Anatomy of a Scene's Anatomy: Sissy Spacek's Dream Shower Becomes a Nightmare in 'Carrie'

<< Blog | Editorial Features Tuesday, October 1, 4:00 PMTue, 1 Oct 2019 @ 4:00 PM by Thrustin' Hoffman

In our weekly seriesAnatomy of a Scene's Anatomy, we're going to be taking a look at (in)famous sexscenes and nude scenes throughout cinema history and examining their construction, their relationship to the film around them, and their legacy. This October, we'll be looking at some famous horror movie nude scenes starting with the opening scene of Brian De Palma's 1976 adaptation of Stephen King's Carrie.

For his tenth feature film, Brian De Palma decided to do his first adaptation of previously published material after reading a galley proof of a short novel by a young writer named Stephen King. King had sold the film rights to his book for $2500 in 1973 and De Palma set up at United Artists to direct the film in 1976 after finishing his latest film Obsession. It would prove to be the first of more than a hundred adaptations of King's work over the next 40-plus years and for many, myself included, it remains the best pure distillation of one of King's novels for the screen.

King was a total unknown at the time and no one had any preconceived notions about what a Stephen King adaptation would be, and though De Palma had earned a solid critical reputation thanks to his work up until that point, he had yet to direct a commercially successful film. This would lead to him being given a minuscule budget of $1.8 million—Star Wars was made that same year at a little more than five times that cost—but it was also the biggest budget he'd had on a feature to that point by close to half a million dollars.

While there are many memorable moments crammed into the film's lean 98 minute running time like the masterfully executed split-screen prom sequence at the end of the film, the moment most folks remember regardless of how many times they've seen the film—and even some who've never seen it—tends to be the opening shower sequence. In under five minutes, De Palma expertly introduces multiple characters and multiple character dynamics, such that by the time the scene is done,De Palma and screenwriter Lawrence D. Cohen have dispensed withroughly 90% of the film's exposition.

The film opens moments before the match point in a high school gym class volleyball game, starting with a bird's eye view that eventually makes its way into close-up on the title character, Carrie White, as played by Sissy Spacek. Carrie does that thing that all too many of us with little to no athletic aplomb can relate to, and she beefs it when the ball is hit to her, causing her team to lose and her classmates to turn on her. P.J. Soles hits her in the head with her red cap and then Nancy Allen's chief antagonistChris Hargensen tells Carrie to "eat shit" before we smash cut to a steamy locker room.

Pino Donaggio's elegant piano and strings theme swells on the soundtrack as De Palma's camera floats through the locker room as naked teenage girls hang out and engage in some horseplay following their game, you know, the way typical teenage girls of the time would. As the camera moves past Amy Irving toweling her hair, Nancy Allen gets a long and loving shot as she walks toward her locker fully nude. It's no wonder De Palma ended up marrying her three years later as he clearly had his eyes on her long before that...

The camera pushes down the row of lockers past Allen and Irving toward Spacek, lingering in the shower after her classmates have all begun getting ready to go back to class. Carrie just takes her time, however,knowing that if she hangs back, the other girls will have gone by the time she's done and she can avoid more humiliation. Instead, as she cleans herself, De Palma introduces blood into the mix as the poor girl has her first menstruation at school, in front of everyone...

Not knowing what's happening to her—as we later find out, Carrie leads a sheltered life thanks to her insanely strict mother—Carrie freaks out, thinking that she might be bleeding to death. These students are already mad at Carrie for blowing the volleyball game, and led by Allen's Chris, begin pelting her with tampons...

In a shade under five minutes, De Palma has not only built tremendous empathy for Carrie in the audience, he's also amped up the villainy to the point where you're waiting with rapt anticipation for them to get their comeuppance. Of course when it arrives in the blood-soaked third act, there's nothing any of these girls can do to get back in Carrie's good graces.

In the retrospectivedocumentary "The Making of Carrie," editor Paul Hirsch talks about De Palma's use of nudity in the film's second scene...

All these girls are seen, in slow motion, in the nude, full frontal nudity. I think it's one of the unsettling devices of the film, because most filmmakers who use or employ nudity in their films, save it for like reel nine (ed. roughly 2/3 of the way through a two hour film). That kind of nudity in the second shot of the film it's very unsettling to an audience because they have the feeling that, here's a director who will do anything and it puts them on edge.

Few filmmakers in the modern era consistently give audiences that feeling the way De Palma did. Certainly one of his most vocal acolytes, Quentin Tarantino,loves subverting audience expectations in a similar way, but Tarantino rarely uses nudity in the way De Palma does. De Palma is even ballsy enough to more or less parody his own opening scene from this film with the opening scene of Blow Outfive years later,which we covered here a few weeks back.

If I'm overly effusive in my praise for De Palma, it's because he's one of the most skilled filmmakers that ever lived and fits the very definition of underrated. He was never recognized by the Academy because he's never made prestige films. He's always made expertly crafted audience pleasing trash, and I say that as a humungous admirer of his. De Palma never meant a cheek his tongue couldn't lodge its way into and it's probably why most "serious" cinema students and critics don't really bother with his work. As a technician though, speaking strictly from a craft standpoint, he's probably second only to Scorsese among his contemporaries—Spielberg included.

Join us again next week when we book a stay at the Overlook Hotel in another Stephen King adaptation, Stanley Kubrick's The Shining.

Catch up with our other editions of Anatomy of a Scene's Anatomy

—The "Real Sex" ofDon't Look Now

—Scarlett Johansson's Nude Debut inUnder the Skin

—The 2 Very Different Sex ScenesofBasic Instinct

—How Halle Berry's Nude Debut Led Her toMonster's Ball

—HowMulholland Dr.'s Legendary Lesbian Scenes Deepen the Film's Mystery

—Showgirlsand the Dangers of High Camp

—Rosario Dawson Laid Bare for Danny Boyle'sTrance

—Katie Holmes MakesThe GiftWorth Remembering

—Jennifer Connelly Comes of Age inThe Hot Spot

—Lisa Bonet's Bloody Nude Debut inAngel Heart