Blow Out (1981)

Michelangelo Antonioni’s Blow-Up (1966) was one of the iconic movies of the 60s. There are lots of things going on in Antonioni’s movie, including a fascinating evocation of Swinging London, but the central plot idea was one that has been much copied. A photographer captures something accidentally in one of his photos, something that may be evidence of a serious crime. In 1974 Francis Ford Coppola took that idea as the centrepiece of his movie The Conversation, but with the evidence being in the form of a sound recording rather than an image. The Conversation is not a bad movie but it’s much inferior to Antonioni’s masterpiece. In 1981 Brian De Palma shot Blow Out which was in effect a remake of The Conversation.

Obviously being a De Palma movie it’s stylistically a lot more interesting than Coppola’s film.

In The Conversation a surveillance guy captures a conversation on tape and becomes obsessed with the idea that it’s related to murder. In Blow Out the central character is a movie sound effects guy.

De Palma is of course well known for being massively (and very fruitfully) influenced by Hitchcock and this subject matter offers obvious possibilities for an exploration of a topic that was always dear to Hitchcock’s heart, namely voyeurism. Making the protagonist a guy involved in the movie business also offers opportunities for exploring the nature of cinema and the relationship between movies and reality (themes De Palma would explore again in his superb Body Double).

Jack Terry (John Travolta) does sound effects for low-budget slasher movies. He’s currently working on Co-Ed Frenzy. He does what he does very frequently in his line of work, he goes for a walk taking his tape recorder with him. He’s recording the sounds of a peaceful riverside. Then he hears a loud noise and then he sees a car plunge through the guard rails of a bridge into the river. The car starts to sink immediately. Jack jumps in, hoping to rescue the occupants. He cannot save the driver but he does manage to save the girl who was a passenger in the car.

He’s naturally feeling fairly pleased with himself. He’s an ordinary guy and ordinary guys very rarely get to do something heroic. He goes to the hospital to make sure the girl will be OK. The girl, Sally (Nancy Allen), was remarkably lucky. She just has a few bruises and is a bit shaken up. Being human Jack naturally tells her that in order to repay him she should have a drink with him sometime. And Sally, being human, agrees to do so.

At the hospital Jack discovers that the driver of the car, the one he wasn’t able to save, was Governor McRyan, a presidential candidate who was quite likely to be the country’s next president. And the dead candidate’s aide tells Jack to forget that there was ever a girl in the car. Jack doesn’t like this but the aide spins him a tale about sparing the feelings of McRyan’s family and he grudgingly agrees. Then he listens to the tape again, the tape he was recording at the time. That sound just before the car plunged off the bridge sounds rather like a gunshot.

From this point on the plot develops as you would expect. Jack’s paranoia steadily increases and his paranoia is justified. What he has discovered will put him in danger, and put Sally in danger. It’s a political paranoia suspense film.

There’s obviously been a conspiracy, but it may have been a conspiracy gone wrong. There’s a sinister guy called Burke (John Lithgow) who is involved but it’s not quite clear what his agenda is. Also involved is a very sleazy photographer named Manny Karp (Dennis Franz).

The plot is actually quite predictable and not very interesting. What impresses about this movie is De Palma’s breathtaking mastery of technique. He uses just about every film-making trick you can think of - split screens, extreme high-angle shots, split diopter shots, Steadicam shots. That can make a movie seem gimmick-laden but that’s the case here. De Palma uses these techniques for a reason, he uses them when they will actually enhance a scene. The movie is like a master class in film-making.

It builds to a very imaginative extended action climax.

The acting is a problem. John Travolta makes a very unsympathetic hero. Maybe De Palma wanted an unlikeable here, or maybe Travolta is just unlikeable. John Lithgow and Dennis Franz are despicable but in a not very interesting way. Nancy Allen (who was married to De Palma at the time) is the only member of the cast who provides any real interest.

There’s a great deal to admire in this movie but like most of the political paranoia movies of its era it’s all a bit too obvious. And it’s just not emotionally engaging.

Despite its problems it’s worth seeing just to see De Palma demonstrating his technical virtuosity, and the ending does provide plenty of thrills.

Blow Out is recommended, but with a few caveats.