The Summer of De Palma: A Career-Spanning Retrospective

Bringing up Brian De Palma as if he’s still some kind of marginalized or misunderstood figure is now heavily contentious, not just in the sense that “the discussion” has, with the presence of the Internet, become so heavily splintered that every figure has at least seem some form of reappraisal, but in that this is being discussed on the occasion of a new documentary and retrospectives in New York, Chicago, Austin, and Toronto (the lattermost of which this symposium will be timed to). Yes, the line has probably tipped past “divisive,” but that doesn’t mean there still isn’t room for debate.

It’s not hard to understand why De Palma’s work strikes a cord with a new cinephilia fixated on form and vulgarity. Though, in going film-by-film — taking us from political diatribes against America to gonzo horror to gangster films your parents watch to strange European co-productions — De Palma can seemingly be stuck in certain periods, an ultimate slave to whatever few liberties might be provided by the Hollywood system. And to explore these contradictions is to see what makes the man the artist he is.

All summer long we’ll be discussing his films with articles for each feature. Bookmark this page and see below for updates as they come in.

Murder à la Mod (1968) by Eric Barroso