Brian De Palma
Encyclopedia
Brian Russell De Palma is an American
film director
and writer
. In a career spanning over 40 years, he is probably best known for his suspense
and crime thriller films, including such box office
successes as the horror film
Carrie, Dressed to Kill, Scarface
, The Untouchables, and Mission: Impossible
.
Throughout the 1970s and early 1980s, De Palma worked repeatedly with actors Jennifer Salt
, Amy Irving
, Nancy Allen
(his wife from 1979 to 1983), Gary Sinise
, John Lithgow
, William Finley
, Charles Durning
, Gerrit Graham
, cinematographers Stephen H. Burum
and Vilmos Zsigmond
(see List of noted film director and cinematographer collaborations), set designer Jack Fisk
, and composers Bernard Herrmann
and Pino Donaggio
. De Palma is credited with fostering the careers of or outright discovering Robert De Niro
, Jill Clayburgh
, John C. Reilly
, John Leguizamo
, Andy Garcia
and Margot Kidder
.
Roman Catholic, was born in Newark, New Jersey
, the son of Vivienne (née Muti) and Anthony Frederick De Palma
, an orthopedic surgeon. He was raised in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
and New Hampshire
in various Protestant and Quaker
schools, eventually graduating from Friends' Central School
. He won a regional science-fair prize for a project titled "An Analog Computer
to Solve Differential Equations".
as a physics student, De Palma became enraptured with the filmmaking process after viewing Citizen Kane
and Vertigo
. De Palma subsequently enrolled at the newly coed Sarah Lawrence College
as a graduate student in their theater department in the early 1960s, becoming one of the first male students among a female population. Once there, influences as various as drama teacher Wilford Leach
, the Maysles brothers
, Michelangelo Antonioni
, Jean-Luc Godard
, Andy Warhol
and Alfred Hitchcock
impressed upon De Palma the many styles and themes that would shape his own cinema in the coming decades. An early association with a young Robert De Niro
resulted in The Wedding Party
. The film, which was co-directed with Leach and producer Cynthia Munroe, had been shot in 1963 but remained unreleased until 1969, when De Palma's star had risen sufficiently within the Greenwich Village
filmmaking scene. De Niro was unknown at the time; the credits mistakenly display his name as "Robert Denero." The film is noteworthy for its invocation of silent film techniques and an insistence on the jump-cut for effect. De Palma followed this with various small films for the NAACP and The Treasury Department.
During the 1960s, De Palma began making a living producing documentary films, notably The Responsive Eye, a 1966 movie about The Responsive Eye op-art exhibit curated by William Seitz for Museum of Modern Art
in 1965. In an interview with Gelmis from 1969, De Palma described the film as "very good and very successful. It's distributed by Pathe Contemporary and makes lots of money. I shot it in four hours, with synched sound. I had two other guys shooting people's reactions to the paintings, and the paintings themselves."
Dionysus in 69
(1969) was De Palma's other major documentary from this period. The film records The Performance Group
's performance of Euripides’ The Bacchae
, starring, amongst others, De Palma regular William Finley. The play is noted for breaking traditional barriers between performers and audience. The film's most striking quality is its extensive use of the split-screen
. De Palma recalls that he was “floored” by this performance upon first sight, and in 1973 recounts how he "began to try and figure out a way to capture it on film. I came up with the idea of split-screen, to be able to show the actual audience involvement, to trace the life of the audience and that of the play as they merge in and out of each other."
De Palma's most significant features from this decade are Greetings
(1968) and Hi, Mom!
(1970). Both films star Robert De Niro and espouse a Leftist revolutionary
viewpoint common to their era. Greetings was entered into the 19th Berlin International Film Festival
, where it won a Silver Bear award. His other major film from this period is the slasher comedy Murder a la Mod
. Each of these films contains experiments in narrative and intertextuality
, reflecting De Palma's stated intention to become the "American Godard" while integrating several of the themes which permeated Hitchcock's work.
Greetings is about three New Yorkers dealing with draft. The film is often considered the first to deal explicitly with the draft. The film is noteworthy for its use of various experimental techniques to convey its narrative in ultimately unconventional ways. Footage was sped up, rapid cutting used to distance the audience from the narrative, and it was difficult to discern with whom the audience must ultimately align. "Greetings" ultimately grossed over $1 million at the box office and cemented De Palma's position as a bankable filmmaker.
After the success of his 1968 breakthrough, De Palma and his producing partner (Charles Hirsch
) were given the opportunity by Sigma 3 to make an unofficial sequel of sorts, initially entitled Son of Greetings, and subsequently released as Hi, Mom!. While "Greetings" accentuated its varied cast, Hi, Mom! focuses on De Niro's character, Jon Rubin, an essential carry-over from the previous film. The film is ultimately significant insofar as it displays the first enunciation of De Palma's style in all its major traits – voyeurism, guilt, and a hyper-consciousness of the medium are all on full display, not just as hallmarks, but built into this formal, material apparatus itself.
These traits come to the fore in Hi, Mom!s "Be Black, Baby" sequence. This sequence parodies cinéma vérité
, the dominant documentary tradition of the 1960s, while simultaneously providing the audience with a visceral and disturbingly emotional experience. De Palma describes the sequence as a constant invocation of Brecht
ian distanciation: “First of all, I am interested in the medium of film itself, and I am constantly standing outside and making people aware that they are always watching a film. At the same time I am evolving it. In Hi, Mom! for instance, there is a sequence where you are obviously watching a ridiculous documentary and you are told that and you are aware of it, but it still sucks you in. There is a kind of Brechtian alienation idea here: you are aware of what you are watching at the same time that you are emotionally involved with it.”
"Be Black, Baby" was filmed in black and white stock on 16 mm, in low-light conditions that stress the crudity of the direct cinema aesthetic. It is precisely from this crudity that the film itself gains a credibility of “realism.” In an interview with Michael Bliss, De Palma notes “[Be Black, Baby] was rehearsed for almost three weeks... In fact, it's all scripted. But once the thing starts, they just go with the way it's going. I specifically got a very good documentary camera filmmaker (Robert Elfstrom) to just shoot it like a documentary to follow the action.” Furthermore, “I wanted to show in Hi, Mom! how you can really involve an audience. You take an absurd premise – “Be Black, Baby” – and totally involve them and really frighten them at the same time. It's very Brechtian. You suck ‘em in and annihilate ‘em. Then you say, “It's just a movie, right? It's not real.” It's just like television. You’re sucked in all the time, and you’re being lied to in a very documentary-like setting. The “Be Black, Baby” section of Hi, Mom! is probably the most important piece of film I’ve ever done.”
thriller Carrie is seen by some as De Palma's bid for a blockbuster. In fact, the project was small, underfunded by United Artists
, and well under the cultural radar during the early months of production, as Stephen King
's source novel had yet to climb the bestseller list. De Palma gravitated toward the project and changed crucial plot elements based upon his own predilections, not the saleability of the novel. The cast was young and relatively new, though the stars Sissy Spacek
and John Travolta
had gained considerable attention for previous work in, respectively, film and episodic sitcoms
. Carrie became a hit, the first genuine box-office success for De Palma. It garnered Spacek and Piper Laurie
Oscar nominations for their performances. Preproduction for the film had coincided with the casting process for George Lucas
's Star Wars
, and many of the actors cast in De Palma's film had been earmarked as contenders for Lucas's movie, and vice-versa. The "shock ending" finale is effective even while it upholds horror-film convention, its suspense sequences are buttressed by teen comedy tropes, and its use of split-screen
, split-diopter and slow motion
shots tell the story visually rather than through dialogue.
The financial and critical success of Carrie allowed De Palma to pursue more personal material. The Demolished Man
was a novel that had fascinated De Palma since the late 1950s and appealed to his background in mathematics and avant-garde
storytelling. Its unconventional unfolding of plot (exemplified in its mathematical layout of dialogue) and its stress on perception have analogs in De Palma's filmmaking. He sought to adapt it on numerous occasions, though the project would carry a substantial price tag, and has yet to appear onscreen (Steven Spielberg's adaptation of Philip K. Dick
's Minority Report
bears striking similarities to De Palma's visual style and some of the themes of The Demolished Man). The result of his experience with adapting The Demolished Man was The Fury, a sci-fi
psychic thriller that starred Kirk Douglas
, Carrie Snodgress
, John Cassavetes
and Amy Irving
. The film was admired by Jean-Luc Godard
, who featured a clip in his mammoth Histoire(s) du cinéma
, and Pauline Kael
who championed both The Fury and De Palma. The film boasted a larger budget than Carrie, though the consensus view at the time was that De Palma was repeating himself, with diminishing returns. As a film it retains De Palma's considerable visual flair, but points more toward his work in mainstream entertainments such as The Untouchables
and Mission: Impossible
, the thematic complex thrillers for which he is now better known.
