Thursday 10 November 2022

Noirvember: Blow Out (1981)

This was long overdue. I have been meaning to watch Blow Out since I bought it on Blu-ray a few years ago. But I just never found myself in quite the right mood for what I assumed was just going to be a remake of Blow-Up. I was, once again, a bit foolish. Not only is Blow Out far removed from the movie that it is reworking, although there are very strong features that clearly mark them out as siblings, but it is up there with the very best of Brian De Palma’s work.

John Travolta plays Jack, a man who has a career supplying sound effects for movies. One night, while out alone recording some ambient noise, Jack witnesses a car careen off a bridge. He dives in, rescuing a female passenger (Sally, played by Nancy Allen). Everyone is quick to label the whole thing a tragic accident, but Jack knows that he heard something different. The car may have suffered a tyre blow out, but there was a noise before that, and that noise strongly suggests foul play. Things get more troublesome when the identity of the other car occupant is revealed, and Jack and Sally struggle to get the truth out there as things start to get more dangerous. 

I barely know where to start with the praise I want to heap on Blow Out so I will actually just start by namechecking the main cast members. Travolta is superb, as obsessive as numerous other De Palma characters, but with a much more innately likable personality, as well as a healthy amount of self-awareness. Allen gives a performance that might be her most appealing, acting cute and ditzy enough to show why she was picked for her role in the unfolding events, while also keeping you rooting for her as things grow increasingly dangerous in the grand finale. Dennis Franz does his usual good work, playing Manny, a man who also claims to have witnessed, AND recorded, the accident, but who might have some extra inside knowledge that should net him some cash reward, and John Lithgow is one of the great murderers in cinema, equal parts smart and unhinged, choosing a number of extra innocent victims just so that he can cover up the motive for the death of his main target.

I have always said that De Palma does his best work when his bravura style is matched by the quality of the material he is working with. That still applies here, but I would also say that Blow Out somehow strikes the perfect balance, his film-making techniques used throughout are so consistently brilliant that they simply work in delivering every scene in the best way possible. One or two absolutely jaw-dropping highlights aside, nothing here is distracting. It’s form and content in perfect harmony, with the visual panache really just helping to emphasise the importance of the audio throughout, as strange as that may sound.

Blow-Up may have been a dark and cynical film, but it was dressed in the carelessness and fun of the “swinging sixties”. Blow Out has no such disguise. Everyone knew the party had been over for some time by the start of the 1980s, and this is the shroud that is wrapped around the whole film.

Add a great Pino Donaggio score, a good selection of supporting cast members who help to widen the scope of things (reminding viewers of the importance of Jack’s potential evidence of foul play), and what could well be one of the greatest (both dark and bittersweet) endings of this decade, and you have a film that is hard to find fault with.

So I didn’t. This is a masterpiece, and I will happily debate that status with anyone who thinks otherwise.

10/10

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