Oeuvre »
Oeuvre is an in-depth examination of the entire body of work of an important director.
Oeuvre: De Palma: Wise Guys
“This time, no one can accuse me of ripping off Hitchcock.” Brian De Palma was in a fairly rough place by the mid-1980s. His films were struggling at the box office and even his
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Oeuvre: De Palma: Body Double
Brian De Palma spent the first half of the ‘80s sublimating his early social critiques into the more aesthetically formal work of his ‘70s genre pictures. Dressed to Kill pushed his Hitchcockian homages well
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Oeuvre: De Palma: Scarface
It’s impossible to overstate the impact of Brian De Palma’s bright, blood-drenched Scarface on the cultural landscape. De Palma, known for liberally borrowing elements of classic thrillers in his early work, was tapping into
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Oeuvre: De Palma: Blow Out
Far before “meta” was part of the parlance of modern film, Brian De Palma was meta. As a filmmaker, his career has been consumed by a fascination with filmmaking in and of itself. From
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Oeuvre: De Palma: Dressed to Kill
Of all Brian De Palma’s films that pay homage to his most prominent inspiration, Alfred Hitchcock—a common and contentious topic when discussing his works—Dressed to Kill is high on the list, particularly for its
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Oeuvre: De Palma: Home Movies
By 1980, Brian De Palma had hit his stride. Gradually building a singular patchwork aesthetic while slowly accruing mainstream cachet, he had overcome a series of early-decade defeats to establish himself as one of
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Oeuvre: De Palma: The Fury
The Fury opens with a scene straight out of a campy 1960s spy caper: Two government agent pals, Peter Sandza (Kirk Douglas) and Ben Childress (John Cassavetes), relax at a cafe on an unnamed
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Oeuvre: De Palma: Carrie
By 1976, Brian De Palma had a helmed a series of odd, mostly underground films that could be considered peculiar even by the standards of the time. Though a few had garnered some critical
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Oeuvre: De Palma: Obsession
Brian De Palma’s early movies pushed their tension at a distinct nexus between the audience and the film itself, employing disorienting, fourth-wall breaking moments that seem designed specifically to make viewers uncomfortable. Clearest of
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Oeuvre: De Palma: Phantom of the Paradise
More than any film before it, 1974’s Phantom of the Paradise establishes Brian de Palma the auteur, the thorny iconoclast and inveterate cinema fetishist, more concerned with a fidgety succession of odd angles and
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