For many film-goers, De Palma's gangster films, most notably Scarface
and Carlito's Way
, pushed the envelope of violence and depravity, and yet greatly vary from one another in both style and content and also illustrate De Palma's evolution as a film-maker. In essence, the excesses of Scarface contrast with the more emotional tragedy of Carlito's Way. Both films feature Al Pacino in what has become a fruitful working relationship. In 1984, he directed the music video of Bruce Springsteen's song "Dancing In The Dark".
Later into the 1990s and 2000s, De Palma did other films. He attempted to do dramas and a few thrillers plus science fiction. Some of these movies (Mission: Impossible, Carlito's Way) worked and some others (Mission to Mars, Raising Cain, Snake Eyes, The Bonfire of the Vanities) failed at the box office. Of these films, The Bonfire of the Vanities
would be De Palma's biggest box office disaster, losing millions. Another later movie from De Palma, Redacted
, unleashed a torrent of controversy over its subject of American involvement in Iraq
, and supposed atrocities committed there. It received limited release in the United States.
De Palma today resides in Los Angeles.
s (Sisters, Obsession, Dressed to Kill, Blow Out, Raising Cain) and his other commercial films (Scarface, The Untouchables, Carlito's Way, and Mission: Impossible). He has often produced "De Palma" films one after the other before going on to direct a different genre, but would always return to his familiar territory. Because of the subject matter and graphic violence
of some of De Palma's films, such as Dressed to Kill, Scarface and Body Double, they are often at the center of controversy with the Motion Picture Association of America
, film critics
and the viewing public.
De Palma is known for quoting and referencing other director's work throughout his career. Michelangelo Antonioni
's Blowup
and Francis Ford Coppola
's The Conversation
plots were used for the basis of Blow Out. The Untouchables finale shoot out in the train station is a clear borrow from the Odessa
Steps sequence in Sergei Eisenstein
's The Battleship Potemkin
. The main plot from Rear Window
was used for Body Double, while it also used elements of Vertigo
. Vertigo was also the basis for Obsession. Dressed to Kill was a note-for-note homage to Hitchcock's Psycho, including such moments as the surprise death of the lead actress and the exposition scene by the psychiatrist at the end.
. Split-screen
techniques have been used to show two separate events happening simultaneously. To emphasize the dramatic impact of a certain scene De Palma has employed a 360-degree
camera pan
. Slow sweeping, panning and tracking shot
s are often used throughout his films. Split focus shots are used to emphasize the foreground person/object while simultaneously keeping a background person/object in focus.
starred in The Wedding Party, Greetings, and Hi, Mom!. Nancy Allen
had acting roles in Carrie, Home Movies, Dressed to Kill and Blow Out. Other actors that De Palma has worked with on more than one occasion include Jennifer Salt
(The Wedding Party, Hi, Mom!, and Sisters), Charles Durning
(Hi, Mom!, Sisters, and The Fury), Al Pacino
(Scarface and Carlito's Way), John Lithgow
(Obsession, Blow Out and Raising Cain), Sean Penn
(Casualties of War and Carlito's Way), Amy Irving
(Carrie, The Fury and Casualties of War (uncredited voice-over)), and John Travolta
(Carrie, Blow Out).
De Palma has consistently worked with a group of screenwriter
s, cinematographer
s, editor
s and composer
s throughout his career. Screenwriter David Koepp
worked with him on Carlito's Way, Mission: Impossible, and Snake Eyes. He commonly works with cinematographers Vilmos Zsigmond
(Obsession, Blow Out, The Bonfire of the Vanities, The Black Dahlia) and Stephen H. Burum
(Body Double, The Untouchables, Casualties of War, Raising Cain, Carlito's Way, Snake Eyes, Mission to Mars). De Palma has also worked with composers Pino Donaggio
(Carrie, Home Movies, Dressed to Kill, Blow Out, Body Double, Raising Cain) and Ennio Morricone
(The Untouchables, Casualties of War, and Mission to Mars). Furthermore, De Palma has used editors Bill Pankow
(Body Double, The Untouchables, Casualties of War, The Bonfire of the Vanities, Carlito's Way, Snake Eyes, The Black Dahlia, Redacted) and Paul Hirsch
(Phantom of the Paradise, Carrie, Raising Cain, Mission to Mars).
in 1991, who had previously been married to Director James Cameron
. They had one child together and divorced in 1993. De Palma's last wife was Darnell Gregorio, whom he married in 1993 and had one child. They divorced four years later.
generation of film directors, a distinct pedigree who either emerged from film schools or are overtly cine-literate. His contemporaries include Martin Scorsese
, Paul Schrader
, John Milius
, George Lucas
, Francis Ford Coppola
, John Carpenter
, and Ridley Scott
. His artistry in directing and use of cinematography and suspense in several of his films has often been compared to the work of Alfred Hitchcock
.
De Palma has encouraged and fostered the filmmaking careers of directors such as Quentin Tarantino
, Mark Romanek
and Keith Gordon
. Tarantino said - during interview with De Palma, that Blow Out is one of his all time favourite films, and that after watching Scarface he knew how to make his own film. Terrence Malick
credits seeing De Palma's early films on college campus tours as a validation of independent film
, and subsequently switched his attention from philosophy
to filmmaking.
In his review of Femme Fatale, Roger Ebert
wrote about the director: "De Palma deserves more honor as a director. Consider also these titles: Sisters, Blow Out, The Fury, Dressed to Kill, Carrie, Scarface, Wise Guys, Casualties of War, Carlito's Way, Mission: Impossible. Yes, there are a few failures along the way (Snake Eyes, Mission to Mars, The Bonfire of the Vanities), but look at the range here, and reflect that these movies contain treasure for those who admire the craft as well as the story, who sense the glee with which De Palma manipulates images and characters for the simple joy of being good at it. It's not just that he sometimes works in the style of Hitchcock, but that he has the nerve to."
DePalma's film Redacted has left a somewhat darker legacy. It has been used as propaganda by Islamic extremists, who claim that several of its scenes are actual footage of real US Army operations. In March 2011 Arid Uka, a Kosovan Muslim living in Albania, was moved to kill 2 US airmen and wound 3 more after watching scenes from the movie.
Co-directed by De Palma
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
film director
Film director
A film director is a person who directs the actors and film crew in filmmaking. They control a film's artistic and dramatic nathan roach, while guiding the technical crew and actors.-Responsibilities:...
and writer
Writer
A writer is a person who produces literature, such as novels, short stories, plays, screenplays, poetry, or other literary art. Skilled writers are able to use language to portray ideas and images....
. In a career spanning over 40 years, he is probably best known for his suspense
Suspense
Suspense is a feeling of uncertainty and anxiety about the outcome of certain actions, most often referring to an audience's perceptions in a dramatic work. Suspense is not exclusive to fiction, though. Suspense may operate in any situation where there is a lead-up to a big event or dramatic...
and crime thriller films, including such box office
Box office
A box office is a place where tickets are sold to the public for admission to an event. Patrons may perform the transaction at a countertop, through an unblocked hole through a wall or window, or at a wicket....
successes as the horror film
Horror film
Horror films seek to elicit a negative emotional reaction from viewers by playing on the audience's most primal fears. They often feature scenes that startle the viewer through the means of macabre and the supernatural, thus frequently overlapping with the fantasy and science fiction genres...
Carrie, Dressed to Kill, Scarface
Scarface (1983 film)
Scarface is a 1983 American epic crime drama movie directed by Brian De Palma, written by Oliver Stone, produced by Martin Bregman and starring Al Pacino as Tony Montana...
, The Untouchables, and Mission: Impossible
Mission: Impossible (film)
Mission: Impossible is a 1996 action thriller directed by Brian De Palma and starring Tom Cruise. Following on from the television series of the same name, the plot follows a new agent, Ethan Hunt and his mission to uncover the mole within the CIA who has framed him for the murders of his entire...
.
Throughout the 1970s and early 1980s, De Palma worked repeatedly with actors Jennifer Salt
Jennifer Salt
Jennifer Salt is an American producer, screenwriter, and former actress.-Life and career:Salt was born in Los Angeles, California. Her parents were screenwriter Waldo Salt and actress Mary Davenport; her stepmother was the writer Eve Merriam...
, Amy Irving
Amy Irving
Amy Davis Irving is an American actress, known for her roles in the films Crossing Delancey, The Fury, Carrie, and Yentl as well as acclaimed roles on Broadway and Off-Broadway. She has been nominated for an Academy Award, two Golden Globes, and has won an Obie award...
