It's hard to believe now that Body Double was condemned as immoral and horrible and all that jazz back in 1984, primarily because of a scene in which a woman is killed with a giant drill. Of course, De Palma shoots this scene so that we never see the drill go through the woman. People reacted to what they thought they saw, and to what was implied. People also reacted to the film's use of porn films in its narrative. Well, and the fact that Body Double is De Palma's love letter to all things Hitchcock, and Vertigo in particular. But the violence now looks quaint. Body Double is less violent than a typical episode of Law and Order: Special Victims Unit.
It's also a love letter to Hollywood and movie-making and actors. Craig Wasson is perfectly cast as a somewhat nebbishy Every-actor who gets pulled into a murder investigation because of his voyeurism, and soon demonstrates that he might be The World's Greatest Detective.
Melanie Griffith generated most of the positive buzz for the movie in her role as Holly Body, the porn star who soon becomes key to Wasson solving the mystery of who killed his neighbour (with the aforementioned drill), and why. Griffith is terrific -- it really was a star-making performance.
I don't know that this is De Palma's best movie, but it's his most purely enjoyable. Is it misogynistic? I don't know. Less so than Hollywood (or Western culture) was in 1984, probably. For the sake of comparison, Hitchcock killed two female characters in Vertigo in the late 1950's. De Palma kills one, and she actually gets avenged in the course of the movie. Radical. Highly recommended.
No comments:
Post a Comment
Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.