041 - Blow Out, 1981, United States. Dir. Brian De Palma.

Friday, February 10, 2017

041 - Blow Out, 1981, United States. Dir. Brian De Palma.

Here are two words to inspire you to watch this film:

John Travolta.

What else do you need to know?

There are at least two ways to cast a movie.  1) Find the actor who is the most right for the role, whose look, essence, and acting ability most resemble the character in the script.  2) Hire a movie star.

Which category do you think John Travolta might fit into for the 1981 film Blow Out?

Here are some hints to help you answer the question.

Travolta plays the role of Jack Terry.  Jack Terry is a sound man for low-budget, campy horror movies.  He has no girlfriend.  He has no social life.  He spends his time going out into the woods recording sound.  When he is not out in the woods recording sound, he is in his lab listening to sound on tape.  He is dedicated to his job and willing to spend hours at a time to get it right.

He works for movies that are so low-brow they are not good enough to be called B pictures.  While editing one of them, his colleague turns and asks him how many years they have worked together.  In answering, he lists the movies: Blood Bath, Blood Bath II, Bad Day at Blood Beach, Bordello of Blood, and the current film, Co-Ed Frenzy.  This adds up to two years.  Five "movies" in two years.  Nothing like quality.

Later, he tells the girl, "I was the kind of kid who fixed radios, made my own stereos, won all the science fairs.  You know the type."

Yes.  We know the type.  The loner.  The science geek.  The nerd.

When we think of the kid who won all the science fairs we think of . . . hmm . . . John Travolta!

He's exactly the type.

Like the way he sits cavalierly in his chair with his hair swept back and smiles like there is no tomorrow.

Or how he struts into his sound lab in his tight pants as though he is Tony Manero doing the Tango Hustle.

          (You do the New York Hustle or the Latin Hustle? / New York, Latin, I do it all!)

Or how he dives athletically into the cold river water to rescue the girl from the submerged car.

Or how he races through the streets of Philadelphia in his blue Jeep to save the girl.

Or how he runs heroically in slow motion with his hair flowing in the wind.

Yes.  That type.

And you care, how?  Did you walk out of the theater complaining that they did not hire a nerdier character type more worthy to play the science-fair-winner-turned-sound-man?  Or did you say, "I've got chills!  They're multiplying!  And I'm losing control!"

That's what I thought.

Movie star wins out.

Charisma.  Energy.  Charm.  Magnetism.  The It Factor.

De Palma himself pointed out that in the golden age of the movies, movie stars were dancers.  Jimmy Cagney was a dancer.  Jimmy Stewart was a dancer.  Cary Grant was a dancer.  "They moved beautifully."  So who else to star in your action thriller than the dancer, John Travolta?

In 1966, Michelangelo Antonioni released a film entitled Blowup and it became an art house sensation.  Blowup is about a fashion photographer who accidentally captures a murder on film.  (We will see several of Antonioni's movies later this year.)

In 1974, Francis Ford Coppola released a film entitled The Conversation.  Starring Gene Hackman, The Conversation is about a surveillance expert who accidentally captures a murder on his equipment.

In 1981, Brian De Palma released a film entitled Blow-Out.  Blow-Out is about a movie sound man who accidentally captures a murder on tape.

None of this is to suggest that these films repeat each other.  They are all quite different in style and theme.

John Travolta first worked with Brian De Palma in 1976 in Carrie, while he was still playing Vinnie Barbarino on the hit television sitcom Welcome Back, Kotter.  In that movie he plays Nancy Allen's boyfriend, who conspires with her to prank Sissy Spacek's character Carrie.

Now it is five years later, and Travolta is an international superstar.  He has played in Saturday Night Fever, Grease, and Urban Cowboy.  He works with De Palma again, and he plays opposite Nancy Allen, Brian De Palma's wife, again.

We begin with a shower scene.

Of course we do.  Why would we not?  This is De Palma.

Remember in our blog of Diabolique (005, January 5)?  We discussed how Henri-Georges Clouzot got the script that Hitchcock wanted.  And in it he had two bathtub scenes that function as pivotal to the film: one, the murder, and the other, the climax.

Then we repeated the speculation that Hitchcock may have responded competitively to Diabolique to create his famous shower scene in Psycho.

