Brian De Palma has been growing better and better. Each time a new film of his opens, everything he has done before seems to have been preparation for it." In his review of "Femme Fatale", Roger Ebert wrote about the director: "De Palma deserves more honor as a director. Consider also these titles: "Sisters", "Blow Out", "The Fury", "Dressed to Kill", "Carrie", "Scarface", "Wise Guys", "Casualties of War", "Carlito's Way", "Mission: Impossible". Yes, there are a few failures along the way ("Snake Eyes", "Mission to Mars", "The Bonfire of the Vanities"), but look at the range here, and reflect that these movies contain
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