At the beginning of his career, director Brian De Palma was thinking about going bald, putting on a hundred (or so) pounds and adopting a droll, British accent.
Okay, not really—but he certainly was channeling Alfred Hitchcock in his movies. Some say “homage,” some say “rip-off.” Potayto, potahto, let’s call the whole thing off.
Whether you respect De Palma for his enthusiastic love notes to Hitch, or you think he’s just full of trash-and-slash, one thing’s hard to deny: you cannot look away from the screen while he’s in charge. De Palma makes movie-movies, the kind injected with the adrenal surge of someone who’s obviously in love with the primitive thrill of film technique.
You understand, of course, I’m talking about the Early De Palma here, not the post-Untouchables era when he put the camera on auto-director and slipped out for a couple frappucinos down at Starbucks. I’m talking about the movies where Hitchcock (specifically Psycho, Vertigo and Rear Window) seems to be standing right there at De Palma’s shoulder (perhaps Hitch is holding the egg-carton holder with the double-fraps he’s just fetched). I’m talking about classic De Palma here. ObsessionDressed to Kill. Blow Out. That Brian De Palma.
One of the first films he made where we can start to track this Hitch obsession was Sisters, a 1973 low-budget effort starring Margot Kidder (who sports an equally low-budget French-Canadian accent). De Palma would make better films than this one, but he’d also make worse—much worse (Mission to Mars for one, Raising Cain for another).
Sisters thrives on one of De Palma’s favorite themes: voyeurism. A too-inquisitive newspaper reporter, Grace Collier (Jennifer Salt), looks out her New York City apartment and sees a dying man scrawl the word “HELP” in blood on the window of a neighboring apartment. With a paranoid curiosity that Jimmy Stewart would be proud of, Grace summons the police and they go up to the apartment to investigate.
This is also where we get a strong dose of De Palma’s favorite cinematic technique: the split screen. He’s used it in movies like Carrie, Blow Out and, most recently, Snake Eyes. Sisters shows off the gimmick with a flair that punches us in the gut. Not only do we see Grace watching the bloody finger, we also simultaneously get it from the victim’s point of view on the other side of the screen. Then, as Grace and the cops work their way up to the apartment (which De Palma draws out to excruciating lengths), we watch two other people dispose of the body, stuffing it in the hide-a-bed sofa. The two scenarios draw closer and closer until finally the action is the same on both screens. Brilliant. There’s no other word for it.
That apartment, by the way, belongs to Danielle Breton (Kidder) a pretty young actress who we first meet when she participates in a Candid Camera type of show. The unwitting victim of that show, Phillip Woode (Lisle Wilson), shows he’s a good sport by asking Danielle out for a drink and then later spending the night at her apartment. In the morning, he discovers that Danielle is actually a Siamese twin separated from her sister a few years ago. Phillip overhears a conversation where he learns that the other sister has an unruly temper which greatly distresses Danielle.
I’ll stop right there for those of you who haven’t yet seen the film. There are twists and shocks galore. Though, to be honest, if you’ve been paying attention to Hitchcock (as De Palma obviously was), then some of the twists won’t be too shocking. Still, it’s fun to hitch a ride with De Palma.
Sisters starts out great, but then starts to roll downhill near the climax. That’s when the story gets muddled with some kooky, kinky Freudian mumbo-jumbo and De Palma loosens his white-knuckled grip on the pace. Until that point, however, the fingers are definitely white-knuckled. There’s some surprisingly shocking violence a la Psycho—here, we see characters get stabbed in the mouth and slashed across the groin—and, if nothing else, the Bernard Hermann score will work its fingernails-on-chalkboard agony on you.
Sisters might be only half as good as most Hitchcock, but it’s doubly better than most De Palma.
DVDS. A reporter gets more than she bargained for when she tries to prove that a murder has occurred in {$Brian De Palma}'s disturbing thriller. Danie...More at DeepDiscount.com
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