BRIAN DE PALMA BLOG-A-THON: Body Double

Posted as part of Cinema Viewerfinder's Brian de Palma blog-a-thon.

'Body Double' is about a man who voyeuristically watches a woman perform seductive dances in her apartment (she follows up the gyrations with a spot of self-pleasuring), graduates to following her obsessively, comes within a whisper of getting sexually involved with her and ultimately witnesses her being murdered in a brutal, protracted and phallocentric manner, and who then immerses himself in the shadowy world of blue movies in order to track down someone who might have a lead on her killer.

'Body Double' - quelle surprise! - annoyed the hell out of feminists when it was released in 1984. Twenty-five years later, I can still completely understand why anyone with even the most lackadaisical involvement in women's rights wouldn't be overly keen on it. Without haring off too enthusiastically into the realms of NSFW, here's a few visual highlights, including the so-classy-it-makes-Jess-Franco-look-like-Carl-Dreyer power-tool evisceration moment:

Would you watch this while your mother was in the room? Or your wife? (Mine took one look at the DVD cover, shook her head sadly and occupied the spare room during the two hours I was watching it.)

It's an even easier film to berate when you examine its place in Brian de Palma's filmography: coming straight after the tense and absorbing 'Blow Out' and the sprawling but iconic 'Scarface', and awkwardly preceding the crowd-pleasing slapstick of 'Wise Guys' and the multi-award-winning 'The Untouchables', it comes on like a throwback to the fetishistic, sexualised violence of 'Dressed to Kill', itself not a big woman's lib favourite.

I'd love to have been a fly on the wall at the first studio meeting. "Hey, Brian! Baby! Loved 'Scarface', loved it! Say hello to my big fat box office returns! Brian, baby, whaddaya wanna do next?" "Well, I was thinking of doing a 'Rear Window' meets 'Vertigo' for the blue movie/video nasty generation kind of thing." "Great, here's a chunk of money. Go make it!"

I know that sounds snide, but I'm absolutely serious: 'Body Double' is a conflation of 'Rear Window' and 'Vertigo'. De Palma's homages to Hitchcock run through his entire filmography, and these are the two films he most frequently references. In 'Body Double' he takes his frenzy for Hitch to its logical extreme and makes unapologetically explicit everything that Sir Alfred left elegantly implicit. There are whole screeds to be written (by someone else) on whether this is a good or a bad thing. All I'll say is take a look at Hitchcock's penultimate film: it contains some pretty grim and graphic material. Had the maestro lived and continued making films into the '80s, how far would he have gone with what he depicted onscreen?

Let's pause a moment and briefly consider what 'Rear Window' and 'Vertigo' are about. In 'Rear Window', "Jeff" Jeffries (James Stewart) is a photo-journalist housebound after breaking his leg; he begins to take an obsessive interest in his neighbours on the other side of the apartment courtyard, his motives seguing from curiosity to prurience and then to paranoid fascination as he grows convinced he's witnessed a murder. In 'Vertigo', "Scottie" Ferguson is a detective who suffers from the titular fear of heights; he begins to take an obsessive interest in a woman who dies suddenly and terribly, then transfers his obsessions to her lookalike. In short, 'Rear Window' is inescapably about voyeurism and implicates the audience so subtlely that most aficionados of this (in my opinion) perenially overrated film probably don't even realise it. 'Vertigo' is even darker, exploring sexual obsession, troilism (ie. the merging of sexual identities) and - by implication - necrophilia. Once again, Hitch trawls murky waters while giving the impression he's helming a pleasure cruiser. A crucial reveal in 'Vertigo' lets the audience off the hook just as surely as 'Rear Window' finds them guilty.

Come to think of it, if 'Body Double' is the bastard child of 'Rear Window' and 'Vertigo', then it was arguably removed from its parents by social services and - bad call by the case worker - given over to the dubious foster care of 'Peeping Tom'. But back to the Hitch comparisons (Michael Powell's anti-masterpiece can have its day on The Agitation of the Mind some other time) ...

'Body Double' is about Jake Scully (Craig Wasson) - his name almost a phonetic conflation of Jeff Scottie - a struggling actor who suffers from claustrophobia. Jeff works behind the camera, Mike in front of it. Scottie is scared of heights, Mike of confined spaces. Jeff likes to watch, as does Mike. Scottie gets obsessed by a woman and starts following her around, likewise Mike. Jeff witnesses a murder, same goes for Mike. Scottie's phobia prevents him from taking decisive action at a vital moment, ditto Mike. Scottie clinches with Madeleine/Judy as the camera whirls around them; same deal when Mike gets his paws on Gloria.

Which brings us to the ladies of the cast and the analogy breaks down somewhat. Grace Kelly and Kim Novak remain resolutely clothed throughout. Deborah Shelton and Melanie Griffith, however ...