, Nancy Allen
Nancy Allen (actress)
Nancy Anne Allen is a Golden Globe nominated American actress and cancer activist.Allen began an acting and modelling career as a child, and from the mid-1970s appeared in small film roles, most notably the anchor of Robert Zemeckis's ensemble comedy I Wanna Hold Your Hand...
(his wife from 1979 to 1983), Gary Sinise
Gary Sinise
Gary Alan Sinise is an American actor, film director and musician. During his career, Sinise has won various awards including an Emmy and a Golden Globe Award and was nominated for an Academy Award. In 1992, Sinise directed, and played the role of George Milton in the successful film adaptation of...
, John Lithgow
John Lithgow
John Arthur Lithgow is an American actor, musician, and author. Presently, he is involved with a wide range of media projects, including stage, television, film, and radio...
, William Finley
William Finley (actor)
William Finley is an American actor who has appeared in the films Simon, Silent Rage, Phantom of the Paradise, Sisters, Obsession and The Wedding Party. Finley has had a long film relationship with director Brian De Palma, beginning with the student films "Woton's Wake", and "Murder a la Mod"...
, Charles Durning
Charles Durning
Charles Durning is an American actor. With appearances in over 100 films, Durning's memorable roles include police officers in the Oscar-winning The Sting and crime drama Dog Day Afternoon , along with the comedies Tootsie, To Be Or Not To Be and The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas, the last two...
, Gerrit Graham
Gerrit Graham
Gerrit Graham is an American actor and songwriter. He's appeared in such films as Used Cars, TerrorVision, National Lampoon's Class Reunion, and Greetings, where he worked with Brian DePalma for the first time...
, cinematographers Stephen H. Burum
Stephen H. Burum
Stephen Henry Burum, A.S.C. is an American cinematographer.-Biography:Burum was born in 1939 in Dinuba, California, a small Central Valley town near Visalia. He graduated from the UCLA School of Theater, Film and Television in the 1960s, and became an instructor at the same school...
and Vilmos Zsigmond
Vilmos Zsigmond
Vilmos Zsigmond, A.S.C. is a Hungarian-American cinematographer.In 2003, a survey conducted by the International Cinematographers Guild placed Zsigmond among the ten most influential cinematographers in history.-Biography:...
(see List of noted film director and cinematographer collaborations), set designer Jack Fisk
Jack Fisk
Jack Fisk is an American movie industry professional, frequently working as either a production designer or art director on Hollywood movies.Fisk met Sissy Spacek when working on Terrence Malick's 1973 movie Badlands...
, and composers Bernard Herrmann
Bernard Herrmann
Bernard Herrmann was an American composer noted for his work in motion pictures.An Academy Award-winner , Herrmann is particularly known for his collaborations with director Alfred Hitchcock, most famously Psycho, North by Northwest, The Man Who Knew Too Much, and Vertigo...
and Pino Donaggio
Pino Donaggio
Giuseppe "Pino" Donaggio is an Italian composer.Born in Burano , into a family of musicians, Donaggio began studying violin at the age of ten, first at the Benedetto Marcello conservatory in Venice, followed by the Giuseppe Verdi Conservatory in Milan...
. De Palma is credited with fostering the careers of or outright discovering Robert De Niro
Robert De Niro
Robert De Niro, Jr. is an American actor, director and producer. His first major film roles were in Bang the Drum Slowly and Mean Streets, both in 1973...
, Jill Clayburgh
Jill Clayburgh
Jill Clayburgh was an American actress. She received Academy Award nominations for her roles in An Unmarried Woman and Starting Over.-Personal life:...
, John C. Reilly
John C. Reilly
John Christopher Reilly, Jr. is an American film and theater actor, singer, and comedian. Debuting in Casualties of War in 1989, he is one of several actors whose careers were launched by Brian De Palma. To date, he has appeared in more than fifty films, including three separate films in 2002...
, John Leguizamo
John Leguizamo
Jonathan Alberto "John" Leguizamo is an Colombian-American actor, producer, voice artist, and comedian.-Early life:...
, Andy Garcia
Andy García
Andrés Arturo García Menéndez , professionally known as Andy García, is a Cuban American actor. He became known in the late 1980s and 1990s, having appeared in several successful Hollywood films, including The Godfather: Part III, The Untouchables, Internal Affairs and When a Man Loves a Woman...
and Margot Kidder
Margot Kidder
Margaret Ruth "Margot" Kidder is a Canadian-born American actress. She is perhaps best known for playing Lois Lane in the four Superman movies opposite Christopher Reeve, a role that brought her to widespread recognition....
.
Early life
De Palma, whose background is ItalianItalian American
An Italian American , is an American of Italian ancestry. The designation may also refer to someone possessing Italian and American dual citizenship...
Roman Catholic, was born in Newark, New Jersey
Newark, New Jersey
Newark is the largest city in the American state of New Jersey, and the seat of Essex County. As of the 2010 United States Census, Newark had a population of 277,140, maintaining its status as the largest municipality in New Jersey. It is the 68th largest city in the U.S...
, the son of Vivienne (née Muti) and Anthony Frederick De Palma
Anthony DePalma
Anthony Federico DePalma was an orthopedic surgeon, humanitarian, and teacher at Thomas Jefferson University, as well as the founder of the orthopedic department at University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey....
, an orthopedic surgeon. He was raised in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
Pennsylvania
The Commonwealth of Pennsylvania is a U.S. state that is located in the Northeastern and Mid-Atlantic regions of the United States. The state borders Delaware and Maryland to the south, West Virginia to the southwest, Ohio to the west, New York and Ontario, Canada, to the north, and New Jersey to...
and New Hampshire
New Hampshire
New Hampshire is a state in the New England region of the northeastern United States of America. The state was named after the southern English county of Hampshire. It is bordered by Massachusetts to the south, Vermont to the west, Maine and the Atlantic Ocean to the east, and the Canadian...
in various Protestant and Quaker
Religious Society of Friends
The Religious Society of Friends, or Friends Church, is a Christian movement which stresses the doctrine of the priesthood of all believers. Members are known as Friends, or popularly as Quakers. It is made of independent organisations, which have split from one another due to doctrinal differences...
schools, eventually graduating from Friends' Central School
Friends' Central School
Friends' Central School is a college-preparatory, Quaker, coeducational day school for nursery through grade 12 located in Wynnewood, a suburb of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania....
. He won a regional science-fair prize for a project titled "An Analog Computer
Analog computer
An analog computer is a form of computer that uses the continuously-changeable aspects of physical phenomena such as electrical, mechanical, or hydraulic quantities to model the problem being solved...
to Solve Differential Equations".
1960s and early career
Enrolled at ColumbiaColumbia University
Columbia University in the City of New York is a private, Ivy League university in Manhattan, New York City. Columbia is the oldest institution of higher learning in the state of New York, the fifth oldest in the United States, and one of the country's nine Colonial Colleges founded before the...
as a physics student, De Palma became enraptured with the filmmaking process after viewing Citizen Kane
Citizen Kane
Citizen Kane is a 1941 American drama film, directed by and starring Orson Welles. Many critics consider it the greatest American film of all time, especially for its innovative cinematography, music and narrative structure. Citizen Kane was Welles' first feature film...
and Vertigo
Vertigo (film)
Vertigo is a 1958 psychological thriller film directed by Alfred Hitchcock and starring James Stewart, Kim Novak, and Barbara Bel Geddes. The screenplay was written by Alec Coppel and Samuel A...
. De Palma subsequently enrolled at the newly coed Sarah Lawrence College
Sarah Lawrence College
Sarah Lawrence College is a private liberal arts college in the United States, and a leader in progressive education since its founding in 1926. Located just 30 minutes north of Midtown Manhattan in southern Westchester County, New York, in the city of Yonkers, this coeducational college offers...
as a graduate student in their theater department in the early 1960s, becoming one of the first male students among a female population. Once there, influences as various as drama teacher Wilford Leach
Wilford Leach
Carson Wilford Leach was an American theatre director, set designer, film director, screenwriter, and college professor.-Biography:...
, the Maysles brothers
Albert and David Maysles
Albert and David Maysles were a documentary filmmaking team whose cinéma vérité works include Salesman , Gimme Shelter and Grey Gardens . Their 1964 film on The Beatles forms the backbone of the DVD, The Beatles: The First U.S. Visit...
, Michelangelo Antonioni
Michelangelo Antonioni
Michelangelo Antonioni, Cavaliere di Gran Croce OMRI was an Italian modernist film director, screenwriter, editor and short story writer.- Personal life :...
, Jean-Luc Godard
Jean-Luc Godard
Jean-Luc Godard is a French-Swiss film director, screenwriter and film critic. He is often identified with the 1960s French film movement, French Nouvelle Vague, or "New Wave"....
