I was on a Brian De Palma kick over the past year. And part of this was out of liking some of his films but most from a "what the fuck" kind of angle. IMO films like Raising Caine, Dressed to Kill and Body Double are not good films, but I do find them highly entertaining.
These movies all have a twist ending to them and all of them are bad twist endings honestly. Either they are taken from other movies (principally Psycho) or are just pure nonsense.
However, it might be my own nostalgia for the first Mission: Impossible film. But I actually think that nearly all of the twists work in that movie. From the Scream-like fake out of having the entire team killed off in the first 10 minutes, to the various traitors that Ethan has to deal with, it all works IMO. When I saw the film the first time I genuinely didn't see them coming, and upon rewatches, they do make sense and feel consistent with the narrative.
It's just kind of interesting to me that De Palma fancied himself this kind of new edgier Hitchcock at the time, but his attempts at doing twists like that just utterly failed until Mission: Impossible. It's no coincidence IMO that the films he wrote kind of failed on this level, while David Koepp who wrote MI was able to successfully write that. MI might be my favorite De Palma film, as he applies his style to it without all of his baggage.
What are your thoughts on De Palma's films and his use of twist endings?
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Body Double isn’t a good film? Body Double’s “twist” doesn’t work? It’s not even a twist really. The entire film is progressing to that and ubiquitously layered to reflect that meta element.
You gotta bring a little more attempted justification here instead of just casually going “Body Double and Dressed to Kill aren’t good films.” They really are.
And for that matter, the fact of thinking the success of the twist or plot or whatever is what makes or breaks these films just tells me you don’t know what you’re looking at in the first place.
The cinematography in a vacuum is better in these films than in 90+% of films at large, not to mention the integration of music and the editing at large.
And we’re just gonna ignore the deliciously twisting and turning Blow Out as if it isn’t amazing? Even Hi, Mom! features a delightfully subversive and playfully changing central focus alongside great execution.
These posts are terrible lately, sorry. I don’t even know how I’m supposed to engage here, cause there’s just nothing of substance even being said.
You didn’t even really explain why you dislike these twists in the first place specifically, much less why that’s gotta be the raison detre or accounting for a decent sample across such a large filmography
100%. The "twist" in Dressed to Kill is whatever but are we really gonna ignore the craftsmanship of the entire film because of that. THAT museum scene is art in and of itself.
When I was 21 I thought De Palma was crap because I literally approached it with the most surface level understanding. Now, I'm shouting on the street corners that he is the most under appreciated filmmaker of his generation. Talking De Palma is way more fun for me than talking Scorsese and Coppola, and I love those guys.
The problem with the "twist doesn't work" criticism is that DePalma's movies aren't all about the twists. They're more about the style and set pieces leading up to the climax, which may or may not be a twist. Any movie fanatics who saw DePalma's movies in the 1970s and '80s were well aware that he was playing around with Hitchcock stories (and other filmmakers like Michaelangelo Antonioni), merging plots and situations, and not necessarily treating them as storylines to take seriously as the be-all-end-all of the movie's reason for existing.
In most of the films, the twist is pretty much telegraphed for those paying attention. The twitchy Michael Caine scenes and the tall reflection in the elevator mirrors ought to make it pretty clear that there's a Psycho/Marnie type of thing going on in Dressed to Kill, and the art gallery cat-and-mouse game is a riff on Vertigo. Then it has a wild punchline (what Angie Dickinson finds in the strange man's drawer).
Blow Out is directly playing with Blow Up, replacing photography with sound, and repeating the circular doomed logic of Vertigo. Body Double goes wild with Rear Window references, and again, is an homage to Vertigo. DePalma is constantly drawing from scenes in Psycho and other films too -- the whole thing is like a Hitchcock fever dream. A lot of it is poised on the edge of a divide between sincere homage and campy send-up, and it's never 100% clear which way to view it (or better yet, you can view it both ways on multiple viewings).
DePalma wasn't trying to reinvent the twist-ending wheel. He was indulging the kinds of scenes and styles he liked. Over-indulging, to some (and people would be justified in accusing him of such). DePalma was like a mashup artist, processing cinema and then recreating it in a funhouse mirror.
