Filmmaker bathed in film within the film:  Jared Martin in Murder a la Mod.

Usually when one dips into the earliest works of a well-known director, one can only hope to find mere traces of the filmmaker’s gestating style.  In the case of Brian De Palma’s Murder a la Mod (1967), the opposite is true.  The micro-budget 1967 film is nothing but style, an agglomeration of the images, themes, and techniques that would characterize his most influential work, compressed into an almost impenetrable mass.  Think of it as a cinematic bouillon cube.  Dissolved and blended into a narrative, it could provide body and flavor.  But in its dense, undiluted form, it is almost unpalatable.         READ MORE