The Sting (George Roy Hill, 1973)

SPOILERS but who could possibly care?

I've written about the tendency of 1970s Hollywood filmmakers to inflate their genre pics into white elephant art. But I didn't anticipate I'd be throwing The Sting, a film I hadn't seen in probably 40 years, onto the pile. What a slog! It starts out as a promising example of the gambling film, a favorite genre probably because gambling has always seemed so butch and beyond me. All the proper nouns, especially names like Horse Face Lee and Suitcase Murphy, and card terms (slice it to the side, horizontal ponies*) announce themselves as standards of traditional masculinity that I will never attain. It's a turn on, in a way. But lawd, why did this thing have to be 129 minutes? The pace slows in the last third to accommodate, you guessed it, compulsory heterosexuality, a waste of time in a film that couldn't care less about women. The entire Loretta (Dimitra Arliss) subplot could be excised. Hooker (Robert Redford) pining for her serves only to postpone the sting to the last ten minutes of the film. And could the sting be any lamer? The earlier card game on the train is far more intense. We know Hooker and Gondorff (Paul Newman, with inhuman eyes) can't die. So when we see them get shot, the "sting" is blunted. This was the best picture of the year according to Oscar? Come back, The Exorcist, all is forgiven.

Grade: C+

*I made those up. 

Carrie (Brian De Palma, 1976)

However shoddy Carrie comes across as a narrative or even a kinetic moviegoing experience, one can easily grasp how Pauline Kael and the Paulettes would gravitate towards it or much of De Palma's oeuvre as a punky tonic against the more dutiful, well-meaning wing of the New Hollywood. All the President's Men, Bound for Glory, Heaven Can Wait, Pretty Baby, Interiors all stifled Kael with their genteel distance and Oscar nods. To extol their virtues over the supposedly more vibrant likes of Convoy or Eyes of Laura Mars or National Lampoon's Animal House or Exorcist II: The Heretic or, um, The Last Waltz (huh??) was to evince a fear of movies, as Kael dubbed a 1978 column. And at the top of this scintillating pile of trash stands Carrie, a film Kael wrote about it as if she were reviewing the Ramones debut released the same year. Would that De Palma could cop to their economy.

De Palma rarely understood that trash feels most alive at higher rates of velocity. The man once rightfully dubbed "the world's oldest film student" sacrifices speed for his many trademark set pieces: split screens, penis-waving long takes, and, the biggest offense, slow-motion. That he also sacrifices narrative logic is our problem, De Palma boosters tell us. We're supposed to revel in the sensation and virtuosity and nuts to us if we're confused about anything. But as with porn and the musical, there has to be something at stake in the spectacle in order for it to achieve maximum voltage. 

Take the prom sequence. The swirling camera around Carrie (Sissy Spacek) and Tommy (William Katt) works because it evokes the delirium of dance and first love (although the accompanying Pino Donaggio-penned song is godawful!). But there's a big problem with the long crane shot of the mean couple sabotaging the prom king/queen ballots. It tracks them as they drop off the ballots to the teachers and then give the okay sign to the other mean couple, Billy (John Travolta) and Chris (Nancy Allen), waiting under the stage to ruin Carrie's moment. It eventually cranes up to the bucket of pig blood awaiting Carrie's coronation and then cranes down a bit to zoom in on Carrie and Tommy below as they learn that they've been voted king and queen of the prom. It's a terrific shot. Indeed, I do revel in its sensation and virtuosity. And it evinces narrative economy by linking cause and effect in one graceful crane. Solely on this level, an A+.

The problem is that the shot also picks up Sue (Amy Irving) sneaking behind the stage...to do what? Sue starts the film as a bad girl. She's the one who opens up the case in the girls' locker room to pelt a menstruating Carrie with a torrent of pads. So when she enlists her boyfriend Tommy to ask Carrie to the prom, we assume she's in on the plot to sabotage Carrie. As our information-craving surrogate, the gym teacher, Miss Collins (Betty Buckley), questions her motives in a later scene. But there's no indication in this scene that Sue has (all of a sudden?) become affectionate towards Carrie. As Miss Collins asks, why is she sacrificing her own prom for Carrie, a girl she barely knows and presumably doesn't even like? For that matter, the same question applies to Tommy. Thus, the power of the nifty shot described above is diminished by Sue's baffling presence at the prom. It's difficult to ooh and aah when you're trying to suss out some basic story information.