, Andy Warhol
Andy Warhol
Andrew Warhola , known as Andy Warhol, was an American painter, printmaker, and filmmaker who was a leading figure in the visual art movement known as pop art...
and Alfred Hitchcock
Alfred Hitchcock
Sir Alfred Joseph Hitchcock, KBE was a British film director and producer. He pioneered many techniques in the suspense and psychological thriller genres. After a successful career in British cinema in both silent films and early talkies, Hitchcock moved to Hollywood...
impressed upon De Palma the many styles and themes that would shape his own cinema in the coming decades. An early association with a young Robert De Niro
Robert De Niro
Robert De Niro, Jr. is an American actor, director and producer. His first major film roles were in Bang the Drum Slowly and Mean Streets, both in 1973...
resulted in The Wedding Party
The Wedding Party (film)
The Wedding Party is a 1969 American film farce.Its simple plot focuses on a soon-to-be groom and his interactions with various relatives of his fiancée and members of the wedding party prior to the ceremony on the family's estate on Shelter Island....
. The film, which was co-directed with Leach and producer Cynthia Munroe, had been shot in 1963 but remained unreleased until 1969, when De Palma's star had risen sufficiently within the Greenwich Village
Greenwich Village
Greenwich Village, , , , .in New York often simply called "the Village", is a largely residential neighborhood on the west side of Lower Manhattan in New York City. A large majority of the district is home to upper middle class families...
filmmaking scene. De Niro was unknown at the time; the credits mistakenly display his name as "Robert Denero." The film is noteworthy for its invocation of silent film techniques and an insistence on the jump-cut for effect. De Palma followed this with various small films for the NAACP and The Treasury Department.
During the 1960s, De Palma began making a living producing documentary films, notably The Responsive Eye, a 1966 movie about The Responsive Eye op-art exhibit curated by William Seitz for Museum of Modern Art
Moma
Moma may refer to:* Moma , an owlet moth genus* Moma Airport, a Russian public airport* Moma District, Nampula, Mozambique* Moma River, a right tributary of the Indigirka River* Google Moma, the Google corporate intranet...
in 1965. In an interview with Gelmis from 1969, De Palma described the film as "very good and very successful. It's distributed by Pathe Contemporary and makes lots of money. I shot it in four hours, with synched sound. I had two other guys shooting people's reactions to the paintings, and the paintings themselves."
Dionysus in 69
Dionysus (film)
Dionysus in '69 is a 1970 film by Brian De Palma. The film records a performance of The Performance Group's stage play of the same name, an adaptation of The Bacchae. It was entered into the 20th Berlin International Film Festival. The play is one of the most controversial ever written, as it...
(1969) was De Palma's other major documentary from this period. The film records The Performance Group
The Performance Group
The Performance Group was a New York City troupe of experimental theater started by Richard Schechner in 1967. TPG's home base was the Performing Garage in the SoHo district...
's performance of Euripides’ The Bacchae
The Bacchae
The Bacchae is an ancient Greek tragedy by the Athenian playwright Euripides, during his final years in Macedon, at the court of Archelaus I of Macedon. It premiered posthumously at the Theatre of Dionysus in 405 BC as part of a tetralogy that also included Iphigeneia at Aulis, and which...
, starring, amongst others, De Palma regular William Finley. The play is noted for breaking traditional barriers between performers and audience. The film's most striking quality is its extensive use of the split-screen
Split screen (film)
In film and video production, split screen is the visible division of the screen, traditionally in half, but also in several simultaneous images, rupturing the illusion that the screen's frame is a seamless view of reality, similar to that of the human eye...
. De Palma recalls that he was “floored” by this performance upon first sight, and in 1973 recounts how he "began to try and figure out a way to capture it on film. I came up with the idea of split-screen, to be able to show the actual audience involvement, to trace the life of the audience and that of the play as they merge in and out of each other."
De Palma's most significant features from this decade are Greetings
Greetings (film)
Greetings is a 1968 film directed by Brian De Palma. The film, which featured a young Robert De Niro in his first major role, is a satirical film about men avoiding the Vietnam War draft....
(1968) and Hi, Mom!
Hi, Mom!
Hi, Mom! is a black comedy film by Brian De Palma, and is one of Robert De Niro's first movies. De Niro reprises his role of Jon Rubin from Greetings...
(1970). Both films star Robert De Niro and espouse a Leftist revolutionary
Revolutionary
A revolutionary is a person who either actively participates in, or advocates revolution. Also, when used as an adjective, the term revolutionary refers to something that has a major, sudden impact on society or on some aspect of human endeavor.-Definition:...
viewpoint common to their era. Greetings was entered into the 19th Berlin International Film Festival
19th Berlin International Film Festival
The 19th annual Berlin International Film Festival was held from June 25 to July 6, 1969.-Jury:* Johannes Schaaf * Agnesa Kalinova* José P...
, where it won a Silver Bear award. His other major film from this period is the slasher comedy Murder a la Mod
Murder a la Mod
Murder à la Mod is a 1968 film directed by Brian De Palma. The film was released in one cinema in New York City. It quickly disappeared not long after and was thought lost...
. Each of these films contains experiments in narrative and intertextuality
Intertextuality
Intertextuality is the shaping of texts' meanings by other texts. It can include an author’s borrowing and transformation of a prior text or to a reader’s referencing of one text in reading another. The term “intertextuality” has, itself, been borrowed and transformed many times since it was coined...
, reflecting De Palma's stated intention to become the "American Godard" while integrating several of the themes which permeated Hitchcock's work.
Greetings is about three New Yorkers dealing with draft. The film is often considered the first to deal explicitly with the draft. The film is noteworthy for its use of various experimental techniques to convey its narrative in ultimately unconventional ways. Footage was sped up, rapid cutting used to distance the audience from the narrative, and it was difficult to discern with whom the audience must ultimately align. "Greetings" ultimately grossed over $1 million at the box office and cemented De Palma's position as a bankable filmmaker.
After the success of his 1968 breakthrough, De Palma and his producing partner (Charles Hirsch
Charles Hirsch
Charles S. Hirsch, born March 30, 1937, is an American forensic pathologist who has been the Chief Medical Examiner of New York City since 1989....
) were given the opportunity by Sigma 3 to make an unofficial sequel of sorts, initially entitled Son of Greetings, and subsequently released as Hi, Mom!. While "Greetings" accentuated its varied cast, Hi, Mom! focuses on De Niro's character, Jon Rubin, an essential carry-over from the previous film. The film is ultimately significant insofar as it displays the first enunciation of De Palma's style in all its major traits – voyeurism, guilt, and a hyper-consciousness of the medium are all on full display, not just as hallmarks, but built into this formal, material apparatus itself.
These traits come to the fore in Hi, Mom!s "Be Black, Baby" sequence. This sequence parodies cinéma vérité
Cinéma vérité
Cinéma vérité is a style of documentary filmmaking, combining naturalistic techniques with stylized cinematic devices of editing and camerawork, staged set-ups, and the use of the camera to provoke subjects. It is also known for taking a provocative stance toward its topics.There are subtle yet...
, the dominant documentary tradition of the 1960s, while simultaneously providing the audience with a visceral and disturbingly emotional experience. De Palma describes the sequence as a constant invocation of Brecht
Brecht
Brecht is a municipality located in the Belgian province of Antwerp. The municipality comprises the towns of Brecht proper, Sint-Job-in't-Goor and Sint-Lenaarts. On January 1, 2006 Brecht had a total population of 26,464...
ian distanciation: “First of all, I am interested in the medium of film itself, and I am constantly standing outside and making people aware that they are always watching a film. At the same time I am evolving it. In Hi, Mom! for instance, there is a sequence where you are obviously watching a ridiculous documentary and you are told that and you are aware of it, but it still sucks you in. There is a kind of Brechtian alienation idea here: you are aware of what you are watching at the same time that you are emotionally involved with it.”
"Be Black, Baby" was filmed in black and white stock on 16 mm, in low-light conditions that stress the crudity of the direct cinema aesthetic. It is precisely from this crudity that the film itself gains a credibility of “realism.” In an interview with Michael Bliss, De Palma notes “[Be Black, Baby] was rehearsed for almost three weeks... In fact, it's all scripted. But once the thing starts, they just go with the way it's going. I specifically got a very good documentary camera filmmaker (Robert Elfstrom) to just shoot it like a documentary to follow the action.” Furthermore, “I wanted to show in Hi, Mom! how you can really involve an audience. You take an absurd premise – “Be Black, Baby” – and totally involve them and really frighten them at the same time. It's very Brechtian. You suck ‘em in and annihilate ‘em. Then you say, “It's just a movie, right? It's not real.” It's just like television. You’re sucked in all the time, and you’re being lied to in a very documentary-like setting. The “Be Black, Baby” section of Hi, Mom! is probably the most important piece of film I’ve ever done.”
