"No realism in Passion, but formalism at all costs. No plausibility either, but suspense, pitfalls, daydreams or nightmares that seem to fit into each other. Passion is also a film of women, mostly bisexual, a film where the one man band will leave pale and deceived like a rookie. Who is nice: blonde, brunette or redhead? Mystery. And if they were one? The twists succeed more twists in a game of mirrors where revenge leads the dance. Passion is nearly a genre film. De Palma returns to his 70s Hitchcockian vein, a period when he amused himself by making variations on the themes of the old master, to draw his own cinema, both haunted by the model and its ability to give life and day to a very personal film.

"De Palma said one day, in a bonus DVD: 'Hitchcock, I know very well of what he speaks.' Another way of saying acquaintances between fantasy filmmakers of Catholic formation, where sex is at the same time a horrific vision and completely exciting. Filmed with great precision, uncluttered, with a knife, with a mastery of every second, Passion is undoubtedly one of the finest films of Brian De Palma."

"Psycho-Sexual probes De Palma’s early Vietnam War draft-dodger comedies as well as his film Dressed to Kill, along with Scorsese’s Taxi Driver and Friedkin’s Cruising as reactions to and inventive elaborations upon Hitchcock’s gendered themes and aesthetic approaches. Greven demonstrates how the significant political achievement of these films arises from a deeply disturbing, violent, even sorrowful psychological and social context. Engaging with contemporary theories of pornography while establishing pornography’s emergence during the classical Hollywood era, Greven argues that New Hollywood filmmakers seized upon Hitchcock’s radical decentering of heterosexual male dominance. The resulting images of heterosexual male ambivalence allowed for an investment in same-sex desire; an aura of homophobia became informed by a fascination with the homoerotic. Psycho-Sexual also explores the broader gender crisis and disorganization that permeated the Cold War and New Hollywood eras, reimagining the defining premises of Hitchcock criticism."

Also included in the series are Jim McBride’s David Holzman’s Diary, John Cassavetes' Shadows, and two early films from Martin Scorsese, Who's That Knocking At My Door and Mean Streets. Hoberman tells Rapold, "One of the ironic things about Mean Streets is that it’s mainly shot in Los Angeles. But the New York stuff is so vivid that he’s really able to make it feel like it’s completely a New York film."

De Niro recently referred to this period of independent filmmaking in an interview with The Wrap's Brent Lang. "There are so many more independent films than there were when I was in my 20s or 30s," De Niro said in response to a question about the state of the movie business. "You had Brian De Palma, Robert Downey and some other people, but the independent films being made then were a different type of thing. They were done on a Super 8, not a feature like they are today, and they didn’t get studio distribution in the same way."

1. Bernie (Richard Linklater)
2. Cosmopolis (David Cronenberg)
3. Passion (Brian De Palma)
4. Zero Dark Thirty (Kathryn Bigelow)
5. Ensayo final para utopía (Andrés Duque)
6. The Master (Paul Thomas Anderson)
7. Bleak Night (Yoon Sung-hyun)
8. Like Someone in Love (Abbas Kiarostami)
9. Enero 2012 (O la apoteosis de Isabel la Católica) (Colectivo Los Hijos)
10. Spring Breakers (Harmony Korine)

Rutanya Alda appeared in both Hi, Mom! and The Fury. A year after the latter, Durning and Alda both appeared in the cult movie When A Stranger Calls (and Durning later reprised his role in the 1993 made-for-TV sequel). In 1986, Durning appeared in Cassavetes' Big Trouble (Cassavetes would take acting jobs in films such as De Palma's The Fury in order to help finance his own independent features). That same year, Durning appeared in Tough Guys, which starred Kirk Douglas, the big name star of The Fury.

Just prior to the incident on the stairs in The Fury, Durning's character tells Gillian that at her age, his one great ambition was to be Fred Astaire. In fact, Durning was once a dance instructor at the Fred Astaire Dance Studios, where he met his first wife, Carol, a fellow dance instructor. Their daughter Jeanine Durning is a New York-based choreographer and modern dancer.

Durning is perhaps best known for his roles in George Roy Hill's The Sting and in Sydney Pollack's Tootsie, but he was nominated for supporting actor Oscars two years in a row: in 1983, for his role in The Best Little Whorehouse In Texas (for which Durning sang and danced), and, in 1984, for his role in To Be Or Not To Be. Durning also appeared in two Coen Brothers films, The Hudsucker Proxy and O Brother, Where Art Thou?, as well as a film by Billy Wilder, The Front Page. Durning was also a friend of Burt Reynolds, and collaborated with him on several projects.