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Douglas Keesey

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Brian De Palma's Split-Screen: A Life in Film Hardcover – May 20, 2015

by Douglas Keesey (Author)

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Over the last five decades, the films of director Brian De Palma (b. 1940) have been among the biggest successes (The Untouchables; Mission: Impossible) and the most high-profile failures (The Bonfire of the Vanities) in Hollywood history. De Palma helped launch the careers of such prominent actors as Robert De Niro, John Travolta, and Sissy Spacek (who was nominated for an Academy Award as Best Actress in Carrie). Indeed, Quentin Tarantino named Blow Out as one of his top three favorite films, praising De Palma as the best living American director.

Picketed by feminists protesting its depictions of violence against women, Dressed to Kill helped to create the erotic thriller genre. Scarface, with its over-the-top performance by Al Pacino, remains a cult favorite. In the twenty-first century, De Palma has continued to experiment, incorporating elements from videogames (Femme Fatale), tabloid journalism (The Black Dahlia), YouTube, and Skype (Redacted and Passion) into his latest works.

What makes De Palma such a maverick even when he is making Hollywood genre films? Why do his movies often feature megalomaniacs and failed heroes? Is he merely a misogynist and an imitator of Alfred Hitchcock? To answer these questions, author Douglas Keesey takes a biographical approach to De Palma's cinema, showing how De Palma reworks events from his own life into his films. Written in an accessible style and including a chapter on every one of his films to date, this book is for anyone who wants to know more about De Palma's controversial films or who wants to better understand the man who made them.

Print length

362 pages
Language

English
Publisher

University Press of Mississippi
Publication date

May 20, 2015
Dimensions

6.5 x 1.25 x 9.75 inches
ISBN-10

1628466979
ISBN-13

978-1628466973
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Editorial Reviews

Review

Brian De Palma's Split-Screen is an insightful and highly scholarly book. It is the best book so far on the life and works of De Palma. It is a very well researched book and provides deep analysis of De Palma's works. It should be on the university curriculum for film studies. It is a must-read for everyone interested in the life and works of Brian De Palma and cinema in general. ― The Washington Book Review

By cunningly projecting De Palma's life side-by-side with his films, Douglas Keesey has brought to light the hidden, deep desires of a film director previously categorized as a purely genre filmmaker. Thanks to Keesey, I can now rewatch De Palma's films with new eyes. -- Paul Duncan, film historian

Book Description

A biographical approach to the films of a controversial and provocative director

Product details

Publisher ‏ : ‎ University Press of Mississippi (May 20, 2015)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Hardcover ‏ : ‎ 362 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 1628466979
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1628466973
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 1.52 pounds
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 6.5 x 1.25 x 9.75 inches

Best Sellers Rank: #3,458,297 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #1,015 in Individual Directors
- #3,334 in Movie Direction & Production
- #8,173 in Movie History & Criticism

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Leslie Osborne

Five Stars

Reviewed in the United States on November 2, 2016

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My hubby loved the book!

One person found this helpful

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Alex

All De Palma’s movies

Reviewed in the United States on September 2, 2019

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All De Palma’s movies are dealt with in this interesting book, where the author insists on some anecdotes of the author, giving to these anecdotes too much importance, nonetheless the essay is more than acceptable, giving us some good information about each of the films which Brian De Palma directed, moving as an author, an independent movie maker, but at the same time dependant on the cinema system.

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ICQ-Tele

A truly awful chapter on Mission Impossible. I did ...

Reviewed in the United States on November 21, 2015

A truly awful chapter on Mission Impossible. I did not read any other chapters. The author managed to miss most of the internal references and complexities that Towne wove into the script. It should be analysed from Towne's writing, not from De Palma's weak directing of the film.

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Nikolaos Oikonomidis

The complete De Palma?

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on April 1, 2017

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I am glad to see De Palma getting the recognition he deserves as time goes by. Of the books devoted to him, I' ve chosen to buy two: the first one was titled Becoming visionary, and it was a very interesting interpretation of De Palma' s films, in terms of philisophical - and aesthetic, nevertheless-achievement( and I have already placed my review on Amazon.uk.); the second was this one and having just finished it, I would like to leave my comments too. The writer has chosen to closely examin every De Palma film( which, in my opinion, is a very good idea), and he does so not in a weak, journalistic manner, but with the will to truly appreciate the elements that characterize De Palma' s work.To do so , he exhaustively describes every film, showing in every chance connections with De Palma' s own life, similarities among his own films, and possible- or obvious, in some cases- references to films of other directors ( mainly, of course, Hitchcock). In general, he focuses more on the story line and the implications of the actions of the characters, and less on the cinematic way the films evolve, although it would be unfair to say that this way is neglected , as it is often implied through the narration. At the end of each chapter, there is a reference to the financial success or failure of the movies, and the reviews they received( very enlightening reference which reminds me of the stupidity of most critics and their inability to see further from their nose, and also of the commercial fate of visionaries- remember Welles as well).Overall, one could say that the writer' s is a psychoanalytical approach, although it is never mentioned as such( preferably, in my opinion), as it links the work of the artist with certain facts of his life, of a traumatic nature, and mainly in the sphere of oidipoeal relations.Doing so, he wishes to read the films as repetitive motives that emerge in order to deal with the trauma( consciously or unconsciously). So far so good. And now my objections: I believe that in most cases , the description of the plot in so many details is not working in favour of clarification of meaning, instead it makes the text a little boring.I understand the need of the writer to lay down all the elements and to find all possible connections, but sometimes you need to keep a little distance in order to see clearly.That said, there are cases where he succeeds in giving a very interesting overall perspective of a movie( and my personal favorite of these is the chapter on Obsession).My second objection is about the kind of psychoanalytical approach.I believe that a interpretation, in order to be meaningful, has to go beyond the simple relation ( similarity) with something else( the past, other movies).It has to bring out a kind of meaningful revelation regarding the movie itself( or the symptom in psychoanalysis), a meaning connected to the film that can be objectified and be described as that which characterizes the certain enjoyment- of the movie and the meaning- by the viewer.So despite ( and maybe because of )the many references,I had the feeling that such a meaning wasn' t often achieved( it was achieved, however, in Obsession and sporadically in other movies, as Carrie and The fury). So on the one hand I was a little disappointed as I was expecting more( maybe the complete analysis of De Palma, which is an illusion, and it is not wanted); on the other hand, this is a sincere and authentic book, by someone who loves the cinema of De Palma( and I appreciate he watched Carrie as a kid, like I did, and so started his relation with De Palma, as did I)and who devoted many hours of work, searching and thinking to provide us with interesting points. And last, since I probably am not going to write my book on De Palma ( and therefore I ' d better be humble), I' d like to mention that of the four friends( Spielberg, Coppola, Scorcese, De Palma) for me De Palma has made the most precious movies, the most groundbreaking, and, also, that after- I mean chronically- Body Double( which counts as a kind of maximum), there were only two movies of De Palma I was deeply satisfied with: Femme fatale( which I came to appreciate lately), and Mission impossible( with some reservations regarding parts if the action in the second half).And I will conclude with a question: what kind of support was Pauline Kael to De Palma when she failed to appreciate masterpieces like Obsession and Body Double?

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