I always love it when people willfully embrace ignorance while simultaneously labeling others as "pseudo intellectual". A typical response from the sort of thinking by this sort of individual is by making an assumption that someone feels as though a film is "great" simply because I disagree that it is "horrible, horrible, horrible" (which is the original position taken by Vidiot). I feel that a more nuanced and contextual response is called for but some people cannot imagine that being justified in any way. I wonder what would happen if somebody ran over his dog because they thought it was just a homely mutt. I mean, it looks like a homely mutt to me so it MUST BE! It's clearly devoid of any redeeming qualities because I don't like the looks of it! Amazing.
Really interesting to see all the discussions about Body Double. When it came out, I was doing a lot of work for a studio that had connections with Deborah Shelton. So of course there was a lot of excitement in the air about the release, and all of us saw it and talked about it. It's remained a minor favorite over the years -- I've often pondered just why I like it, and whether it's a "great" film. I like it because it's offbeat, I enjoy the Hitchcockian themes, the music (including Relax), the locations (including the aforementioned Chemosphere house), and of course Ms. Shelton and Ms. Griffith. For me, Craig Wasson fit the role well -- he was convincing as a sort of everyman, a bit of a schmuck, the sort of person who just might get drawn into this sort of vortex, improbable though it was. So I like the film and would gladly watch it again tonight, but can't imagine defending it on an intellectual level, like BrokenByAudio did in his well written response. To me it's more a guilty pleasure than brilliant film making. There are plenty of flaws -- some key scenes seem random, it's pretentious at times, it's over the top in ways that seem silly at times. (A De Palma trademark?) But it will always be on my "like" list and hmm...come to think of it...maybe I'll add it to my Netflix queue for next week.
When one refers to viewers who dislike a film as having "vacant eyes" and "shut-down brains", one sets up oneself for such status, doesn't one? When one insists that viewers must read some obscure old essay before they watch said movie, one enhances one's status in that regard, doesn't one? When one implies that only viewers with one's knowledge and sophistication possess the right to criticize said movie, one adds to that status even more, doesn't one? When one brings in bizarre analogies to animal killing, one really goes off-track, doesn't one?
I'm of a similar mind, though I don't find the movie pretentious. It's one I like for its style, and that's enough for me in this case.
Wow. It was a paper written for a college course! Writing style gets points, especially when one is an English major as I was. But you can't get that context either, can you? I didn't suggest that. I suggested that there was a great deal more to the film than was apparent to that commenter. You really are beyond the comprehension of the subject if you cannot grasp that analogy in the context of the discussion. I'm done with you.
Enjoying a film doesn't mean the film is great or that everyone can appreciate it. As you mentioned, it's a guilty pleasure.
With all of the commentary about Body Double, and suggestions that there is little-to-no value in the film, I thought it might be interesting to publish the remainder of the paper I wrote as explication to the film. The readers here certainly aren't required to read Laura Mulvey's essay as I will quote from it as required in the course of the explication. Anyone not interested please just don't read. Or, if you wish to take part in a substantive dialogue, please feel free. Childish responses will be ignored. I'll paste in a few paragraphs at a time over a few days and see how it is being received. I do think there is value in the film. Would I "get" the film today if I was seeing it for the first time? Would I "get it" if I hadn't read Mulvey's essay? I don't know, by degrees to bothI would hope. What is clear is that at the time I was the beneficiary of some rather significant education in Post-Structural theory and without that I would have had far fewer tools to try and explicate a bit of film-making that was anything but obvious to the casual viewer. So, following on the from the introductory paragraph in #101 above: The seeming paradox is surely quite by design—an attempt, in fact, to draw attention to a discussion that had foundered, coming as it did eight to nine years after the fact. Whether or not this is true would depend on what Mr. De Palma would say, but it is clear that the concept of a film as a response to Mulvey’s essay is a Hollywood producer’s dream scenario. The studio joyfully stamps their approval on the project because big money is made by catering to the runaway testosterone set and at the same time the director can make a real film by framing an intellectual debate that is socially pertinent. Criticism that takes the stance that De Palma’s finished product is precisely the sort of cinema that Mulvey rails against is certainly not without merit. Mulvey herself would likely have preferred any number of approaches that would not have included the very sexual objectification and blatant opportunities for voyeurism that she so decries. But it’s hard to imagine another film, short of a social documentary-type vehicle, that could have presented the issue in such stark terms and forced the viewer to consider, as this one did, exactly what was being said and why. And presenting the film as standard Hollywood fare exposes the message to far more people than any documentary film or postmodern essay ever could, or would. Body Double is stamped with requisite 80’s In-Scene cinematic markers, from the gender-blurring presence of 80’s disco and Rocky Horror androgyny, to the plot device of a mayhem-bent slasher figure pursuing an attractive woman (former Dallas TV star Deborah Shelton displayed in all her physical glory as the character Gloria Revelle—revel in her glory—get it?), and the eventual utility of a large and nasty power tool as the slasher’s weapon of choice. The shameless (but highly useful) references to Alfred Hitchcock’s Rear Window and Psycho, and endlessly trite plot elements from the jilted lover hammering down Jack Daniels at the local bar early on, to the waiting for the other shoe to drop at the end when we’re sure Mr. Slasher isn’t really dead, all add to the sense that this film was just another cheap R-rated Hollywood skin vehicle.
