Brian De Palma
Omicidio a luci rosse

The double, cinema and reality, voyeurism in life and fiction, Hitchcockian cinema and its canonical narrative tension, the disenchantment of pornography, the gloss of the Eighties, classical commentary music, and synth-pop songs. It's all really there in this film by Brian De Palma, perhaps the point of encounter between one of the quintessential cinemas, that of Alfred Hitchcock, and the new trends of an increasingly ruthless, pornographic, and cynical society and culture.

Despite a very agile and flowing narrative, the great filmmaker includes a series of theoretical insights, reflections on cinema itself, and metanarrative games. One of the most interesting concerns the fiction that lurks within reality, in what we believe is our real life. It is not always such; there is a gap between pure truth and its image, which can always hide pockets of fiction almost impossible to distinguish in the flow of days.

The discourse is subtly carried forward through two different and antithetical dimensions. There's the life of protagonist Jack and the set of the film by director Rubin. If the second seeks verisimilitude, even in the admitted falsification at its artistic form's origin, in the first, the pitfalls are greater, the planes continually confuse themselves. Cinema then reveals itself to be less mystifying and falsifying than life because it openly relies on fiction, almost awkwardly at times. Life is the real danger, the true epistemic sphinx for man.

Cinema and life inevitably communicate: an unhappy life leads to unsatisfactory acting performances, and it is cinema that will provide the protagonist with a cue to save his skin at a decisive moment. And the success of the actor's real-world exploits reverberates in a newfound dramatic flair. Because flesh and emotions are always present: if the narrative is fictional, the actors who carry it forward are not fake, nor are the cramped spaces they must stand in, nor the hot or cold water that flows in a shower, just as the breasts of a body double are not.

The protagonist's voyeurism, as already seen in famous Hollywood precedents, is nothing but a stylized reenactment of the cinematic form within life. Thus, existence presents innumerable forms of vision and knowledge that mirror the ways of cinema: that is, they replicate the same detachment, the impossibility of always verifying everything, of going beyond one's perceptual limits imposed by the medium, whether it be the staging decided by the director or the limits of a telescope pointed at the neighbor's house.

De Palma litters his film with these insights, more or less evident. Perhaps not all critics immediately understood this film because some thematic cores are really only hinted at and require significant reflection from the viewer.

The work has the enormous merit of not stopping at conceptual strength, neglecting the rest. Body Double is a film of great entertainment and storytelling, with chases, suspense, twists, and upheavals. The greatest trick, the striking feat that probably made it enjoyable to many, is constructed with truly rare perfection. The viewer remains completely ignorant of everything for quite some time. Or rather, one senses that something is wrong, but it is impossible to understand why.

That something wrong is a blatant, deliberately emphasized, and garish cinematic sheen that makes certain scenes from the protagonist's real life farcical. A kiss that seems like a fairy tale, a killer with a caricatured face. These are very subtle polishings that could be mistaken for bad taste from the Eighties. Instead, they are completely oblique stylistic filigrees, understandable only at the end of the viewing. Reality (always supposed, of course) thus undergoes the same functional mutations as cinema; this is the concept. A couple of meters deep trench becomes an abyss; an underpass extends until it becomes a terrifying tunnel.

Music is omnipresent and adds something to the discourse. Like the image, the seen and unseen can falsify reality; music also reshapes events, dragging them wherever it pleases. Here, De Palma makes an intelligent use of it, using it to color the narrative according to Jack's psychological inclinations at different moments. There is a musical theme for the protagonist's erotic voyeuristic attacks, which return punctually. And then just a few notes suffice to understand where it's heading. In other sequences, orchestrations are used as a tribute to Hitchcockian cinema on one hand, but also to carry forward that discourse that juxtaposes life and aesthetic rumination. The events are enigmatic; it’s not clear what is happening, but the music is clear, open. And then, in the light of the film’s ending, it’s clear that even the soundtrack can be an instrument of falsification.

This is confirmed by the evident change in the final part when Jack better understands what has happened. Even the musical emphasis from the Hollywood golden age disappears suddenly, giving way to more contemporary, less emotionally connoted music.

9/10