How Alfred Hitchcock influenced Brian De Palma
As far as contemporary auteurs go, Brian De Palma ranks toward the top of the pile. Releasing many iconic films over his time, and exploring a complex array of different themes, his oeuvre is as varied as they come, and although there are obvious criticisms, you can direct at some of his most prominent works, more often than not, De Palma has produced challenging titles of quality, and this has kept him in the conversation, as his investigations of the dark side of humanity are timeless.
Whilst there are some deviations in his filmography, largely, De Palma is a master of suspense and has a penchant for crime and psychological thrillers. Sisters, Dressed to Kill, and Blow Out are just three of his finest titles, and in them, he displays many elements that are best described as Hitchcockian. He employs voyeurism, helplessness, and artificiality in ways that Hitchcock would likely be proud of and is rightly regarded as the successor to the late English auteur.
De Palma is a lifelong fan of Hitchcock, and he credits his films as being the main influence on his work, particularly 1958’s Vertigo. Duly, he has drawn on Hitchcock in more explicit ways than just themes and cinematography, with the plot of Rear Window used as the basis for Body Double, Vertigo as the main reference point for Obsession, and Dressed to Kill a like-for-like tribute to Psycho.
When sitting down with NPR in 2016, De Palma discussed how “it all started” by watching the films of Hitchcock, concentrating on the first time he saw Vertigo.
He recalled: “A movie I saw in 1958, and it had an incredible impression on me way before I was interested in making movies. And there was something about the way the story was told and the cinematic language used in it that connected to me, even though, at that point, I was studying to be an engineer.”
Building on the life-changing impact Vertigo had on him; De Palma told the Alternative Press in 2020: “As I’ve gotten older and made a lot of films, I can see there’s always lessons to be learned from Hitchcock the way he sets up certain sequences. And Vertigo is the whole idea of creating an illusion and getting the audience to fall in love with it and then tossing it off the tower twice. Very, very good idea.”
Interestingly, despite being an adherent of Hitchcock’s work, there are still titles in his filmography that he isn’t a fan of: “I thought the late Hitchcock stuff was not that good. When he got finally discovered by the French and all the critics started to write about him, that’s when he was in his decline, I thought. I don’t think he ever reached the pinnacle that he did after Psycho and Vertigo.”
