Welcome to week 8 of the “Not Noir” film and lecture series. You have just watched Brian De Palma’s “Blow Out”, and soon we will begin Shane Black’s “Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang”.
DePalma, who at the time was largely a horror film director, conceived of “Blow Out” while sound-mixing “Dressed to Kill”. He was working with his frequent sound designer, Dan Sable, and there was shoddy wind effect used when De Palma got frustrated, angrily telling him to go and record some new wind. The two filmmakers later laughed about it, and the conversation spurred a connection to the 1966 film “Blow Up” which generated the plot outline for “Blow Out”. The resulting film alludes to the Kennedy assassination, Watergate, and Ted Kennedy’s Chappaquiddick incident in which the senator crashed a car into a Massachusetts river killing a young female aide, fled the scene, and only reported it to the police 9 hours later. DePalma’s film also was about film-making.
“Blow Out” was originally written to be a very low budget project. De Palma’s friend and “Carrie” actor John Travolta, who had become a huge movie star in the 4 years since they last worked together, read the script and wanted to do it as his next picture. The film’s budget ballooned, and De Palma’s producer, George Litto became the studio head for Filmways, the production company. DePalma was under considerable pressure to make a big summer picture, but had written a small, dark, complex film. Making things additionally difficult, Travolta insisted on working with DePalma’s wife and 3-time actress, Nancy Allen, whom was far younger then the original script called for. Travolta had insomnia during filming and turns in one of his best performances of his early career. That, paired with Nancy Allen’s sweet Sally and John Lithgow’s disturbingly committed Burke make this film one of the finest acted of DePalma’s library. It remains a cult classic and filmaker favorite, including being the reason Quinten Tarrintino resurrected Travolta’s career with “Pilp Fiction”.
De Palma was schooled by the films of Alfred Hitchcock and is an obsessed master of mystery and film-craft. To quote him, “Cinema creates illusions for us to fall in love with, that’s unique to cinema.” With regards to directing, he says, “I like stylization. I try to get away with as much as possible until people start laughing at it…” and “the location of the camera is as important as the composition of the shot.” This is the first movie he used a Steadicam, which has become something he is known for, especially in films like “The Untouchables” and “Snake Eyes”. He also uses split screen and split-focus diopter lens to great effect in splitting up the viewable information.
What makes this film Not Noir is that goes so thoroughly off the rails in the third act and floods into a horror film, only to pop back into the original setup of Terry finding a decent scream. There’s almost nothing more nihilistic then a film that distills a mystery, love story, and resulting tragedy down to the completion of a mundane task.
With regards to this week’s Noir characterizations, John Travolta’s sound-man / film editor Jack Terry is this weeks Private Eye. The Femme Fetale is Nancy Allen’s naive Sally. The Object of Pursuit this week is who orchestrated the murder of Governor McRyan and as for The Big Reveal, it’s a bust this week; the film has none. “Blow Out” moves like an unstoppable freight train throughout the film. From the moment Terry sees the wreck to the bleak finale, the movie cooks, remaining compelling despite the long complex depiction of film-making.
And its this self aware film-making that is the connection between this week’s films. “Blow Out” and “Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang” are both films that, although dramatic in nature, poke fun at the construction of mystery films, while making very good examples of the genre: True Postmodern Neo Noir.
Next week, we’re taking an intermission, but the following week we’ll be watching the zany Noir offshoot “Who Framed Roger Rabbit” by director Robert Zemeckis followed by the Robert Rodriguez and Frank Miller co-directed comic book Noir “Sin City”. See you in two weeks!
Aggregate Space Film 