Sisters (1972)

 

Sisters (1972)

 

When is a travesty not a travesty?

When it's a De Palma movie.

n Critic  Matthew Dessem 

 

There are a number of very talented Directors who annoy the crap out of me, and Brian DePalma is most of them. An ultra-talented Young-Buck emerging in the late-1960s, an era that changed USA filmmaking forever. He started his career with a string of mostly now forgotten Comedies and Sexploitation films, most of which I haven’t seen, but his inventiveness and breathe-taking self-assuredness was noted by even those Critics who called some (most?) of these early films terrible. He also presented us with the majority of Actor Robert DeNiro’s earliest screen work, though DeNiro is not in this particular film.

 

(I have seen, and highly recommend, the non-Sexploitation, “The Wedding Party” (released in 1969, but actually made in 1963 while DePalma was still a student), a Comedy about a rich family’s wedding that keeps verging on the edge of chaos).

 

In many ways, DePalma reflected the USA’s embrace of Auteur Theory, that the Director was the true Author of the film, but at the heart of Auteurism also was the pursuit of a more Personal Document, and I have seen little convincingly personal in most of DePalma’s films, even his best ones. He loves cinema, and everything he does is meant as a demonstration, recreation, tweaking of, and expanding upon, what he loves in other’s work. Unless you believe he’s as Misogynistic as a number of his films have turned out to be, there’s no DePalma in any DePalma except DePalma showing off how good his is at what he does.

 

“Sisters” changed the trajectory of DePalma’s career. It was his first film to get wide distribution and Critical attention, was much praised, and for a decade to come, it guided a huge percentage of the projects he was involved with. DePalma had many favorite Filmmakers he tried to emulate, but none was more important than Director Alfred Hitchcock. Here, the Hitchcock homages were unsubtle, the audience recognized them, responded positively, and DePalma said so himself:

 

“I have found that people who like and are knowledgeable about Hitchcock also like Sisters—they know the references I am making to his films and they seem to appreciate it all the more for that. Which is good, because you could so easily be attacked as a tawdry Hitchcock rip-off.”

 

Well, actually, the film was “tawdry,” but that’s not always a bad thing.

 

Across DePalma’s next nine films (1974-1984), at least four take these Homages to the level of aping, this eventually become a running joke among Critics and Audiences alike, though it should be said, that running joke was often quite profitable. Also, DePalma is a Screenwriter, he at least partially wrote all the Hitchcock-aping movies (this one he co-Wrote with Louisa Rose) yet of the other five, all but two were based on other’s screenplays.

 

This film is trash, but there’s nothing wrong with that. It also includes much to entrance you into its trashiness, but other aspects make one wish he took the Themes he dangled in front of us a bit more seriously.

 

I liked all the sly jokes about Staten Island and its back-seat position in how native New Yorkers view that smallest of the five Boroughs in this City. The Heroes, tenacious Journalist Grace Collier (Jennifer Salt) and Private Investigator Joseph Larch (Charles During) are a great, understated, comic Detective Team, and their out-of-placeness in what is essentially a gruesome Horror film adds to the pleasures instead of detracting.

 

On the other hand …

 

From the very first scene, DePalma makes Voyeurism his subject, and his camera is so skilled, so he promises to explore that Theme, but doesn’t. DePalma often does this, promising much more than he delivers. Also, this is a Psychological Horror inspired, loosely, by a true story, but the film’s Psychology is shallow (I might be being too kind) bearing almost no relationship to the real-world tragedy of Siamese Twins Masha and Dasha Krivoshlyopova that provided the kernel of the idea; but again, DePalma is a Master, and you might be fooled into thinking he actually has something to say.

 

The film opens with some Low-, Sitcom-level, Comedy, but that isn’t the complaint that it sounds like, as the scene proves pretty clever; but again, after the clever introduction of Satirical ideas, they never raise their heads again.

 

Character Philip Woode (Lisle Wilson) is in a Locker Room and notices that, improbability, Construction Workers have torn down the wall between the Men’s and Women’s Locker Rooms and just left it like that. Soon an attractive blind woman (Margo Kidder) enters, unaware Philip can observe her, and begins undressing. Philip is tempted to violate her assumed privacy.

 

Freeze frame, then the reveal. This entire thing proves to be a set-up for a tasteless TV show called “Peeping Toms,” which is in the style of “Candid Camera” (first aired in 1948). The Host (uncredited) takes a poll from the Studio Audience as to if Philip will act like a gentleman or not.

