Film: Blow Out

Director: Brian De Palma
Genre: Thriller
Source: USA (1981)
Rating: R
Location/Format: Criterion Blu-ray
Grade: A-

A strong little conspiracy thriller made a little more unique due to a rock solid cast, De Palma's trademark visual flair, and a fascination with the art of filmmaking, Blow Out was another blind Criterion buy (as most of them are for me) that left me pretty satisfied. 

The film opens with a B-movie slasher as a deranged killer walks through a girl's dorm room looking for a victim. It's cheesy, ineffective, and aurally overblown, capped off with the killer pulling open the shower to the weak and comic screen of a truly talentless actress. 

Cut to John Travolta, as Jack Terry, laughing at the mixing board as the director looks on in disgust. "That's a terrible scream," they agree. 

Jack's quest to find more authentic sound effects--wind his director "hasn't heard before"--leads him to a bridge at night--a bridge which becomes the point of impact for a presidential candidate's deadly drive into a lake. Jack witnesses--and records on audio--the entire car accident, but he starts to wonder if he might have heard something more.

Like Hitchcock, De Palma is a filmmaker who seems to lay filmic themes into his movies, and nowhere is that more obvious than here. Jack is in the movie business, and his professional life and personal drama--as the politician's death may be more than meets the eye (or ear)--get more and more mixed up as the film goes on. Yes he may be on to a huge political assassination, but he's also supposed to be finishing this cheap slasher, and the two storylines continue to get intertwined. The movies and real life intersect in unexpected ways, De Palma seems to suggest, and it's when films touch something authentic that they become most powerful. 

Cue the final scenes of Jack's shaken, sweaty face . . . 

John Lithgow, Dennis Franz, and John Travolta all work nicely in their prescribed roles, but I have to admit Nancy Allen took a while to grow on me. Playing an airhead with a breathy ungrounded voice, her Sally never felt quite authentic to me. Maybe that would change on a second viewing, but she seemed to be the weakest piece of the movie this time through.

What does work is De Palma's visual stylings, as split screen and visual overlays connected through sound end up being really effective in showing us the traditional thriller elements in new ways. And yes, that focus on film sound here seems fitting given the way this feels in many ways like the sort of film Hitchcock might have made if he had lived longer. He, too, was obsessed with sound--from the musical dissonance of Rear Window to the totally diegetic sound of The Birds, and so something of Blow Out feels of a piece with Hitch's whole aesthetic.

I look forward to digging into the special features on the Criterion blu-ray soon. I think this is a film I enjoyed one time through but could grow to love with a little more time.