Brian De Palma is an incredibly important, yet controversial and provocative, filmmaker; his films range from some of the greatest of all time to some unfortunate misfires and therefore his body of work is worth ranking. Heavily influenced by filmmakers such as Alfred Hitchcock, Jean-Luc Godard, and Michelangelo Antonioni, De Palma emerged as one of the most significant directors of the "New Hollywood" movement of the late '60s and '70s. Despite his obvious influences, De Palma has an identity all his own as a director with his own unique stylistic flourishes – reflected in each one of Brian De Palma's movies.
De Palma is often regarded as a master of thrillers and suspense. He is a lifelong fan of the director Alfred Hitchcock and regards Hitchcock's Vertigo as the film that made him want to become a filmmaker. His love for the works of Hitchcock is clear to see in many of his movies as not only does De Palma often reference Hitchcock through similar imagery but also by using Hitchcock's films as a blueprint. Many of De Palma's films have direct parallels with Hitchcock's filmography, fittingly, as doubles and doppelgängers often appear in De Palma's oeuvre.
That said, De Palma's work is not just a shallow retread of Hitchcock's. The revered filmmaker has directed some of the most critically acclaimed and popular movies of all time. Aside from thrillers, he has also worked across a wide variety of genres, from science-fiction to satirical comedies, representing a wide body of work. Here's every movie Brian De Palma has directed, ranked from worst to best.
Domino (2019)
Brian De Palma's 2019 movie, Domino, was unlucky from the outset. The production was, by all s, an underfunded nightmare with undelivered promises of payment and De Palma himself locked out of post-production entirely. Unfortunately, all the budgetary and production issues are incredibly easy to spot in the final film, from the cheap-looking sets to the seemingly unfinished visual effects. While several of De Palma's calling cards are visible throughout Domino, notably split screens and his use of split-diopter shots, where a partial lens is placed in front of the camera that allows two separate distances to be in focus, they are not enough to save Domino. One redeeming feature is Prometheus' Guy Pearce's turn as the scenery-chewing CIA agent, Joe Martin.
ion (2012)
With ion, Brian De Palma attempts to make a throwback to his '80s erotic thrillers but fails to recapture what makes those movies endure. Instead, ion feels like a cheap parody of De Palma's previous work. The third act of ion comprises a series of consecutive plot twists, each more implausible than the last, piling on top of each other until the movie finally decides to stop. The talented cast, including Noomi Rapace, Rachel McAdams, and an early performance from Peaky Blinders' Paul Anderson, is simply wasted, and De Palma has covered similar ground in much better movies.
The Wedding Party (1969)
Although it was the third Brian De Palma film to be released, in 1969, The Wedding Party was actually the first film he was involved in when it was shot back in 1963. Brian De Palma is also one of three credited directors, the others being Wilford Leach and Cynthia Munroe. Its early production, on top of the presence of two other co-directors, means that The Wedding Party is missing many stylistic elements that would go on to define De Palma's career, such as voyeuristic imagery and POV shots. It also often feels like the student film that it is. However, it does have a 19-year-old actor Robert De Niro in a ing role as one of the lead character's groomsmen.
Get To Know Your Rabbit (1972)
Get to Know Your Rabbit was the first studio film for Brian De Palma and, thankfully, the last of his series of early comedies. It opens promisingly with a fantastic visual trick, fitting for a film about a magician, where the opening two shot reveals itself to be a split screen and the two characters conversing were not only not talking to each other, but in two separate rooms entirely. However, the film quickly loses steam as it attempts to be an American feature-length Monty Python sketch, and misses that mark quite considerably. Get to Know Your Rabbit was taken away from De Palma by the studio, Warner Bros, in post-production and re-edited the film without his involvement. Due to the way he was treated, De Palma would not work with Warner Bros again until The Bonfire of the Vanities, which was a highly publicized production disaster.
Greetings (1968)
Greetings, Brian De Palma's second film to be released, is a satirical comedy about 1960s counterculture, the Vietnam War, and JFK assassination conspiracy theories. The film is about as messy as it sounds; Greetings, instead of a traditional plot, features a series of sketches centered around three characters, one of which is played by a young Robert De Niro. De Palma employs many experimental techniques here: breaking the fourth wall, montage editing, and blocking for frames within the frame itself. While the filmmaking is interesting, the comedy is incredibly dated and often painfully unfunny.
Wise Guys (1986)
Wise Guys is the last of Brian De Palma's comedies and is among the worst of his movies. With an utterly wasted cast that includes the talents of It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia's Danny DeVito, Patti LuPone, Dan Hedaya, and Harvey Keitel, Wise Guys disappoints with unfunny humor that all too often relies on Italian and Jewish stereotypes. Wise Guys once again emphasizes that Brian De Palma's strengths lie outside of comedy.
Home Movies (1979)
While Home Movies is clearly a creative failure, the project had an utterly fascinating, and unique, production. Home Movies was conceived as a learning device for De Palma’s students at Sarah Lawrence College, allowing them to “learn by doing”. The students shot the film while De Palma supervised their work, co-wrote the script, and co-produced the movie. De Palma also managed to get a couple of movie stars on board, namely the legendary actor Kirk Douglas and an incredibly game Nancy Allen, who just happened to be De Palma's wife at the time.
Unfortunately, De Palma makes the bafflingly racist decision to have several sequences where the lead character is in blackface. It's a needless inclusion that only sours Home Movies. It's another reason De Palma made his name with thrillers and not screwball comedies.
The Bonfire of the Vanities (1990)
The Bonfire of the Vanities undoubtedly has some redeeming qualities. The shot of the Concorde ing across the setting Sun as it comes into land, for instance, with Manhattan in the background, is arguably one of the most spectacular images ever put to film. It's perhaps unsurprising that this scene alone took five cameras, months of planning by Eric Schwab, the film's Second Unit Director, and $80,000.
Unfortunately, the rest of the movie fails to live up to this opening. The controversial satirical tone present in Tom Wolfe's novel is defanged through some truly remarkable miscasting, especially Elvis actor Tom Hanks in the lead, and a tacked-on, embarrassingly poor speech that attempts to sum up The Bonfire of the Vanities' themes but instead ends up feeling like an overly-long sermon. The trouble with The Bonfire of the Vanities is that its difficult production is so much more interesting than the film itself, in large part to the presence of journalist Julie Salamon on set, who wrote about the troubled making of the film in her book The Devil's Candy.
Murder À La Mod (1968)
In his feature debut, De Palma steals from many of his usual haunts: Hitchcock’s Psycho, Antonioni’s Blow-Up, Powell’s Peeping Tom, and also, in a surprise twist, Akira Kurosawa’s Rashomon. While its story may not be the most original, Murder à la Mod's filmmaking is highly experimental; De Palma plays with all sorts of techniques like jump cuts, varying frame rates, POV shots, and film exposure. Murder à la Mod is also an early showcase for themes that will go on to define De Palma's career such as voyeurism, graphic violence, and their intersection: the opening few minutes of the film feature a woman changing clothes and then her brutal murder via a razor blade wielded by an unseen cameraman. Murder à la Mod also features a gloriously cheesy late '60s pop-rock theme song, that shares its title with the film, performed by one of the film's lead actors, William Finley, with a relatively able David Crosby impression.
The Black Dahlia (2006)
The Black Dahlia effectively captures the tone of a real-life Black Dahlia murder, rather using it as a springboard to focus on the fictional relationship between Josh Hartnett and Aaron Eckhart's detectives. Due to the film's critical and commercial failure, on top of the executive meddling, The Black Dahlia is, to date, De Palma's last Hollywood film.