I think he got better and better at the technical aspects over time, but he occasionally lapsed into the same types of mistakes he made early on. I love his movies where he steps outside his main area of interest a bit. For Casualties of War, he fully reapplies himself to a real-life case in which soldiers committed rape, almost as if paying a directorial penance for earlier films that could be accused of reveling in rape imagery.
The Untouchables is one of his best movies, where he used his skills for pure entertainment and suspense, letting a David Mamet story guide the plot, but indulging his own set-piece skills along the way. What a superb piece of cinema that whole movie is.
Then you have Carlito's Way, which is the opposite of a twist-ending movie. The only twist is that the movie ends the way it suggested it would be ending.
"as if paying a directorial penance for earlier films that could be accused of reveling in rape imagery"
That is basically what he accomplished already with Blow Out, which is an indictment of violence in film and our complicity as observers. I don't think De Palma would consider it "penance," though, because that would suggest there was something to atone for, and that the earlier films were purely exploitative (which they weren't)
Yeah, I overstated the case on that. Not penance, but more a statement of his actual values, or a case of him reapplying his skills to make a real-world moral argument. His 1970s movies do revel in the extreme emotions of on-screen sex and violence, but it's a cinematic indulgence and not some sort of endorsement of real-life abuses.
I could not care less about De Palma's twists. It's all about style and the social commentary on its subjects and stories. Blow Out isn't really about a murder case. It's a commentary on movie making. Dressed to Kill and Body Double are awesome, and if you don't get a rush when Frankie Comes To Hollywood starts playing in BD, man you ain't living.
Idk about that but I can say I saw the twist from a mile away when I first saw the film.
Also fun trivia for you: Jim Phelps was the IMF’s Director in the original TV show. So, if you were a fan of the show and knew that, you might have been more shocked by the twist that a character you’ve known from TV turned out to be a bad guy
This sub doesn't like direct criticism that has clear cut judgments, but I think you're partly right, and there's nothing personal against De Palma in what you wrote.
At the same time, Hitchcock was the exact same. His movies are extremely camp in many ways, and that's a directorial choice. The odd thing, is to realize that the tension can be elevated by bending the frigid rules of a movie.
I think what OP is tapping into is that DePalma is a lot of fun and has a lot of style, but he's not a great storyteller, because he doesn't really care about his characters. I don't feel like that's a harsh criticism, it's just the nature of his work- you can't make everything a winking, meta pastiche that means nothing and expect the audience to actually feel anything. It's the same problem I have with him. And if that works for you, that's fine! But it seems like folks are really put off by OPs reaction when it's just the way his films are.
OP should have said that then. But they only said they didn't like the twists. The sub is meant for more involved discussion than "I didn't like it" or "I liked it because it had good twists." There are plenty of other subs for shallow discussion like that.
Seems to me like it triggered plenty of thoughtful (though needlessly angry) discussion, do we need a cinema knowledge test to filter people out, or should we maybe accept people where they're at and welcome people who have room to grow?
Really tough for me to buy that films like Femme Fatale, Carlito’s Way, Carrie, Blow Out, Phantom of the Paradise, Casualties of War, and many others don’t care about their characters … Certainly it’s not in the same way that a straightforward adult-drama-oriented director would, but that’s not De Palma’s genre and it’s not his style. His way of approaching things like tragedy is embellished, broad, and stylish — but still genuine and often serious! Carlito’s death? The rape in CoW? The ending of Blow Out? The coy way Femme Fatale engineers a happy ending? I love the way BDP’s work toys with how emotionally overwhelming a trashy sensibility can be … Sometimes he delves into melodrama and it’s like Lifetime on steroids and with actual style. It’s powerful, disorienting stuff.
I think, in the first place, that this push among current audiences for films and other narrative arts to be relatable or for their makers to demonstrate that they “care about the characters” is extremely limiting anyway, because seeing the arts as merely a vehicle for empathy and humanity feels, I dunno, corny. Can’t art also be about play?