Transition to Hollywood
In the 1970s, De Palma went to Hollywood where he did big budget films: after several small, studio and independent released films that included stand-outs Sisters and Obsession, a small film based on a novel called Carrie was released directed by Brian De Palma. The psychicPsychic
A psychic is a person who professes an ability to perceive information hidden from the normal senses through extrasensory perception , or is said by others to have such abilities. It is also used to describe theatrical performers who use techniques such as prestidigitation, cold reading, and hot...
thriller Carrie is seen by some as De Palma's bid for a blockbuster. In fact, the project was small, underfunded by United Artists
United Artists
United Artists Corporation is an American film studio. The original studio of that name was founded in 1919 by D. W. Griffith, Charles Chaplin, Mary Pickford and Douglas Fairbanks....
, and well under the cultural radar during the early months of production, as Stephen King
Stephen King
Stephen Edwin King is an American author of contemporary horror, suspense, science fiction and fantasy fiction. His books have sold more than 350 million copies and have been adapted into a number of feature films, television movies and comic books...
's source novel had yet to climb the bestseller list. De Palma gravitated toward the project and changed crucial plot elements based upon his own predilections, not the saleability of the novel. The cast was young and relatively new, though the stars Sissy Spacek
Sissy Spacek
Sissy Spacek is an American actress and singer. She came to international prominence for her for role as Carrie White in Brian De Palma's 1976 horror film Carrie for which she earned her first Academy Award nomination...
and John Travolta
John Travolta
John Joseph Travolta is an American actor, dancer and singer. Travolta first became known in the 1970s, after appearing on the television series Welcome Back, Kotter and starring in the box office successes Saturday Night Fever and Grease...
had gained considerable attention for previous work in, respectively, film and episodic sitcoms
Situation comedy
A situation comedy, often shortened to sitcom, is a genre of comedy that features characters sharing the same common environment, such as a home or workplace, accompanied with jokes as part of the dialogue...
. Carrie became a hit, the first genuine box-office success for De Palma. It garnered Spacek and Piper Laurie
Piper Laurie
Piper Laurie is an American actress of stage and screen known for her roles in the television series Twin Peaks and the films The Hustler, Carrie, and Children of a Lesser God, all of which brought her Academy Award nominations...
Oscar nominations for their performances. Preproduction for the film had coincided with the casting process for George Lucas
George Lucas
George Walton Lucas, Jr. is an American film producer, screenwriter, and director, and entrepreneur. He is the founder, chairman and chief executive of Lucasfilm. He is best known as the creator of the space opera franchise Star Wars and the archaeologist-adventurer character Indiana Jones...
's Star Wars
Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope
Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope, originally released as Star Wars, is a 1977 American epic space opera film, written and directed by George Lucas. It is the first of six films released in the Star Wars saga: two subsequent films complete the original trilogy, while a prequel trilogy completes the...
, and many of the actors cast in De Palma's film had been earmarked as contenders for Lucas's movie, and vice-versa. The "shock ending" finale is effective even while it upholds horror-film convention, its suspense sequences are buttressed by teen comedy tropes, and its use of split-screen
Split screen (film)
In film and video production, split screen is the visible division of the screen, traditionally in half, but also in several simultaneous images, rupturing the illusion that the screen's frame is a seamless view of reality, similar to that of the human eye...
, split-diopter and slow motion
Slow motion
Slow motion is an effect in film-making whereby time appears to be slowed down. It was invented by the Austrian priest August Musger....
shots tell the story visually rather than through dialogue.
The financial and critical success of Carrie allowed De Palma to pursue more personal material. The Demolished Man
The Demolished Man
The Demolished Man, by Alfred Bester, is a science fiction novel that was the first Hugo Award winner in 1953. The story was first serialized in three parts, beginning with the January 1952 issue of Galaxy Science Fiction, followed by publication of the novel in 1953. The novel is dedicated to...
was a novel that had fascinated De Palma since the late 1950s and appealed to his background in mathematics and avant-garde
Avant-garde
Avant-garde means "advance guard" or "vanguard". The adjective form is used in English to refer to people or works that are experimental or innovative, particularly with respect to art, culture, and politics....
storytelling. Its unconventional unfolding of plot (exemplified in its mathematical layout of dialogue) and its stress on perception have analogs in De Palma's filmmaking. He sought to adapt it on numerous occasions, though the project would carry a substantial price tag, and has yet to appear onscreen (Steven Spielberg's adaptation of Philip K. Dick
Philip K. Dick
Philip Kindred Dick was an American novelist, short story writer and essayist whose published work is almost entirely in the science fiction genre. Dick explored sociological, political and metaphysical themes in novels dominated by monopolistic corporations, authoritarian governments and altered...
's Minority Report
Minority Report (film)
Minority Report is a 2002 American neo-noir science fiction film directed by Steven Spielberg and loosely based on the short story "The Minority Report" by Philip K. Dick. It is set primarily in Washington, D.C...
bears striking similarities to De Palma's visual style and some of the themes of The Demolished Man). The result of his experience with adapting The Demolished Man was The Fury, a sci-fi
Science fiction
Science fiction is a genre of fiction dealing with imaginary but more or less plausible content such as future settings, futuristic science and technology, space travel, aliens, and paranormal abilities...
psychic thriller that starred Kirk Douglas
Kirk Douglas
Kirk Douglas is an American stage and film actor, film producer and author. His popular films include Out of the Past , Champion , Ace in the Hole , The Bad and the Beautiful , Lust for Life , Paths of Glory , Gunfight at the O.K...
, Carrie Snodgress
Carrie Snodgress
Caroline "Carrie" Snodgress was an American actress.-Biography:Snodgress was born in Park Ridge, Illinois. She attended Maine Township High School East in Park Ridge then Northern Illinois University before leaving to pursue acting. Snodgress trained for the stage at the Goodman Theatre, in Chicago...
, John Cassavetes
John Cassavetes
John Nicholas Cassavetes was an American actor, screenwriter and filmmaker. He acted in many Hollywood films, notably Rosemary's Baby and The Dirty Dozen...
and Amy Irving
Amy Irving
Amy Davis Irving is an American actress, known for her roles in the films Crossing Delancey, The Fury, Carrie, and Yentl as well as acclaimed roles on Broadway and Off-Broadway. She has been nominated for an Academy Award, two Golden Globes, and has won an Obie award...
. The film was admired by Jean-Luc Godard
Jean-Luc Godard
Jean-Luc Godard is a French-Swiss film director, screenwriter and film critic. He is often identified with the 1960s French film movement, French Nouvelle Vague, or "New Wave"....
, who featured a clip in his mammoth Histoire(s) du cinéma
Histoire(s) du cinéma
Histoire du cinéma is a video project begun by Jean-Luc Godard in the late 1980s and completed in 1998. The densest and undoubtedly one of the greatest of Godard's films, Histoire du cinéma is an examination of the history of the concept of cinema and how it relates to the 20th century; in this...
, and Pauline Kael
Pauline Kael
Pauline Kael was an American film critic who wrote for The New Yorker magazine from 1968 to 1991. Earlier in her career, her work appeared in City Lights, McCall's and The New Republic....
who championed both The Fury and De Palma. The film boasted a larger budget than Carrie, though the consensus view at the time was that De Palma was repeating himself, with diminishing returns. As a film it retains De Palma's considerable visual flair, but points more toward his work in mainstream entertainments such as The Untouchables
The Untouchables (1987 film)
The Untouchables is a 1987 American crime-drama film directed by Brian De Palma and written by David Mamet. Based on the book The Untouchables, the film stars Kevin Costner as government agent Eliot Ness. It also stars Robert De Niro as gang leader Al Capone and Sean Connery as Irish-American...
and Mission: Impossible
Mission: Impossible (film)
Mission: Impossible is a 1996 action thriller directed by Brian De Palma and starring Tom Cruise. Following on from the television series of the same name, the plot follows a new agent, Ethan Hunt and his mission to uncover the mole within the CIA who has framed him for the murders of his entire...
, the thematic complex thrillers for which he is now better known.
For many film-goers, De Palma's gangster films, most notably Scarface
Scarface (1983 film)
Scarface is a 1983 American epic crime drama movie directed by Brian De Palma, written by Oliver Stone, produced by Martin Bregman and starring Al Pacino as Tony Montana...
and Carlito's Way
Carlito's Way
Carlito's Way is a 1993 crime film directed by Brian De Palma, based on the novels Carlito's Way and After Hours by Judge Edwin Torres. The film adaptation was scripted by David Koepp. It stars Al Pacino, Sean Penn, Penelope Ann Miller, Luis Guzman, John Leguizamo, Jorge Porcel, Joseph Siravo, and...
