The dan­ger of look­ing in Bri­an De Palma’s Sisters

“Hel­lo every­one and wel­come to Peep­ing Toms, New York’s newest and groovi­est game!” These are the smarmy words of a gameshow host as he ges­tic­u­lates in front of a live audi­ence. The gist is to gam­ble on whether an unknow­ing con­tes­tant, in this case Phillip Woode (Lisle Wil­son), will suc­cumb to peep­ing in a staged scenario.

This is how we’re intro­duced to mod­el Danielle Bre­ton (Mar­got Kid­der), as she plays a pseu­do-blind woman undress­ing. Such a voyeuris­tic open­ing per­fect­ly sets the tone for Bri­an De Palma’s 1972 Hitch­cock homage, which fol­lows the woman after what turns out to be their deranged meet-cute.

What ele­vates Sis­ters above a stan­dard Hitch­cock rip-off, and makes it authen­ti­cal­ly De Pal­ma, is its typ­i­cal­ly unsub­tle and scathing social cri­tique. Latch­ing on to the dis­il­lu­sion­ment of late-1960s Amer­i­ca amid the broad­cast­ing of the Viet­nam War, he makes his con­cerns about mor­bid fas­ci­na­tion appar­ent. By fram­ing the game show scene as a tele­vi­sion stu­dio set, De Pal­ma posi­tions us as the live audi­ence, mak­ing it impos­si­ble to ignore his on-the-nose satire.

As evi­denced in this scene, the act of look­ing is cen­tral to the plot of Sis­ters and is unavoid­able as a by-prod­uct of its Psy­cho-meet-Rear Win­dow nar­ra­tive. Cru­cial­ly, bud­ding inves­tiga­tive jour­nal­ist Grace Col­lier (Jen­nifer Salt) is intro­duced as the lead char­ac­ter through a voyeuris­tic episode: the view­ing of Woode’s mur­der at the hands of psy­cho­log­i­cal­ly unhinged Dominique, Danielle’s since-sep­a­rat­ed Siamese twin and ulte­ri­or personality.

After a fren­zy of blood and Bernard Herrmann’s screech­ing score, Collier’s iden­ti­ty as Danielle’s dis­tant neigh­bour, and wit­ness, is revealed via a tan­ta­lis­ing zoom out. De Pal­ma uses his noto­ri­ous split-screen­ing to show this ordeal unfold­ing from both apart­ments simul­ta­ne­ous­ly, sug­gest­ing that no one is immune to being spied on in this twist­ing, slash­er escapade.

This begins the reporter’s sto­ry of female cri­sis as dis­trust haunts her at every turn: whether it’s the police, her own moth­er, or a pri­vate inves­ti­ga­tor she hires. De Pal­ma makes this dis­be­lief as frus­trat­ing to watch as pos­si­ble, to both point at a repres­sive patri­archy and indi­cate the dan­gers of her inva­sive, sus­pense-fuelled investigation.

He achieves this by fre­quent­ly posi­tion­ing the audi­ence as voyeurs of the sto­ry rather than being immersed in one character’s per­spec­tive: effec­tive­ly pun­ish­ing them for peep­ing too. One excru­ci­at­ing split screen sequence shows Grace’s fra­cas with the police side-by-side with Danielle’s ex-hus­band Emil (reg­u­lar De Pal­ma col­lab­o­ra­tor William Fin­ley) hur­ried­ly cov­er­ing up the mur­der and hid­ing the body in a sofa bed.

Collier’s per­sis­tence height­ens upon view­ing a Bre­ton Twins exposé, rem­i­nis­cent of the exploita­tive real-life doc­u­men­taries that fed per­verse curios­i­ty in the six­ties. Her own mor­bid fas­ci­na­tion leads her into cap­tiv­i­ty under Emil and she is forced to wit­ness the jour­ney of the twins whilst sedat­ed in a har­row­ing dream sequence.

This is where De Pal­ma real­ly flex­es his direc­to­r­i­al mus­cle, phys­i­cal­ly launch­ing Col­lier into the per­spec­tive of Dominique through her own pupil, which tran­si­tions to become a peep hole into the twin’s night­mar­ish his­to­ry. Switch­ing from 35mm to 16mm, colour also ceas­es to exist as she wit­ness­es life on the oth­er side of the lens, includ­ing the inva­sive record­ing of the doc­u­men­tary and the neu­rot­ic behav­iour of the gen­er­al public.

Such an explo­sive crescen­do rounds up what De Pal­ma was say­ing all along: our voyeuris­tic ten­den­cies are unhealthy, per­verse, and ulti­mate­ly dan­ger­ous. The final shot and the last act of look­ing is one of obses­sion and zero res­o­lu­tion. Through binoc­u­lars, the pri­vate inves­ti­ga­tor observes the sofa bed intrin­sic to the mur­der. No one is com­ing for it and the case is dead in the water. Still, he watch­es on.