A Pair of Perverse Shockers, Newly Restored
Tomorrow, New York cinephiles will get a double dose of family-fueled horrors, as Janus Films puts Marco Bellocchio’s Fists in the Pocket and Brian De Palma’s Sisters back into theaters. Beginning a weeklong engagement at Film Forum in a new restoration, Bellocchio’s 1965 feature debut is a caustic critique of bourgeois values, depicting the deranged—and ultimately murderous—efforts of one young man (Lou Castel) to cure his family of its many ills. As critic Deborah Young writes in her liner essay for our edition of the controversial Italian classic, “it wouldn’t be too far-fetched to read Fists in the Pocket as an auteurist horror film about repressed violence in the provinces.”
Just a mile uptown from Film Forum, De Palma’s own auteurist shocker—also newly restored—will settle in for a run at the Quad Cinema. A stylistic tour de force that adapts several Hitchcockian themes (voyeurism, doppelgängers, etc.) to its twisted ends, 1973’s Sisters stars Margot Kidder as the once-conjoined twins Danielle and Dominique, and Jennifer Salt as the crusading reporter who suspects Dominique of cold-blooded murder. If you’re a De Palma obsessive far from New York, never fear: Criterion will be putting out a packed new edition of Sisters, featuring the 4K restoration screening at the Quad, on October 23.
