The Advocate
December 23, 1976
•By JOSEPH GELMIS
The L.A. Times/Washington Post
December 23, 1976
•By JOSEPH GELMIS
The L.A. Times/Washington Post
NEW YORK - Though the popularity of an upbeat movie like "Rocky" spurs talk of a revival of public interest in positive pictures about the human condition, the fact is that audiences still can't get enough of the technically proficient revenge movies. The latest sensationalized revenge movie to hit pay dirt is "Carrie," one of the season's biggest money-makers. It's the story of a high school scapegoat who is driven berserk by her tormentors and uses her telekinetic powers to destroy them.
Telekinesis is the power to will objects to move. In "Carrie," it's merely used as what Hitchcock would have called the McGuffin, a device to divert the audience's attention from what's really going on. There is no discussion, analysis or exploration of telekinesis in "Carrie." What's really going on is a formula manipulation of the audience's emotions to sympathize with the girl when she's being persecuted by her classmates (especially the school tramp) and locked in a punishment closet bv her sin-obsessed, crazed Jesus-freak mother.
The essence of "Carrie" is the worm turning, the victim turning monster on a rampage. It is the same revenge theme that is at the heart of "King Kong," who escapes his chains and his humiliation as a freak on exhibit and terrorizes New York City.
"Carrie" is a simplistic entertainment, belonging to the category of good-bad movie or absorbing trash. It's designed to appeal not only to the getting-it-off mentality but also to the youth market. It's a sort of nasty "American Graffiti" setting that pays tribute to kid culture while tapping into the impotent fantasy of adolescence — wish-fullfilling revenge on your enemies without touching them.
There is a streak of masochism in the national psyche, or the revenge movie would not so consistently tap a nerve. "Carrie" is made by a superior technician with fine performers (most notably Sissy Spacek and Piper Laurie, in a dazzling return to the screen as her terrifying mother) and outstanding special effects.
Yet it's an intrinsically unpleasant movie. The sardonic mind behind it, that of director Brian DePalma, evidently gets perverse pleasure in the kinkiest moments of his film. Like the opening in a school shower, where Sissy Spacek, a scrawny, immature girl is shown naked, hysterical, huddled in a corner as she belatedly has her first menstruation (which her mother hasn't prepared her for) and her classmates shriek taunts and pelt her with boxes of sanitary napkins. Or like the scene in which the mad mother stabs her daughter, a ghastly, ugly image that is followed by an even more repellent sequence of knife-throwing.
DePalma's sense of humor tastelessly extends to a liquid plop on the sound track when a hand pinned to a wall by a knife is yanked free. More than the choreographed slaughter at the senior prom, which is abstractly kaleidoscopic, it is the butchery between mother and daughter that has an intimate brutality that makes the comic context offensive.
DePalma has now hit the jackpot, as did his friend Martin Scorsese earlier this year with "Taxi Driver," a similar formula flick artfully made. Their success says something about them and us, their amorality and our masochism.
New Yorkers who've gone Hollywood, Scorsese and DePalma are a couple of the more talented filmmakers of their generation (roughly in their mid-30s). They've each demonstrated a willingness to relinquish values for technique, to exploit a trend. DePalma used to be a committed anarchist as a young Columbia University graduate. Now he's indistinguishable from a cynical nihilist. Scorsese bared a tortured soul in "Mean Streets" and the lack of one in "Taxi Driver." These are gifted filmmakers who are content in these, their most successful pictures, "Carrie" and "Taxi Driver," to withhold commitment, to "entertain" with pornographic grand-guignol blood baths.
Each director has struggled to get financing in the past and has had marginally successful pictures. Both "Taxi Driver" and "Carrie" are essentially variations on one long buildup to a massacre. The protagonist of each movie is a victim of society who is finally driven past endurance to revenge. Robert De Niro in "Taxi Driver" is another Kong figure angry with New York City. You could read the outsider, or anything else, into him if you chose, as some read meaning into Kong. But De Niro was merely an instrument, like Sissy Spacek in "Carrie," for giving your viscera workout, for exercising your internal organs.
Now that each has had a commercial hit, maybe their humanity will seep back into their movies. Each is capable of being a complete artist. Neither has yet achieved what their confrere Francis Ford Coppola did with "The Godfather," made a substantive film that had social significance, dramatic validity and the vitality (and yes, the violence) that sells tickets.
