The 1976 Film Carrie Directed by Brian de Palma

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Carrie (1976)

The 1976 film Carrie was directed by Brian De Palma. The summary of the film is a young, quiet and timid 17-year-old girl name Carrie White. She experiences moments of insanity, she can move objects and make things happen unexpectedly. She has telekinesis that leads up to her ultimate revenge at the prom after a humiliating prank against her. Throughout the movie its form is to the climax of the devastating night at the prom, based on the torment and bullying that the “popular” girls pick on innocent/quiet Carrie.

Brian De Palma, “Master of the psychological thriller” has consistently demonstrated a fluent and inventive cinematic style. De Palma sometimes criticized as a mere imitation of Alfred Hitchcock. Though it pays homage to Hitchcock, differs strikingly in subject matter and technique, similarly criticized for portraying graphic violence. De Palma responds that he is incorporating Eisenstein's theory of montage as conflict that "film 'is' violence." Stylization acts to aesthetically distance De Palma's violence so that it becomes a visual effect rather than a naturalistic detail. De Palma's fascination with the dual role of the gifted young person as a heroic ideal and outsider is illustrated in Carrie and The Fury (1978) (http://hitchcock.tv/people/depalma.html).

De Palma's most important contributions to contemporary cinema lie in his inventive, visually dynamic style. He frequently employs such techniques as the stalking, searching camera; the "God's eye" point of view; and an expressively detailed mise-en-scene. A master of rhythmic editing, he often opens his films with an extended, viscerally composed sequence. The now-classic prom sequence in Carrie, with its use of the split screen, slow-motion an...

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...oducing us into the main characters and dramatic issues. The opening must also plant details that may seem unimportant to us, such as the volleyball scene. When you first see Carrie playing volleyball, she looks like quiet timid girl but as the locker room shot appears, you see Carrie washing her body. It plays as confusion that she would be more reluctant to show her body off. As the scene plays you can see the intimidation the other girls have over Carrie. Not being told what a period is and no one there to help her.

I chose to analyze this movie because it had a lot of great sound in it that always caught my attention when I was watching it. After taking this class and watching the movie over again more closely I can catch all the other elements that went into the director’s decision of style, the camera shots, and over all mise-en-scene and cinematography.

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