This is a continuation of last week’s article, exploring the works of writer and director Brain De Palma...

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The Bonfire of the Vanities (1990)

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I feel I come to Bonfire of the Vanities with a particular view on things that by all accounts was mostly different to the view most came to it upon its first release in 1990. Chiefly the very big view that I had never read and never knew the plot of Tom Wolfe’s original sensation of a best-seller, I knew only broad-strokes; 80’s New York socialites, racial commentary, and that the film was by all accounts a disaster critically and commercially. Heading into this article and this De Palma re-watch I wished to keep this view and so did not and still have not read the book and have only now started listening to the brilliant podcast series from TCM adapting to radio Julie Solomon’s book The Devil’s Candy, the tell all account of how the film was made – a book that undoubtedly has led to a sort of myth making when it comes to the film. However when one eventually comes back to watch it, or in my case watches it for the first time... You find that it’s certainly not the worst piece of cr*p you’ve ever seen, nor is it by any means a hidden gem underrated work in De Palma’s cannon. Vanities in many ways is far more interesting to talk about than to actually watch, anybody who knows even a glimpse of the behind the scenes dramas will understand this, however to just sit and watch the film and go with its plot and go with its characters is a fine experience in itself. The plot is intriguing and biting, and Michael Cristofer’s adaptation of Wolfe’s novel is a tight and funny one, pair this with an absolutely sensational ensemble of actors (some of whom are pitch-perfect, others less so) and you’ve got yourself a pretty fun film that effectively becomes as much a court-room drama as it does a darkly comedic satire of the headiness of the 80’s. Some things miss the mark narrativley and themes and tones are more obvious than I think they have to be, now of course we are dealing a 600 page book being turned into a film of two hours, so broad-strokes are in a way to be expected. De Palma here unfortunately at times seems to feel hampered creatively, it’s not that he can’t direct great scenes of conversation, however the great camera work and extended sequences of his other films are nowhere to be found here, beyond a few fleeting moments that seem to grow less and less frequent as the film continues and one beautiful and brilliant extended one-take shot in the beginning that follows in the great lineage of De Palma opening oner’s that set tone and pace for the film about to come. But in this case does the oner set the right pace? It set’s it alright, but it unfortunately doesn’t maintain it for the rest of the film’s run-time. One could point to many small and some very large things that led to this film becoming the thing that it is; the casting particularly in the parts of Tom Hanks and Melanie Griffith does just feel a little off, the possibility that for as much as he brings to it this might not have been the best fit for De Palma as a director, aswell as the tantalising but perhaps undoubtedly flawed issue of attempting adaptation on this book in the first place. Christofer is game to make a good go at it and De Palma does bring all he can to it, and bar Hanks and Griffith the ensemble really do bring this world to life with exactly the right tone the film requires, but overall one can’t help but feel that the film is just a slightly undercooked attempt at an adaptation that I doubt will be tackled again.

Raising Cain (1992)

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Now there’s two ways to look at Raising Cain, and that is to say that is De Palma finally pushing everything too far, which many do. Or you can look at it with a more De Palma career focussed approach and realise that De Palma has pushed it this far so many times before, it’s just in this case there is a focus instead on I feel ‘intentionally’ pushing things too far, rather instead in the case of Body Double where there was a more unintentional feel. Here De Palma with both his script and direction is constantly taking everything to the ultimate extreme. Serial killer plot is nothing compared to a serial killer who also kidnaps children. A tragic back-story is nothing compared to every single person on screen having a more tragic back-story than the last, whether it be the instigating incident for murderous figure, but rather even our victims each have their own tragic flashbacks (which feature the most frequently horrifying parts of the film, especially a certain hospital bed scare).  Dreams within dreams within dreams fuel a plot with a lead figure with an abundance of multiple personalities, all brought to us by the brilliant John Lithgow in his tour-de-force De Palma performance. Now of course Lithgow’s best performance for De Palma was with De Palma’s best film of all, Blow Out, but here every single facet of Lithgow is used, like everything else, to the absolute extreme. It really can’t be underestimated to what extent everything in this film is to the extreme, now in this case, unlike Body Double, I feel we are not in as assured hands when it comes to the overall success rate across it’s run-time. But then in the end De Palma once again pulls out a top-class extremist set piece that blows the whole thing away and gives one more than enough reason to watch. Lithgow is at times over-the-top, sometimes unsettling and subtle, sometimes in fabulous drag – it’s a truly all encompassing tour across Lithgow’s many personalities as a performer. Beyond Lithgow, the film has plenty to offer of course. De Palma’s script is brilliantly expositional to a fault and when overly expositional, which is often, De Palma fuels the scenes with a great visual flare to balance out what could be quite droll scenes. Beyond Lithgow, Steven Bauer returning to the De Palma fold is the perfect ‘perfect man’ and Frances Sternhagen as the perfect vaguely European psychologist is perfectly cliché and wonderfully overwrought, like everything else on display. Raising Cain is a joyously overwrought psycho-melo-drama that knows what it’s doing, even if it’s absurd at times.

