Auteur Fatale: The Films of Brian De Palma

Pauline Kael's famous affinity for De Palma's films aside, few other great filmmakers have had more contemptuous relationships with film critics than he did. Unlike many other cinematic titans who simply shrugged off the various factions of middlebrow—the bluehair feminists, the part-time humanists, the Hitchcock obsessives—De Palma repeatedly dwelled on the critical brickabats. Maybe he thought he wasn't being taken seriously as an artist, maybe he thought they were responsible for his comparatively midrange level of box-office success, with the spikes in interest usually coming from his projects hacking for studios Scarface, Mission: Impossible which isn't to say these are less worthy of praise, especially in the case of the latter.