Ahem. Moving swiftly on ... 'Body Double' makes no bones about what it is. It's an exploitationer: the opening and closing credit scenes, playing on the tits 'n' gore B-movie horror tropes that define the shitty low-budget movie Mike is starring in, reinforce the aesthetic to the point of rubbing the viewer's nose it in. But it's an exploitationer in the way 'Inglourious Basterds' is a war movie: it juggles expectations, conforming to some items on the genre checklist while subverting others, and uses artifice to provide a commentary on how the genre defines itself and what the audience bring to the war movie or the sex 'n' violence flick, as well as testing how much directorial trickery and rug-pulling they're comfortable with. Audiences have perhaps been kinder to Tarantino than to de Palma in this regard.

Tarantino certainly demonstrates a better facility with actors in 'Inglourious Basterds'. De Palma, quite capable of eliciting good performances (Travolta in 'Blow Out', Costner in 'The Untouchables'), either doesn't try here or lets his performers mug their way through the shoot knowing he's not going to get much from them. Wasson is singularly awful. Gregg Henry is straight out of the pantomime villain school of acting. Deborah Shelton is radiance personified but not so hot in the acting stakes. Dennis Franz doesn't get enough screen time to make an impression. Which leaves Melanie Griffith. As the much-put-upon but kookily irrepressible porn starlet Holly Body, hers is the best turn in the film. And that, I think, pretty much says it all.

It's a good job, then, that de Palma is clearly saving himself for the set-pieces, of which there are many. Several are patently ludicrous (but then again, so is the baby-carriage/staircase scene in 'The Untouchables' and yet it suckers me in every time!), and as many again are tense, unpredictable and kinetically realised. The visuals are as glossy as the material demands, but compositions are effective and de Palma makes intriguing use of images built around different levels or spatial dislocations: the M.C. Escher-like layout of a mall populated by expensive boutiques; the staggered balconies of the beach house Mike follows Gloria to; the symmetrical blocks of concrete regulating the flow of an inlet channel to a reservoir.

I think this is why I like 'Body Double' so much: it's a film not just defined by, but blatantly revelling in, its surface value; yet its imagery and acknowledgement of the manipulation of said imagery suggest depths and levels beneath that surface.

PERSONAL FAVES: Carlito's Way

Made ten years later, 'Carlito's Way' plays out like the flipside to 'Scarface'. In place of an aggressive young hothead on the rise, a middle-aged career criminal trying to go straight after an appeal frees him from prison. In place of glamorous locations and opulence, broken down neighbourhoods and a sense of lives wasted. In place of "THE WORLD IS YOURS" on the side of a blimp, "ESCAPE TO PARADISE" on a travel agent's poster. What both films share is the illusion of these promises.

Both protagonists share a self-declared integrity that proves their downfall. Tony Montana tells anyone who'll listen that he only has two things "my word and my balls" and quickly comes to believe his own publicity - comes to believe, in other words, that he's invulnerable. Carlito Brigante (Pacino) is fiercely loyal - a debt owed is one he's honour-bound to discharge. And he owes lawyer Dave Kleinfeld (Sean Penn) big time.

Kleinfeld has exploited an irregularity in the District Attorney investigation that put Carlito behind bars, launching an appeal that gets him out after just five years of a thirty stretch. Determining to go straight, Carlito devotes himself to putting together the money he needs to buy a legitimate business. A favour to his cousin on his first day out sees him mixed up in drug deal that goes bad; within minutes there's bodies all over the place, Carlito's wounded and he's on a hiding right back to the slammer if he doesn't get out of there PDQ. On the plus side, with all the other participants dead, the $30K that finds its way into his pocket makes for a decent bit of start-up capital.

Another favour, to debt-addled nightclub owner Saso (Jorge Porcel), sees Carlito running the joint, assisted by Pachanga (the great Luis Guzman*). The money's coming in, he's rekindled a romance with old flame Gail (Penelope Ann Miller) and his dream of a normal life is looking more and more real. There are just two flies in the ointment.

One is Benny Blanco (John Leguizamo), a big-talking wannabe who's squeezing Sosa for money owed. Carlito has him ejected from the nightclub after he starts some shit but goes against his deeply ingrained instincts to whack Benny and instead lets him walk away.

The other is Kleinfeld. One of his clients, Tony Taglialucci (Frank Minucci), has a line of credit with Kleinfeld to the tune of a million dollars he entrusted to Kleinfeld to make a payoff but which went into the lawyer's back pocket. Taglialucci is terminally ill and doing time on the Riker's Island Prison Barge. It's his dying wish to break out. An inside man can get him off the barge. All he needs is someone to fish him out of the river. Kleinfeld owns a boat. Taglialucci orders Kleinfeld to liaise with his sons and be on the river at the appointed time. Convinced the Taglialucci boys will summarily dispose of him once their dad's safe and sound, Kleinfeld asks Carlito to repay the favour.

