Noticias El Jove Brian de Palma, Festival,
Cinema Jove programs a series dedicated to the early days of Brian de Palma
  • This retrospective includes titles like ‘Carrie’ or ‘Dressed to Kill’, and takes over the one dedicated to young David Lynch in the last edition
  • One of the attractions added in this series is the chance of seeing actors like Robert de Niro, Sissy Spacek or Margot Kidder in their first steps

To contemplate an almost beardless Robert de Niro in an independent film shot in 1968, ‘Greetings’, is just one of the attractions of this section, ‘The young Brian de Palma’, included in the program for the 33rd edition of Cinema Jove.

This retrospective addresses the production of the American filmmaker until his forties, long before shooting ‘The Untouchables’ or ‘Mission:impossible’. This series includes an unreleased film, his first commercial successes and, in overall, a good selection of movies that show his evolution from the more experimental films from the late 60’s to the hybrid between suspense, eroticism and terror that made him notorious in the 70’s. Brian de Palma follows David Lynch in this section of Cinema Jove, in which, as every year, the public gets to know the younger stage of an acclaimed director.

‘Carrie’ or ‘Dressed to Kill’ are some of the best known titles within this series consisting of eight movies, all of which will be screened entirely in the Centre del Carme and will have a very special climax: the documentary ‘De Palma’, shot during ten years in which the director himself analyses  a vast career of almost six decades.

Unreleased film and cult musical film

The beginnings of Brian de Palma submerge us in the field of the most risky and experimental cinema. That’s the case of ‘Greetings’ (1968), where we can watch the second launch in the big screen of a really young (and by then, unknown) Robert de Niro, a part of a crazy trio starring this obviously independent tape. That is also the case of ‘Murder a la Mod’ (1968), unreleased film which constitutes a true rarity, showing the narrative languages explored by the director in his first steps, far away from the classical pattern he would follow later on.

Another curiosity of this series is the personal revision of the myths ‘The Phantom of the Opera’ and ‘Faust’, which led to the film ‘ The Phantom of the Paradise’, a sort of rock satirical opera considered for many as kitsch, related to the cult musical ‘The Rocky Horror Picture Show’.

By then, Brian de Palma started to be a well know director, thanks to a previously released film, ‘Sisters’ (1973), clearly inspired by his master Hitchcock, which we will also be able to enjoy in the 33rd edition of Cinema Jove. This movie meant, in its day, the first critical and public success, and also, an important push to the main actress career, Canadian Margot Kidder, recently passed away and forever reminded for playing Lois Lane, Superman’s girlfriend, in the famous movie saga of the seventies and eighties.

The next film of the director, in the same line of thriller, was ‘Fascination’ (1976), which got him an Oscar nomination, being the immediate precedent of his final recognition.

The massive success of ‘Carrie’,

In the second half of the seventies,  Brian de Palma took the big screen, for the first time in history, a Stephen King novel, which meant his definitive entry in the terror genre. The result, ‘Carrie’ (1976), was a total international hit, a blockbuster and, again, the launch to fame of its main actress, a young Sissy Spacek. From there on, the Brian de Palma career, who counted 36 years old by then, started to be the one of a famous acknowledged man in the movie industry.

Also included in this series are later titles, like ‘The Fury’ (1978), starring Kirk Douglas and John Cassavetes, and other of his more celebrated films in his career, the intriguing and sensual ‘Dressed to Kill’ (1980), a thriller in which De Palma returns to  the suspense, Hitchcock style, and that includes a memorable interpretation by Michael Caine in the role of the ambiguous doctor Robert Elliott.