Word: palmas
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DRESSED TO KILL Directed and Written by Brian De Palma...
These gimmicks could provide the basis for a great horror movie. In fact, they have: Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho. But Brian De Palma seems to have been inspired by his first youthful look at Psycho the way other teen-agers are affected by a helpful teacher or a first kiss: he has built his obsession into a career. De Palma's last seven films, from Sisters in 1973 to the current Dressed to Kill, have been informed by Hitchcock's work until some of them begin to look like remakes. Dressed to Kill is the most explicit...
...genres, the thriller is the most dependent on directorial technique. Using camera tracks, point-of-view shots and disorienting cuts, the director can reveal or conceal, lead and mislead the viewer into a position as vulnerable as that of a fair-haired virgin in an old dark house. De Palma knows all about this. His camera glides down corridors and through rooms as elegantly as a downhill racer with murder on his mind. His actors of ten move at an otherworldly pace that recalls the stylized slowness of silent movies-especially in a wordless sequence that lasts almost half...
...Psycho continues to disturb is that Screenwriter Joseph Stefano gave Norman Bates and his hapless victims some emotional resonance. Even if you never screamed while watching Psycho, you could appreciate it for the sense it gave of seemingly ordinary people drawn into a swamp of frustrations and aggressions. De Palma's movies no longer explore these tensions; they have become exhibitions of a master puppeteer pulling high-tension strings. In Dressed to Kill, the marionettes on-screen still respond to De Palma's manipulations. Moviegoers may not, especially those who hoped that De Palma would become the heir...
...product of sensibilities inclined towards the commonplace, the fragmentary, the unresolved, and the best photographs are frequently of nothing much at all. Duane Powell gets a peculiar, hovering beauty out of a telephone pole, the cresent of a car top, and a nubbly expanse of sand. Bill de Palma's black-and-white picture of a black billboard, a line of trees, two parked cars and a man in an overcoat holding a paper cup, beside a wet-haired kid wearing sunglasses, is a display of visual acuity remarkable for its simplicity, poise and verve...