Un-American Psycho

Chris Dumas

Description

Brian De Palma is perhaps best known as the director behind the gangster classic Scarface. Yet as ingrained as Scarface is in American popular culture, it is but one of a sizeable number of controversial films—many of which are consistently misread or ignored—directed by De Palma over his more than four-decade career.

In Un-American Psycho, Chris Dumas places De Palma’s body of work in dialogue with the works of other provocative filmmakers, including Alfred Hitchcock, Jean-Luc Godard, and Francis Ford Coppola with the aim of providing a broader understanding of the narrative, stylistic, and political gestures that characterize De Palma’s filmmaking. De Palma’s films engage with a wide range of issues surrounding American political and social culture, and this volume offers a rethinking of the received wisdom on his work.

Introduction: The Case of the Missing Disciplinary Object 

 

Chapter 1: Shower Scene 

Hitchcock and the Murder of Marion Crane

How to Blame De Palma

How to Operate the Hitchcock Machine

Everything You Ever Wanted to Know about Žižek (But Were Afraid to Ask De Palma) 

 

Chapter 2: Get to Know Your Failure 

Death(s) of the Left: An Historical Cartoon

Godard: The Holy Man

Made in U.S.A.

Cinema of Failed Revolt

 

Chapter 3: The Personal and The Political 

Bad Objects

The Liberal Gaze

The Political Invisible 

 

Conclusion: Norman Bates and His Doubles

Sujets

• Arts visuels
• Arts visuels
• Cinéma
• Cinéma
• Cinéma
• Cinema
• Film director
• General officer
• History of film
• Art
• General

Informations

• Publié par: Intellect Books Ltd
• Date de parution: 23 juillet 2012
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781841506944
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 2 Mo

