Review

2023

Body Double as Formalist Cinema
By Thom Denton
Through the discussion of how cinematic styles and techniques relate to form, we as an
audience can dissect what we are being shown and relate it to our own experience by examining
how they either explore our lives in either a realistic or constructed way. In the realist tradition,
audiences are asked to investigate the lives of ordinary characters typically to make a political
statement. On the other end of the spectrum, is formalism. The formalist is they kind of director
who looks to take an audience outside of their everyday life and present a series of unpredictable
circumstances to unbelievable characters to get a point across. This is the difference, we are told,
between a political message and an artistic one. This essay will examine the elements used by
Brian De Palma in his 1985 thriller, Body Double, and how they relate to a formalist style.
One of the most obvious formalist elements De Palma employees is his use of montage
editing. Particularly in the scenes where Jake is looking through the telescope at the woman in
another house: we first see Jake looking, then a cut to the woman he is looking at, then back to
Jake looking more intently, then back to the woman. This goes on for some time and draws the
audience in. Because of the montage editing, we can feel something other than what we are
seeing, something not shown. Sergei Eisenstein explains the power of the montage: “in my
viewing montage is not an idea composed of successive shots stuck together but an idea that
DERIVES from the collision between two shots that are independent of one another.” (266)
What Eisenstein is describing is the audience’s ability to intellectually connect with the
filmmaking process and what the director is trying to communicate. We as viewers can
understand what is being implied from two very different shots being shown. This of course is a
technique De Palma uses repeatedly in his films.
However, it is not just his editing technique which displays elements of formalism, but
how he uses the camera in a self-conscious way. Many times, throughout Body Double, we
become aware of the fact that we are watching a movie. De Palma does this in a few ways: by
showing the filmmaking process in the film (once even blending the story the audience is
watching with the film being made inside the movie in a very meta way), as well as the way he
allows his camera to follow characters through complex set-pieces in a self-conscious way. This
is clear in the mall chase scene: we, the audience, are following a character follow another
character through an elaborate set-piece, who is being followed by another character. By
lingering on the characters following each other for extended periods of time, the audience
begins to feel like a voyeur into a situation they may not wholly be comfortable with. Then,
when De Palma does finally cut, the audience is shaken right back into their reality, almost as if
they have been hypnotized by the extended scene. Tony McKibbin describes this in his essay
Formalist Theory:
“… the filmmaker manipulates through elaborate blocking, as the camera moves
around the cinematic space to create an elaborate weave that mesmerizes the viewer. In
each instance we feel the weight of the cut… This is the long take not necessarily to
reveal reality better… more to play up the nature of film form, even suggest links to
painting over reality.” (3)
McKibbin alludes to the concept of formalism being more closely related to a painting in its
construction and design over the more realist aspects of film which are closer in relation to a
stage play at a theater. The formalists, such as Hitchcock, De Palma, and Tarantino, are far more
interested in how they can manipulate the audience, rather than showing the audience something
real.
This leads nicely into the final point: De Palma is intent on making art. Of the differences
between realist and formalist filmmaking, perhaps the most prominent is how the former seeks to
achieve a political message whereas the latter attempts an artistic message. De Palma uses
artistic techniques to achieve a picture which is constructed, therefore taking the audience
outside of their reality. He achieves this by using what Vsevolod Pudovkin calls “editing as an
instrument of impression.” (11) In his 1926 essay From Film Technique, Pudovkin explains that
“editing is not merely a method of the junction of separate scenes or pieces, but is a method that
controls the ‘psychological guidance’ of the spectator.” (11) This provides the viewer with a
distorted version of reality, in which they are persuaded to interpret what they are shown on their
own, as opposed to being told how to interpret it. This becomes clear towards the climax of the
film when Jake is attempting to save Holly from Sam as he digs a shallow grave for her.
Suddenly, when the tension is at an all-time high, we hear “cut!”, the camera pulls back to show
we are on a film set with a director and actors. Jake, both the character in the film we are
watching and an actor in the film being made; to this point he has not been able to bring himself
to be a hero. In the moment, he is being coached by the in-film director, he finally brings himself
to save the day. There are layers-upon-layers of subtext and allegory at play in this scene, but for
our purposes, it perfectly displays De Palma’s intention for the film: he is making a film about
making film. We are shown all the elements and instructed to figure it out in a way which makes
sense to us.
Quinten Tarantino once said, “De Palma was a student of Hitchcock’s cinematic
vocabulary,” and anyone with even a passing knowledge of film history could see the parallels
between De Palma and Hitchcock’s work. In Body Double, De Palma pays homage to two of
Hitchcock’s most famous pieces of cinema: how his main characters’ fear (in Vertigo it was
vertigo, Body Double in its claustrophobia) hinders them until they finally overcome it, and
voyeurism, our innate desire to see something we are a not supposed to see. By being so obvious
in his tribute, De Palma is showcasing his style and how it differs from Hitchcock’s. De Palma
brings old ideas into a new generation, bringing obsession from the cheap hotels of the 1950’s to
the shopping malls of the 1980’s, while losing none of the intrigue of the original.