 

Phillip proves to be a proper gentleman, the Audience cheers him, and he’s introduced to the not-really-blind girl, an Actress named Danielle Breton. Phillip and Danielle hit it off, go on a date, and spend the night together. In the morning Danielle tells Phillip she used to be one-half of a famous Siamese Twin pair, now separated, and the other, Domenic, is visiting, and that is both Sisters’ Birthday. Phillip goes out to by both a Birthday Cake, returns, and –

 

Well, that’s when the Horror movie starts.

 

Starting here, it becomes a game of “Let’s Have Fun with Hitchcock.” Phillip, the apparent Main Character, is brutally Murdered after a long stretch of us thinking we were in a much different movie (“Psycho” (1960)). This is observed through the widow by a neighbor across the way (“Rear Window” (1954)). The hiding the victim's body is done in a tense, and exceptionally long, single take, and given the time pressure, the Body needs to be hidden in plain sight (“Rope” (1948)). The Villains succeed in duping the Police, leaving the young female Witness with few allies and a Mystery to solve even though virtually nobody believes her story (“The Lady Vanishes” (1938)). DePalma even secured Composer Bernard Herman, Hitchcock’s favorite but by then semi-retired, and there was much praise of the film’s music.

 

De Palma told an amusing story about working Hermann:

 

Herman: "That's TERRIBLE!"

DePalma: "What's wrong with it?"

Herman: "Nothing happens in this movie for forty minutes!"

DePalma: "Yes, that's the idea. There is a slow beginning—you know, like ‘Psycho,’ where the murder doesn't happen until about 40 minutes into the picture." Herman: "YOU are not Hitchcock; for Hitchcock they will WAIT!"

 

In fairness to DePalma, we waited, and it wasn’t 40-minutes, it was only 27.

 

What I’ve yet to mention is that Character Phillip is Black man and Danielle is White, deliberate piece button-pushing, but after some snide references in the first fifteen minutes, the obvious Racial issues are narely addressed thereafter (though one Cop does say, “These people [Blacks] are always stabbing each other”), and there’s not another single Black Character in the film; more of DePalma’s promising more than he delivers. He pushes our buttons, he rings our bells, and then he walks away.

 

Okay, back to the Witness, the woman across the street, that’s Journalist Grace. She dutifully she called the Police, but there’s no Body, Blood, or any sign of Struggle. The Police were already inclined to be dismissive of Grace even before the call, she’s Professionally Frustrated because her Newspaper, a tiny local called Staten Island Panorama, had an aversion to serious news, and Grace’s attempts at Exposes have annoyed many.

 

Not backing off, she hires PI Joesph from the Brooklyn Institute of Modern Investigation (another snub to Staten Island) and the rest of the film them trying to figure out where the Dead Body is and untangling the Motive. The story keeps going back-and-forth between Grace and Joesph’s Investigation, then Danielle, and then to Danielle’s creepy ex-husband, Dr. Emil Breton (William Finley). Emil becomes an Accessory After-the-Fact in the Murder and Plots against all who potentially threaten Danielle or sister Dominique (Kidder again) and proves to be almost as crazy as the Killer. Emil’s relationship with Danielle goes back when the sisters were still physically attached and the Trauma of that separation left Dominique seriously Mentally Ill. In addition to Hitchcock, the film references Roman Polanski’s “Repulsion” (1965) but without any attempt at the other film’s Psychological Depth.

 

More wild twists will follow, none of them especially logical but most all full of delicious sordidness, so I don’t want to spoil it.  I will say the end is super wicked.

 

DePalma was particularly skilled with split-screen shots, a mannerism that had fallen out-of-fashion during the early Sound Era, but had a temporary revival in the late ‘60s & ‘70s. No other Director seemed to have DePalma’s touch though (a far more respected Director, Norman Jewison, employed them in “The Thomas Crown Affair” (1968) to far less effect). Also, spit-screen often didn’t work on small TV screens, so the revived fad soon faded.

 

An example of how DePalma applied it was Grace telephoning the police in one frame, while the other displayed some of her old Newspaper columns. Another was two angles of the same hallway outside Danielle’s apartment with Grace and Detective Kelly (Dolph Sweet) knocking on the door and Emil hiding from them just a feet away.

