Body Double

press release:

FRI., 9/16, 7 p.m. OBSESSION: USA | 1976 | DCP | 98 min.

Director: Brian De Palma; Cast: Cliff Robertson, Genevieve Bujold, John Lithgow

A wealthy New Orleans businessman (Robertson) loses his wife to kidnappers. Still overcome with grief and guilt 15 years later, he meets her double in Venice, Italy. Working from a script by Paul Schrader (Taxi Driver), De Palma has crafted a stylish and loving homage to Vertigo, right down to the lush original music composed by Bernard Herrmann.

FRI., 9/16, 8:45 p.m. BODY DOUBLE: USA | 1984 | DCP | 109 min.

Director: Brian De Palma; Cast: Craig Wasson, Gregg Henry, Melanie Griffith

An out-of-work actor with crippling claustrophobia (Wasson) becomes a witness to a horrific crime and enters the world of porno movies to catch the culprit. Not content at being merely an elaborately perverse Vertigo/Rear Window mashup, De Palma finds time to present a sharp satire of Hollywood filmmaking (both mainstream and adult), slip in a Driller Killer homage, and take an intermission to offer up a Frankie Goes to Hollywood music video.

Brian De Palma Thrills Us! series: Noah Baumbach and Jake Paltrow’s new documentary De Palma combines interviews and film clips to take us deep into the life and work of Brian De Palma, master of the contemporary thriller and one of American cinema’s most expressive, eclectic, and personal filmmakers. In his New York Times review De Palma, critic A.O. Scott writes “It’s almost hard to believe that he could have made so many wild, haunting and provocative movies, but by the end of the documentary, you may want nothing more than to see them all.” While not a complete retrospective, this series provides you the opportunity to see the first theatrical screening of De Palma in Madison, plus 10 of Brian De Palma’s very best features, several of which will be shown on original 35mm prints.