Almost everyone knows the story of howAlfred Hitchcockfought to death to include a toilet shotin 1960’sPsycho. you may actually see it in a very funny scene in the 2012 semi-biography,Hitchcock. Things were pretty different back then, and absolute creative control wasn’t possible even when studios trusted very successful directors. They were, of course, afraid of censors slashing big-budget movies to scraps and being forced to release films that lacked a director’s vision and could be financial failures.
They sacrificed the ideas and arguments that directors like Hitchcock expressed only through the lens of a camera, storyboards, and very clever editing. By today’s standards, a toilet shot seems harmless, even random. But detractors said it was immoral. Still, Hitch’s argument for including that scene was so powerful, this time it didn’t end up on the editing room flor.
Introducing Brian De Palma
Jump to 1984, and you will find yourself glancing atBrian de Palma’sBody Double. In it a woman gets killed right after she masturbates. The killer uses an electric drill to impale her. Talk about immoral. And this scene isn’t the only controversial one in the film, or in any other by De Palma. The director had clashes with censors but nothing seemed to affect him in his New Hollywood comfort zone. He was always able to bring to life the perverse images that his films contained by design, something that his biggest influencer Alfred Hitchcock never had at disposition. This brings the question: what if Hitchcock had been able to “perform” outsidethe Hays Code guidelines?
We don’t intend to be divisive, but we like to spark conversations. The idea of De Palma being a Hitchcock imitator got dropped years ago, because his body of work was solid enough for people to recognize a cinematic identity beyond the limits of homages and tributes. Sometimes, you can still hear people saying he’s a copycat, and all we can guess is that De Palma still does the same when he hears that: he shrugs his shoulders, draws a warm smile, and keeps enjoying the films he likes the best. Of course, Hitchcock’s are among those.
Related:Best Brian De Palma Films, Ranked
It’s a generational thing. De Palma got the opportunity to do what Hitchcock couldn’t, and we can all theorize that his films can be seen as a good representation of what Hitchcock would have done if censorship hadn’t been so restrictive back in the day. The irony is that his latest films aren’t quite restricted, and they even have nudity, but these weren’t the best in the career of the second master of suspense. So, in the absence of a “Hitch without restraints,” we got young de Palma instead, and boy what a ride has that mastermind given us!
Hitchcock and De Palma: From Scores to Frame Composition
We won’t make a list of every single thing de Palma took from Hitchcock and somehow adapted into one of his movies. From his earliest films, he was adamant about including them, but in some cases he went all the way in creating a variation ofHitchcock’s most important films. The similarities betweenPsychoandDressed to Killare very obvious.VertigoandRear Windowdirectly influencedBody DoubleandBlow Up. It seems he always needed to wink at his most influential filmmaker and address him respectfully. He even used Hitchcock’s favorite composer, Bernard Herrmann, for two of his film’s scores,SistersandObsession. You can see more aspects of the influence in this side-by-side comparison, a video essay by Peet Gelderblom and Directorama:
One aspect of De Palma’s body of work is that he never loses control in his films. They always feel surgical to a degree. We can’t think of a better filmmaker for Hitchcock’s succession in how to build thrillers that never feel formulaic. Like Hitchcock, De Palma stayed within the frontiers of a well-designed plan. Inside of that, anything could happen, but losing control was inadmissible. Everything was completely controlled by De Palma
The Important Difference Between Being a Copycat and Using Influence
When De Palma got questioned about Hitchcock, he turned conversations into exchanges about what made the British director so good from a technical perspective. He knew and still knows who he is in that discussion, and as expected, De Palma implies Hitchcock’s world was so vast you could do anything by learning from his filmmaking. As he toldAP News:
As I’ve gotten older and made a lot of films, I can see there’s always lessons to be learned from Hitchcock the way he sets up certain sequences. AndVertigois the whole idea of creating an illusion and getting the audience to fall in love with it and then tossing it off the tower twice. Very, very good idea.
He never denied what he did and didn’t want people to see it any other way. He didn’t need to. His films were clear enough to understand; they revolutionized the ideas Hitch couldn’t express in his career. The industry was okay with this, andBrian De Palma’s careerstemmed from a style that not-so-subtly paid homage to a genre Hitchcock dominated.
De Palma Is the Heir to His Greatest Hero
Hitchcock’s films aren’t the same today as they were back in the day. Audiences evolved, and modern audiences didn’t see things the same way. Not to say they needed a new Hitchcock (though by the ’70s, the former master of suspense had lost some respect), but De Palma proudly stepped up and created an empty seat and filled it at the same time with his invasive style of films. Ever since 1972’sSisters, he showed prominence for emulating Hitchcock’s themes.
Related:Underrated Thrillers of the 1980s, Ranked
In every film he released, he made sure to include plot devices, scores, and even shots, to let people believe he was the next in line. Hollywood embraced this, and audiences went berserk when De Palma “changed” the rules of what could be shown, who could be the killer, and who could die. Those rules had been written by Hitchcock, and De Palma beautifully followed his steps and gave them a twerk to impress audiences through the heavy use of gore and nudity.
We like to think Hitchcock is proud wherever he is. Proud of an industry that hasn’t forgotten him or his shenanigans, but also proud of a filmmaker who took every risk and created something out of it without looking down on the cinema that inspired him. His art is violent, offensive, and sometimes sick. But there’s also love there, and that, we are sure, is what he feels for the greatest director that ever lived.