, pushed the envelope of violence and depravity, and yet greatly vary from one another in both style and content and also illustrate De Palma's evolution as a film-maker. In essence, the excesses of Scarface contrast with the more emotional tragedy of Carlito's Way. Both films feature Al Pacino in what has become a fruitful working relationship. In 1984, he directed the music video of Bruce Springsteen's song "Dancing In The Dark".
Later into the 1990s and 2000s, De Palma did other films. He attempted to do dramas and a few thrillers plus science fiction. Some of these movies (Mission: Impossible, Carlito's Way) worked and some others (Mission to Mars, Raising Cain, Snake Eyes, The Bonfire of the Vanities) failed at the box office. Of these films, The Bonfire of the Vanities
The Bonfire of the Vanities (film)
The Bonfire of the Vanities is a 1990 American film adaptation of the best-selling novel of the same name by Tom Wolfe. The film was directed by Brian De Palma and stars Tom Hanks as Sherman McCoy, Bruce Willis as Peter Fallow, Melanie Griffith as Maria Ruskin, and Kim Cattrall as Judy McCoy,...
would be De Palma's biggest box office disaster, losing millions. Another later movie from De Palma, Redacted
Redacted (film)
Redacted is a 2007 American war film written and directed by Brian De Palma. It is a fictional dramatization, loosely based on the 2006 Mahmudiyah killings in Mahmoudiyah, Iraq...
, unleashed a torrent of controversy over its subject of American involvement in Iraq
Iraq
Iraq ; officially the Republic of Iraq is a country in Western Asia spanning most of the northwestern end of the Zagros mountain range, the eastern part of the Syrian Desert and the northern part of the Arabian Desert....
, and supposed atrocities committed there. It received limited release in the United States.
De Palma today resides in Los Angeles.
Themes
De Palma's films can fall into two categories, his psychological thrillerPsychological thriller
Psychological thriller is a specific sub-genre of the broad ranged thriller with heavy focus on characters. However, it often incorporates elements from the mystery and drama genre, along with the typical traits of the thriller genre...
s (Sisters, Obsession, Dressed to Kill, Blow Out, Raising Cain) and his other commercial films (Scarface, The Untouchables, Carlito's Way, and Mission: Impossible). He has often produced "De Palma" films one after the other before going on to direct a different genre, but would always return to his familiar territory. Because of the subject matter and graphic violence
Graphic violence
Graphic violence is the depiction of especially vivid, brutal and realistic acts of violence in visual media such as literature, film, television, and video games...
of some of De Palma's films, such as Dressed to Kill, Scarface and Body Double, they are often at the center of controversy with the Motion Picture Association of America
Motion Picture Association of America
The Motion Picture Association of America, Inc. , originally the Motion Picture Producers and Distributors of America , was founded in 1922 and is designed to advance the business interests of its members...
, film critics
Film criticism
Film criticism is the analysis and evaluation of films, individually and collectively. In general, this can be divided into journalistic criticism that appears regularly in newspapers, and other popular, mass-media outlets and academic criticism by film scholars that is informed by film theory and...
and the viewing public.
De Palma is known for quoting and referencing other director's work throughout his career. Michelangelo Antonioni
Michelangelo Antonioni
Michelangelo Antonioni, Cavaliere di Gran Croce OMRI was an Italian modernist film director, screenwriter, editor and short story writer.- Personal life :...
's Blowup
Blowup
Blowup is a 1966 film directed by Michelangelo Antonioni, his first English-language film.It tells of a British photographer's accidental involvement with a murder, inspired by Julio Cortázar's short story, "Las babas del diablo" or "The Devil's Drool" , translated also as Blow-Up, and by the life...
and Francis Ford Coppola
Francis Ford Coppola
Francis Ford Coppola is an American film director, producer and screenwriter. He is widely acclaimed as one of Hollywood's most innovative and influential film directors...
's The Conversation
The Conversation
The Conversation is a 1974 American psychological thriller film written, produced and directed by Francis Ford Coppola and starring Gene Hackman...
plots were used for the basis of Blow Out. The Untouchables finale shoot out in the train station is a clear borrow from the Odessa
Odessa
Odessa or Odesa is the administrative center of the Odessa Oblast located in southern Ukraine. The city is a major seaport located on the northwest shore of the Black Sea and the fourth largest city in Ukraine with a population of 1,029,000 .The predecessor of Odessa, a small Tatar settlement,...
Steps sequence in Sergei Eisenstein
Sergei Eisenstein
Sergei Mikhailovich Eisenstein , né Eizenshtein, was a pioneering Soviet Russian film director and film theorist, often considered to be the "Father of Montage"...
's The Battleship Potemkin
The Battleship Potemkin
The Battleship Potemkin , sometimes rendered as The Battleship Potyomkin, is a 1925 silent film directed by Sergei Eisenstein and produced by Mosfilm...
. The main plot from Rear Window
Rear Window
Rear Window is a 1954 American suspense film directed by Alfred Hitchcock, written by John Michael Hayes and based on Cornell Woolrich's 1942 short story "It Had to Be Murder"...
was used for Body Double, while it also used elements of Vertigo
Vertigo (film)
Vertigo is a 1958 psychological thriller film directed by Alfred Hitchcock and starring James Stewart, Kim Novak, and Barbara Bel Geddes. The screenplay was written by Alec Coppel and Samuel A...
. Vertigo was also the basis for Obsession. Dressed to Kill was a note-for-note homage to Hitchcock's Psycho, including such moments as the surprise death of the lead actress and the exposition scene by the psychiatrist at the end.
Camera shots
Film critics have often noted De Palma's trend for camera tricks, good and bad, throughout his career. He often frames characters against the background using a canted angle shotDutch angle
Dutch tilt, Dutch angle, Dutch shot, oblique angle, German angle, canted angle, Batman angle, or jaunty angle are terms used for one of many cinematic techniques often used to portray the psychological uneasiness or tension in the subject being filmed...
. Split-screen
Split screen (film)
In film and video production, split screen is the visible division of the screen, traditionally in half, but also in several simultaneous images, rupturing the illusion that the screen's frame is a seamless view of reality, similar to that of the human eye...
techniques have been used to show two separate events happening simultaneously. To emphasize the dramatic impact of a certain scene De Palma has employed a 360-degree
Circle
A circle is a simple shape of Euclidean geometry consisting of those points in a plane that are a given distance from a given point, the centre. The distance between any of the points and the centre is called the radius....
camera pan
Panning (camera)
In photography, panning refers to the horizontal movement or rotation of a still or video camera, or the scanning of a subject horizontally on video or a display device...
. Slow sweeping, panning and tracking shot
Tracking shot
In motion picture terminology, a tracking shot is a segment in which the camera is mounted on a camera dolly, a wheeled platform that is pushed on rails while the picture is being taken...
s are often used throughout his films. Split focus shots are used to emphasize the foreground person/object while simultaneously keeping a background person/object in focus.
Significant collaborations
De Palma has collaborated with many of the same actors and crew members throughout his career. Robert De NiroRobert De Niro
Robert De Niro, Jr. is an American actor, director and producer. His first major film roles were in Bang the Drum Slowly and Mean Streets, both in 1973...
starred in The Wedding Party, Greetings, and Hi, Mom!. Nancy Allen
Nancy Allen (actress)
Nancy Anne Allen is a Golden Globe nominated American actress and cancer activist.Allen began an acting and modelling career as a child, and from the mid-1970s appeared in small film roles, most notably the anchor of Robert Zemeckis's ensemble comedy I Wanna Hold Your Hand...
had acting roles in Carrie, Home Movies, Dressed to Kill and Blow Out. Other actors that De Palma has worked with on more than one occasion include Jennifer Salt
Jennifer Salt
Jennifer Salt is an American producer, screenwriter, and former actress.-Life and career:Salt was born in Los Angeles, California. Her parents were screenwriter Waldo Salt and actress Mary Davenport; her stepmother was the writer Eve Merriam...
(The Wedding Party, Hi, Mom!, and Sisters), Charles Durning
Charles Durning
Charles Durning is an American actor. With appearances in over 100 films, Durning's memorable roles include police officers in the Oscar-winning The Sting and crime drama Dog Day Afternoon , along with the comedies Tootsie, To Be Or Not To Be and The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas, the last two...
(Hi, Mom!, Sisters, and The Fury), Al Pacino
Al Pacino
Alfredo James "Al" Pacino is an American film and stage actor and director. He is famous for playing mobsters, including Michael Corleone in The Godfather trilogy, Tony Montana in Scarface, Alphonse "Big Boy" Caprice in Dick Tracy and Carlito Brigante in Carlito's Way, though he has also appeared...
