| Blow Out | |
|---|---|
 Theatrical release poster | |
| Directed by | Brian De Palma |
| Written by | Brian De Palma |
| Produced by | George Litto |
| Starring | |
| Cinematography | Vilmos Zsigmond |
| Edited by | Paul Hirsch |
| Music by | Pino Donaggio |
Production company | Viscount Associates |
| Distributed by | Filmways Pictures |
Release date |
|
Running time | 108 minutes |
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Budget | $18 million[1] |
| Box office | $13.8 million[2] |
Blow Out is a 1981 Americanindependent[3]mysterythriller film written and directed byBrian De Palma.[4] The film starsJohn Travolta as Jack Terry, a moviesound effects technician fromPhiladelphia who, while recording sounds for a low-budgetslasher film, unintentionally captures audio evidence of anassassination involving a presidential hopeful.Nancy Allen stars as Sally Bedina, a young woman involved in the crime. The supporting cast includesJohn Lithgow andDennis Franz. The film's tagline in advertisements was, "Murder has a sound all of its own".
Directly based onMichelangelo Antonioni's 1966 filmBlowup, the film replaces the medium of photography with one of audio recording. The concept ofBlow Out came to De Palma while he was working on the thrillerDressed to Kill (1980). The film was shot in the late autumn and winter of 1980 in various Philadelphia locations on a budget of $18 million.
Blow Out opened to very little audience interest at the time of release despite receiving a mostly positive critical reception. The lead performances by Travolta and Allen, the direction by De Palma and the visual style were cited as the strongest points of the film. Critics also recognised the stylistic and narrative connection to the work ofAlfred Hitchcock, whom De Palma admires, andgiallo films.[5][6] Over the years since its initial theatrical release, it has developed status as acult film[7] and received a home media release bythe Criterion Collection,[8] a company which specializes in "important classic and contemporary film," which re-ignited public interest in the film.Quentin Tarantino praises De Palma as the "greatest director of his generation" and citesBlow Out as one of his three favorite films that he would take to a desert island.[9]
While inpost-production on the low-budgetslasher filmCo-ed Frenzy,Philadelphia sound technician Jack Terry is instructed by his producer Sam to obtain a more realistic-sounding scream and better wind effects. While recording potentialsound effects at a local park, he sees a car careen off the road and plunge into a creek. The male driver is killed, but Jack manages to rescue a young woman named Sally Bedina and accompanies her to a hospital. There, a detective interviews Jack about the accident, and Jack asks Sally out for a drink. He learns thatGovernor George McRyan, a presidential hopeful, was driving the car and that Sally was hisescort. An associate of McRyan, Lawrence Henry, persuades Jack to conceal her involvement by smuggling her out of the hospital.
Listening to his recorded audio of the accident, Jack distinctly hears a gunshot just before the tire blow-out, suspecting that it was actually anassassination. He learns from a news report that, seemingly coincidentally, a man named Manny Karp filmed the accident with amotion picture camera. When Karp sells stills from his film to a localtabloid,News Today Magazine, Jack splices them together into a crude movie, syncs them with his recorded audio and finds a visible flash and smoke from the fired gun. Though initially reluctant, Sally eventually agrees to help Jack privately investigate the incident. Over a drink, Jack reveals how he left his prior career as part of a government commission to root out police corruption after a wiretap operation he was involved in led to the death of an undercover cop named Freddie Corso.
Unbeknownst to Jack, Sally and Karp, both frequent blackmail co-conspirators, were hired as part of a larger plot against McRyan. A rival candidate had hired a thug named Burke to hook McRyan with Sally posing as a prostitute, take unflattering pictures of the pair, and publish them to expedite McRyan's withdrawal. However, Burke decided to blow out the tire of McRyan's car with a gunshot, thereby causing the accident. After botching thecover-up of Sally by murdering a look-alike, Burke murders two more look-alike women with piano wire and attributes the deaths to a fictionalserial killer, "theLiberty Bell Strangler," so that he can cover up the cover-up when she is successfully murdered.
