The two 1990s movies Brian De Palma called the pinnacle of his career: “Doesn’t get much better than that”
For Brian De Palma, filmmaking success didn’t come all of a sudden – it took him time to carve out a career as a director, but once he found acclaim, the filmmaker became one of the most important voices in New Hollywood.
In 1968, he’d make his feature debut with Murder a la Mod, a low-budget movie that has since been long forgotten, but over the coming years, a series of comedies would pave the way for a breakthrough – by 1974, he’d blended horror and comedy to make Phantom of the Paradise, a glam-rock musical unlike anything anyone had ever seen before… It was impossible to ignore.
But then there was Carrie, a massive hit which propelled the horror genre to even greater mainstream prominence – it came shortly after The Texas Chain Saw Massacre and The Exorcist – while also bringing attention to the work of Stephen King. From that moment on, the author would have almost every subsequent project given the silver screen treatment, for better or for worse.
De Palma would make many popular hits from here on out, and you’d probably argue that the ‘80s was his golden period, but it was actually two movies from the next decade that he cites as his “pinnacle” – in the ‘80s, De Palma released a string of major classics, like Dressed to Kill, Blow Out, Body Double, and, of course, the highly influential and ever-so-quotable Scarface.
He was on a roll, expertly blending sex and violence in a way that drew from his low-budget roots, yet didn’t forgo mainstream accessibility, and in fact, the filmmaker knew how to make a hit that still had a gritty edge to it, and that’s perhaps the key to his success.
But the following decade, he released two movies that would become massive, and he cites these as the real shining stars of his success. “In my mid-50s, doing Carlito’s Way and then Mission: Impossible. It doesn’t get much better than that,” he told AP News.
The filmmaker continued, “You have all the power and tools at your disposal… When you have the Hollywood system working for you, you can do some remarkable things, but as your movies become less successful, it gets harder to hold on to the power, and you have to start making compromises.”
“I don’t know if you even realise you’re making them. I tend to be very hard-nosed about this. If you have a couple of good decades, that’s good, that’s great.”
Brian De Palma
De Palma cherishes those later years of his career, which enabled him to make such huge movies. Mission: Impossible, released in 1996, was, of course, a huge star vehicle for Tom Cruise, grossing $457.7million and spawning a major franchise, although the filmmaker never returned to it as a director. That was arguably De Palma’s last real success, though, because since then, he has failed to make anything remotely on the same level.
It seems like De Palma doesn’t mind too much, however, because he is lucky enough to have had so many good years behind him, and few filmmakers can say they’ve made as many classics over the decades as De Palma.
