A Lost Art: Brian De Palma and Noah Baumbach on Dressed to Kill (1980)

This interview is featured on The Criterion Collection Blu-ray for Dressed to Kill (1980).
#BrianDePalma #DressedtoKill #NoahBaumbach

[@masters1313]

This is one of my top 5 fav movies!! L O V E this film! Thank You Brian De Palma, Angie Dickinson, Michael Caine, Nancy Allen & Keith Gordon.

[@aidanflynn1577]

In “Dressed to Kill” DePalma brought out the best in the woefully underrated actress Angie Dickinson and his wife Nancy Allen. “Cruising” was a great suspense, thriller, horror movie.

[@themightymonkeybable]

De Palma is a master. I love Carlitos Way and Snake Eyes. Body Double is such a treat and a bigger laugh when you know and love his work. Snake Eyes is great too, I love the score and the sets. The editing and camera work are insane.

[@classicartfoundation639]

And Scarface

[@kdizzle901]

You said snake eyes twice lol

[@douglascunningham768]

Snake Eyes is SO underrated.

[@LosHuxleys]

Blow Out and Dressed To Kill; masterpieces

[@merlinoner]

100% !

[@francissookraj3202]

Brian De Palma is such a brillant talented directors of thrillers. The way he set the cameras to get the tension from the story is so clever. Blow out, Sisters, Dressed to Kill, Carlito's way, Carrie are fantastic even the former ones weren't big hits when they came out, they still great film making. Brian De Palma is such a artist.

[@Jeckxdeel]

De Palma is magic!

[@January.]

And Body Double, a great movie with excellent acting, casting, and SOUNDTRACK.

[@savage_skirt5386]

underrated film

[@classicartfoundation639]

A genius, Scarface and Carlito's Way are perfection

[@joegotham27]

I love this film so much for all the reasons they chat about

[@OuterGalaxyLounge]

Why have I never noticed before how much his voice sounds like William Hurt's?

[@PrisonJunkie]

Whoa, I can't unhear it.

[@cannibalholocaust3015]

Actually sounds like Marty Funkhauser from Curb if he spoke “normally” 😂

[@user-um8qx1ex7j]

Angie Dickinson should have won an oscar . She was so Great in this movie.

[@anoxia999]

Dressed to Kill was inspired by his real life secretly recording his dad’s trysts which Spielberg sort of takes as his own experience in The Fabelmans except Spielberg never had that natural directorial voyeurism. The scene where the kid unknowingly records the affair never happened with Spielberg. There’s a covert angle and building excitement of de Palma that Spielberg, still great in his own right, does not have. Being wrong feels so right to follow from de Palma’s angles which much of cinema which tailors to “the gallery” lacks. His attention to detail on the seemingly simplest scenes and moments make all the difference. And so true about sound; so much movies today just want to play everything and whatever audiences would like without considering its service to the vision of the film…it is exactly like “color.”

[@theotherguy5516]

I thought the scene in The Fabelmans where the Spielberg proxy (wonderful performance from a promising young actor, by the way) uncovers the affair was a Blow Out homage. It's different, of course, in significant ways, but it seemed like a tribute in a more generous way than the steal/homage to Snake Eyes in Minority Report.

[@anoxia999]

@@theotherguy5516 yes Spielberg and De Palma are completely diff worlds; Spielberg's aesthetic distancing (which has an effect of intimacy/closeness) vs De Palma's aesthetic intimacy (which has an effect of distancing/alienation) achieved by De Palma's distinct focus of details. Blow Out is an homage to Antonioni's Blowup (we see this concept of accidentally catching something sinister on film recycled often...there's that movie with Sydney Sweeney, another with Shia LeBeouf...I do not remember those movie titles...that other one sort of loosely based on the concept with Robin Willams 24 hour photo...Haneke's Benny's Video, Zulawski's On the Silver Globe...the meta-capture concept has been around as long as film has been around I am sure, it is a perspective that taps into a collective fascination with documentation/recording/layered intersectional realities on screens); specifically the concept of filming your parent's adultery intentionally and not by accident (lollll) is unique to De Palma's development as a filmmaker. In Spielberg's version it is an accident because it is not *that kind of movie* lol and makes it more suspenseful. DP is a freak, making the best of what any kid would consider a terrible parental situation, and I love him for it. Just celebrating the authentically real freaky weirdos lmao. I mean, people make home movies to capture moments within family all the time. Some would choose to hide the taboo/secret. He confronted it at his own angle. His films truly have a special quality to me. I have actually not seen Minority Report.

