STUDIES AND RESEARCH
Brian de Palma: Dressed to Kill — The Analysis of the Sequence in Museum
Close analysis of the museum sequence aimed
at detecting a personal »touch« of De Palma’s filmmaking.
The paper is supplied with the short encyclopaedic biography
and filmography of De Palma.
Is it possible to trace a personal touch of a film director
by the analysis of only one sequence in one of his films?
The answer is yes, but only with the particular kind of
sequences, those that have no marked importance for the
development of plot, but in which, nevertheless, the maximal
attention and professional interest of filmmaker is invested.
This is the case with the museum sequence in De Palma’s Dressed
to Kill (1980). It is the fourth introductory segment,
first three being the protagonist’s (Kate, Angie Dickinson)
dream, then the conversation sequence between the protagonist
and her son, and the psychiatric session scene. Though
after the first three introductory scenes one can expect
to be faced with the first »story event« (something »storywise«
consequentially happening to the protagonist: say, a
murder attempt) it appeared that the museum sequence
is yet another introductory segment, but highly enlightening
regards protagonist (Kate), and engaging by its suggestive
strategy. The sequence has its own closed plot-structure:
the introductory part (Kate entering museum, her pensive
observation of paintings and her surroundings), problem
appearance (appearance of the man and the gaze exchange
among Kate and him), intrigue (Kate follows the man,
then runs from him), culmination (she has lost him) and
solution (she founds him in taxi and approaches him).
As paper demonstrates through the close, step by step,
analysis of the directorial discoursive strategy, De
Palma succeeds, through the careful and highly sensitive
guidance of spectator’s view (through elaborated Kate’s
POV-s, emphasis on particular scenic details and the occasionally
important general situational layout), to involve spectators
into the mood of the protagonist, and to inmeshed them
into the De Palma’s play with his characters. (Intertitles
of the paper: Introduction; Short content of the film;
Place and significance of the museum sequence within
the whole of the film; The smaller segments of the sequence;
Small Chinese girl, pictures and the Kate’s notebook;
Flouted expectations; The use of the background of the
shot; Was the third person invisible witness of the whole
museum sequence?; The function of the glove; The use
of the space; Conclusion: John Carpenter speaks).
Dejan Jovović |
