They tried…with M in SF, SP and finally NTTD but didn´t have the balls like DePalma to go all the way…
3 Likes
My bad. That should have been 105 minutes.
I am better with words than numbers.
4 Likes
Since I am bad at numbers, too, here are the numbers for every Mission (and DePalma‘s was the most concise):
M:I - 110
M:I 2 - 124
M:I 3 - 126
M:I Ghost Protocol - 134
M:I Rogue Nation - 131
M:I Fallout - 147
M:I Dead Reckoning - 164
M:I The final reckoning - 170
3 Likes
OBSESSION (1976) on Blu-ray
It’s a very strange picture, a very beautiful picture, very different for me. It’s all about time. Has a Proustian, Henry Jamesian feeling to it. – Bernard Herrmann
Proust? Henry James? De Palma?
De Palma wasn’t the De Palma we know/love/hate back in 1975 when he made OBSESSION. He had difficulties financing it, and then Columbia, after acquiring it for distribution, “tiptoed” (De Palma’s term) around its release. It did well, but was overshadowed by another De Palma film released in 1976–a little thing called CARRIE. De Palma was safely launched at last.
Leaving Proust and James aside for the moment, another name to bring up is Hitchcock. De Palma and Paul Schrader (screenwriter) have said that they began to talk about the film after they watched a screening of VERTIGO at LACMA.
And VERTIGO is there–the cinematic roux of the film. But what is fascinating are the flavors De Palma adds to his roux in the making of the film.
-
Michael Courtland is Scottie Ferguson, just as obsessed, but far more steely. He decides to call in the police. There is no “We-can’t-call-the-police” anguish in this movie. He is thinking about saving his wife and daughter, and also about not losing his money.
-
Robert LaSalle is Gavin Elster–the friend who for economic gain stages manages what Courtland experiences. What is interesting is how De Palma emphasizes the monetary stakes. LaSalle’s cry about how rich they could be if it weren’t for Courtland has a tone of feral capitalism to it.
-
Bernard Herrmann’s score nods to VERTIGO, but has a lushness and otherworldliness all its own. Herrmann told De Palma it was his best work, and it is certainly one of his greatest efforts.
-
Cliff Robertson is an Old Hollywood actor in a film by a New Hollywood director. He always seems a touch removed–perfect for Courtland who is said to be still living in 1959. There is an intensity/determination to Robertson’s Courtland that is scary–you believe that he would kill Sandra/Amy.
-
The final circular shot in the airport is amazing as Geneviève Bujold reclaims both her identity as daughter and her father, and Robertson slowly grasps exactly what is happening. As the recognition spreads over his visage, De Palma freezes the frame at the perfect moment.
-
Bujold is wonderful as the distraught daughter, loving mother, and LaSalle’s co-conspirator. More doubling from De Palma. The solution arrived at to suggest incest without declaring it, gives Bujold her best moment, as she tells Courtland she is now Elizabeth. Is it Courtland’s fantasy? Or is it Sandra taking advantage of Courtland’s fantasy/hallucination to deliver a coup de grace?
-
De Palma allows for a happy ending. The hero does not let the heroine to die a second time.
OBSESSION is another of those marvelous 1970s movies that were made before the revolution instigated by JAWS and STAR WARS changed Hollywood forever.
3 Likes
Thank you for this very interesting and once again intelligently organized review.
Coincidentally, I chose OBSESSION also as my next De Palma re-watch. It’s been at least two decades since I saw it for the first time.
3 Likes
The difference though is Mallory wasn’t Miles Massery. If Ralph Fiennes had appeared in 10 films and didn’t seem completely incompetent for at least one of the them, then maybe. Dench played 2 different characters, but even then, she wasn’t the villain in Skyfall.
1 Like
Carlitos Way
Pacino as Jimmy Cagney, shot through artiface, everyone is pretending / trying to be something other than they are. Only Brigante is aware of the futility of the artiface.
He is a Cagney figure, of the Ilk of The Roaring Twenties and Angels with Dirty Faces, but in a world where nobility is unimportant.
I love this movie
3 Likes
I saw this one for the first time during the European premiere at the Berlin Film Festival - and during the magnificent last act at the Grand Central Station even the jaded critics were gasping and fully immersed, despite knowing that it won‘t end well for Carlito - or maybe because of that.