I don't know if I know what you mean regarding the push among current audiences- I certainly don't think characters have to be relatable, not what I'm saying. But I like them to feel like real people as opposed to being treated as toys. And I don't think it has to be a rule anyone needs to follow, just that I don't really respond well when there isn't an investment, whatever else is going on just doesn't resonate with me the same way. And that's just me! I get why people love DePalma, I certainly have fun with him, I just don't watch movies for those reasons, it's not as interesting to me. The most fun I've had with movies is when I connect to the characters, undercutting that with a wink just takes me out of it. Like I said - don't have to like them, don't have to relate to them, a recent example is The Killer. Completely unlikable, even arguably absurdly drawn, but fully realized and a lot of fun.
Haven't seen all the films you mentioned but I saw Blowout and Carlito's Way and they both fell flat for me. Carrie is the exception!
I don’t really think the twist works in Mission Impossible. But not because it betrays the source material, which I couldn’t care less about.
De Palma literally shows you a visual lie in order to trick you about the death Jim Phelps on the bridge. Like, a straight up lie. I get that this is supposed to be what Ethan is seeing “in his mind’s eye,” and is meant to fool the audience along with Ethan, but I just don’t think it works. It feels cheap. I like a lot about the first movie, but it’s the one I rewatch the least by far.
(More controversial is that I actually think MI:2 is a better movie. It certainly has superior action.)
Watched MI:2 again recently, first time in a long time, and it is pretty ridiculous. But that motorcycle chase is really something, can't deny it.
Oh, it’s surely ridiculous! I don’t really watch the first two movies very much anymore. The later films are better.
TBH, I hated the twist ending of the first Mission Impossible. It was a betrayal of the source material for a cheap surprise. Totally unearned and sleazy.
As far as his other films, Dressed to Kill, Body Double, Phantom of the Opera and a couple of others are great, fun movies clearly celebrating his love of Hitchcock and filmmaking in general. I stopped loving his movies in the 90s when he seemed to lose the plot.
Betrayal of the source material? The source material was an episodic TV show, not some great literary novel.
Unearned? The plotting laid all the elements out well in advance, including dropping the hint about the Chicago hotel.
Cheap surprise? How is it cheap if it's entertaining and interesting? It plays into the spy story completely, showing that not all is what it seems, even to the people whose job it is to detect subterfuge.
It doesn't matter what the source material is, the movie was banking on fans of the series (or memories of it) for its success. That's why you pay for the title. The movie tosses aside the character that for years was the hero of the story and the world.
It's cheap because its very easy to say "what character would the audience never suspect because of that character's long history and behavior, can we turn into the villain?" It's a common trope in movies and almost always bad writing.
The movie wasn't really banking on fans of the series from the 1960s. By the time the movie came out in the late 1990s, the 1960s fans weren't pining to see re-creations of the Peter Graves and Martin Landau (and other) roles. The movie was aimed at a modern audience and wasn't about nostalgia from 30 years previous. The Phelps character didn't have a cultural foothold in the same way as someone like Captain Kirk did for Star Trek. Mission Impossible wasn't one of those shows that had a cult revival, and it had limited syndication, meaning most audiences were not familiar with it through repeats on TV. So much of the paying theater audience had no idea who Phelps was, or cared what twist occurred with his character.
It's doubtful if the Mission Impossible movies would have gone anywhere if the creators attempted to adhere to the TV show's character lineup. By taking the name, music, and concept and running in a different direction with it, with new characters, it was resurrected into a new entity.
I remember my dad being pretty upset about how Phelps' character was treated, he grew up watching the show. Maybe it was the right decision for the future of the franchise but that seems like a pretty cynical way to approach something. But hey, that's Hollywood.
He specifically said he wanted to subvert the source material. He originally wanted to have the og TV cast in that opening sequence and kill them off, but the studio declined. So instead he got a bunch of famous actors people liked and killed them. Pretty awesome.
There is a bunch of DePalma stuff which falls flat--he telegraphs the twist --and frankly I have no inkling of why he ever let that happen. 'Obsession', 'Blow Out', etc. But to answer your question,
I'd say "no". His first film 'Sisters' has two twists which work superbly; one at the beginning and one at the finale. This movie refutes your assertion firmly.
Also 'Carrie' has a lot of effective bumps and shocks; especially at the finale. [I think the only reason it's less admired than the book is that the book was already popular prior to the release.]