Brian De Palma film it retains De Palma's considerable visual flair, but points more toward his work in mainstream entertainments such as "", the thematic complex thriller for which he is now better known. For many film-goers, De Palma's gangster films, most notably "Scarface" and "Carlito's Way", pushed the envelope of on-screen violence and depravity, and yet greatly vary from one another in both style and content and also illustrate De Palma's evolution as a film-maker. In essence, the excesses of "Scarface" contrast with the more emotional tragedy of "Carlito's Way". Both films feature Al Pacino in what has become a fruitful working
Brian De Palma enrolled at the newly coed Sarah Lawrence College as a graduate student in their theater department in the early 1960s, becoming one of the first male students among a female population. Once there, influences as various as drama teacher Wilford Leach, the Maysles brothers, Michelangelo Antonioni, Jean-Luc Godard, Andy Warhol, and Alfred Hitchcock impressed upon De Palma the many styles and themes that would shape his own cinema in the coming decades. An early association with a young Robert De Niro resulted in "The Wedding Party". The film, which was co-directed with Leach and producer Cynthia Munroe, had been shot