It’s an ingenious idea frankly, so ingenious that it’s been told many ways previously, but never quite like this. Without a doubt my favourite film directed by the iconic Brian De Palma is Blow-Out. The lines between ‘favourite’ and ‘best’ can often get blurred, but I do believe in this case my favourite De Palma film also happens to be his best. No film better utilises the power of De Palma’s dread and paranoia than this. Other films have better kills perhaps, but the cold calculation of John Lithgow’s assassin in this film will always overpower the mania of the maniacs in De Palma’s other thrillers for me. Also it’s a very easy argument to make that John Travolta and Nancy Allen give two of the best performances ever in a De Palma film. I mean anybody who has seen this film and knows the cannon would almost certainly argue that this is the finest ending of any of the directors films, if not the best then certainly the most effecting one. One can ultimately throw around a lot of superlatives in discussing such high quality work as this. But frankly when the work is this good, there are never enough superlatives to throw around. Such is this case with the daring, devastating and masterful Blow Out.

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My title eludes chiefly in the case of this film to the two factors that for me set it apart from other De Palma thrillers. This still has all the power and effect of those films. It even has the self-conscious nature and humility to open with a lambasting over-the-top reduction of so many of the sexy blood and guts movies De Palma had been making previously. There is something to be said here, politically and about movie making. Every movie where De Palma shows somebody watching somebody else, critics all over the world jump to the commentary that the film is a study of what it means to make films. However here we are completely in the nitty gritty and the granular nature of what it actually means to make a film, and at times the truly personal weight that can go into making a film too. The rather simple tale of John Travolta’s Jack capturing the sound effect of an attempted political assassination, before falling for Nancy Allen’s Sally (a simple girl with her own conspiracy plan we come to learn) who was trapped in the car with the politician, is a thrilling one of conspiratorial secrets and powerful relationships. However Blow Out spends its time with the outsiders. Sure, many conspiracy films do spend their time with the little person who gets in and topples a huge governmental conspiracy, but that’s not the case here. Jack and Sally stay on the outside for the most part, intrigued, but not necessarily focused on the big reveal. Even our undercover assassin is thrown out of the circle he was hired by after going rogue to follow his own psychotic plans to cover up the crash. By the end of the film we are in a simple chase with three people and after the chase, nothing is revealed. Jack goes back to work. Readers who have seen the film already of course however know that this day at work is hardly like any other.

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But ultimately it’s the tragedy of Blow Out that gives it it’s kick and power. One almost doesn’t notice that by the third act of the film we aren’t even really dealing with the political power-plays that kicked this whole thing off anymore, as a matter of fact by the end of the film we’re just trying to stop one rogue mad-man, never-mind a whole conspiracy. The tragedy and sorrow of knowing that even if you did know the absolute truth about something, that nobody would care or listen, and that frankly the most important and deeply tragic moment of your life is the cutting room floor scraps of somebody else, is simply not only the stuff of great tragedy, but also great horror. I once read a critic who I can’t recall discuss that the great horror of the majority of 80’s horror films with kids is that nobody ever believed them. No parents, no cops, none of the people that children are told to go to when they do need to tell somebody something. Such is the case with our adult Jack, but Jack knows all too well that in many cases it may be best to stay quiet and out of it. But as my title eludes the backdrop of Philadelphia, a city steeped in Americana and political history is the absolute perfect backdrop for this film and really does give it an overall sense of something bigger than it perhaps is. This is of course cemented later in the film with Sally reaching out and screaming in front of the literal backdrop of the American flag. Perhaps De Palma intentionally set himself a challenge of trying to make a film so focused narrativley on sound to be made with such a visual dynamism, however as we all know if you give De Palma a camera, you’re never gonna get back an un-interesting visual.

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It’s one of Tarantino’s favourite films and many other classic director’s have also cited the power of this particular De Palma. Everything is just so perfectly on point, leading to one of the most touchingly ironic and painful closing moments any film has ever had in my opinion. The power of Travolta’s final line delivery puts it up there for me in the all time closing moments rankings and after the film we’ve just seen, with it’s fine balancing of horror and thriller elements with pained human loss and misery, I’d be amazed if anybody watched this wasn’t effected by what De Palma gives us here. In a career that perhaps has spent a lot of time in the world of titillation and what many perceive simply and perhaps reductively as elevated schlock, Blow Out is the one that everybody seems to agree on as pure quality. The reasoning’s for a critical appreciation for the work are to be seen everywhere, why above certain other films in the writer and director’s oeuvre, who’s to say? What can be said is no film in the oeuvre strikes a more personal blow than this one. The original title of the film in-fact was Personal Effects, from the name of the movie company Jack works for. Perhaps it is this sincerely personal effect that makes many, including myself agree, that this is De Palma’s finest ever work.

Next year, I will be releasing a four part series of articles looking at every single Brian De Palma film. So get ready for full depth studies of every film in De Palma's incredible ouvre. 

-        -  Thomas Carruthers