A couple of nights ago I saw Blow Out
As in the case of many of De Palma’s films, there are references to classic movies in this one as well, mainly Antonioni’s Blow-Up, although, unlike Antonioni, De Palma doesn’t question reality itself but, instead, Travolta turns out to live in a distorted reality from different reasons. John Travolta is Jack Terry, a sound man for a B-movie company in Philadelphia. Late one night, while he’s standing on a bridge recording owls and other night sounds, he becomes a witness to an accident. A car has a blowout, veers off a bridge and plunges into a river. Travolta jumps in after it, rescues the girl inside, Sally (Nancy Allen), and later discovers that the car’s drowned driver was a presidential candidate. After he reviews his sound recording of the event, Travolta becomes convinced that he can hear a gunshot just before the blowout, but everyone, police and high officials included, advise him to leave the conspiracy theory to himself. The plot thickens, Travolta’s character digs deeper and deeper, and a great film emerges, with an epic ending, that has a lot to say. And it got me wondering, who was more naïve, Terry or Sally?
In what may be the best scene in the film, Travolta comes across a series of photos of the fatal accident and we are shown, step by step, how he assembles the photos and his recording into a film of the event. It is a brilliantly crafted sequence, one that not only reflects De Palma’s skill, but his love for films, too, and a sequence that also invites the viewer to take part in the action. I do love directors who respect their audience and make movies for an intelligent public.
photo: film still, Filmways Pictures
