I have to say, I don’t want to like Brian De Palma’s films. They’re so 1970 something and always feature lots of breast (or tits, as his characters would say), lots of girls dancing around in dorm-rooms or apartments naked and for seemingly no reason, lots of voyeurism, lots of sex, lots of things that maybe should be offensive to women or creepy and yet I find myself oddly drawn to that seventies or early eighties schmooze that De Palma captures so well, and as my husband pointed out, the Hitchcock rip-offs are less than subtle, but that’s part of the charm.
So it’s no surprise that this last week, with a headache and no desire to work with such a pain, I found myself drawn to the DVD and video shelf and pulled out “Blow Out” starring our favorites, and De Palmas, the ever-present Nancy Allen back in her prime, along with a posse of other women who all sort of look like her, and the star of the show, a young John Travolta who plays the role of a sound man who captures what is supposed to be a tire blowout but turns out to be a far more insidious thing for several reasons, as we soon find out.
As the car with the blow-out veers off the bridge, the good-guy Travolta leaps into the water to see who can be saved. Alas, the man in the car looks already dead but the woman, Nancy Allen, she’s is very much alive and panicking. Of course, Travolta manages to rescue her and later finds out that she was in the car with a married senator. he’s told, of course, to keep it all hush-hush, that is to lie, though why never is really clear to me, apart from the fact that he’s married and is a senator which his reason enough I suppose, but why Nancy Allen will find herself being pursued by a murderer does remain rather vague, at least to this viewer. Wouldn’t a pay-off be just as effective, I wondered, but that’s not the point for without a real murder mystery going on and lots of gratuitous boob shots, it wouldn’t be De Palma. I want to speak less of this particular film but use it as a kind of template for what I’ve seen in a lot of other work by De Palma.
Always, there is a murder and usually, it’s a woman and perhaps a man will die, but the woman must die naked or in a sex act, if at all possible. She must, as in Body Double, be masturbating herself and being spied on by a voyeur (a friend who house sits and is set up in that case), or, in this case, the weak conceit that there is a serial murder on a campus and a film is being made and Travolta is the sound man. The actress hired for the shower murder scene has a scream like a yowling cat and so Travolta is in search of a better scream that can be dubbed in. AS the director in the film in the film says, I didn’t hire her for her scream, I hired her for her tits. I realize this should probably be crude and it really is presented as crude. The film in the film is really quite offensive and at the same time, it’s classic De Palma without the refinement (well, you know what I mean). There is a sorority house or dorm room. AS the camera shows us the view of the voyeur, we see two or more girls dancing topless to disco music, while in another room, a girl, also topless, masturbates herself into a frenzy, in the third room, a girl, again topless, straddles her boyfriend before seeing the voyeur outside the window and panicking and the last girl, well, she’s in the shower soaping up the boobs she was hired for when the killer pulls back the curtain and kills her and she yowls like that aforementioned cat. This is how Blow Out opens and it’s a great opening because it’s not clear that what we are seeing isn’t the actual film itself.
Article comments
1 - D.B. Cooper
Interesting take on the phenom known as De Palma - the one-time bad boy of film directors. I think a lot of his gratuitous scenes are spoof, or a way in which he thumbs his nose at the formula systems in place which require a bit of T&A and a bit of blood. De Palma cut his teeth in a few crappy B-Movies before becoming A list, and I think his violence and sex is his way of saying, "If you are going to make me do this, then I will do it over the top." The great argument with De Palma, and one which will haunt him to his grave, is that his films tend to resemble a lot of previous films, Hitchcock, Blow Out an Americanized version of Antonioni's Blowup, etc.....What is perhaps his most famous film, Scarface, is also a remake of Howard Hawks' film noir classic. It is so incredibly violent that I have only seen it once and have never really had an interest in seeing it again. His greatest film, Carlito's Way, is a mature, composed De Palma at the height of his powers. Even in his worst films, there are moments of brilliance exposing a truly inspired talent. He has never refined his destructive bad boy tendencies, and his uneven career has suffered because of it. You've made a good point however, as the ideal of a female's body has changed throughout the years in films. I have always been insulted by films with average looking male stars - Duvall, Hoffman, Hackman, hell, even De Niro, having wives or girlfriends who look as if they stepped off the covor of Glamour magazine. A man can be butt ugly, but he's always going to have that perfect Victoria Secret model on his arm........There's an old western called The Cowboys, starring John Wayne in the twilight of his career. The film is only fair, but there are some extraordinary scenes between him and the actress playing his wife. She is old, weary, large in the hips. But she is real. Such honesty is rare in many films today. People chime about being the maker of dreams in Hollywood, but since when did dreams become emotionally untruthful?
2 - sadi
d.b. - thanks for such a long and thoughtful comment. you're right about the male leads always having these gorgeous types on their arms. it's interesting. and yes, to me, i was more interested in how the ideal of female beauty has changed to something that i believe at one time was attainable, and now, is attainable only through plastic surgery etc. That sets a standard that is impossibly high to most women and beyond the reachof our wallets even if we DID want to be that.
De Palma is spoofing, you are right, and he does it well. But there's still something there that works for him and that i always find interesting in his films, despite the often obnoxious stereotypes and women often being used as mere sex objects. perhaps a lot of that is tongue in cheek - i wouldn't doubt that.
if only directors today made more characters like our Bridget Jones who is perhaps closer to reality and lovable in her way. I think my next piece will likely be on her in the first film, because there is so much there and lets face it, it's all a spoof of PRide and Prejudice, even including Mr. Darcy who even repeats some of the same lines, though slightly altered, as in the PBS mini-series of PRide and Prejudice.
It's interesting... could go on forever. must restrain myself. much reading and catching up to do.
be well, and take good care of yourself.
sadi