One could take "Body Double" serious as a work of art and there are those that do--a small group of De Palma apologists and fans but here's the problem with the film--even from a post-modernist point-of-view it remains derivative and uninspired. Homage becomes outright theft at this point because De Palma had, frankly, run out of ideas. His work is still visually stunning at this point but it is a matter of style over substance and the plot serving no greater purpose than to further pull in the audience as voyeurs but at the cost of artistic credibility. With "Dressed to Kill" De Palma introduced sexual politics as a much larger element of the suspense genre (and one could argue that sexual politics is where De Palma largely departs from his fixation with Hitchcock) and the artificial element of Hollywood, the concept of reminding everyone that they are watching a film. While that is all well and good it doesn't work well within the suspense genre as it removes the viewer from the experience robbing the film of much of its commentary. By "Body Double" De Palma had all the proper chess pieces but he was playing against himself and no one was interested in watching the outcome.
His movies are rarely that good narratively, but they are always visually interesting and generally leave an impression on me. There is always a distinct image that stays with me from his films. Off of the top of my head, the overhead shot in 'Blow Out' from above the ceiling fan in Travolta's apartment room, and the homage to Eisenstein in 'The Untouchables' with the baby carriage on the staircase really stand out to me as beautifully executed scenes. Of his films that I've seen, I consider Blow Out, Carrie, The Fury, The Untouchables, Scarface and Casualties of War to each be very good to great. Of the 4 or 5 others I've seen, meh to mediocre. But at least they're always interesting visually. The films in which he has written the screenplays have definitely had diminishing returns for me though.
The ending was the most memorable part! How often do you get to see John Cassavetes exploding from a dozen different angles?
The Fury is a fun film. The ending is exciting and still shocking. I love Blow Out, although I do agree with fans (in other forums) who suggest there is a major plot hole on why Travolta's character allows Nancy Allen's character to meet up with John Lithgow alone. Now that film has an incredible ending. Depressing but effective and I think it's one of Travolta's best performances.
Agree in all your points. As far as Blow Out, De Palma does try to explain Travolta placing Nancy Allen in danger: Years earlier, he wired a cop for an undercover operation, with disastrous results. So now he's going to do the same with Allen, only this time he'll get it right. Yeah, right. I don't care how good the actor selling that -- I ain't buyin' it. And it's a shame because up to that point the movie is great -- perhaps De Palma's best work to that point.
Nope - vacant eyes! It's that damned shut-down brain! Hard to argue with someone who once wrote a college paper about the film! That's the knee and Ultron right there, baby!
The pretensions in this thread are out of control. Gotta be a "film scholar" to decide if a movie's good, huh?
Body Double explication continued from post #133: Allusion and cliché finally achieve absurdist overload during scene a third of the way into the film when Gone With the Wind romantic sentimentality and camera technique caps a flood of Freudian symbolism. One feels as if he’s been smacked in the face with a cold herring. Unemployed actor Jake Scully (Craig Wasson) has just stepped across the line from being a passive and voyeuristic stalker and has chased the soon-to-be-slasher (character Sam Bouchard, Gloria’s husband in disguise as an Indian, played by actor Gregg Henry) into a tunnel in pursuit of a purse he’s snatched from his wife. Gloria to this point has been depicted simultaneously as the hyper-sexualized object of Scully’s voyeuristic obsession, and, soft, feminine, passively helpless, and desperately in need of a man “I’ve got to talk to you. I’ve got to talk to someone,” she said to her lover on the phone. “I need you.” She then headed for the beach, followed by the two men, one scheming to kill her and the other fetishizing over her. Jake’s would-be rescue of his damsel in distress comes to nothing when both he and the Indian stagger into the tunnel, spent by the chase and gasping for air. Jake’s previously revealed claustrophobia suddenly seizes him, allowing the Indian to get away with what he wanted from the purse while Jake collapses in a heap against the tunnel. Gloria arrives moments later and, with the nurturing instincts borne of woman, escorts the near-paralyzed Jake through the tunnel. De Palma’s filming of the scene strongly suggests a birthing mother helping the child’s difficult struggle down the birth canal to the light of life outside the womb. Jake recovers at the entrance of the tunnel and within seconds the two of them are embracing with mad passion as the cameras go round and round and the symphonic music soars. It could have been Rhett Butler and Scarlet O’Hara but for the blouse coming unbuttoned and Jake’s groping of breasts and butt while Gloria pants “yes. . . .” But a moment later it turns to “No, no, I can’t!” and Gloria lurches away, shattering the oedipal moment. It’s in that moment that the movie unequivocally declares itself as something else, even if that something else is not perceived as a response to Laura Mulvey and the discourse she initiated. Even those unfamiliar with the context have to begin to wonder that something is just up. The whole cinematic construction is so flagrantly over the top that one just has to wonder about that scene, and hence about the movie leading up to and proceeding from that point.* * boldface type added in response to suggestions that only with Mulvey's essay at hand might the film be seen as something more meaningful than what appears on the surface. I realize I was the one who originally put the question to Vidiot about whether he was familiar with the essay--thereby establishing a substantial part of the discourse in the context of the Mulvey essay. But as I suggest here, clearly there were points at which the discerning viewer has to wonder about the WHAT and the WHY as the film moves along. There were more to come.
I like a handful of his films, but to me The Untouchables should be called The Unwatchables. That is an AWFUL film. The acting, the action, the music is all TERRIBLE. Carrie and Scarface are good fun.
As much as I like crime movies, I will admit when I watched The Untouchables it did have that corny Disney-ish feel to it.
Haven't seen it in awhile and I don't remember the music, but I couldn't disagree more. I think it was very well done. I don't get this at all. What is "Disney" about the way Sean Connery got whacked, or the accountant in the elevator, or Costner throwing the assassin off the rooftop? It's far too violent for Disney.
