Taglines: Murder has a sound all of its own!
Blow Out movie storyline. This stylish Brian De Palma thriller plays off the theme of the unsuspecting witness who discovers a crime and is thereby put in grave danger, but with a novel twist. Jack Terry is a master audio technician who makes his living by recording unique sounds for grade-B horror movies.
Late one evening, he is recording sounds for use in his movies when he hears something unexpected through his sound equipment and records it. Curiosity gets the better of him when the media become involved, and he begins to unravel the pieces of a nefarious conspiracy. As he struggles to survive against his shadowy enemies and expose the truth, he does not know whom he can trust.
Blow Out is a 1981 American neo-noir psychological political thriller film written and directed by Brian De Palma.[3] The film stars John Travolta as Jack Terry, a movie sound effects technician from Philadelphia who, while recording sounds for a low-budget slasher film, serendipitously captures audio evidence of an assassination involving a presidential hopeful. Nancy Allen stars as Sally Bedina, a young woman involved in the crime. The supporting cast includes John Lithgow and Dennis Franz. The film’s tagline in advertisements was, “Murder has a sound all of its own”.
The film is directly based on Michelangelo Antonioni’s 1966 film Blowup, replacing the medium of photography with the medium of audio recording. The concept of Blow Out came to De Palma while he was working on the thriller Dressed to Kill (1980). The film was shot in the late autumn and winter of 1980 in various Philadelphia locations on a relatively substantial budget of $18 million.
Blow Out opened to minuscule audience interest at the time of release despite receiving a mostly positive critical reception. The lead performances by Travolta and Allen, the direction by DePalma and the visual style were cited as the strongest points of the film. Critics also recognised the stylistic and narrative connection to the work of Alfred Hitchcock, who DePalma admires, and giallo films. Over the years since its initial theatrical release, it has developed status as a cult film and received a home media release by the Criterion Collection, a company who specializes in “important classic and contemporary film”, which re-ignited public interest in the film.
Themes and allusions
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.” 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. The film uses several of DePalma’s trademark techniques: split-screen, the split diopter lens, and the elaborate tracking shot.
As with several other De Palma films, Blow Out explores the power of guilt; both Jack and Sally are motivated to help right their past wrongs, both with tragic consequences. De Palma also revisits the theme of voyeurism, a recurring theme in much of his previous work (ex:, Hi, Mom!, Sisters, and Dressed to Kill). Jack exhibits elements of a peeping tom, but one who works with sound instead of image.
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 recall both Michelangelo Antonioni’s film Blowup and Francis Ford Coppola’s The Conversation. The film alludes to elements of the Watergate scandal and the JFK assassination. The film also recalls elements of the Chappaquiddick incident, although De Palma intentionally tried to downplay the similarities.
De Palma also explicitly references two of his previous projects. At one point in the film, Dennis Franz watches De Palma’s film Murder a la Mod on television. Originally, the character was to watch Coppola’s Dementia 13, but Roger Corman demanded too much for the rights. 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 by Sidney Lumet.
Blow Out (1981)
Directed by: Brian De Palma
Starring: John Travolta, Nancy Allen, John Lithgow, Dennis Franz, Peter Boyden, Curt May, John McMartin, Deborah Everton, J. Patrick McNamara, Missy Cleveland, Barbara Sigel, Cindy Manion
Screenplay by: Brian De Palma
Production Design by: Paul Sylbert
Cinematography by: Vilmos Zsigmond
Film Editing by: Paul Hirsch
Costume Design by: Vicki Sánchez
Set Decoration by: Bruce Weintraub
Music by: Pino Donaggio
MPAA Rating: None.
Distributed by: Filmways Pictures
Release Date: July 24, 1981
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