368 - Dressed to Kill, United States, 1980. Dir. Brian De Palma.

Wednesday, January 3, 2018

368 - Dressed to Kill, United States, 1980.  Dir. Brian De Palma.

In 1998 Gus Van Sant remade Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho (1960), with Vince Vaughn as Norman Bates and Anne Heche as Marion Crane.

But Van Sant has nothing on Brian De Palma.  De Palma has been remaking Psycho for years.

When we watched his film Blow Out (1981) in February of last year, we talked about the number of his movies that feature shower scenes, and we mentioned that this movie, Dressed to Kill, begins and ends with shower scenes.

To be more precise, Dressed to Kill begins and ends with dreams of shower scenes.  And De Palma adds a twist here.  The knife murder does not take place in either of the shower scenes but in an elevator in the middle of the movie.

Elevator as shower stall.

And while we are remaking Hitchcock, let us add Vertigo (1958) to the list.

Kate Miller, played by Angie Dickinson, is the blonde with the bob who sits at the art museum, which, we are told is the Metropolitan Museum of Art, but which, we are told, was filmed at the Philadelphia Museum of Art in Philadelphia.

She sits with her back to us.  In a state of contented repose, gazing at the portrait of a woman.  No, there is no spiral on the top of her hair, nor does she resemble the portrait before her.  But Kate seems remarkably at peace as she glances sideways into the other galleries, in between looks at the portrait, and observes others in relationship--the man hitting on the woman in one direction, the young couple flirting publicly in another.

Her current frame of mind is in direct contradiction to her feelings this morning, when she was engaged in unsatisfactory love-making with her current husband, which in turn led to the shower fantasy followed by a session of frustrated venting with her therapist.

She talked to her son Peter before leaving the house, informing him that they were going to the museum today, followed by lunch with his step-father and grandmother.  And in that moment she displayed her greatest strength in the film.  Her maternal love for him.  He is a science enthusiast, a science-fair champion, and he has stayed up all night working on his homemade computer.  He is dedicated to his work, and she is proud of him.  Proud of his mind.  Proud of his work ethic.

Keith Gordon as Peter Miller probably resembles the young De Palma more closely than John Travolta, who also played a science enthusiast and science fair winner, does in Blow Out.  And his round, thin-rimmed glasses and mop top hairdo predates Harry Potter by twenty years.  Perhaps Daniel Radcliffe was Keith Gordon's secret younger brother.

Watching this scene, one cannot help but feel that De Palma reveals a tenderness for his own mother, and that she must have supported and nurtured him in his academic quests.

But now consider this.  Peter has stayed up all night working on his project.  Because of that he is too tired to go to the museum with his mother.  And because of that she goes alone.  Consequently, as she sits alone she engages in the brilliantly filmed, edited, and scored cat-and-mouse game with the man, Warren Lockman, who happens to sit down on the bench next to her.  Had her son been sitting next to her on the bench, well, you can draw the conclusions.  She would not have gotten into the taxi with Mr. Lockman, would not have had the affair at his apartment, and would not have been brutally murdered in the elevator.  The dry shower.

It is not clear if Peter harbors any feelings of guilt over this chain of events, but he certainly misses his mother deeply.  And in his grief he vows to do something about it.  He, like Dennis Franz's Detective Marino, and like Nancy Allen's high-priced call girl Liz Blake, believes that the killer, another blonde, must have come out of Doctor Robert Elliott's office that morning, must have overheard Kate tell Dr. Elliott that she was going to the museum, must have followed her there, and must have then followed her to Lockman's apartment building.

Maybe Peter can do something about it.

Maybe he can also save Liz's life, as she was standing at the elevator as its doors opened, and witnessed the crime, and saw the woman's face.  At least what there was to see beneath all that hair and behind those dark glasses.

Liz is now in grave danger.  And she knows it.  And Peter knows it.  And maybe even Detective Marino knows it to the extent that he does not believe Liz herself did it.

Get ready to ride on this thrilling thriller.  Where all the tropes are on full display.  Where the homage to the past is on full display.  Where the dialogue and acting are sacrificed for the visual and aural.  And where the self-referential comes close to the edge of self-parody.  And yet.  Despite all that.  The formula works.

And while your mind knows it.  And can see through it.  Your heart will be racing.  A mile a minute.