Carlito’s Way (1993)

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In the sensational core text for all De Palma fans, the incredibly insightful and brilliant composed documentary De Palma by Noah Baumbach and Jake Paltrow, De Palma himself describes watching Carlito’s Way and thinking to himself that he ‘was never gonna make a film better than this one’. Describing in detail “Al [Pacino] and the opera”. It certainly is a film that can induce such reactions, with its hauntingly tragic bookending subway assassination, underscored by Patrick Doyle’s sensationally un-gangster like classical inspired score, and with Pacino doing some of his finest subtle acting work just with his eyes. Pair this with the ultimate journey we’ve gone on throughout the film and one can easily see a director or audience member just leaping to their feet. Whereas Pacino and De Palma’s previous gangster outing was the bombastic, virile and sensationalist Scarface, here both iconic figures turn to tell amore human character study spanning a period of months, rather than many, many years. Carlito’s Way also boasts some of De Palma’s best romance since Blow Out, with the beautiful and compelling Penelope Ann Miller, giving us some of the best Pacino chemistry since Keaton in The Godfather. The tale of Carlito is a simple one that has been told over and over again; honest crook tries to go straight but his ties, friends, foes and previous life choices inevitably ‘pull him back in again!’ It’s a simple tale well told with foreshadowing employed at every turn presenting this story as the tragedy of an honest man trying to do good, trying to make a life with the woman he loves.

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The biggest thorn in his side is Sean Penn in one of his finest, scummiest parts as Kleinfeld, the world’s worst coked up lawyer scumbag. Penn drives the viewer absolutely insane and at times even stretches our credibility with Pacino’s Carlito, for who would be stupid enough to stand by or with this again after all he’s done before and will definitely do again. But lord knows it’s easy enough to stand back and say these things. Lord knows it’s harder when you’re really there. For me it’s never been coke-fuelled dirty lawyers, but it’s happened, it’s happened. Due to the first bombing at the world trade centre the original intended climactic chase was aborted and hence De Palma was forced to return to what he describes with a touch of chagrin as “another railway station again”.  Yet it is the immense skill of the director that this set piece is wholly different from the subway stalking of Blow Out, as much as it is also different from the Battleship Potemkin aping/homaging staircase sequence of The Untouchables. Here De Palma for the entire last act returns to his roots of tension and Hitchcockian suspense, making what could have been a very standard gangster tale drip with painfully extended moments of dread and ultimately tragedy. Because if Carlito’s Way is one thing above anything else, it is most certainly a tragedy, perhaps one of the most effecting of both Pacino’s and De Palma’s careers. I personally believe unlike De Palma that he did make better films than this, but this is certainly a crowning achievement none the less and a firm favourite in my De Palma top five, and by far my favourite of his ‘gangster films’.

Mission Impossible (1996)

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De Palma’s biggest success in the world of commercial film has to undoubtedly be the first entry into the sensational Mission Impossible franchise that he helmed from a script amalgamated from multiple drafts by David Koepp and Steven Zallian, only to be rewritten in-between takes by Robert Towne. Quite frankly one could make the comment that this bumper blockbuster franchise would have no legs if it were not for this sensationally good first entry helmed by De Palma. But also one could make the sincere comment that this first film in the Tom Cruise series is at its most successful when it is at its most De Palma. That is to say when the film gives way to extended sequences of tension, gives in to moments of intense sexual dynamics and blends an overall sense of Hitchcockian spy dread into its tale of a man on the run, wronged by all around him (the prototype from multiple Hitchcock thrillers prior to it). De Palma even wanted to employ another one of Hitchcock’s most famous devices, with an early draft featuring such stars of the original series as Martin Landau and Peter Graves re-apearing in this film only to die in the first 20 pages. With Graves’s Jim Phelps going on to then become the villain of the piece, as the Graves we do get (played with great warmth and then great fierce virility by Jon Voight) does indeed turn. Everybody involved in the original series that was contacted refused feeling a great sense of betrayal to the original series. The remnants of this wonderful idea do remain with De Palma employing the likes of Emelio Estevez and Kristin Scott Thomas to appear as affable and very likeable members of an IMF team that is quickly dismissed off in the film’s first 25 minutes. It’s a wickedly sinister turn that turns the whole film on a dime and makes it’s into the intense thrill ride that it becomes. Many return to this first film after the explosive highs of the more modern entries and are somewhat stunned by how barebones it really is. Many even comment to me that dreaded word that is indeed “boring”. I comment however that anybody who can watch the Langley sequence, or even the opening Prague sequence without biting their nails or curling into their seats, and honestly say that the expiericne of watching these masterfully done sequences is “boring”. Well. That is just where we differ my friends.

