Brian De Palma

Discussion in 'Visual Arts' started by alexpop, Feb 3, 2014.

  1. Right. Hence our disconnect. It was like those badly executed violent scenes among those weekly live action Disney movies that used to be on ABC. The Untouchables is the only disc in my library of nearly 4,000 that I literally threw away. The only one. I loathe it.

    I think Dick Tracy is a far, far superior film.
     
  2. Myke

    Myke Trying Not To Spook The Horse

    At least there was no Teal. You'd have had a stroke. :laugh:
     
    Hutch likes this.
  3. Me watching a teal version of The Untouchables:
    [​IMG]
     
  4. agentalbert

    agentalbert Senior Member

    Location:
    San Antonio, TX
    I still don't know what you mean. They didn't seem badly executed to me. Not sure why its being compared to Dick Tracy either, but its fine if you don't like it.
     
  5. Monosterio

    Monosterio Forum Resident

    Location:
    South Florida
    The only thing I agree on about The Untouchables is the disco-synthesizer music -- it sounds totally out of place. I love the rest, though.
     
  6. Fixed. :D
     
  7. alexpop likes this.
  8. I don't know I think that Sean Connery is very watchable in that film.

    There is NOTHING Disneyesque about any of the scenes in "The Untouchables". Seriously, you need to revisit it if you believe so because it is as far away from a Dismey weekly movie as is possible.

    I will agree to disagree with you--as flawed as "The Untouchables" is, "Dick Tracy" is a million times worse and is just a bad movie. It is entertainingly bad but bad. Madonna is truly awful in the film.

    "Dick Tracy" on the other hand reminds me very much of a weekly Disney movie with a big budget.
     
    Last edited: May 29, 2016
    Rocker likes this.
  9. I would add two other films one that has a hard on for "Vertigo" but works amazingly well,without a knowledge of it--"Obession" (which introduced John Lithgow to filmgoers) and an even earlier one--"Sisters" with one of Bernard Herrmann's most disturbing scores (when working on "Obession" De Palma made a comment about wanting to recall the grandeur of Hitchcock's "Vertigo" to which Herrmann replied, "you're no Hitchcock").
     
    profholt82 and alexpop like this.
  10. It was a Disney movie. But, no. I will never watch The Untouchables again under any circumstances. I've seen it twice. (The second time for the very reason you suggest.) Never again.
     
  11. alexpop

    alexpop Power pop + other bad habits.... Thread Starter

    Never say never.:)

    Oh! Wrong thread.
     
  12. Monosterio

    Monosterio Forum Resident

    Location:
    South Florida
    I just saw Raising Cain for the second time, the first being when it was released. By this point (1992), De Palma was not just borrowing from Hitchcock, he was cannibalizing his own work (Dressed to Kill mostly). Talk about a movie totally devoid of anything but technique! There's absolutely nothing to hold on to here but the camera work, the shocks -- and, oh yeah, John Lithgow's crazy lead performance. I can't see anyone but a De Palma (or Lithgow) fan liking it.
     
    LitHum05 likes this.
  13. Thwacko

    Thwacko Forum Resident

    Location:
    Peacham, Vermont
    "Body Double" is one of my favorite movies. "Carrie" has its moments, I liked "The Untouchables" when it came out but haven't seen it since, but never saw any others.
     
    BrokenByAudio likes this.
  14. BrokenByAudio

    BrokenByAudio Forum Resident

    Body Double explication continued from post #144 (The Mulvey quote reference numbers pertain to a written copy of the essay which I do not have in digital form. My apologies but I think the quotes stand on their own.)

    The visually defining scene of the movie, however, in the larger context of public perception, and the one on which marketing energies were focused, is the Rear Window scene which took place earlier in the film. Sam has brought Jake to the hillside residence ostensibly as a house-sitter and pulls him over to a telescope. Adjusting the telescope, Sam exults, “There she is! Showtime! Jake, I want you to meet my favorite neighbor.” At that point Jake looks into the telescope and the central expression of what Mulvey would call woman as spectacle begins on center stage as the mostly nude Gloria Revelle (ostensibly Holly Body) dances sensuously and provocatively about. The blatant reference to Hitchcock’s Rear Window jars the more experienced viewer, but quickly melts away in the voyeuristic moment that the viewer shares with Jake. What the viewer is sharing is the image of the woman as an objectified other (Mulvey, 9), a visual target object necessary in Freud’s notion of Scopophilia, an act in which “looking is itself a source of pleasure” (8). Mulvey argues that traditionally, “the woman displayed has functioned on two levels: as erotic object for the characters within the screen story, and as erotic object for the spectator” within the theater (11). This is exactly what De Palma has produced with this scene. The theatergoer in the scene sees, without the sense of the telescope, what Jake Scully sees when he looks through the telescope. There is little to choose between Scully leering through the telescope at the woman-as-objectified, or woman-as-sex-object, and men leering at the same scene while sitting in the theater seats. The woman is presented as spectacle, Mulvey would say, for both sets of observers.


