1. Prof. Myrna Monllor Jiménez English 124

2. Brian De Palma Carrie Blow Out Dressed to Kill Scarface
The Untouchables
Carlito’s Way
Mission: Impossible
Psychological thrillers
Likes to use slow motion to build
suspense
De Palma has employed a 360-degree camera pan. Slow sweeping, panning and tracking shots are often used throughout his films, often through precisely-choreographed long takes lasting for minutes without cutting. Split focus shots, often referred to as "di-opt", are used by De Palma to emphasize the foreground person/object while simultaneously keeping a background person/object in focus. Slow-motion is frequently used in his films to increase suspense.[9]
Like Hitchcock, the filmmaker De Palma was so heavily influenced by, De Palma constructs Carlito’s Way with the viewer very much in mind. He has crafted a plot based on the principle of ephemerality, of transience, of allowing a dream to exist only to have it withdrawn. The profundity and melancholy of Carlito’s Way lies in the gesture De Palma makes that, like the cinema and life itself, Carlito by striving desperately to make his dream a reality is constantly haunted by death. In the images of the last scene, we share Carlito’s final view of the world: as it slips from a normal perspective and turns uncontrollably until settling on the over-head fluorescent lights that pass one by one; as people in a rushed and panic state huddle round the stretcher fussing over this “Puerto Rican ass”; as we catch the final glimpse of Carlito’s beloved, Gail who we are painfully pulled away from. She stands alone on the platform – crying – ready to board that train. That empty space beside her is where Carlito should be, and together they should board that train and begin their life together. Carlito/Pacino is an angel, unable to materialize his dreams, to live his life “his way”.
Constructs scenes thinking about the viewer.
Often uses a canted angle shot and split screen techniques
Uses unusual camera angles and compositions
Uses dynamic, meaningful imagery

3. Examples

4. Puerto Rican/Hispanic Actors in the Film
Jaime Sánchez
John Ortiz
Luis Guzmán
John Leguizamo
Jorge Porcel
Marc Anthony (cameo appearance)

5. The Setting: New York 1975
116th Street in Spanish Harlem, 1975
The street is watching. She is watching all the time.

6. Definition of Greek Tragedy
In Greek tragedy, a character makes fatal mistake/s that lead to his downfall, which produces suffering and arouses pity from the audience

7. What is Carlito’s sin? Is it hubris? What decisions will he regret?
How will he atone for his sins?

8. The Tragic Mistakes
Benny Blanco is Carlito’s doppelganger. He is a reflection of what Carlito was.

9. Conventions of Greek Tragedy
Begins with a prologue in which the problem is introduced
Follows the Greek belief that everything happens for a reason and that there is no way to escape your destiny
At the end of the story, the character will experience a catharsis
Upside down, in slow motion, colour-drained, across Central Station, fixated on a garish, tacky Caribbean billboard.

10. A Modern Day Greek Tragedy: A Character Seeking Redemption
Carlito’s dream is to get out and escape
Love, loss, pride, abuse of power are the main themes
Carlito’s makes mistakes for which he will pay
When Carlito realizes his errors, his world crumbles around him

11. The Prologue How is this scene shot? What calls your attention?
Begins with a first person voice over.
Carlito sees the world upside down from his stretcher while being rushed to hospital. We encounter an inverted neo-noirish black and white
Reflection on the last year of his life, Carlito calls himself the last of the Moricans.
Carlito has seen the light now, but the light hasn’t quite seen him, or if it has so has too much darkness. Death looms from the outset and comes full circle to claim its own. He’s on a road for which there is but one exit. All of his life flashes before his eyes in a last bid to hold onto that elusive, one and only truth: the love of a beautiful woman and the paradise it promises.
How is this scene shot? What calls your attention?
What is Carlito saying?

12. Carlito’s Voice Over Recorded to provide a sensation of intimacy
Voice overs are usually by a voice in the future reminiscing about the past. In Carlito’s voice over, we are in the present, listening to Carlito as he is dying and reflecting upon his life.
“Carlito speaks, describing and setting-up dramatic events, as if he does not know what is about to happen – and that very particular (and strange, unreal, but cinematically and narratively very useful) effect is created by having him say everything in the present tense.”

13. The Beginning
Initally Carlito feels to sure of himself…the sin of hubris.
What opinion do you have of Carlito as the story begins? How does his attitude relate to the sin of hubris?

14. Searching for Paradise What obstacles impede his entrance to paradise?
the idea of paradise is emphasized through the name of the bar “el paraíso’

15. De Palma’s Use of Mirrors
Reflections in mirrors indicate that Carlito is no longer part of the dangerous world he inhabits.
De Palma uses reflections in mirrors to indicate that Carlito is no longer part of the sleazy world he inhabits.

