Blow Out (1981)
Directed by: Brian De Palma.
Written by: Brian De Palma.
Starring: John Travolta (Jack
Terry), Nancy Allen (Sally), John Lithgow (Burke), Dennis Franz (Manny Karp), Peter
Boyden (Sam), Curt May (Donahue), John Aquino (Detective Mackey), John McMartin
(Lawrence Henry).
Blow
Out may or may not be Brian De Palma’s best film – it’s very close to it if it
isn’t – but it is undoubtedly the film I would show a newcomer De Palma’s work
if I want to encapsulate everything that makes De Palma such a great director
when he’s working at his peak. It is one of his Hitchcock inspired thrillers,
with mind boggling set pieces the master of suspense would happily have called
his own, and yet it’s more than just an exercise in style, like some lesser De
Palma are. The film will remind cinephiles of two other, probably more famous
films – Michelangelo Antonioni’s Blow Up (1966), where a photographer
obsessively examines photos he took in a park, where he may – or may not have –
captured a murder in the background, and Francis Ford Coppola’s The
Conversation (1974), in which Gene Hackman obsessively listens, and re-listens
to a conversation he has recorded for a client, trying to figure out if it
contains evidence of a murder.
The
“hero” of De Palma’s Blow Out is Jack Terry – played, in one of his very best
performances by John Travolta, who works as a sound man for low rent slasher
movies – the kind in which a lot of naked girls get stalked and killed, but
only after having copious amounts of sex. He does all the sound effects for the
films, and his director wants some new ones – including wind, and especially a
new scream. Terry heads out one night into a park in Philadelphia, and as he’s
recording new sounds, a car skids off the road, and crashes into a nearby
creek. Terry jumps into action, dives in and rescues a girl – Sally (Nancy
Allen) from the wreckage. He isn’t able to save the man who was driver –
Governor McRyan, who was well on his way to becoming President. Terry is
convinced that he heard – and recorded – a gunshot before the car tire blow
out, and wants to prove that this wasn’t a tragic accident, but actually a
murder. No one believes him – except for Sally, who he enlists to help him.
The
opening shot of Blow Out is a virtuoso one in its own right – as a killer
stalks a sorority house from the outside, before heading inside with his knife
– and going full slasher attacking a woman in the shower. This sequence, which
is done all in one take, from the killer’s POV, is the first of many times in
the movie when De Palma will play with the audience – and introduce an element
of black humor to the movie – as he reveals that what we are watching isn’t
real, but is part of the movie that Terry will be working on. It’s almost as if
De Palma is toying with the audience there – after some of the criticism he had
received for prior films, being overly divertive or oversexed, he’s putting
that out there front and center, and then pulling it away again (it also plays
perfectly with the final scene of the movie – the two of them are perfect
bookends to the movie).
This
is hardly the last virtuoso piece of camerawork in the film. De Palma uses both
new and old techniques throughout the movie, and what he and cinematographer
Vilmos Zsigmond do with split screens, and steadicam (the first time De Palma
used one – a year after Kubrick in The Shining) is remarkable. The finale
setpiece – a chase through the streets of Philly, climaxing with a burst of
fireworks and other Americana – including, of course, murder – is perhaps the
best thing De Palma has ever filmed.
What
makes Blow Out better than the other Hitchcock inspired films of De Palma
though is not just the style – the style of Sisters, Obsession, Dressed to
Kill, Body Double and Femme Fatale is nearly as good as it is in Blow Out –
it’s in the way De Palma weaves the plot together, and because the characters
in Blow Out feel real – which moves the movie beyond mere thriller into the
realm of real tragedy in the end. Travolta’s Jack Terry is a man who becomes
obsessed with finding the truth – and is determined that he is the only one who
can actually do that. He trusts in his abilities to do that, and distrusts
everyone else. Throughout the movie, as grows closer to Nancy Allen’s Sally –
perhaps even grows to love her. But he also isn’t above using her for his own
means – in a key sequence near the end of the movie, he sends her into a
situation that could be dangerous, while he hangs back with his sound equipment
from a safe distance – to “gather evidence”. For her part, Allen is just as
good as Travolta, in a role that at first seems frivolous – as if perhaps she
is nothing but a sex object (there are multiple characters in the movie that
use her in just that way – although they are all clearly sleazy). She is a
dreamer and an optimist – she loves the fact that Terry works “in the movies”,
and won’t watch the news because it’s “too depressing”. All she wants is to be
happy, but she allows herself to be dragged along – by one man after another,
to do something she doesn’t really want to do. Even John Lithgow’s Burke – a
violent man willing to do anything, including “pose” as a sexual serial killer
to cover his tracks – is given slightly more, not depth really, but something
more defined that most killers of this sort in movies. He is terrifying because
we know he’s capable of anything. And, in a smaller role, Dennis Franz is very
good as a slezeball P.I., with a camera, and his own version of the American
Dream.
The
film has one of the most cynical and nihilistic endings of any genre film that
I can recall. It’s really only at the end of the film where everything snaps
into focus – as to who our “hero” really is, which is tragically flawed. It’s
an ending worthy of Hitchcock – who did this a few times (jn films like Vertigo
or Notorious), but also completely De Palma. The finale shot of the movie is
one the saddest shots in film history – a haunted man who has ensured he will
remain haunted forever.
To
say that De Palma has had a very tumultuous career would be an understatement –
for every great films (like Carrie, Blow Out, Scarface, Body Double, Femme
Fatale) there is a bad one (like Mission to Mars or Bonfire of the Vanities or
Redacted) – and a whole hell of lot in between. But at his best, De Palma could
be one of the very best filmmakers of his generation – someone who takes what
came before him, and mixes the ingredients into something wholly his own. No
wonder Quentin Tarantino loves him so much – he’s basically made a career out
of doing the same thing.
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