Capital Celluloid 2015 - Day 75: Mon Mar 16

Dressed To Kill (De Palma, 1980): Prince Charles Cinema, 8.45pm



This film, being screened from 35mm, is part of the Prince Charles' De Palma Selectrospective. Full details here.

Observer review:
Of the generation of confident, bearded, cine-literate film-school graduates dubbed the Movie Brats who set out to take over Hollywood in the 1970s (Spielberg, Coppola, Scorsese, Milius, Lucas et al), none was more technically accomplished or referential than Brian De Palma. His  work has been prolific and uneven, with mainstream successes like The Untouchables (1987) and Mission: Impossible (1996), and mainstream failures, most notably The Bonfire of the Vanities (1990). His best films were made between his version of Stephen King's Carrie (1976) and the Vietnam-set Casualties of War (1989). His most daring films are two brilliant thrillers – Dressed to Kill (1980) and Blow Out (1981).

The Blow Out DVD appeared earlier this year. Dressed to Kill, his masterly homage to Psycho (with major references to Vertigo and North By Northwest), is out this week accompanied by revealing interviews with De Palma, his producer and stars. This ingenious erotic thriller full of unexpected shocks is best seen with no foreknowledge and even better at a second viewing. Angie Dickinson gives her finest performance as a frustrated middle-class wife and mother, Michael Caine plays her sympathetic shrink, Nancy Allen is a call girl who witnesses an appalling murder, and Dennis Franz is a cynical homicide cop. There's a brilliantly sustained eight-minute sequence of a pick-up at New York's Metropolitan Museum with no dialogue but with a Bernard Herrmann-type score by Pino Donaggio, who began his movie career composing the music for Nic Roeg's Don't Look Now in 1973.
Philip French

Here (and above) is the trailer.

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