[@theotherguy5516]

@@anoxia999 Thanks very much. I've seen the American movies you mention (though I wasn't impressed) but not the international ones, if I can put it like that. You're spot-on about De Palma -- he's a freak, and is gifted at putting freaks (and astonishing imagery) on his canvas. In fact, he doesn't care what people think, and it's that artistic commitment that makes him indispensable. And it's probably the factor that has been precluded him from being placed on the same pedestal as his peers, like Spielberg, Coppola, and Scorsese (and Lucas, but he doesn't really belong with them; he's more on JJ Abrams's level). This is especially true where I live, in the UK, where audiences and critics approach cinema as if it's TV. Honestly, mentioning De Palma's name here, even to ostensible film buffs, almost without fail raises eyebrows. Check out Minority Report. It's one of Spielberg's best.

[@shaneschoeppner2868]

My favorite films of dePalma are Carrie, Dressed to Kill, Blow Out, and The Fury.

[@simonemancuso3576]

What do you think of "Sisters"? I think it's his Psycho before Dresses to kill

[@RanBlakePiano]

@@simonemancuso3576 agree

[@crippleboysad5549]

Blow Out is the masterpiece.

[@williamwalsh3983]

The best part of Dressed to Kill is the camera work for the scene when she wakes after sex with the stranger she met in the museum. It happened in the apartment and the camera moves back as she gets dressed and leaves the apartment.

[@roseforyou83]

Such a classic

[@MrOctober44]

Carrie, Dressed to kill, Blow out, Scarface, Carlito's way. Pretty impressive.

[@LosHuxleys]

Yeah a total genius…

[@savage_skirt5386]

i've always thought De Palma's films were more of an homage to Hitchcock, not an imitation of style

[@ojacobsen3727]

Someone told Hitchcock that Dressed to Kill was an homage and he supposedly said "it's a fromage".

[@SmartCookie2022]

@@ojacobsen3727 Hitchcock was long dead by the time Dressed to Kill was released.

[@ojacobsen3727]

@@SmartCookie2022 You are right! might be one of De Palmas earlier imitations that it was about. Too good a quote to forget!

[@LosHuxleys]

De Palma is just the Hitchcock of the 80’s…

[@Me-gs3uu]

7:23- Sound Mixing

[@jakethekipper]

I love this movie. It's a guilty pleasure.

[@hankworden3850]

There's no such thing as guilty pleasure.

[@MultiFribourg]

​@hankworden3850 specially since it's on the upper level in terms of filmmaking. It's not like it's avengers or barbie some product like this.

[@46metube]

For me, Body Double was probably the better of the two. But both shook me by the trousers.

[@hankworden3850]

Boner?

[@d9iego]

Privado del éter licuó los actos substituyó el valor y lo repartió Difusión profusión

[@lostsoul2184]

Nobody's gonna talk bout the ending ?! That last scene changes the whole meaning of the movie

[@ChubbyChecker182]

Explain

[@1165mac]

I’m not a fan of the last scene. Feels way over the top and unnecessary considering everything which has happened before. I don’t see it for any other reason than a final stinger. The rest of the film is impressive.

[@eduardo_corrochio]

Oh? The final sequence, a dream, doesn't change anything ... except maybe it punctuates how affected and traumatized Liz (Nancy Allen) has become after the whole frightening experience involving Bobbi. It's merely one final jolt for the movie audience, even if it was only a nightmare scenario. It's just like the last part of Carrie, in which Sue Snell gets a shock while dreaming (the sequence even ends similarly in both films: someone comforts the screaming, waking dreamer-- as the musical score changes into something dramatically loud and scary).

[@hankworden3850]

How does it change it?

[@martinpascoe7678]

Angie Dickinson is very beautiful and sexy in this movie and I think she was about 50

[@lostsoul2184]

Obviously noam never understood the first half is actually the second half of the movie

[@freakingevilgenius]

What do you mean?

[@lostsoul2184]

​@@freakingevilgenius watch the last scene of the movie . That girl is her mom . And the first half is the metamorphosis ized version

[@ChubbyChecker182]

Eh ?

[@eduardo_corrochio]

@@lostsoul2184 Wait, "That girl is her mom", what does that even mean? Are you talking about Liz? The last scene is a nightmare, never really happened.

[@benwherlock9869]

The end of the film is a bit of a mess, but apart from that it's a pretty good film.

[@leonolaialeonolaia6424]

I’ll be killed for this, but I always thought De Palma’s psychosexual movies were a bit gimmicky and obvious. But more straightforward genres, where the subject got out of his way, so to speak, were perfection: The Untouchables, Scarface, Blow out, Casualties of War. A maestro when he has constraints. Does that make sense?

[@handyalley2350]

di palma phonin j.k. "listen, don't worry about those idiots. i started reading the new book. i LOVED HARRY POTTER."