Snake Eyes (1998)

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If one were to come into a De Palma debate with a hot take, there would be a pretty solid argument for such a hot take individual to make that Snake Eyes could be pound for pound De Palma’s best directed movie. Does it have the best plot and script? No, although it is the running and his working of David Koepp’s screenplay is a brilliant matching of talents that allows for this pair to really got to some of the adult lengths you can feel they wanted to with Mission Impossible. Does it have the best performances? No, but again, this film does contain many of the top rank for me, person after person, character after character, Koepp and De Palma and the cast inhabiting them create intriguing, dynamic and ingenious combinations of people and scenarios. Does the film have the best single take De Palma opening shot? Yes, for me, yes. This is where the ‘yes’s’ start and once the positivity begins, it’s quite hard for it stop with this film. I mean how is such a tight and incredibly directed film such an underrated gem at this point? I mean this is a populous thriller with big stars doing great work and a director hot off a huge commercial feature that he managed to elevate. Even amongst De Palma fans I don’t find this to be the film that people champion for as the under-dog, however as I said before this De Palma riff on Rashamon has everything one could ever want from a thriller of this ilk. Intrigue, twists, a compulsive and relentless narrative, great characters, great action, great suspense and an overall conceit that is just as much visually evocative as it is brilliantly entertaining. A political assassination at a boxing match. I mean the set pieces write themselves and De Palma relishes at making the perhaps inconceivable notions of this prospect, wholly conceivable, wholly grounded and still incredibly over the top and joyously tense. I think also it cements an era of De Palma that we unfortunately never really got, following the immense success of Mission I feel this film marks a path for De Palma to make modern adult action-thrillers with big budgets effectively combining his 70’s and 80’s erotic thriller works with the 80’s and 90’s action movies – we at least got one in Snake Eyes at least. 


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Let’s talk about that cast that populate this film, again everybody is on top form and on exactly the same page when it comes to delivery and tone and what this film is going for. Again, one can’t effectively describe how above all else that is the most difficult thing to do with a film like this – to get everybody on the same page. Perhaps that’s one of the reasons for the rejected Pino Donaggio score, before Ryuichi Sakamoto was commissioned to write and compose the score that the film has now – a pulsating thriller score with modern synth overtones. Nicholas Cage is our star and gives one of his most grounded over-the-top performances he ever has, let me explain, here the character is the over-the-top one and Cage imbues with humanity, rather than as we have seen in some cases the character being somewhat standard and Cage injecting his immense adrenaline into the role making it a wholly over-the-top one.  Gary Sinese stars here in a brilliant turn as a character named Kevin Dunne, in a role originally offered to Will Smith and Al Pacion. I can see Pacino, but the age doesn’t really work, and I can see Smith, mainly because of how effective certain narrative turns would have been. Let the record also show that the actor Kevin Dunn is also in this film appearing again under De Palma after, I have no idea how this decision was made, but I’m happy for Dunn is great in his role, as he of course always is. Carla Guigino is brilliant here as what we at first think is a femme fatale, before revealing herself to be a far more vulnerable and complex figure. John Heard offers up his best evil business-man in the genre of ‘80’s and 90’s Trump villains’. Stan Shaw appears and for my money in a certain sequence during the ring has one of the best moments of silent acting I’ve seen in a De Palma film. Now without spoilers you can’t really talk about the film without discussing the original shot and edited ending of the film which consisted of a tidal wave crashing into the stadium. Now the ending we up with is solid, but the fact that this entire sequence was shot, as a huge special effects piece helmed by Industrial Light and Magic, only to be cut, leaves one baffled. More baffling is the references to the tidal wave that are all throughout the film and remain, afterall they are intrinsic in most cases and unable to be cut. De Palma has said before that the tidal wave was supposed to signify a sort of biblical cleansing of the sin of Atlantic City, and I can see that, but perhaps the ending we have is a more clean cut thriller approach to wrapping up the story we have, rather than adding a biblical allegory element in there too. And the De Palma audio cameo at the end of the film as a reporting questioning “what about the cocaine?” only leads me to believe that this is De Palma’s actual auditory response whenever he is watching a cocaine movie and there isn’t any of the actual substance lying around.

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This article will continue and conclude in the next edition...

-        -  Thomas Carruthers