16. Mirrors

17. Mirrors
Watch for the mirror images with Saso and Lalín. Carlito framed in mirrors.

18. Mirrors

19. A Stand Up Guy
For how long does Carlito believe that Kleinfeld is a stand up guy? Why does
Carlito refuse the D.A’s offer?

20. Lalín
How can you f….the only people who ever cared for you.

21. Pachanga

22. The doppelganger: Benny Blanco

23. The Con Man: Kleinfeld

24. The Love Story: Gail “No room in this city for big hearts like hers…
Sorry baby, I tried the best I could, honest…
Can’t come with me on this trip.”
Why is this love story doomed from the start? What signals do we see from the beginning? What is the importance of Gail being pregnant by the end of the story?
Gail foreshadows what’s going to happen to them…that they won’t be able to escape.

25. Doomed Love: Reflections
“For Carlito, Gail remains an image which, by its very nature, must remain tantalisingly out of reach, and he is consistently separated from her by windows, door chains, narrative events and the sheer length of the widescreen frame: to film their single moment of sexual passion, De Palma selects that complex camera movement – borrowed from Vertigo (Alfred Hitchcock, 1958) – he habitually uses to imply surrender to romantic illusion. But for us, Gail is presented as a fully rounded individual with an autonomous existence that is the antithesis of Carlito’s: she is practical enough to understand that her dreams of becoming a dancer can best be achieved by performing in a strip club. The relationship’s attraction for Carlito lies precisely in its artificiality: he can enjoy making plans which, at some level of consciousness, he knows circumstances will prevent him from realizing and that, when the time comes, he can easily abandon (the key moment is Carlito’s smashing of the mirror in which he and Gail had been reflected)” quoted from ___.

26. Redemption

27. De Palma’s Visual Style

28. De Palma’s Visual Style

29. De Palma’s Visual Style

30. Carlito didn’t escape the streets, but his child will as Gail escapes with the 75,000 and will raise her child far away from the crime world.
“Sorry boys, all the stitches in the world can’t sew me together again. Lay down…lay down.”

31. De Palma’s Use of Space
In many shots, he divides the space into two roughly equal zones

32. The Novel

33. Carlito’s Way: Rise to Power
"the darkest and seamiest sides of law."
New York State Supreme Court Judge
Criminal defense attorney
Films adapted from his work
Q & A
After Hours (Carlito’s Way)
Carlito’s Way: Rise to Power
presence of racism and prejudice in the criminal justice system
Torres participated in the prosecution of the infamous Sal "the Capeman" Agron. (Wikipedia)
"A society that loses its sense of outrage," he has said, "is doomed to extinction."

34. The Palladium Ballroom 1948-1966

35. Carlito is going to tell his story as a way of showing what happened to the dreams of PR immigrants.
The Beginning
Sooner or later, a thug will tell his tale. We all want to go on record. So let’s hear it for all the hoods. The Jews out of Brownsville. The blacks on Lennox Street. The Italians from Mulberry Street. Like that. Meanwhile, the Puerto Ricans been getting’ jammed since the forties and ain’t nobody said nothin’. We been laid, relayed, and waylaid and nobody wants to hear to hear about it. Well, I’m gonna lay it on you one time, for the record.
What themes are introduced from the beginning? What is the tone?

36. Carlito’s Childhood New York Gangs in the late 1940’s
Each group had its territory
Membership was based on race
Establishes a friendship with Rocco Fabrizi and
Earl Bassey
Thinks of himself as a stand up guy
Tries to become a boxer
What do we learn about his childhood? the reasons he joined the gangs? Did he try to live another life? What impeded his following another life?

37. Carlito’s Choice
“Age fourteen, I saw that. I said, uh-uh. Them’s the humped-I’m going with the humpers.” “How’d exist in the streets? Sometimes legit But mostly hustlin’, thievin’, break and entry shootin’ pool was my main stick.”

38. How does Carlito view his relationship with women?
Carlito and Women
India
Honey
Leticia (Tuta)
Gail
How does Carlito view his relationship with women?

39. What problems does Reggie cause?
Issues of Race
The Gangs
Reggie
Petey Amadeo
What problems does Reggie cause?
The Gangs
Reggie
Petey Amadeo
You and my brother Earl are two of a kind-social parasites with no awareness of the
Revolutionary changes taking place around you. (Reggie)

40. Carlito and Cuba
Who was Nacho Reyes?

41. What is Carlito’s view of the law?
Morris Steinhardt
Kleinfeld
Carlito’s own defense

42. Bibliography
John Kenneth Muir’s Reflections on Cult Movies and Classic TV
Senses of Cinema, A Revelation:Carlito’s Way

43. Bibliography THE RESPONSIVE EYE OF DEPALMA PT. 3: Carlito’s Way
Unsung Gems: Carlito’s Way

44. Bibliography
A Walk Through Carlito’s Way  Adrian Martin