And this, in turn, diminishes the power of the subsequent slow-motion sequence when Carrie (and, let's not forget, Tommy who may have been killed by the bucket slamming down on his head) gets the pig blood dumped on her. Sue realizes what's about to happen and tries to warn Miss Collins. Miss Collins pulls Sue away because Sue's not supposed to be at prom without a date. But the potential gravity of the slow-motion results in bloat since at this point, we have to take it on faith, and not from any internal logic, that Sue is there to help Carrie. Whatever economy De Palma may have gained in the crane shot evaporates here.

Again, I know I'm apparently the doofus for caring about such silly billy narrative questions although I'll note that Kael was baffled by Sue too ("this girl's involvement in trapping Carrie is left too ambiguous"*). But think of how much more effective, more kinetic the prom sequence could be with just a teensy bit of motivation for Sue and Tommy, something to assure you that you didn't fall asleep for ten minutes at some point. And there's a perfect chunk of screen time which De Palma could replace for such a scene. After Carrie telekinetically blows up Billy and Chris in their car, she walks home in a shot that lasts over a minute. Question: why? Dude, cut! Or at least have a dissolve get her into the house. This is punky trash? This is kinetic virtuosity? And I'll end here by not mentioning the terrible performances (Spacek is terrific but you'd never suspect that Buckley is a decorated actor from the botch she makes of her role) and some of the most wince-inducing dialogue since Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (Billy and Chris swear like toddlers or Martians trying out English for the first time).

Grade: B

* Pauline Kael, When the Lights Go Down (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1980), p. 210.

The Fury (Brian De Palma, 1978)

I'm closer to understanding why I cannot stand The Fury. The fireworks don't begin until 47 damn minutes into the film when Gillian (Amy Irving) has her staircase vision. (If you're going to tell me the first nosebleed or even the toy train scene are anything to write home about, then you've got a lot of calisthenics to do). And, okay, I dug the Celine and Julie Go Boating-ish vibe of Gillian's visions. But it's too little, too late. There need to be more "numbers" in the first half and all throughout. It's not preposterous enough! Femme Fatale is redonkulous from the very first scene (compare The Fury's opening scene and weep despite the great close-up of Cassavetes' feet). I knew Showgirls would be the greatest film of 1995 ten minutes into it. The Devil is a Woman astounds from frame one to frame last. Etc. And this is to leave out The Fury's prehistoric sexual politics. So despite all the smart people who dig if not adore this film, I'm moving on to campier pastures. Oh and one more problem: Andrew Stevens' body is underutilized so voilà:

Grade: C+

Dressed to Kill (Brian De Palma, 1980)

I've read that this is supposedly a feminist film because it's largely about a woman looking at/after another woman (the female cop shadowing Liz [Nancy Allen]. But that revelation comes too in the film to matter. And on one level, the ending is an acknowledgment of the shared oppression between Kate (Angie Dickinson) and Liz. But on another, it's a baffling, lazy dream scene, a godawful ending more unimaginative than any of the Hitchcock steals. Risible, juvenile, Dressed to Kill is yet another baffling entry in De Palma worship. Do I much prefer Femme Fatale solely because it doesn’t seem driven by the fears of a 15-yo boy?

Grade: C+

Domino (Brian De Palma, 2019)

It's a mess alright. Plagued with finance problems, it makes for a swift but convoluted ride. It looks incredibly cheap. (Can someone explain to me why it always seems to be dusk in the film? Color correction?) And it ends terribly with a trite critique of "our" predilection for seeing horrifying violence, a desire De Palma stokes by showing us...horrifying violence. But you know what? It has the grungy, late-night feel of 1990s cable fodder. A week after seeing it, you'll wonder if it's a dream you had rather than a film you saw. That's why I don't mind its incompleteness. Makes for one of those broken cognitive experiences I cherish so. And for the De Palma stans, several trademark set pieces remain including a fun, over-the-top climax involving a drone. At 89 minutes (!) with seven minutes of closing credits (!), it may be infuriating but it's definitely not boring.

Grade: A-minus

Sisters (Brian De Palma, 1973)

Sisters starts off promisingly. It's a damn fine film about Manhattan chauvinism. I didn't want it to swerve from the stories of Staten Island and police corruption. And I love the split-screen introduction of Jennifer Salt's reporter. But then the dopey twin-sisters horror kicks in, as it must, and I start to drift off. Quantum leaps better than the freakishly and bafflingly overrated The Fury, though.

Grade: B+