) framed by Satanic producer Swan (the film’s composer Paul Williams), disfigured in a record-press accident, and becoming reborn as the vengeful spectre that haunts the theater of the title, while falling for singer Phoenix (Jessica Harper) the film was at a critical and commercial disaster on release, but has now rightly been reappraised as one of the director’s masterpieces. The cult of “Phantom of the Paradise” has a lot to do with the wide-ranging music by Williams, and the soundtrack’s been influential on the likes of Daft Punk. But the appeal goes beyond that, particularly with the exuberant visuals, which are even more wildly comic book-y than normal (take the escape from prison/creation of the Phantom sequence), with De Palma’s usual obsessive flourishes amped up to a frantic degree (it features some of his best use of split screen ever, during the sequence where the Phantom is planting a bomb on stage). Either you love “Phantom of the Paradise” or you hate it, there’s very little middle ground. But for a director routinely criticized for how “cold” his movies are, this is an absolute delight, a surprisingly emotional, endlessly rewatchable journey through the dark heart of showbiz.
1. “Carrie” (1976)
Often imitated, never duplicated (woe to the various remakes), Brian De Palma’s 1976 film “Carrie” not only introduced the work of Stephen King to the silver screen for the first time, but also helped to usher the horror genre out of the B-movie ghetto and into mainstream success and prestige (both Sissy Spacek and Piper Laurie were Academy-award nominated for their performances). De Palma brings his sheer cinematic audacity to the well-trodden world of high school bullies and mean girls, both energizing and abstracting the genre’s aesthetic, infusing the proceedings with a shot of absurdism and beauty, and showcasing a completely unique style of cinematic storytelling. However, here, all of the style serves the story, which is why sequences like the extended slow motion naked locker room introduction/tampon attack, the spiraling camera during a dance between Carrie and Tommy (William Katt), and the use of split screen to demonstrate Carrie’s telekinetic powers during her violent rampage feel not just apropos, but the only way to capture these moments. But while he applies artful (and ballsy) cinematic techniques to what is essentially high school horror exploitation material, DePalma isn’t afraid to muck around with a little bit of camp (a quality all too easily tossed aside in overly serious modern horror). Laurie’s performance as Carrie’s Southern-fried religious fanatic mother, as well as Nancy Allen as the evil Chris (with John Travolta as her dumb-as-rocks boyfriend) are the epitome of high camp. This willingness to allow the film to be ridiculous or funny at times is what makes it so compulsively re-watchable (the mark of a true classic), and inspires one to long for De Palma to return to this milieu. No matter how many sequels or remakes or Broadway adaptations, no iteration of this tale will come close to the original without De Palma behind the wheel.
What’s your favorite De Palma movie? Do you consider him one of the greats or an overrated plagiarist? Weigh in below in the comments section.
— Drew Taylor, Rodrigo Perez, Oliver Lyttelton, Katie Walsh, Erik McClanahan, Jessica Kiang and Kimber Myers