De Palma‘s visual storytelling combines with Patrick Doyle‘s haunting and tense score so perfectly.
3 Likes
Who is Ralph Forbes ?
Absolutely agreed on all points.
I was completely sucked in by OBSESSION, this second time I watched it. How wonderful and also kind of relaxing it is to see a thriller with a simple plot which does not try to force the audience on a rollercoaster ride of “hah, you thought it is this? It is THAT! And not even that, it is this and that and this and that!”
Instead, it focuses on one main character’s tragedy, told with the perfect marriage of Vilmos Zsigmond´s daydream/nightmare cinematography and Bernard Herrmann’s - as you beautifully put it - lush and otherworldly score.
It is interesting how almost motionless Robertson’s face is in the first part of the film, even when confronted with the most terrible loss. And then, when he encounters Sandra in Rome, how his face lights up, how his whole demeanor becomes looser and alive again. And I completely agree: at the end his intensity is indeed as scary as his disappointment and yet relief when he reunites with his daughter.
By the way: the scene with the old rich guys and their much younger beautiful wives (which turn out to be just their lovers, while they still have wives they want to honor with earning money for them) is a sly and satiric nod to Courtland´s age difference towards Elizabeth and later on Sandra. Even the dance at the beginning of the film has Courtland trying to bring in “Mommy” - yet Elizabeth glides away and out of reach for the camera, maybe because she knows that her husband is completely fascinated by his daughter.
As I understand, the studio did not think “Obsession” would become successful and therefore dropped it into too few theaters. Maybe it just wasn’t expected to work well with the heartland.
3 Likes
CARLITO’S WAY on streaming
De Palma has said that he cannot make a movie better than this one, and it does reside in the top tier for me. All of De Palma’s techniques, stylings, and emphasis on watching are present: precise and engaging as always, but muted this time, as if matching the elegiac tone of the film.
The acting is great, and watching Pacino and Penn square off is grand. Even Penelope Ann Miller is good (though my husband who watched some of the movie with me said Meg Ryan should have gotten the role). This is Pacino’s true “they-pull-me-back-in” performance.
I noted this time how close in structure this film is to 1995’s CASINO by Martin Scorsese. Each is centered on gangsterism, and the protagonist of each makes a fatal error at exactly the halfway point of their respective films.
In CASINO, Sam Rothstein refuses to rehire the brother-in-law of the chairman of the Clark County Commission, who then arranges for Rothstein’s gaming license to be denied. In CARLITO’S WAY, Carlito rebuffs Benny Blanco from the Bronx a second time, and then, given the chance to finish him off, spares him. Rothstein sits in his large office overlooking the gambling floor, and Carlito is seated in his club, relishing dinner. In each case, hubris of a particular kind clouds the better judgement of these men, and leads to their downfall.
More cerebral than Scorsese’s visceral work, De Palma again asks questions about the nature and possibility of justice, as well as limining the ever-present threat of men betraying other men.
4 Likes
The Arrow Films 4K edition is superb…
And here‘s another great review by John Kenneth Muir:
2 Likes
PASSION
The first time I watched this I was severely disappointed. It all looked cheap and did not draw me in at all.
This time I did appreciate that it indeed has a thought out plot, good performances by the three main female characters, and as always a very concise way to tell its story visually. And the Donaggio score again works wonders.
But one sees how small the budget was (almost no wide shots of exteriors), and the lighting lacks any of De Palma’s usual elegance, was it digitally lensed at a time when those cameras still had that home video feel? And since this was financed mainly with German money, taking place in Berlin and making use of German actors, that took me out of the movie lots of times. For me, as a German, De Palma movies always have that lush, extravagant atmosphere which is just the opposite of Germany.
Still, the film has a very interesting “nightmare within reality which feels like a nightmare”-trick which confused me the first time. But it really is intelligently made and a new approach to the usual “oh, it all was just a dream”-strategy.
3 Likes
Here are two links to substantive considerations of De Palma and his work. They start with a general overview, and then there are links to critiques of individual films (including both positive and negative evaluations):
From the Slant Magazine critique of HI, MOM!:
"…the director’s greatest directorial strategy—one that incidentally informs Hi, Mom! more than it does practically any other De Palma film—is his attempt to make us aware of our role as an audience, and also our connection with what he as a director is attempting to accomplish through a heady mix of artifice, contradiction, and a hectic emotional pitch.