Well, let's just say that De Palma responded in kind.  De Palma loves Hitchcock.  And he loves shower scenes.  And he took the shower scene and ran with it to the moon.

Carrie (1976) begins with a shower scene, with a group of girls in a locker room.
Dressed to Kill (1980) begins and ends with a shower scene.
Our film, Blow Out (1981) begins and ends with a shower scene.
Body Double (1984) begins and ends with a shower scene.

Do you feel dirty?
Or do you feel Zestfully clean?
(That's a Waking Up in Reno (2002) reference.  Nod to Brent Briscoe.  Nod to Jordan Brady.)

De Palma's films that do not have shower scenes often contain scenes in the rain or other falling water.

Our shower scene is the culmination of a parody of a bad horror film.  It is being shot by the inventor of the Steadicam, Garrett Brown, fresh off his work on Stanley Kubrick's The Shining.  The Shining is not a bad horror film, nor is it a parody of anything.  It is a great classic.  In Blow Out, Brown himself holds the knife in front of the camera to simulate the point of view of the malefactor.

It turns out that Jack Terry is sitting in the editing room with his editor and fellow film maker.  They are watching footage from their current film.  They cannot get a good scream to dub in for the girl in the shower.  Terry is assigned to go out and capture wild sound.

He goes to the river at night and records things.  A couple stand nearby, trying to be alone.  She notices him across the bridge, eavesdropping on them.  They leave.  He hears animals, a frog, random noises.  Then he hears a car, a popping sound, a blow-out, burning rubber, a crash.  The car is veering out of control on the bridge.  It crashes through the guard rail and plunges into the cold river.

He intervenes.

He rescues the woman but the man is gone, drowned. 

Viewers of a certain age will respond to this scene with one word: Chappaquiddick.

Terry does not know until later, at the hospital, when the paparazzi arrive, that the man in the car was the governor, McRyan, who was running for President and who had his mistress in the car with him.  No one must know.  Dennis Franz arrives to hush him up, but Terry says he has to tell.  He has already told the police.  He has the sound footage.  He specifically heard a gunshot before the tire blew out.  He cannot hide the truth.  He must tell it.

That makes Jack Terry a target and puts the girl, Sally, on the hit list.

John Lithgow is around.  He can take care of it.  If he kills a few girls that look like Sally and then kills Sally, then people will think Sally's death was the result of a serial killer and not associate it with the scandal of the dead politician.

Good thinking, hit man.

Jack and Sally are now in this together, and they are racing against a ticking clock to try to reveal the truth, and for Jack, to try to save Sally's life.

Through all of the twists and turns that take place in this, one of De Palma's signature high-gloss, stylish thrillers, Jack Terry maintains his integrity from start to finish.  He is a hero, a good man.  And he cares about Sally.

And along the way he gets what he needs.  He fulfills the duties of his job.

Now that's a scream.

It's a good scream.

*                              *                              *                              *                              *                              *

On a technical note--

Brian De Palma uses split screens in his movies, as well as split diopter shots.  A split diopter is a focusing glass placed over the camera lens that allows you to focus one side of the lens at one distance and another side of the lens at another distance.  This allows the image to have depth of focus, or depth of field, with objects in the foreground and in the background both being in focus at the same time.  This more closely simulates how the human eye sees, and it hearkens back to the use of it by the great Orson Welles in the greatest of movies, Citizen Kane.

In Blow Out, you can see an owl giant in the foreground on the right side of the screen while seeing Travolta, far off in the background on the bridge, on the left side of the screen.  Both are sharply in focus at the same time.  You can also see John Lithgow in a tight close-up on the left side of the screen as he eavesdrops on a couple, farther back on a bench on the right side of the screen.  Both are sharply in focus at the same time.  De Palma does this frequently throughout the film.

Here are Brian De Palma's thoughts on it:

"You want to keep everything in focus.  I don't see anything great about shooting a shot where somebody in the foreground is in focus and the person in the background is out of focus.  What's the value of that?  Who wants to look at a blur in the background there?  And then you rack focus from one to the other, and the person in the foreground is out of focus?"

He patterns his filmmaking after the great filmmakers and not after the contemporary trends.