Brian De Palma
Omicidio a luci rosse

Opinions about a director like Brian De Palma are always varied, and rightly so. Artistically born in the late sixties alongside Coppola, Scorsese, and all the others of the New Hollywood, De Palma has done many things with mixed results: often and willingly he has tried the path of nonconformism (the rock musical Phantom of the Paradise, 1974) and experimentation (his early films like The Wedding Party, 1966, or Greetings, 1968, but also the latest Redacted, 2007); many other times he has indulged his passion for a genre, the erotic thriller, to which he has made a fundamental contribution, especially in the eighties (the famous Dressed to Kill, 1980, is its undisputed masterpiece); he devoted himself to a baroque and turgid remake of Hawks' Scarface with Al Pacino more epic than ever, and to another couple of well-crafted gangster movies (The Untouchables, 1987 and Carlito's Way, 1993); and not infrequently he has catered to the needs of the industry with predominantly commercial operations, sometimes with positive outcomes (Carrie, 1976, based on Stephen King) sometimes mediocre (The Bonfire of the Vanities, 1990, from Tom Wolfe, Mission Impossible, 1996).

The common denominator of all these exploits is an indisputable technical mastery - long takes and split screen represent two authentic trademarks of De Palma's style, overused to the point of mannerism - combined with a robust dose of cinephilia. His guardian spirit is, as is well known, Hitchcock, generously honored in the most varied forms and ways, with a fidelity to the master sometimes excessive, sometimes questionable, but often undoubtedly fruitful.

From Hitchcock, above all, De Palma derives certain precise themes - the double, personality deviations, the woman as a disturbing element, voyeurism, scopophilia - and brings them to personal and unexpected developments, inevitably placing emphasis on the technical-visual component, much less on the dramatic. Rarely, watching a De Palma film with a critical eye, can one be rationally convinced by the improbable narrative contortions of his scripts (very different from those, unattackable, of master Hitchcock), it is much easier to be seduced by the spectacular skill of a professional who in some ways is also one of the most significant American Authors of the last decades.

Body Double, which is to be considered De Palma's manifesto (it contains a bit of all the characteristics of his cinema), obviously makes no exception. Filmed in 1984, after Scarface, the film moves once again through the well-known territories of Hitchcockian mystery, with obvious (indeed, blatant) references to Rear Window and Vertigo.

As in Rear Window, the voyeuristic element is involved: the protagonist, Jake Scully (Craig Wasson) spies on his seductive neighbor (who every evening performs, for no apparent reason, a sensual erotic dance with a masturbatory finale), and soon realizes that something is wrong, and that a man, a chilling Indian with a disfigured face, is trying to kill her.

As in Vertigo, there is the woman who dies midway through the film, the murderous conspiracy of which the protagonist will discover he is a pawn, and above all there is the theme of the fragile man and victim of his own fears (Craig Wasson's claustrophobia is a clear hint to the vertigo James Stewart suffered from) who will only be able to fully live again after embarking on a journey within himself to confront and overcome them.

To this emulsion of Hitchcockian motives, De Palma adds a clear metafilmic component: the story is set in the Hollywood world of B-movies, the protagonist is an actor in crisis (fired due to his phobia of closed spaces) and at a certain point the porn starlet Holly Body (played by Melanie Griffith in her first important role) enters the picture and we discover she had a role in the woman's murder: that of the "double" (body double is indeed the original title).

If the film works, engages, and fascinates, it is not so much for the complex and improbable plot devised by De Palma and co-screenwriter Robert J. Avrech, but for the beauty of its directorial solutions, which are capable of making believable even moments that could (unintentionally) lend themselves to more than a few laughs. The flaws and plot holes of Body Double are indeed redeemed by a powerful style, which offers some of the most unforgettable moments of De Palma's cinema: I am thinking particularly of the mall tailing scene, the tunnel scene, the genial sequence on the porn film set complete with a cameo of Frankie Goes To Hollywood singing Relax, the torrid kiss between Jake and the neighbor filmed with a dizzying circular tracking shot (the Hitchcockian citation here is more evident than ever, even in the grating violins of the music excellently written by Pino Donaggio).

Elegant and baroque at the same time, the highly inspired direction creates an intriguing and sensual atmosphere, not avoiding pressing the pedal on eroticism, nor on brutality (the scene of the poor woman killed with a drill is a cult of cinematic sadism of the eighties, also quoted in Bret Easton Ellis' American Psycho). Body Double is a typical example of how an extraordinary visual talent can fully redeem the flaws and banalities of a not-so-solid script. Almost all of De Palma's cinema - at least in its best outcomes - is further confirmation of this premise.