Sightlines · how to watch
How to watch Dressed to Kill
1980 · Brian De Palma · Dressed to Kill on Sightlines
5 things to watch and listen for on a first viewing, without spoilers, and 3 more once you have seen it. Each names something you can see or hear, the pattern it belongs to, and what noticing it gives you. How these keys work.
On a first viewing
Watch for one shot keeping a near and far object both sharp. (camera)
De Palma and Bode use a split-diopter lens so foreground and background stay in equal focus at once, an unusual and deliberate effect.
Payoff: The image itself is showing you divided attention before any character says a word about it. In the reading: symbol. Deleuze calls an object that condenses a film's whole organizing relation a symbol, and this lens shot is exactly that.
Notice whose eyes the camera is looking through. (camera)
The film keeps adopting a literal point of view, Kate scanning a gallery, a stalker tracking someone, a teenager watching a doorway.
Payoff: You are constantly placed inside someone's act of watching, not given a neutral view of the scene.
Listen for long stretches with no dialogue, only swelling strings. (sound)
Donaggio's lush, Herrmann-descended score effectively narrates entire sequences, standing in for speech and turning suspense into something closer to opera.
Payoff: The music is not accompaniment here. It is telling large parts of the story on its own.
Notice how many mirrors and glass surfaces appear in each scene. (staging)
Reflective surfaces keep doubling and fragmenting characters throughout the film, structuring rooms as much as any wall or doorway does.
Payoff: The rooms themselves keep suggesting that everyone here has more than one self.
Notice how each major scene is built around a single location. (structure)
A museum, a doctor's office, a subway car: De Palma treats each space as a self-contained set piece with its own controlling idea.
Payoff: The plot exists mainly to connect these self-contained sequences to each other.
The 3 rewatch keys open on this page when you choose "Seen it?".
Carry this in: Stop tracking the plot. Track the looks instead, and notice the camera noticing you.