Brian De Palma is celebrated or torn in the air for his films. He celebrates his 80th birthday on Friday.
Brian De Palma will be 80 years old on September 11th. It is proud 60 years ago that he laid the foundation for a long, varied and successful career in the film business with his first short film "Icarus". And that although De Palma initially devoted himself to physics at the university.
A great, sometimes achieved role model
No director from the serious film industry can avoid naming Alfred Hitchcock (1899-1980) as a great role model sooner or later. During his work, De Palma never made a secret of it, neither in interviews nor in his films. In his thrillers such as "Dressed to Kill" (1980), "Death Comes Twice" (1984) or as early as 1976 in "Schwarzer Engel" he generously quotes, some critics would say shamelessly, classics of the "Meister des Suspense".
De Palma also likes to orientate himself thematically on motifs of a hitchcock. Obsession, anxiety, voyeurism and, what can almost never be missing, a murder. The best conditions and probably one of the reasons that he should celebrate his breakthrough with the film adaptation of a book by horror author Stephen King (72) in 1976. "Carrie", in German with the lurid nickname "Des Satan's Youngest Daughter", is considered a masterpiece of profound horror and – highly unusual for this genre – has received two Oscar nominations ("Best Lead Actress" and "Best Supporting Actress") .
The F-word and the O-word
The almost three hours long, extremely brutal (keyword: chainsaw) and riddled with swear words gangster epic "Scarface" (script: Oliver Stone, 73) with Al Pacino (80) as the title hero cemented De Palma's reputation as a courageous, highly gifted filmmaker. As with "Carrie", he worked out a tragic character study and finally let it pass away in sheer excesses of violence. Fun fact: The F-word occurs 207 times in "Scarface" – roughly every 1.2 minutes.
Meanwhile, another film that deals with organized crime also won an Oscar. Out of four golden boys for whom his crime film "The Untouchables" was nominated, only Sean Connery (90) received it in 1987 as "Best Supporting Actor". He had previously also been able to collect the Golden Globe for it.
Between the extremes
Brian De Palma's works polarize. This can be seen abundantly in the aforementioned "Death Comes Twice", which on the one hand was highly praised by the respected US film critic Roger Ebert (1942-2013) and on the other hand also earned De Palma a nomination for the Golden Raspberry as "Worst Director". At times, however, there were no two opinions about the poor quality of a De Palma film – at the spearhead of the criticism De Palma itself.
His film "Purgatory of the Vanities", based on the novel of the same name by Tom Wolfe, he tore in the air. The tome was considered impossible to make into a film, "and I have proven that that was probably true," said the director in an interview with Charlie Rose (78). There is also little good to report about his sci-fi film "Mission to Mars" from 2000, which failed at the box office and critics alike.
A parallel to James Cameron
De Palma may not have achieved the consistently high quality of his oversized role model Hitchcock, but in one thing he is ahead of the legendary directing. He tried almost every genre, from horror ("Carrie") to comedy ("Wise Guys") to war drama ("The Damned of War") and science fiction ("Mission to Mars"). And with another "mission" he even gave the go-ahead for one of the most successful action series of all time: In 1996 he sent Tom Cruise (58) for the first time on a "Mission: Impossible", who is still in action as Ethan Hunt – part seven just turned.
By the way: De Palma also has one thing in common with his colleague James Cameron (66), but far away from the camera. Both were married to the film producer Gale Anne Hurd (64), Cameron from 1984 to 1989, De Palma from 1991 to 1993. The latter has a child with her, as well as his second ex-wife, Darnell Gregorio-De Palma.
Despite being 80 years old, the birthday child still does not think about retirement. Two new films, "Sweet Vengeance" and "Catch and Kill", are already in the planning stage. And as the two titles suggest, he does not deviate from his most successful cinematic route to date in either of these – violence, murder and revenge.