To help Jack investigate McRyan's murder, Sally steals Karp's film, which, when synced to Jack's audio, clearly reveals the gunshot that precipitated the blow-out. Nevertheless, nobody believes Jack's story and a seemingly widespread conspiracy immediately silences his every move. Local talk-show host Frank Donahue asks to interview Jack on air and release his tapes, to which Jack eventually agrees. Burke follows the development by tapping Jack's phone, calls Sally as Donahue, and asks her to meet him at a train station with the tapes. When Sally tells Jack about Donahue's call, he becomes suspicious. He copies the audio tapes, but is unable to copy the film before Sally's meeting.
Shadowing a wired Sally from a distance, Jack is alarmed to see that his supposed contact is actually Burke. Immediately realizing that she is in danger, Jack attempts to warn her, but she and Burke slip out of range and into a parade. Jack manically dashes across the city, attempting to head them off and rescue her, but crashes hisJeep into the window of a department store and is incapacitated. By the time he awakens in a parked ambulance, Burke has stolen the film from Sally and thrown it into a river. Still listening in on his earpiece, Jack spots Burke attacking her on a rooftop, startles him and ultimately stabs him to death with his own weapon, but shockingly discovers that Sally has already been strangled, cradling her lifeless corpse in his arms.
Burke's death, combined with the loss of the film, ties up the last loose end. Jack's audio tapes alone are ultimately deemed insufficient to prove that a gunshot occurred and the cover-up succeeds. Jack begins replaying the recording of Sally's voice, eventually becoming obsessed with it. Sometime later, he has incorporated her death scream inCo-ed Frenzy. Ecstatic at having found the perfect scream, Sam replays the audio, forcing Jack to cover his ears.
After completingDressed to Kill, De Palma was considering several projects, includingAct of Vengeance (later produced forHBO starringCharles Bronson andEllen Burstyn),Flashdance, and a script of his own titledPersonal Effects.[10] The story outline for the latter was similar to what would becomeBlow Out, but set in Canada.[10]
According to screenwriter Bill Mesce Jr., he wrote the first draft of the script after winning a competition in Take One magazine hosted by Brian De Palma, but his version ended up being almost completely changed.[11]
De Palma scripted and filmedBlow Out in his home town ofPhiladelphia.[10] The film's $18 million budget was high for De Palma, and Filmways spent an additional $9 million to market the film.[10] De Palma consideredAl Pacino for the role of Jack Terry, but ultimately chose John Travolta,[10] who himself lobbied De Palma to castNancy Allen for the role of Sally Bedina (the three had previously worked together onCarrie); De Palma initially hesitated—he was married to Allen at the time, and did not want her to be known for only working in his pictures—but ultimately agreed.[10] In addition to Travolta and Allen, De Palma filled the film's cast and crew with a number of his previous collaborators:Dennis Franz (Dressed to Kill,The Fury);John Lithgow (Obsession,Raising Cain in later years);cinematographerVilmos Zsigmond (Obsession);editorPaul Hirsch (Hi, Mom!,Sisters,Phantom of the Paradise,Obsession,Carrie,The Fury); and composerPino Donaggio (Carrie,Home Movies,Dressed to Kill).
Seventy percent of the film was shot at night. "Basically I just shotBlow Out straight", replied cinematographer Vilmos Zsigmond, "... By not diffusing and not flashing as much ... That doesn't mean I necessarily like that look but I think it was good for the picture. You see, I like a softer look, a more diffused look."[12] During the editing process, two reels of footage from the Liberty Parade sequence were stolen and never recovered. The scenes were reshot withinsurance money at a cost of $750,000.[10] Because Zsigmond was no longer available,László Kovács lensed the reshot sequences.[13]
Thematically,Blow Out almost "exclusively concern[s] the mechanics of movie making" with a "total, complete and utter preoccupation with film itself as a medium in which ... style really is content."[14] In numerous scenes, the film depicts the interaction of sound and images, the manner in which the two are joined together, and methods in which they are re-edited, remixed, and rearranged to reveal new truths or the lack of any objective truth.[10] The film uses several of De Palma's trademark techniques:split screen, the split diopter lens, and the elaboratetracking shot.[15]
As with several other De Palma films,Blow Out explores the power ofguilt; both Jack and Sally are motivated to help right their past wrongs, both with tragic consequences.[10] De Palma also revisits the theme ofvoyeurism, a recurring theme in much of his previous work (ex:,Hi, Mom!,Sisters, andDressed to Kill).[10] Jack exhibits elements of apeeping tom, but one who works with sound instead of image.[10]
Blow Out incorporates multiple allusions both to other films and to historical events. Its protagonist's obsessive reconstruction of a sound recording to uncover a possible murder recalls bothMichelangelo Antonioni's filmBlowup[16] andFrancis Ford Coppola'sThe Conversation.[17] The film alludes to elements of theWatergate scandal and theJFK assassination.[16] The film also recalls elements of theChappaquiddick incident,[14][16] although De Palma intentionally tried to downplay the similarities.[10] The film references theZapruder film as comparable to the footage shot of the accident.