Extrait

First published in the UK in 2012 by
Intellect, The Mill, Parnall Road, Fishponds, Bristol, BS16 3JG, UK
First published in the USA in 2012 by
Intellect, The University of Chicago Press, 1427 E. 60th Street, Chicago, IL 60637, USA
Copyright © 2012 Intellect Ltd
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without written permission.
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
Cover Image: William Finley in “Phantom of the Paradise,” ©1974 Twentieth Century Fox. All rights reserved.
Cover designer: T.K
Copy-editor: MPS Technologies
Production manager: Jelena Stanovnik
Typesetting: Planman Technologies
ISBN 978-1-84150-554-1
eISBN 978-1-84150-694-4
Printed and bound by Hobbs, UK
COPYRIGHT ACKNOWLEDGMENTS: From The New Biographical Dictionary of Film by David Thomson, copyright ©1975, 1980, 1994, 2002 by David Thomson; used by permission of Alfred A. Knopf, a division of Random House, Inc.
From “Dreck to Kill” by Andrew Sarris, copyright ©1980 by Andrew Sarris and The Village Voice; used by permission of Village Voice LLC.
From “Brian De Palma: The Movie Brute,” copyright ©1984, 1987 by Martin Amis; used by permission of Penguin Group and SSL/Sterling Lord Literistic Inc.
From Easy Riders, Raging Bulls by Peter Biskind, copyright ©1998 Peter Biskind; used by permission of Simon & Schuster, Inc.
From “Brian De Palma Interviewed by Marcia Pally,” copyright ©1984 by Film Comment /Marcia Pally; used by permission of Marcia Pally.
From American Psycho by Bret Easton Ellis, copyright ©1991 by Bret Easton Ellis; used by permission of Bret Easton Ellis, Vintage Books, Pan Books/Palgrave MacMillan, and International Creative Management.
Regarding the Author
Chris Dumas holds degrees from Oberlin College, Columbia University, and Indiana University. Born in Arkansas, he lives in San Francisco.
Table of Contents
List of Illustrations
Acknowledgments
Introduction: The Case of the Missing Disciplinary Object
Chapter 1: Shower Scene
Hitchcock and the Murder of Marion Crane
How to Blame De Palma
How to Operate the Hitchcock Machine
Everything You Ever Wanted to Know about Žižek (But Were Afraid to Ask De Palma)
Chapter 2: Get to Know Your Failure
Death(s) of the Left: An Historical Cartoon
Godard: The Holy Man
Made in U.S.A.
Cinema of Failed Revolt
Chapter 3: The Personal and The Political
Bad Objects
The Liberal Gaze
The Political Invisible
Conclusion: Norman Bates and His Doubles
Reference List and Bibliography
Index of Film Titles and Selected Proper Names
List of Illustrations
  1. Body Double (Brian De Palma 1984, Columbia Pictures).
  2. Murder A La Mod (Brian De Palma 1967, Sigma III).
  3. Psycho (Alfred Hitchcock 1960, Paramount Pictures).
  4. Phantom of the Paradise (Brian De Palma 1974, Harbor Productions).
  5. Zabriskie Point (Michelangelo Antonioni 1970, Warner Bros.).
  6. The Fury (Brian De Palma 1978, Frank Yablans Presentations).
  7. Shadow of a Doubt (Alfred Hitchcock 1943, Skirball Productions).
  8. Dressed to Kill (Brian De Palma 1980, Filmways).
  9. Dressed to Kill.
10. Vertigo (Alfred Hitchcock 1957, Paramount Pictures).
11. Body Double.
12. Dressed to Kill.
13. Vertigo.
14. The Birds (Alfred Hitchcock 1963, Universal Pictures).
15. The Ladies Man (Jerry Lewis 1961, Paramount Pictures).
16. Greetings (Brian De Palma 1968, West End Films).
17. Phantom of the Paradise.
18. Body Double.
19. Body Double.
20. Raising Cain (Brian De Palma 1992, Universal Pictures).
21. Raising Cain.
22. Raising Cain.
23. Dressed to Kill.
24. Dressed to Kill.
25. Dressed to Kill.
26. Body Double.
27. Sauve Qui Peut (La Vie) (Jean-Luc Godard 1980, Sara Films).
28. La Chinoise (Jean-Luc Godard 1967, Anouchka Films).
29. Body Double.
30. Murder A La Mod.
31. Greetings.
32. Greetings.
33. Greetings.
34. Greetings.
35. Greetings.
36. Dionysus in ’69 (Brian De Palma 1970, Sigma III).
37. Dionysus in ‘69.
38. Hi, Mom! (Brian De Palma 1970, Sigma III).
39. Hi, Mom!.
40. Hi, Mom!.
41. Hi, Mom!.
42. Get to Know Your Rabbit (Brian De Palma 1970/72, Warner Bros.).
43. Get to Know Your Rabbit.
44. Get to Know Your Rabbit.
45. Sisters (Brian De Palma 1973, Pressman-Williams).
46. Casualties of War (Brian De Palma 1989, Paramount Pictures).
47. Redacted (Brian De Palma 2007, Film Farm).
48. Body Double.
49. Casualties of War.
50. Home Movies (Brian De Palma 1980, SLC Productions).
51. Dressed to Kill.
52. Scarface (Brian De Palma 1983, Universal Pictures).
53. Dressed to Kill.
54. Dressed to Kill.
55. Dressed to Kill.
56. Imitation of Life (Douglas Sirk 1959, Universal Pictures).
57. Body Double
58. Body Double.
59. Body Double.
60. Body Double.
61. Body Double.
62. Blow Out (Brian De Palma 1981, Filmways).
63. Phantom of the Paradise.
64. Dressed to Kill.
65. Blow Out.
66. Casualties of War.
67. Mission: Impossible (Brian De Palma 1995, Paramount Pictures).