And Carlito has no choice but to help. As he puts it when Gail pleads with him not to get involved: "Dave is my friend. I owe him. That's what I am. Right or wrong, I can't change that."

Things go wrong. Kleinfeld, coked to the gills, takes matters into his own hands and crosses the line. Sosa tips Carlito off that Pachanga's loyalties are divided, then proves to be duplicitous himself when Carlito finds that money is missing from the club. Some made guys who were associated with Taglialucci want answers over the break-out snafu. Then the DA comes calling ...

If 'Scarface' is an exercise in surface value, 'Carlito's Way' is deeper, more considered, much more accomplished. Pacino's Carlito Brigante is introspective and complex where Tony Montana was extrovert and brutally simplistic. Carlito's relationship with Gail provides an emotional crux. In 'Scarface', the stakes were purely monetary. Here, they're infinitely higher. So when the net begins to tighten and Carlito's bid for freedom turns into a desparate race against both time and a bunch of men with guns, de Palma ratchets the tension to an unbearable level. In one extended, heart-pounding sequence, a battle of wits at the nightclub segues into a skin-of-the-teeth escape, leading to a tense subway pursuit and culminating in a cat-and-mouse showdown at Grand Central Station.

What makes de Palma's achievement so impressive is that he's already revealed how it ends - in the opening credits. Two hours spent building up to an ending the audience already know - and a real downer of an ending at that - yet you barely breathe for the fifteen minutes Carlito spends running for his life, running for a future summed up by three words on a poster; an advert; something crafted to fool people into believing.

*Amazingly, this is the first time I've featured a Luis Guzman film on the blog. He's one of those actors who automatically makes you smile when you see his name in the opening credits; you know, however else the film might pan out, that you're in for at least one great performance.

Scarface

An oft-repeated criticism of 'Scarface' is its portrayal of Cubans. Which is kind of laughable given the American government's attitude towards Cuba. I don't really think there's much American film-makers can do to compound the insult. Nonetheless, it's an easy criticism to understand. Opening with a news footage montage showing the boat people arriving in the US, title cards inform us that of the quarter of a million refugees who left Cuba in 1980, an estimated 25,000 had criminal records.

It's swiftly insinuated that Tony Montana (Al Pacino) counts for one of them. Detained, along with his friend Manny (Steven Bauer) at the ironically-named Freedomland (a refugee camp situated beneath an underpass), Tony embraces the American dream by undertaking a hit on a political dissident in return for a green card. Oh, and a job. If you can call sweating over a greasy stove in a burger van a job. Needless to say, Tony and Manny soon investigate career opportunities outside of the catering industry.

Omar Suarez (F. Murray Abraham), number two to paunchy mob boss Frank Lopez (Robert Loggia), gives them a taste of the criminal underworld - both its dangers (Tony is almost eviscerated by a chainsaw when his contact on his first job pulls a double-cross) and its rewards. One of the rewards is that a balding declasse middle-aged guy with a fake tan and a lot of bling gets the svelte, smart-mouthed and sexily contemptuous Elvira (Michelle Pfeiffer) on his arm. Tony decides he wants what Frank has. Particularly Elvira.

Tony strengthens his powerbase after Frank sends him and Omar to lay the groundwork for a deal with Bolivian drug lord Alejandro Sosa (Paul Shenar). Sosa recognises Omar as a stool pigeon and has him taken care of. Sensing he can trust Tony, Sosa makes the deal directly with him. This doesn't go over too well with Frank, who decides Tony's becoming a liability.

The key scene for me - and one of de Palma's trademark set-pieces - takes place in a nightclub. Plot points and narrative developments converge in such a cluster it's surprising one of the staff doesn't show them over to a table of their own. One near the stage. That way they could enjoy the cavortings of Octavio the Clown, though they'd have to scoot out the way PDQ as soon as the shoot-out starts. But I'm getting ahead of myself ...

Tony and Manny show up, the former not impressed to see his sister Gina (Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio) enjoying a bit of the old bump and grind with some greasy lowlife, the latter not impressed that he's not the object of said bumping and grinding (Manny's hots for Tony's sister is something that has serious ramifications later on). When Gina's bit of rough leads her off to the toilets for a quick fumble and a line of coke (classy guy!), Tony sees red. His mood is already tense after a conversation with bent cop Mel Bernstein (Harris Yulin) who wants monthly payoffs from Tony and his holidays paid for. Then Frank and Elvira turn up, the latter unresponsive (as yet) to Tony's attentions and there's an altercation.

So we've had, in one ten minute scene, the Tony/Gina/Gina's boyfriend situation, the simmering Gina/Manny tension, the Tony/Bernstein issue, the unresolved Tony/Elvira tension, and the Tony/Frank stand-off. Throw into the mix the two gunmen waiting for the spotlight to drift away from Octavio's performance and light up Tony's table ...

