10 great horror scripts to download, read and study

Brian De Palma’s style

Before we get started, let’s clarify a definition. In the context of film and television, “pastiche” is a cinematic device that directly imitates another filmmaker’s cinematography or scene work by directly recreating iconic moments in that film or television show. And De Palma is a master at it.

De Palma and Tom Cruise on “Mission: Impossible”Photo credit: Paramount Pictures

Some background information on De Palma

When it comes to original filmmakers, we’re experiencing a bit of a drought today. Hollywood has prioritized tentpoles and IP filmmakers, and we’ve seen a decline in people building their own stories and making them. But in the late ’60s and early ’70s, when De Palma came on the scene, writers and directors were at a peak.

He formed a circle of friends including Francis Ford Coppola, Martin Scorsese, Steven Spielberg and George Lucas. De Palma stood out as the odd one out in this group. His career was based on narrative intertextuality, with homages to directors such as Alfred Hitchcock.

After making successful indie films like sisters And obsessionhe finally got the chance to direct the studio film, Carrie. It was a Stephen King adaptation of a very popular novel. And De Palma went in and made it his own. He flipped teen comedy tropes and incorporated them into horror films, adding a twist ending and increasing the blood and violence. This hugely successful film earned Oscar nominations for some of the cast.

From that point on, De Palma’s career followed the motto “One for them, one for me”. He would do it Dressed to killthen make sure he follows it all up with something more commercial Scarface. He would direct Body double but make sure he did The untouchables, so he could do it at some point War victims. Yet even as his career waned and his projects were canceled in the late ’90s and early 2000s, he still managed to bring elements of himself into the films Hollywood allowed him to make.

Like the absolutely incredible thing opening up Bonfire of the VanitiesThe film is most often cited as dooming his personal projects for a long time.

De Palma and pastiche

When some people brush De Palma aside, they usually point to his reliance on other films to make some of his major works. Yes, it’s easy to see how De Palma abuses Hitchcock. Dressed to kill takes sequences from Psycho and borrows storylines liberally. Body double takes over the action rear window and adds a few things dizziness as well as.

He takes over the title from Michelangelo Antonioni explosion and the plot of Coppola The conversation for Blow out. And The untouchablesThe finale is a clear homage to the Odessa Steps sequence in Sergei Eisenstein’s work The battleship Potemkin.

Because he does this, many people have labeled him “unoriginal.” That is not remotely the case. De Palma understands the story so well that I think he likes to play riffs like a great jazz artist. While we praise people like Quentin Tarantino for this, I think we need to remember that De Palma was a pioneer. He studied classic Hollywood and found the parts he thought he could update.

This style of storytelling was also a clever way to involve producers and actors. He could pitch his films without any problem. “It is Psycho with a bored housewife. It is rear window with a struggling actor and a porn star.

He also had a distinct shooting style that borrowed from the classics but didn’t sell out the story to honor it. He had no problem changing the beats he adopted into something that served a story that he knew felt modern. His murderer is revealed Dressed to kill Not only is this a huge twist, but it also winks at you in the normal Bates way, showing you that he knows what you were expecting and that he somehow surprised you.

His absolute reconstruction of the Hollywood studio system in Body double is not only a biting satire of the industry and how you have to sell your soul and body to be a part of it, but it’s also an examination of the depravity and filth that drives people forward.

De Palma is not someone who just steals beats, he is a major artist with a perspective on life, love, war and capitalism. Even his studio films have these moments, although he has to let them simmer under service. Instead, he ends up using cinematography to speak to us, with Dutch angles, split diopter shots and long panning shots that keep the audience on the edge of their seats.

Summary of Brian De Palma’s pastiche

I think De Palma is one of our unsung heroes of cinema. Nowadays so few are allowed to try his path. And that’s kind of sad. He is a rebel of cinema who changed Hollywood for the better. There is an excellent documentary about De Palma and his decisions that I recommend if you want to delve deeper into his filmography. While his films aren’t for everyone, they’re a constant reminder that it’s okay to steal and pay homage, as long as you have something to say about the world.

Let me know your thoughts in the comments.