68. Redacted.
69. Casualties of War.
70. Sisters.
Acknowledgments
Like most other first books in this field, the current volume began as a doctoral dissertation – written, in this case, under the auspices of the departments of Communication and Culture and American Studies at Indiana University at Bloomington, where it was supported by a Chancellor’s Fellowship. I remain indebted to my doctoral committee, chaired by Joan Hawkins and comprising James Naremore, Eva Cherniavsky, and Jonathan Elmer, for their patience and their exacting criticisms during its completion. I extend a further thanks to Dr. Hawkins and her husband Skip for their hospitality, their humor, their graciousness, and their good taste in all things. Were it not for you, Joan, this book could never have been written.
Additionally, I wish to thank those other scholars and university colleagues of mine with whom I have had such memorable conversations (and for some of whom I have written papers) about Brian De Palma over the years. At Oberlin: Irene Chien, M. X. Cohen, Daupo, W. Patrick Day, Doug Dibbern, Susan Fischman, Josh Fox, Paul Francis, the inimitable Daniel J. Goulding, Lisa Jervis, Chris Labarthe, Mark Ozdoba, Robert Kirkpatrick, John Sloat (esq.), and Greg Travis. At Columbia: Mark Andrews, Michael Barrett, Seth Ellis, Dan Friedlander, Josh Lanthier-Welch, Will Luers, Elise MacAdam, Caroline MacKenzie, Dave McKenna, Ralph Rosenblum (RIP), James Schamus, and Shira-Lee Shalit. At Indiana: Chris Anderson, Nathan Carroll, Tonia Edwards, Darrel Enck-Wanzer, Suzanne Enck-Wanzer, Nicola Evans, Erik S. Fisk (esq.), Jonathan Haynes, Vanessa Kearney, Jim Kendrick, Claire Sisco King, Jon Kraszewski, the unforgettable Roopali Mukherjee, Jonathan Nichols-Pethick, and Bob Rehak. I am also grateful for conversations and/or correspondence I had about De Palma with Ethan de Seife, Scott Ferguson, Norman Gendelman, Zac Harmon, Todd Haynes, J. Hoberman, Lawrence Levi, Kenneth MacKinnon, James Moran, Marcia Pally, Amy Rust, David Weintraub, and Linda Williams. Each of these good people contributed to this project in ways that they might or might not wish to recognize.
Thanks, too, to Bonnie Clendenning and Nancy May-Scott at IU for preventing me from missing all the important deadlines. And an extra thanks to Amy Rust at Berkeley for throwing a fine conference (“Documentation, Demonstration, Dematerialization: American Art and Cinema of the late 1960’s and 1970’s,” at which an early version of Chapter 2 of this book was presented). Thanks also to the conference board of the Society for Cinema and Media Studies for providing a forum in which ideas from this book were aired on more than one occasion.
A deep bow of gratitude and humility to the editorial staff of Critical Inquiry and Cinema Journal for their willingness to give this material a chance. And the same deep bow to Jelena Stanovnik and the staff at Intellect Press.
Thanks to Geoff Songs, of the De Palma A La Mod website, and Ari Kahan, of the Swan Archives website, not only for their work (which is essential) but also for their extraordinarily generous help to the author in acquiring certain permissions; thanks also to Ethan de Seife for connecting me to them. Thanks to the great William Finley for his gracious consent to use his image on the front cover of this book. Thanks to Trinh Dang at Twentieth Century Fox for her assistance in securing a license for that image.
I extend special thanks to the great Mr. Steve Chack of the late and lamented Naked Eye Video (SF), as well as to Nathan Carroll, for help in locating some of the more difficult-to-find movies. Nathan gets a third thanks for his real commitment to the notion of the archive.
Many thanks to Don Marvel and Elke Pessl for providing a crashpad on so many occasions, and similar thanks to Bob Rehak and Katie Kenyon. Bob gets a third thank-you for countless hours of great film conversation.
Thanks to The Pine Box Boys (and associated musicians and friends) for providing something really worthwhile to do with my spare time during the writing of this manuscript. And thanks to everyone in the Department of Cell and Tissue Biology at the University of California, San Francisco for providing me with such an accommodating workplace during many stages of this process.
Thanks to Tabitha Lahr for processing the frame grabs (and for the cheese grits). And an extra thanks to John Sloat for a last-minute dissection of this manuscript, and to Dr. Kearney for her last-minute save.
Thanks to Greg Travis, my chief enabler and instructor, for twenty years of potential infinity (mainly embodied in his answering machine).
Jonathan Haynes watched me tunnel through this mountain from across the bay at Berkeley. As one of the three founding m