De Palma's camera navigates the nightclub, and the intricacies of the scene, with effortless panache. In a film that has more than its share of set-pieces - the aforementioned business with the chainsaw, Tony's settling of the score with Frank, the abortive hit Tony undertakes at Sosa's behest, the 'Wild Bunch'-style shoot-out at Tony's mansion - this is a stand-out both technically and in terms of advancement of narrative. It's after Tony survives the ensuing gunplay that his ruthless ambition really drives him forward; ten minutes later, we're in montage territory, hundred dollar bills whizzing through a counting machine, Elvira on Tony's arm, vans pulling up in front of a bank and tough guys in sharp suits hauling bulking sacks of currency inside. All cut to Giorgio Morodor's pumped-up score.

And from here, 'Scarface' enters the downward curve of its narrative arc. If 'Little Caesar' is perhaps cinema's first rise-and-fall gangster epic (albeit shoehorned into 77 minutes), then 'Scarface' is one of its fullest expositions, the narrative arc charted across a properly epic running time of two and three quarter hours.

'Scarface' blew me away the first time I saw it, in my late teens. Everything about it was big: its length, the performances, the production design, the verbal outbursts (particularly Pacino's "take a look at the bad guy" rant in an upmarket restaurant) and the violence. I watched the video quite a few times in my twenties. I picked up the DVD as part of a Pacino box set recently and this afternoon is the first time I've seen it in maybe a decade. It's still a hell of movie, for all of the reasons mentioned. But it's an empty one. All surface: glossy and immediate and superficial. Which is kind of the point - the theme is moral bankrupcy, and de Palma achieves some 'Citizen Kane'-style images of his protagonist alone by his own actions in a mansion filled with very expensive but worthless things - but the bravura staging of the final massacre (with its all-together-now iconic line "say hello to my little friend") strives to make a martyr of Tony Montana. Unlike Henry Hill in 'Goodfellas', he doesn't get to live out the rest of his life like a shmuck - he gets to be the messiah of movie violence, instead, only defeated when someone shoots him in the back; the poster boy for everything de Palma and writer Oliver Stone were meant to be criticising.

"First you get the money, then you get the power," Tony declares soon after he and Manny get their start with Frank, opining that it's only after these two achievements that you get the women; "that's the way it works in this country." From the outset, Tony's vision of America is as a big fat dollar sign waiting for him to grab a chunk of it. The blimp he sees shortly after taking over Frank's operation - the message "THE WORLD IS YOURS" blinking out in huge letters - is at once his mission statement, his epitaph and the big lie he fell for.

A film criticised for its depiction of Cubans? As much as 'Scarface' can be said to be about anything, it's about how the American dream, no matter how villainous those who pursue it, is always the bigger bad guy.

Al Pacino double bill

I enjoyed last weekend's James Cagney double-bill. The hit-and-run style of reviewing - watch the film, hammer out the article, post it online, watch the next film, repeat - made the experience a lot more immediate than my usual modus operandi of watch film, let my thoughts about it percolate in the back of my mind for a few days, draft out an article, revisit it the next day, edit, polish, correct typos, generally dick around with it for probably longer than necessary.

So I've decided to repeat the exercise today. Longer films this time, so expect the second review much later this evening.

Our subject: a pair of gangster movies (interesting that the general "crime movie" remit of Shots on the Blog seems to have gravitated so specifically towards the gangster movie), one made in the '80s and very redolent of the rampant materialism of that decade, the other in the '90s and more introspective in its approach - that pair Al Pacino with director Brian de Palma. I don't think I've written about a de Palma film yet on The Agitation of the Mind. Let's rectify that. He's an interesting if frustrating film-maker.

I've often heard this summarising comment applied to Stanley Kubrick's ouevre (and not without justification): that his films are technically brilliant but devoid of emotionalism. You could easily say the same of de Palma, and in fact use the comparison to point up that as technically-minded as Kubrick is at the cost of the human element, his films are also very accomplished narratively. Not only is de Palma's work generally lacking emotionally (although one of this afternoon's choices provides an exception to the rule as does, say, 'Blow Out'), he's not adverse to sacrificing narrative coherence for the sake of showmanship (pick your own example here; I can think of at least half a dozen without even flipping onto IMDb to refresh my memory).

De Palma's also an ideal director to engage with right now because, generally speaking, his best outings have a crime/mystery/gangster bent. In order to maintain the integrity of that statement, I am going to have to pretend that 'The Black Dahlia' doesn't exist - or, better still, imagine myself in an alternative reality where David Fincher had directed it and was currently in pre-production with James Ellroy's follow-up 'The Big Nowhere' and not some Facebook flick.

But I digress. The first film of the afternoon is sliding into the DVD player and a definitively dodgy dude is about to get off the boat from Cuba ...