"So I like to try to go back and develop pure visual storytelling. Because to me, it's one of the most exciting aspects of making movies and almost a lost art at this point"
About this Quote
De Palma is staking out a contrarian position in an industry that never stops talking. The phrase "pure visual storytelling" isn’t a neutral preference; it’s a quiet rebuke to modern filmmaking’s dependence on dialogue, exposition, and plot mechanics that play like audiobook chapters with coverage. He frames it as craft, but the subtext is closer to cultural complaint: movies have drifted toward being illustrated scripts, optimized for clarity, phones, and speed rather than the sensual, spatial intelligence that the medium can uniquely deliver.
Calling it "almost a lost art" is classic De Palma provocation, but it’s also autobiography. His work has long treated the camera as an active storyteller: split screens, long takes, voyeuristic framing, suspense built from what we see and don’t see. He’s the director who learned from Hitchcock not just how to scare an audience, but how to make them complicit - to turn looking into an ethical problem. When he says "go back", he isn’t nostalgic for old movies as museum pieces; he’s arguing for a discipline that forces directors to think in images first, to earn information through blocking, motion, and rhythm.
The intent, then, is both aesthetic and defensive: reclaim cinema’s specificity at a time when streaming-era content flattens visual choices into functional transparency. De Palma’s excitement comes from the gamble involved - trusting the audience to read faces, spaces, and cuts. In a landscape where explanation is mistaken for storytelling, he’s making the case that the most modern thing a filmmaker can do is shut up and let the image talk.
Calling it "almost a lost art" is classic De Palma provocation, but it’s also autobiography. His work has long treated the camera as an active storyteller: split screens, long takes, voyeuristic framing, suspense built from what we see and don’t see. He’s the director who learned from Hitchcock not just how to scare an audience, but how to make them complicit - to turn looking into an ethical problem. When he says "go back", he isn’t nostalgic for old movies as museum pieces; he’s arguing for a discipline that forces directors to think in images first, to earn information through blocking, motion, and rhythm.
The intent, then, is both aesthetic and defensive: reclaim cinema’s specificity at a time when streaming-era content flattens visual choices into functional transparency. De Palma’s excitement comes from the gamble involved - trusting the audience to read faces, spaces, and cuts. In a landscape where explanation is mistaken for storytelling, he’s making the case that the most modern thing a filmmaker can do is shut up and let the image talk.
Quote Details
| Topic | Movie |
|---|
More Quotes by Brian
Add to List