De Palma also explicitly references two of his previous projects. At one point in the film, Dennis Franz watches De Palma's filmMurder a la Mod on television. Originally, the character was to watch Coppola'sDementia 13, butRoger Corman demanded too much for the rights.[10] A flashback where Travolta recalls an incident where his work got a police informant killed was also taken from an abandoned project,Prince of the City, which was ultimately directed bySidney Lumet.[10]
Blow Out opened on July 24, 1981, to positive reviews from critics,[10] including several that were ecstatic. InThe New Yorker,Pauline Kael gave the film one of her few unconditional raves:[18]
De Palma has sprung to the place thatRobert Altman achieved with films such asMcCabe & Mrs. Miller andNashville and that Francis Ford Coppola reached withThe Godfather films—that is, to the place wheregenre is transcended and what we're moved by is an artist's vision ... it's a great movie. Travolta and Allen are radiant performers.[19]
Roger Ebert's four-star review in theChicago Sun-Times noted thatBlow Out "is inhabited by a real cinematic intelligence. The audience isn't condescended to ... we share the excitement of figuring out how things develop and unfold, when so often the movies only need us as passive witnesses."[16] Both Ebert and fellow criticGene Siskel recommended it on its original run[20] (and with the former putting it as part of his list of their "Buried Treasures" in a 1986 episode ofAt the Movies).[21]Review aggregator websiteRotten Tomatoes gives the film a rating of 89% based on 61 reviews, with an average grade of 7.90/10. The critical consensus reads, "With a story inspired by Antonioni'sBlowup and a style informed by the high-gloss suspense of Hitchcock, De Palma'sBlow Out is raw, politically informed, and littered with film references".[22]Metacritic, which uses aweighted average, assigned the film a score of 86 out of 100, based on 15 critics, indicating "universal acclaim".[23]
Despite positive reviews, the film floundered at the box office, due to negative word of mouth about its bleak ending.[10]Blow Out made $13,747,234 (or $39 million in 2023) at the box office.[24][a 1] It was considered a disappointment, as Filmways had publicly claimed the film would make $60–80 million.[2] Rentals generated $8 million.[25]
However, the public reputation ofBlow Out has grown considerably in the years following its release.[26] As a "movie about making movies", it has earned a natural audience with subsequent generations of cineastes.[27] In particular,Quentin Tarantino has consistently praised the movie,[28] listing it alongsideRio Bravo andTaxi Driver as one of his three favorite films.[29] Inhomage, Tarantino used the music cue "Sally and Jack" from the score byPino Donaggio within his own filmDeath Proof, the second half of the double releaseGrindhouse. Noel Murray and Scott Tobias ofThe A.V. Club putBlow Out at #1 of their list of De Palma's best films ("The Essentials"), describing it as
The quintessential De Palma film, this study of a movie craftsman investigating a political cover-up marries suspense, sick humor, sexuality, and leftist cynicism into an endlessly reflective study of art imitating life imitating art.[30]
In April 2011, the film became a part of theCriterion Collection with a DVD and Blu-ray release.[8] Special features include new interviews with Brian De Palma and Nancy Allen.[15] The Criterion release also includes De Palma's first feature-length filmMurder a la Mod.[15]
In 2023,Time selectedBlow Out as part of their list 100 Best Movies of the Past 10 Decades, praising it as "a film filled with mistrust, one where the ghosts ofChappaquiddick and theZapruder film lurk in the corners."[31]
| Award | Category | Subject | Result | Ref. |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| National Society of Film Critics Awards | Best Cinematography | Vilmos Zsigmond | Nominated | [32] |
| Satellite Awards | Best Classic DVD | Nominated | [33] | |