DePalma has done outrageous experiments, like "The Phantom of the Paradise," a cult film . And
Scorsese's touch was deft enough in "Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore" to help Ellen Burstyn win the best-actress Oscar. He's got "New York, New York," a musical, coming up. One can only wish them the luck and the strength to surpass what they've done so far, and to use the clout they've attained as commercial directors to keep growing as personal filmmakers.
Telekinesis is the power to will objects to move. In "Carrie," it's merely used as what Hitchcock would have called the McGuffin, a device to divert the audience's attention from what's really going on. There is no discussion, analysis or exploration of telekinesis in "Carrie." What's really going on is a formula manipulation of the audience's emotions to sympathize with the girl when she's being persecuted by her classmates (especially the school tramp) and locked in a punishment closet bv her sin-obsessed, crazed Jesus-freak mother.
The essence of "Carrie" is the worm turning, the victim turning monster on a rampage. It is the same revenge theme that is at the heart of "King Kong," who escapes his chains and his humiliation as a freak on exhibit and terrorizes New York City.
"Carrie" is a simplistic entertainment, belonging to the category of good-bad movie or absorbing trash. It's designed to appeal not only to the getting-it-off mentality but also to the youth market. It's a sort of nasty "American Graffiti" setting that pays tribute to kid culture while tapping into the impotent fantasy of adolescence — wish-fullfilling revenge on your enemies without touching them.
There is a streak of masochism in the national psyche, or the revenge movie would not so consistently tap a nerve. "Carrie" is made by a superior technician with fine performers (most notably Sissy Spacek and Piper Laurie, in a dazzling return to the screen as her terrifying mother) and outstanding special effects.
Yet it's an intrinsically unpleasant movie. The sardonic mind behind it, that of director Brian DePalma, evidently gets perverse pleasure in the kinkiest moments of his film. Like the opening in a school shower, where Sissy Spacek, a scrawny, immature girl is shown naked, hysterical, huddled in a corner as she belatedly has her first menstruation (which her mother hasn't prepared her for) and her classmates shriek taunts and pelt her with boxes of sanitary napkins. Or like the scene in which the mad mother stabs her daughter, a ghastly, ugly image that is followed by an even more repellent sequence of knife-throwing.
DePalma's sense of humor tastelessly extends to a liquid plop on the sound track when a hand pinned to a wall by a knife is yanked free. More than the choreographed slaughter at the senior prom, which is abstractly kaleidoscopic, it is the butchery between mother and daughter that has an intimate brutality that makes the comic context offensive.
DePalma has now hit the jackpot, as did his friend Martin Scorsese earlier this year with "Taxi Driver," a similar formula flick artfully made. Their success says something about them and us, their amorality and our masochism.
New Yorkers who've gone Hollywood, Scorsese and DePalma are a couple of the more talented filmmakers of their generation (roughly in their mid-30s). They've each demonstrated a willingness to relinquish values for technique, to exploit a trend. DePalma used to be a committed anarchist as a young Columbia University graduate. Now he's indistinguishable from a cynical nihilist. Scorsese bared a tortured soul in "Mean Streets" and the lack of one in "Taxi Driver." These are gifted filmmakers who are content in these, their most successful pictures, "Carrie" and "Taxi Driver," to withhold commitment, to "entertain" with pornographic grand-guignol blood baths.
Each director has struggled to get financing in the past and has had marginally successful pictures. Both "Taxi Driver" and "Carrie" are essentially variations on one long buildup to a massacre. The protagonist of each movie is a victim of society who is finally driven past endurance to revenge. Robert De Niro in "Taxi Driver" is another Kong figure angry with New York City. You could read the outsider, or anything else, into him if you chose, as some read meaning into Kong. But De Niro was merely an instrument, like Sissy Spacek in "Carrie," for giving your viscera workout, for exercising your internal organs.
Now that each has had a commercial hit, maybe their humanity will seep back into their movies. Each is capable of being a complete artist. Neither has yet achieved what their confrere Francis Ford Coppola did with "The Godfather," made a substantive film that had social significance, dramatic validity and the vitality (and yes, the violence) that sells tickets.
DePalma has done outrageous experiments, like "The Phantom of the Paradise," a cult film . And
Scorsese's touch was deft enough in "Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore" to help Ellen Burstyn win the best-actress Oscar. He's got "New York, New York," a musical, coming up. One can only wish them the luck and the strength to surpass what they've done so far, and to use the clout they've attained as commercial directors to keep growing as personal filmmakers.
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