“De Palma’s films are nothing if not structural, representational works of art, filled with winking moments that distance the audience from the diegetic details of his scenarios through their flamboyant technique…even as other equally showboating moments are galvanizing narrative K.O. punches”
2 Likes
De Palma stays with you. I’m the tiny scenes
Travolta at the end of Blow Out, it’s a good scream
Pacino at the pool table in Carlitos Way, the escalator sequence in the same movie.
The doors being closed in Carrie
Ann Margaret being picked up in the art gallery
Michelle PfIefer dancing in Scarface
Connery interrogating a dead man in the Untouchables
The beauty of the steadycam follow in Body Double
Many more but his movies stay with me in a way Spielbergs never really have. Less obvious than Scorcese, more profound than Lucas.
Blow Out is probably his masterpiece, movement of camera performances that have never been better from Allen and Travolta.
3 Likes
What a treasure trove of articles - deepest thank you!
2 Likes
Totally agreed. There is an emotional trigger he can pull on me, whereas Scorsese mostly feels dry, artificial and steamrolling over me.
I still love Spielberg and his huge versatility, and his movies, easier to connect to and more welcoming to be emotionally invested, have impacted on me since my teenage years.
But De Palma, with the dangerous, often seemingly trivial surface indulging in lurid genre, offers so much intelligence and surprising depth one has to discover and do the work to meet his ideas half way. And that’s what interests me these days.
4 Likes
I think the steamrolling sensation might come from the power of his technique, and his unparalleled ability to match mise en scene with music/song. I am always seduced by the Copa scene in GOODFELLAS, as well as by the later montage of Jimmy’s removal of everyone connected with the Lufthansa heist.
All that said, I adore the stillness of SILENCE, and the quiet of THE IRISHMAN.
The funny thing is that De Palma is every bit as versatile, but often his films are seen as riffs not just on genres, but on other filmmakers’ takes on genre, e.g., MISSION TO MARS is De Palma doing Spielberg doing sci-fi. There is always that Brechtian element to De Palma. He (and by extension his audience) is never allowed not to be aware of the man behind the curtain.
Exactly. Spielberg puts out the comfy seat for his viewer and her emotions.
Agreed. A De Palma film is a cerebral workout punctuated with shots of cinematic adrenaline, which @Stbernard points out. I may not recall every shot and narrative twist in BLOW OUT, but I can not forget “It’s a good scream.”
4 Likes
What De Palma also achieves almost in every movie is to hire the right composer who delivers a masterpiece of a perfect score.
Listen to Patrick Doyle‘s music for the Grand Central finale of CARLITO‘S WAY:
4 Likes
SNAKE EYES
A whodunit turning into a conspiracy thriller and ending in a character study.
What’s not to like?
Cage and Sinise are fantastic, the use of subjective flashbacks turning out to be lies is a great De Palma move (after being unjustly ridiculed for that in “M:I”), and the Sakamoto score is absolutely hauntingly brilliant. Also, DePalma is once again displaying his trademark theme: Don’t believe your eyes (and ears), everything is a spin (right from the beginning when the female reporter is told to say “Tropical Storm” instead of “Hurricane” because otherwise it would cut into tourist business).
But what hooks me the most is the basic story De Palma is telling here: the crooked and corrupt small time cop meets his childhood buddy turned decorated military hero (“the most decent man ever”), and how the roles reverse mid-film. The scene in which Cage learns that Sinise is behind the assassination works so well because he really does not want to hear it. He would have preferred to remain in his illusion, and he desperately tries to dismantle the truth - but he knows what he has seen, and that the truth is what it is.
When he then endures all the consequences and still tries to save the witness we have witnessed someone finding his conscience. What a comment on our times when such an anti-hero probably would be laughed off as “corny” or “unbelievable”.
But even in 1998 De Palma did not let Cage’s character that easily off the hook: the coda shows that even his triumph is short-lived because his past catches up with him and lands him in prison.
Yes, with DePalma the good guys are never that good, and the ones who try to change for the better never get away clean.
4 Likes