In “De Palma,” filmmaker Brian De Palma says he used to watch his father perform surgery amid geysers of blood and later pursu🍌ed the old man with a camera to create surveillance photos of the latter’s philandering. “Aha,” says the fan of such sanguinary and voyeuristic thrillers as “Dressed To Kill,” “Body Double” and “Blow Out.”
Sharp, funny and as mesmerizing as the master’s notoriously languorous suspense scenes, the doc is a De Palma monologue (directed by Noah Baumbach and Jake Palt🥀row) backed by clips from De Palma’s work and that of the many directors (notably and repeatedly Hitchcock) from whom he cribbed. De Palma shares a mix of showbiz gossip (to make Michael J. Fox angry during a scene for “Casualties of War,” Sean Penn whispered “television actor” in Fox’s ear), explications of his technical craftsmanship and a refreshingly unapologetic defense of his eroticized themes. Frequently he falls back on the line, “It made perfect sense to me” as he shrugs off the outrage generated by his supposed misogyny — meaning, many a barely clad woman in peril.
De Palma, who came of age with Steven Spielberg, George Lucas, Francis Ford Coppola and Martin Scorsese, developed a vision a💮s unmistakably personal as any of them, creating such masterpieces as “The Untouchables” and “Carlito’s Way” alongside amusing schlock such as “Raising Cain” and “Scarface.” “De Palma” treats its subject as the gonzo genius of genre cinema, which is to say it gives him his due.