 

DePalma is often praised for the performances in his films but, paradoxically, not known to heavily Direct his Actors. Instead, he casts his films with exceptional care, and given how low-budget his early films were, that involved using the same persons over-and-over (examples: Actors During, Finely, Kidder, and Salt). I’ve noticed that he does not rely on the same Casting Director consistently, and in this case there was no credited Casting Director at all, so he must spent his career taking charge of these selections himself. That’s his legit Auteurism, he’s intimately overseeing all; as I’ve said, he often Wrote his films, and he designed them in such a way that he would be, inevitably, be taking a leading role in the Editing process (here the credited Editor was future Oscar-Winner Paul Hirsch, who had worked with DePalma before and convinced DePalma to approach Composer Herman).

 

With a female Psycho-Killer running amok, the roles all the female Characters play, and the Eroticization of Violence, things present in so many of DePalma’s films, the issue of Misogyny can’t be ignored. Film Scholar Robin Wood wrote that the film "analyzes the ways in which women are oppressed within patriarchy society on two levels, the professional … and the psychosexual … If the monster is defined as that which threatens normality, it follows that … one can define the monster of ‘Sisters’ as women's liberation."

 

Misogyny is to be found here, but also Feminist themes. Journalist Grace is a plucky as that other famous fictional Journalist lady, Lois Lane (debuting in a comic book, Action Comics #1 (1938), in the first published Superman story, and Actress Kidder, not Actress Salt, would play Character Lane just a few years later in big-budget movie version of “Superman” (1978)). Grace is a doggedly persistent outsider digging in her heels to finally get heard in this man’s world, but also repeatedly interrupting her pursuit of Justice is her nagging mother Peyson (Mary Davenport), "The Cunningham girl is engaged. He's a doctor. Well, he's really a veterinarian, but all the animals are owned by wealthy people." Peyson also suggests the Grace’s agitation about her "little job" is being triggered by diet pills.

 

DePalma has been quoted as saying, "Unfortunately, most movies derive from a literary rather than a visual intent." Going back to Critic Dessem, he observed, “This probably explains why so few of his characters are three-dimensional. But it also means that there are a few scenes that would never work on the page, but succeed on film for strictly visual reasons.” Though Dessem was dismissive of some aspects of the film, he also pointed out some deft visual jokes DePalma worked in, specific things that enhance the film, but were unlikely to be meaningful conveyed in prose. (Unusual for its day, “Sisters” doesn’t seem to have a tie-in novelization).

 

Among the praise:

 

Critic Kevin Thomas, it’s a "witty homage to Hitchcock … [a] low budget but high style scare show."

 

Derek Hill, "...arguably De Palma's best, most entertaining film. It contains enough inspired wickedness and lunacy that it would have made even Hitchcock jealous.”


Glenn Erickson, "’Sisters’ is one of De Palma's best films, better than any of his subsequent horror thrillers. It's so good, in fact, that later attempts like ‘Dressed to Kill’ (1980) and ‘Body Double’ (1984), lacking both the novelty and the inspiration of ‘Sisters,’ come off as derivative and devoid of imagination, as if De Palma had become some kind of cinema Sisyphus, doomed forever to repeat the same meaningless homages...De Palma has several clever sequences that seem wholly his own, for instance, the Life Magazine newsreel story on the twins that provides very effective exposition. But ‘Sisters’ is best remembered for two killer scenes, the asylum nightmare and the split screen murder."

 

JJB of The DVD Journal, “a relentless focus on mutants and freaks of nature, is a film designed to make you very, very uncomfortable, despite the everyday nature of the lead actors.”

David Thomson, “an artful homage to Hitchcock. It is a psychological suspense film, drawing upon Psycho but still raw with the background naturalism of student films.”

 

John McCarty, "Brian De Palma's Sisters is the freshest, most gripping suspense thriller to hit movie screens since ‘Night of the Living Dead’ [1968]. It is also the most insightful and deeply felt homage to the art of Alfred Hitchcock that a devoted admirer has yet produced.”

 

Roger Ebert, "In a movie industry filled with young actresses who look great but can't act so well (especially when they've got to play intelligent characters), De Palma has cast two of the exceptions: Margot Kidder and Jennifer Salt. Both of them are really fine, but Jennifer Salt is the bigger surprise because she's so convincing as the tough, stubborn, doggedly persistent outsider. It's a classic Hitchcock role.”

James O’Neill, "Although filled with wild inconsistencies and lurid excesses, this film is acted and directed with such style and verve that it hardly matters."

 

The film was remade in 2006. I haven’t seen it, but few seemed to like it.

 

Trailer:

Sisters (1973) - Trailer (youtube.com)