DRESSED TO KILL
A film review by Michael Stoneheel
Copyright 1993 Michael Stoneheel
Director: Brian De Palma Cast: Michael Caine, Angie Dickinson, Nancy Allen, Keith Gordon Released in 1980.
A sexually active woman is brutally murdered. Her son, a hooker who was a witness to the murder and the victim's psychiatrist are looking for the killer. The main characters cope with terror, fear, violence and sex until the mystery is solved.
Brian De Palma is usually being accused of borrowing his ideas from Alfred Hitchcock. Using such opinions, this film is a mixture of a Hitchcock suspense film and an erotic horror movie. Personally, I think that De Palma was also influenced by several realistic directors and by Louis Bunuel. Violence and sex are being used as the surface of the film. In a higher level De Palma is looking for the connection between the senses and our behavior. Aesthetically, the film is focused on the relation between what we see and what we think and feel. I will describe two scenes to clarify my ideas.
On the first scene, Angie Dickinson is sitting near a stranger in a museum. She desires him but in the same time she fears to approach him. This common conflict is being illustrated by the way she looks at the world. When she wants the stranger she glances at him, and then she immediately turns her head to the other direction. After he is gone, she is determined to find him. She tries to follow him and looks at every direction. When she finally finds him in a position she wasn't expected him to be, she decides to forget the whole thing. The scene continues in the same manner and the spectators see exactly what the woman see, and also the expressions on her face. The simple interpretation of feelings and thoughts is due to the crucial importance of the sense of sight in our lives. In fact, what wee see is what we think and vice versa.
On the second scene, the hooker explains the boy how to perform a sex conversion. On the background several women conduct their own discussion. Every time the hooker completes a sentence, the first woman on the background says yes to a woman we cannot see. The second woman on the background seems to catch on some of the hooker words, and she reacts in a wide expression of shocking and surprise. The difference between both reactions makes this situation funny for the spectator who understands that the sight of the background can be misleading.
Although DRESSED TO KILL combines several styles, the film is essentially realistic. Except from the realistic sex and violence scenes, De Palma has used several cinematography methods. The tremendous use of slow panning shots increases the importance of vision and gives the audience more time to look at things and to respond by creating emotions. Another interesting method is the splitting of the screen into two simultaneous scenes. As a result, the spectator has to choose what to see (It has the same realistic effect as deep-focus shots). The nightmares in the film are so real that it is not clear if they are dreams or just thoughts.
In the film, life is consisted of sights, thoughts, feelings and nightmares which are being summed up to sex, violence and love. Due to the relations between feelings and visions, the spectator can reach a better understanding by looking at things from "within the scene". As a result, the spectator becomes another participant in the film. In my opinion, a perfect harmony between the theme, aesthetics and metaphysics along with excellent cinematography and acting turned into a true masterpiece.
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