One of the first questions you may ask when picking up author and filmmaker Laurent Bouzereau’s new The De Palma Decade book is which decade are we talking about?
Is this the 1980s, with the controversial Scarface and Body Double, the 1990s with a return to form in Carlito’s Way and the director’s foray into big budget blockbuster territory in the first Mission Impossible, or the director’s start in the 1970s with a plethora of genre hits and misses?
Bouzereau chooses to dub the 1970s (with a dip of his toe into the early 1980s as well) the “De Palma Decade” and he makes a pretty good case for it in his new expose.
The author is not shy about letting readers know right from the start (in the Introduction no less) that he is a De Palma obsessive, so if you’re looking for an unbiased view of De Palma’s body of work, look elsewhere. Despite his fandom, Bouzereau crafts an engaging and informative look at De Palma’s varied cinematic hits and misses through the lens of three categories: “The Split”, “The Power”, and “The Tragedies”. The non-chronological approach makes sense here, grouping the films by genre (other than “The Tragedies” which refers to the subject matter and the lack of financial success), which allows the writer to dive into similar techniques and tropes of De Palma.
Bouzereau provides plenty of commentary on each section/film (Sisters and Dressed to Kill, Carrie and The Fury, and Phantom of the Paradise, Obsession, and Blow Out), but a majority of the book consists of first hand accounts from De Palma and his collaborators and actors. The insights of the cast and crew of each film adds not only credibility to the text, but also the behind the scenes stories that are designed for cinephiles.
Even if you are more a fan of De Palma’s ’80s films, The De Palma Decade shines a light on the path that led to Scarface, Body Double, and The Untouchables, and highlights some cult classics that are not as often discussed in other examinations of the director’s work.
The De Palma Decade is currently available at finer bookstores everywhere.