(Scarface and Carlito's Way), John Lithgow
John Lithgow
John Arthur Lithgow is an American actor, musician, and author. Presently, he is involved with a wide range of media projects, including stage, television, film, and radio...
(Obsession, Blow Out and Raising Cain), Sean Penn
Sean Penn
Sean Justin Penn is an American actor, screenwriter and film director, also known for his political and social activism...
(Casualties of War and Carlito's Way), Amy Irving
Amy Irving
Amy Davis Irving is an American actress, known for her roles in the films Crossing Delancey, The Fury, Carrie, and Yentl as well as acclaimed roles on Broadway and Off-Broadway. She has been nominated for an Academy Award, two Golden Globes, and has won an Obie award...
(Carrie, The Fury and Casualties of War (uncredited voice-over)), and John Travolta
John Travolta
John Joseph Travolta is an American actor, dancer and singer. Travolta first became known in the 1970s, after appearing on the television series Welcome Back, Kotter and starring in the box office successes Saturday Night Fever and Grease...
(Carrie, Blow Out).
De Palma has consistently worked with a group of screenwriter
Screenwriter
Screenwriters or scriptwriters or scenario writers are people who write/create the short or feature-length screenplays from which mass media such as films, television programs, Comics or video games are based.-Profession:...
s, cinematographer
Cinematographer
A cinematographer is one photographing with a motion picture camera . The title is generally equivalent to director of photography , used to designate a chief over the camera and lighting crews working on a film, responsible for achieving artistic and technical decisions related to the image...
s, editor
Film editing
Film editing is part of the creative post-production process of filmmaking. It involves the selection and combining of shots into sequences, and ultimately creating a finished motion picture. It is an art of storytelling...
s and composer
Composer
A composer is a person who creates music, either by musical notation or oral tradition, for interpretation and performance, or through direct manipulation of sonic material through electronic media...
s throughout his career. Screenwriter David Koepp
David Koepp
-Career:As a writer, Koepp has worked on such blockbuster Hollywood films as Jurassic Park, Mission Impossible, and Spider-Man. Koepp had a cameo as the "Unlucky Bastard" in The Lost World: Jurassic Park, in which he was serving as Writer and Second Unit Director.His work as a director has not had...
worked with him on Carlito's Way, Mission: Impossible, and Snake Eyes. He commonly works with cinematographers Vilmos Zsigmond
Vilmos Zsigmond
Vilmos Zsigmond, A.S.C. is a Hungarian-American cinematographer.In 2003, a survey conducted by the International Cinematographers Guild placed Zsigmond among the ten most influential cinematographers in history.-Biography:...
(Obsession, Blow Out, The Bonfire of the Vanities, The Black Dahlia) and Stephen H. Burum
Stephen H. Burum
Stephen Henry Burum, A.S.C. is an American cinematographer.-Biography:Burum was born in 1939 in Dinuba, California, a small Central Valley town near Visalia. He graduated from the UCLA School of Theater, Film and Television in the 1960s, and became an instructor at the same school...
(Body Double, The Untouchables, Casualties of War, Raising Cain, Carlito's Way, Snake Eyes, Mission to Mars). De Palma has also worked with composers Pino Donaggio
Pino Donaggio
Giuseppe "Pino" Donaggio is an Italian composer.Born in Burano , into a family of musicians, Donaggio began studying violin at the age of ten, first at the Benedetto Marcello conservatory in Venice, followed by the Giuseppe Verdi Conservatory in Milan...
(Carrie, Home Movies, Dressed to Kill, Blow Out, Body Double, Raising Cain) and Ennio Morricone
Ennio Morricone
Ennio Morricone, Grand Officer OMRI, , is an Italian composer and conductor, who wrote music to more than 500 motion pictures and television series, in a career lasting over 50 years. His scores have been included in over 20 award-winning films as well as several symphonic and choral pieces...
(The Untouchables, Casualties of War, and Mission to Mars). Furthermore, De Palma has used editors Bill Pankow
Bill Pankow
Bill Pankow is an American film editor with more than 32 film credits dating from 1982. He won the Seattle Film Critics Award for Best Editing in 2002 for his work on Femme Fatale. Femme Fatale was one of the nine films that Pankow has edited with director Brian De Palma commencing with Body...
(Body Double, The Untouchables, Casualties of War, The Bonfire of the Vanities, Carlito's Way, Snake Eyes, The Black Dahlia, Redacted) and Paul Hirsch
Paul Hirsch (film editor)
Paul Hirsch is an American motion picture editor.A native of New York City, after graduating from Columbia he began to pursue a career in editing. In the late 1960s, while editing trailers in NYC, he was introduced by his brother, Charles, to then unknown filmmaker Brian De Palma...
(Phantom of the Paradise, Carrie, Raising Cain, Mission to Mars).
Personal life
De Palma has been married and divorced three times. He married Nancy Allen in 1979 and divorced her in 1983. He married producer Gale Anne HurdGale Anne Hurd
Gale Anne Hurd is an American film producer and screenwriter.-Early life:Hurd was born in Los Angeles, California, the daughter of Lolita and Frank E. Hurd, an investor. She grew up in Palm Springs, California and graduated from Stanford University with a B.A...
in 1991, who had previously been married to Director James Cameron
James Cameron
James Francis Cameron is a Canadian-American film director, film producer, screenwriter, editor, environmentalist and inventor...
. They had one child together and divorced in 1993. De Palma's last wife was Darnell Gregorio, whom he married in 1993 and had one child. They divorced four years later.
Legacy
De Palma is often cited as a leading member of the New HollywoodNew Hollywood
New Hollywood or post-classical Hollywood, sometimes referred to as the "American New Wave", refers to the time from roughly the late-1960s to the early 1980s when a new generation of young filmmakers came to prominence in America, influencing the types of films produced, their production and...
generation of film directors, a distinct pedigree who either emerged from film schools or are overtly cine-literate. His contemporaries include Martin Scorsese
Martin Scorsese
Martin Charles Scorsese is an American film director, screenwriter, producer, actor, and film historian. In 1990 he founded The Film Foundation, a nonprofit organization dedicated to film preservation, and in 2007 he founded the World Cinema Foundation...
, Paul Schrader
Paul Schrader
Paul Joseph Schrader is an American screenwriter, film director, and former film critic. Apart from his credentials as a director, Schrader is most notably known for his screenplays for Martin Scorsese’s Taxi Driver and Raging Bull....
, John Milius
John Milius
John Frederick Milius is an American screenwriter, director, and producer of motion pictures.-Early life:Milius was born in St. Louis, Missouri, the son of Elizabeth and William Styx Milius, who was a shoe manufacturer. Milius attempted to join the Marine Corps in the late 1960s, but was rejected...
, George Lucas
George Lucas
George Walton Lucas, Jr. is an American film producer, screenwriter, and director, and entrepreneur. He is the founder, chairman and chief executive of Lucasfilm. He is best known as the creator of the space opera franchise Star Wars and the archaeologist-adventurer character Indiana Jones...
, Francis Ford Coppola
Francis Ford Coppola
Francis Ford Coppola is an American film director, producer and screenwriter. He is widely acclaimed as one of Hollywood's most innovative and influential film directors...
, John Carpenter
John Carpenter
John Howard Carpenter is an American film director, screenwriter, producer, editor, composer, and occasional actor. Although Carpenter has worked in numerous film genres in his four-decade career, his name is most commonly associated with horror and science fiction.- Early life :Carpenter was born...
, and Ridley Scott
Ridley Scott
Sir Ridley Scott is an English film director and producer. His most famous films include The Duellists , Alien , Blade Runner , Legend , Thelma & Louise , G. I...
. His artistry in directing and use of cinematography and suspense in several of his films has often been compared to the work of Alfred Hitchcock
Alfred Hitchcock
Sir Alfred Joseph Hitchcock, KBE was a British film director and producer. He pioneered many techniques in the suspense and psychological thriller genres. After a successful career in British cinema in both silent films and early talkies, Hitchcock moved to Hollywood...
.
De Palma has encouraged and fostered the filmmaking careers of directors such as Quentin Tarantino
Quentin Tarantino
Quentin Jerome Tarantino is an American film director, screenwriter, producer, cinematographer and actor. In the early 1990s, he began his career as an independent filmmaker with films employing nonlinear storylines and the aestheticization of violence...
, Mark Romanek
Mark Romanek
Mark Romanek is an American filmmaker, whose directing work includes feature films, music videos and commercials.He wrote and directed the critically acclaimed 2002 film One Hour Photo starring Robin Williams...
and Keith Gordon
Keith Gordon
Keith Gordon is an American actor and film director.-Life and career:Gordon was born in New York City, the son of Barbara, an actress, and Mark Gordon, an actor and stage director. He grew up in an atheist Jewish family and was inspired to become an actor at the age of twelve, after seeing James...
