I’ll always abide by the church of Brian De Palma. He hasn’t necessarily gotten his due over the years, at least when compared to his more high profiled peers.
Noah Baumbach directed an excellent doc about De Palma in 2015 which tried to reassess this great filmmaker and introduce him to a new generation of moviegoers.
Quentin Tarantino seems to be in agreement, but he’s gone that extra mile by saying he likes De Palma more than either Martin Scorsese or Steven Spielberg.
The main reason why Tarantino compares these filmmakers is due to their central role in The New Hollywood, also known as American New Wave. This was a movement in American film history from the 1970s to the early 1980s, when a new generation of young filmmakers came to prominence.
De Palma, Scorsese, Spielberg and Coppola were definitely four of the biggest names to have come out of this movement. De Palma’s stock eventually dwindled, to the point where he’s turned out to be classified as one of the more underrated auteurs of this era.
When asked last year to name his peak career period, De Palma didn’t choose any peak from the ‘70s or ‘80s, but, rather, a one-two punch he had in the early ‘90s.