    The final scene in the film is the densest scene in regard to De Palma’s responding to Mulvey on multiple levels; as such it will be a source of close examination as we move on. It begins with a camped-up bat fluttering outside the window of a shower where Scully, recast on the Hollywood set in the role of androgynous vampire, is back to work. The director cries, “ Let’s get the bat out!” In hindsight this is De Palma’s way of saying that the overt silliness is over and now he’s going to give it to you straight. The camera pulls back and the workings of the Hollywood set are revealed. It is relevant that De Palma chose to end his movie with a shower scene—another clear reference to Hitchcock—this time for Psycho. The movie is one of Hitchcock’s own examinations of Freudian psychology and the violent end to the woman in that movie echoes on a certain level the end of Gloria Revelle in Body Double.

    The single most obvious connection one can make between Mulvey and Body Double is that they both deal on one level with the making of film. Body Double both opens and closes on a Hollywood set. The end shower scene reinforces the dual nature of spectacle addressed in the Rear Window scene by showing other actors, visitors and support crew on the set watching while a voluptuous nude female body double is substituted in a shower scene for the less well-endowed pretty faced blonde actress. When the director yells for quiet because he’s “trying to think” (a laughable notion considering the seriously B-grade nature of the film within the film) he’s telling the film audience to pay attention because some key points are coming. The camera pans slowly and both theater audience and Hollywood set audience get to watch the voluptuous nude as she slides into position. The camera soon fixes narrowly on the double’s ample breasts and their accompanying hardened nipples. De Palma is focusing not just on the breasts, but on another concept of Mulvey’s.


    Mulvey’s “to-be-looked-at-ness” (italics LM, 11) includes a separation of parts of the woman—she makes examples of Marlena Dietrich’s legs and Greta Garbo’s face—that is represented perfectly here by the modern cinematic techniques of flawless editing. Such editing enables the utilization of body doubles and thus uses pieces of individual women, suggesting that they are never good enough, as well as chopping them up like so many pieces of meat. (In this regard, Mulvey’s work provided starting points for later feminist reformers Naomi Klein and Jean Kilbourne, among others.) De Palma’s filming illustrates precisely the sort of cinematic approach that Mulvey rails against. The difference is that he sticks that approach in our face for all to see and invites the viewer to examine it in detail. Yes, it is breasts, but it is so blatantly just breasts that we have to ask the more probing question why? Mulvey could not, on this point anyway, have had a greater standard-bearer.
     
    Thwacko likes this.
  15. Yes, I know it was (technically Touchstone which was run by someone else within Disney) but it reminded me of a Disney TV show in terms of the quality. "The Untouchables" not so much.
     
  16. Ghostworld

    Ghostworld Senior Member

    Location:
    US

    Somebody likes "Body Double?"
     
    Vidiot and wayneklein like this.
  17. BrokenByAudio

    BrokenByAudio Forum Resident

    You might once you understand what it is about!
     
  18. I understand it very well but find it a derivative, self referential work that's pretentious overwhelm the weak marerial.
     
    Oatsdad likes this.
  19. pdenny

    pdenny 22-Year SHTV Participation Trophy Recipient

    Location:
    Hawthorne CA
    Yeah I recall seeing Craig Wasson's picture on milk cartons after that flick left theaters :nyah:
     
    Vidiot likes this.
  20. agentalbert

    agentalbert Senior Member

    Location:
    San Antonio, TX
    What, you don't see the Disney touch when Deniro's Capone bludgeons a guy to death with a baseball bat?
     
    wayneklein likes this.
  21. Vidiot

    Vidiot Now in 4K HDR!

    Location:
    Hollywood, USA
    That was a Paramount film. It did have the "Paramount" touch.
     
  22. Torontotom

    Torontotom Forum Resident

    Location:
    Canada
    It's getting a little heated in this thread.

    Let's take a dance break!

     
    alexpop, gramfan and Monosterio like this.
  23. alexpop

    alexpop Power pop + other bad habits.... Thread Starter

    He's nothing good in year's.
     
  24. agentalbert

    agentalbert Senior Member

    Location:
    San Antonio, TX
    Yeah, I know. Someone earlier (prior page) said The Untouchables had that "corny Disney-ish touch about it".
     
  25. Vidiot

    Vidiot Now in 4K HDR!

    Location:
    Hollywood, USA
    I worked on it for 2 weeks, and that was precisely my opinion as well.

    I think The Untouchables is not a very good film, but it's a better film than Body Double. It's got some moments. Robert DeNiro in a bad film can often still deliver a good performance.

    I have no problem with somebody saying, "hey, film XYZ is a terrible movie, but I really love watching it because it's got a lot of elements I like." Who knows... the acting, parts of the story, the cinematography, the sound... maybe it's a nostalgia thing. There's all kinds of terrible horror & sci-fi films I love from my childhood, but I don't pretend they're really good films. All the intellectual essays in the world can't make The Brain That Wouldn't Die a good film, but it's a lot of fun to watch (and is a weird, disturbing film). I think it's 276 times more entertaining than Body Double, and Brain has zero pretensions of any artistic considerations at all. I think DePalma is one of those directors that makes films that run the gamut from brilliant to awful, but he hits one out of the park once in awhile... though not often in the last 20 years.
     
    Last edited: May 31, 2016
    wayneklein and Oatsdad like this.

Share This Page

molar-endocrine