. Tarantino said - during interview with De Palma, that Blow Out is one of his all time favourite films, and that after watching Scarface he knew how to make his own film. Terrence Malick
Terrence Malick
Terrence Frederick Malick is a U.S. film director, screenwriter, and producer. In a career spanning almost four decades, Malick has directed five feature films....
credits seeing De Palma's early films on college campus tours as a validation of independent film
Independent film
An independent film, or indie film, is a professional film production resulting in a feature film that is produced mostly or completely outside of the major film studio system. In addition to being produced and distributed by independent entertainment companies, independent films are also produced...
, and subsequently switched his attention from philosophy
Philosophy
Philosophy is the study of general and fundamental problems, such as those connected with existence, knowledge, values, reason, mind, and language. Philosophy is distinguished from other ways of addressing such problems by its critical, generally systematic approach and its reliance on rational...
to filmmaking.
In his review of Femme Fatale, Roger Ebert
Roger Ebert
Roger Joseph Ebert is an American film critic and screenwriter. He is the first film critic to win a Pulitzer Prize for Criticism.Ebert is known for his film review column and for the television programs Sneak Previews, At the Movies with Gene Siskel and Roger Ebert, and Siskel and Ebert and The...
wrote about the director: "De Palma deserves more honor as a director. Consider also these titles: Sisters, Blow Out, The Fury, Dressed to Kill, Carrie, Scarface, Wise Guys, Casualties of War, Carlito's Way, Mission: Impossible. Yes, there are a few failures along the way (Snake Eyes, Mission to Mars, The Bonfire of the Vanities), but look at the range here, and reflect that these movies contain treasure for those who admire the craft as well as the story, who sense the glee with which De Palma manipulates images and characters for the simple joy of being good at it. It's not just that he sometimes works in the style of Hitchcock, but that he has the nerve to."
DePalma's film Redacted has left a somewhat darker legacy. It has been used as propaganda by Islamic extremists, who claim that several of its scenes are actual footage of real US Army operations. In March 2011 Arid Uka, a Kosovan Muslim living in Albania, was moved to kill 2 US airmen and wound 3 more after watching scenes from the movie.
Feature films
Directed by De Palma- Murder a la ModMurder a la ModMurder à la Mod is a 1968 film directed by Brian De Palma. The film was released in one cinema in New York City. It quickly disappeared not long after and was thought lost...
(1968) - GreetingsGreetings (film)Greetings is a 1968 film directed by Brian De Palma. The film, which featured a young Robert De Niro in his first major role, is a satirical film about men avoiding the Vietnam War draft....
(1968) - Hi, Mom!Hi, Mom!Hi, Mom! is a black comedy film by Brian De Palma, and is one of Robert De Niro's first movies. De Niro reprises his role of Jon Rubin from Greetings...
(1970) - Get to Know Your RabbitGet to Know Your RabbitGet to Know Your Rabbit is a 1972 American comedy film written by Jordan Crittenden and directed by Brian De Palma.-Synopsis:Corporate executive Donald Beeman, fed up with the rat race, impulsively quits his job and takes to the road as a traveling tap dancing magician under the tutelage of Mr....
(1972) - Sisters (1973)
- Phantom of the ParadisePhantom of the ParadisePhantom of the Paradise is a 1974 musical film written and directed by Brian De Palma. The story is a loosely adapted mixture of The Phantom of the Opera, The Picture of Dorian Gray and Faust and also briefly references Frankenstein and The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari...
(1974) - Obsession (1976)
- Carrie (1976)
- The Fury (1978)
- Home MoviesHome Movies (film)Home Movies is a 1980 independent film directed by Brian De Palma and starring Kirk Douglas, Nancy Allen, Vincent Gardenia, Keith Gordon, Theresa Saldana, and Gerrit Graham.-Plot:...
(1980) - Dressed to Kill (1980)
- Blow OutBlow OutBlow Out is a 1981 thriller film, written and directed by Brian De Palma. The film stars John Travolta as Jack Terry, a movie sound effects technician from Philadelphia who, while recording sounds for a low-budget slasher film, serendipitously captures audio evidence of an assassination involving a...
(1981) - ScarfaceScarface (1983 film)Scarface is a 1983 American epic crime drama movie directed by Brian De Palma, written by Oliver Stone, produced by Martin Bregman and starring Al Pacino as Tony Montana...
(1983) - Body DoubleBody DoubleBody Double is a 1984 American thriller film directed by Brian De Palma starring Craig Wasson, Melanie Griffith, and Gregg Henry. The film is an homage to Alfred Hitchcock's Vertigo, Rear Window, and Dial M for Murder. The original musical score was composed by Pino Donaggio...
(1984) - Wise GuysWise Guys (film)Wise Guys is a 1986 feature film directed by Brian De Palma and starring Danny DeVito and Joe Piscopo. A comedy revolving around two small-time mobsters from Newark, New Jersey, it also features Harvey Keitel, Lou Albano, Dan Hedaya, and Frank Vincent....
(1986) - The UntouchablesThe Untouchables (1987 film)The Untouchables is a 1987 American crime-drama film directed by Brian De Palma and written by David Mamet. Based on the book The Untouchables, the film stars Kevin Costner as government agent Eliot Ness. It also stars Robert De Niro as gang leader Al Capone and Sean Connery as Irish-American...
(1987) - Casualties of War (1989)
- The Bonfire of the VanitiesThe Bonfire of the Vanities (film)The Bonfire of the Vanities is a 1990 American film adaptation of the best-selling novel of the same name by Tom Wolfe. The film was directed by Brian De Palma and stars Tom Hanks as Sherman McCoy, Bruce Willis as Peter Fallow, Melanie Griffith as Maria Ruskin, and Kim Cattrall as Judy McCoy,...
(1990) - Raising CainRaising CainRaising Cain is a 1992 psychological thriller film written and directed by Brian De Palma, and starring John Lithgow, Lolita Davidovich and Steven Bauer.-Plot:Dr. Carter Nix is a respected child psychologist, the son of a giant in the field...
(1992) - Carlito's WayCarlito's WayCarlito's Way is a 1993 crime film directed by Brian De Palma, based on the novels Carlito's Way and After Hours by Judge Edwin Torres. The film adaptation was scripted by David Koepp. It stars Al Pacino, Sean Penn, Penelope Ann Miller, Luis Guzman, John Leguizamo, Jorge Porcel, Joseph Siravo, and...
(1993) - Mission: ImpossibleMission: Impossible (film)Mission: Impossible is a 1996 action thriller directed by Brian De Palma and starring Tom Cruise. Following on from the television series of the same name, the plot follows a new agent, Ethan Hunt and his mission to uncover the mole within the CIA who has framed him for the murders of his entire...
(1996) - Snake EyesSnake Eyes (film)Snake Eyes is a conspiracy thriller film directed by Brian De Palma, one featuring his trademark use of long tracking shots and split screens. It starred Nicolas Cage, Gary Sinise and Carla Gugino....
(1998) - Mission to MarsMission to MarsMission to Mars is a 2000 science fiction film directed by Brian De Palma from an original screenplay written by Jim Thomas, John Thomas, and Graham Yost. The film's story details a fictional portrayal of a manned Mars exploration mission gone awry in the year 2020...
(2000) - Femme Fatale (2002)
- The Black DahliaThe Black Dahlia (film)The Black Dahlia is a 2006 neo noir crime film directed by Brian De Palma. It is based on the novel of the same name by James Ellroy, writer of L.A. Confidential and starred Josh Hartnett, Scarlett Johansson, Aaron Eckhart and Hilary Swank. The story is based on the murder of Elizabeth Short...
(2006) - RedactedRedacted (film)Redacted is a 2007 American war film written and directed by Brian De Palma. It is a fictional dramatization, loosely based on the 2006 Mahmudiyah killings in Mahmoudiyah, Iraq...
(2007)
Co-directed by De Palma
- The Wedding PartyThe Wedding Party (film)The Wedding Party is a 1969 American film farce.Its simple plot focuses on a soon-to-be groom and his interactions with various relatives of his fiancée and members of the wedding party prior to the ceremony on the family's estate on Shelter Island....
(1969) - DionysusDionysus (film)Dionysus in '69 is a 1970 film by Brian De Palma. The film records a performance of The Performance Group's stage play of the same name, an adaptation of The Bacchae. It was entered into the 20th Berlin International Film Festival. The play is one of the most controversial ever written, as it...
(1970)
Short films
- Icarus (1960)
- 660124: The Story of an IBM Card (1961)
- Woton's Wake (1962)
- Jennifer (1964)
- Bridge That Gap (1965)
- Show Me a Strong Town and I'll Show You a Strong Bank (1966)