Blow Out
The European “arthouse” cinema circuit has always been known as being exclusive to its continent of origin. Vague, colorful “artsy” films on whom their plots were little more than shoestrings from which to display their unique style up to and including the showcasing of sexual acts and outright sexual perversions, and also having some downbeat, unhappy endings never hurt either. Enter Brian DePalma, who by the late 1970s was already nursing a reputation from critics as being the “new Hitchcock”, and was already known to have greatly loved The Master Of Suspense’s own tapdancing around the boundaries of sexual obsession in Vertigo. DePalma also as well harbored a great appreciation for the Europeans with their own breaking of sexual boundaries, and in 1980 he combined both the Hitchcock and European styles to come up with Dressed To Kill, singlehandedly inventing the erotic thriller genre in the process. This follow up in 1981 continued the tradition (borrowing heavily from Antonioni’s Blow Up) and in the minds of many became his masterpiece at least in the eyes of those who greatly preferred his work in thrillers (DePalma’s true high points in various genres certainly came at different times). Moreso, he managed to cast John Travolta as the brooding male lead and Travolta, having already utilized his goofy, grinning exuberance to great effect in such films as Saturday Night Fever, Grease, and Urban Cowboy, came up with easily his best performance up to that point in his career, so much so that Quentin Tarantino shamelessly proclaimed this among his top 3 favorite movies ever and the main reason why he cast Travolta in Pulp Fiction. Certainly an on set bout with insomnia can also be cited as to why Travolta was able to tone things down greatly here and be able to play a character seemingly on the edge of his nerves with little reason to be happy. Here he plays Jack Terry, a sound effects technician on possibly the worst B (or C) grade horror slasher films imaginable, with his style of applying his “art” being so listless that he could care less on just how authentic ANY of the sound effects in the films that he works on actually comes across. Nonetheless, once he realizes that the latest spate of flicks that he has worked on all seem to be sounding the same, he takes his microphone and recorder in hand and goes out skulking around a bridge, even creepily recording a young couple trying to get intimate together. Suddenly he sees a car racing across the bridge, an explosive sound that could be a gunshot, and then the vehicle goes plunging straight into the water. Travolta dives in to attempt a rescue only to find the older man in the front seat already dead (seemingly from the impact) but still manages to rescue a beautiful girl (DePalma’s then wife Nancy Allen, who a year earlier had portrayed what is still the sexiest movie hooker on record in Dressed To Kill) who was trapped in the backseat. The problem though lies with the dead guy behind the wheel, as he was actually a very popular (and populist) Presidential Candidate who was said to have been beating the current sitting President in the polls by at least 40 points (!) and with him now dead (unintentionally it turns out, as Allen being discovered in the car with him behind his wife’s back was supposed to shame him out of the race, ala Teddy Kennedy with Chappaquidick), the damage control is now well underway to make sure that he died both alone and as a martyr. Which leaves Allen and her pimp as the only loose ends that need tying up, and unfortunately for Travolta, Allen is imbued with one of those sweet, innocent, waifish, little girl type personalities which really means that she might just as well be walking around with a t shirt that has the words “Please Save Me And Protect Me” emblazoned on it. As a result, she quickly latches onto Travolta for protection, and Travolta in turn manages to fall completely in love with her all while becoming obsessed with using his own sound recording to prove that the whole accident was really just a setup and murder, along with doing whatever he can to protect Allen from the impending consequences of being an expendable figure in such a scandalous political coverup. Those consequences are embodied by Burke (John Lithgow in one of his first major roles), a (possibly CIA) government cleanup man and definite twisted sociopath who has devised a Jack The Ripper type plan to take care of his own mess from when he had fired the bullet at the tire that caused the accident: Go on a sicko killing spree of local random hookers so that the police will believe that it is indeed the work of a serial killer, and save Allen (his real intended target) for last as the final victim, thus disconnecting any notion that her own death has anything to do with the deceased candidate, even as we come to wonder if Lithgow happily butchering all these poor girls really is nothing more than just him “doing his job” or if he actually is sexually relishing in his own twisted, grotesque actions and is just glad that he now has a reason to carry out his sick fantasies. There is also Dennis Franz as Allen’s business partner / pimp who was not only in on the whole thing, but had actually filmed it with his own movie camera as part of the original plan to merely embarrass the candidate, playing it up as a fat, sleazy con artist who unlike Allen, is just glad that he’s getting paid as opposed to having it weigh heavily on his conscience as she does. And it’s in his (silent) film footage that Travolta becomes obsessed with piecing it together along with his sound recording (where a flash can clearly be seen at the moment of the gunshot) in order to prove that there WAS a conspiracy and that only HE can prove it, reaching new heights of paranoia in ways that would make Oliver Stone wince and not being helped any by Lithgow surreptitiously sabotaging much of his work. As Travolta becomes more unglued and Allen works her little sweet but scared act on him, Lithgow calmly goes about his business (including an unusually sexually explicit scene involving a hooker in a subway station) all while the city of Philadelphia where the story is set prepares for some kind of patriotic celebration involving The Liberty Bell, thus allowing DePalma to give his own personal takes on everything from the scum side of the low budget horror movie industry (the production offices of the film company where Travolta works at resides above a porno theatre) to the viewer wondering if Travolta’s feelings for Allen are truly reciprocated (with her dizzying dumb schtick about being a dedicated and expert makeup artist) or if the girl is just another one of those sad, lost female souls who will take on just about anybody who can actually serve a purpose for her to just how far the extent that a government backed conspiracy will go (as many suspected with the JFK case) in allowing such an obvious mad dog sicko within their own ranks to be able to carry out their own dirty work in order to cover all their collective asses as well as the actual trustworthiness of the media when a popular TV newsman makes an offer to Travolta to bring his evidence and show it to both him and the masses live on the air. It all leads up to that most obvious of homages to the European cinematic artform, that of the downbeat, unhappy ending, shot beautifully of course by DePalma but still of course an ending that has divided movie fans everywhere no matter how daring it may well be, but yet is still in keeping with the overall cynical tone of the movie itself, one which seems to clearly state that when dealing with the vestiges of both money and true power in our society “Since you can’t win, don’t even bother to try” which is certainly a dour message to say the very least, but one with which DePalma still proves himself as being one of the greatest cinema masters of the 20th century, incorporating not only the Hitchcockian thriller elements with the European eroticism, but also giving us a strong dose of political intrigue and light satire as well, prepared in an intriguing mix and served directly up to us by a man whose legend is well deserved and whose spot in the Hollywood Director Hall Of Fame should have long since been reserved…
9/10