Blow Out


1h 47m 1981
Blow Out

Brief Synopsis

When audio technician Jack Terri is recording sound effects for a movie, he hears a car crash. Just as the car is sinking in the river, Jack pulls the woman inside to safety, but cannot save the other passenger. When he learns that man who drowned was a presidential candidate, he suspects that the w

Film Details

MPAA Rating
Genre
Drama
Thriller
Release Date
1981
Location
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA

Technical Specs

Duration
1h 47m

Synopsis

When audio technician Jack Terri is recording sound effects for a movie, he hears a car crash. Just as the car is sinking in the river, Jack pulls the woman inside to safety, but cannot save the other passenger. When he learns that man who drowned was a presidential candidate, he suspects that the wreck was not an accident, but murder. After Jack becomes romantically involved with the woman he saved, he learns that she is part of a scheme to blackmail important men, and he begins to wonder if things are as they appear to be. Jack realizes that he was right about the "accident" when the assassin focuses on him and his girlfriend, and he has to utilize all of his special effects skills to keep them alive.

Film Details

MPAA Rating
Genre
Drama
Thriller
Release Date
1981
Location
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA

Technical Specs

Duration
1h 47m

Articles

Blow Out (1981)


Brian De Palma's reputation as a master craftsman of psycho-sexual thrillers and stylish suspense films looms so prominently over his career that his interest in political and social themes are often forgotten. Blow Out (1981) is a marriage of the two, a thriller that spins themes and events from political crimes and scandals into a tense conspiracy thriller steeped in political cynicism, moral corruption and bureaucratic complicity.

John Travolta stars in the film as Jack Terry, a sound technician working on low-budget horror movies. While scouting sounds for a new production, he inadvertently records a car wreck that kills a political candidate and ends up investigating a political conspiracy and cover-up. Nancy Allen, De Palma's then wife and frequent star, plays a part-time call girl who gets caught up in the cover-up and the investigation. The title makes clear the inspiration of Blow Up (1966), Michelangelo Antonioni's film of a fashion photographer who becomes obsessed when he thinks he inadvertently photographed a murder. Blow Out, uses tools of filmmaking in Terry's investigation. The situation, meanwhile, draws from such real-life crimes and incidents as Chappaquiddick, Watergate and the assassination of John F. Kennedy.

It was a personal project for De Palma, who had been developing the story for a few years. "What I wanted to do in the film is to show how haphazard—as opposed to precisely worked out—a conspiracy is." De Palma was, by his own admission, an assassination buff, which inspired the political setting. While making Dressed to Kill (1980) he became interested in the work of his own sound technician recording wild sounds for new sound effects for the film. After working for over a year on the film Prince of the City (1981), De Palma was suddenly replaced, and some of his ideas for that film were worked into the screenplay, notably a flashback to a police surveillance operation involving an undercover officer wired for sound by Terry.

De Palma originally had Al Pacino in mind for the lead but Travolta lobbied for the role after reading the script. De Palma had directed Travolta in Carrie (1976) and reconceived Terry as a younger man. It gave the actor an opportunity to play against the kinds of roles that made him a star in Saturday Night Fever (1977) and Grease (1978). It was Travolta who suggested Nancy Allen, De Palma's wife, for the not-too-bright call girl, and he talked Allen into it. "I never doubted that she could play it but we both agreed that she should follow up Dressed to Kill with something other than a prostitute," De Palma explained in a 1981 interview. "But John convinced both of us that she should do Sally." According to Travolta, who had previously worked with Allen on Carrie, "the chemistry was so good between us, I just knew we'd be perfect together in Blow Out." Other De Palma regulars were cast in key roles: John Lithgow took another sinister part in the reckless, cold-blooded killer Burke and Dennis Franz, who had been in The Fury (1978) and Dressed to Kill, plays a sleazy private investigator. Cinematographer Vilmos Zsigmond previously shot Obsession (1976) for De Palma and Blow Out became the director's fourth collaboration composer Pino Donaggio.

The film was shot largely on location in Philadelphia, with sets built at the Port of History Museum in downtown Philadelphia. As De Palma explained it, "I come from Philadelphia and I wanted to play this sort of contemporary political story against the old conceptions of liberty and independence and truth." The film's major set piece, a surveillance/chase sequence through a Liberty Day Parade (an event created for the story), required over 1,000 extras and 25 stunt drivers and was shot with 11 cameras, including one mounted on a custom-made helicopter rig.

The production faced a serious setback when 2,000 feet of original film negative was stolen from a freight company truck. The footage included an expensive stunt sequence of a Jeep racing through City Hall and crashing through a display window at the department store Wanamaker's and scenes shot in the first days of principle photography. To reconstruct the sequence, the production team had to recreate the parade, and it took two days of filming with over 500 extras. Zsigmond, the film's cinematographer, was unavailable, so his colleague and close friend László Kovács stepped in for the reshoot.

De Palma returned to his favorite cinematic devices, using split-screens and long takes for key sequences and turning to split diopter lenses to stage action in close-up on one side of the screen and long shot on the other side. And he used the Steadicam camera system for the first time on the suggestion of Zsigmond. They even secured Garrett Brown, the creator of the Steadicam, to operate it for the opening sequence, a long take point-of-view shot from a cheap horror film that Terry is working on. Brown, excited to outdo Halloween's (1978) memorable opening, was disappointed to discover he was hired to create a parody of a bad slasher movie, and thus had to be purposely sloppy. He was, however, impressed by how well prepared the entire cast and crew was for the challenge of the elaborate long take. The Steadicam long take became a staple of De Palma's work and ultimately became one of his directorial trademarks.

"[M]ore important than anything else about Blow Out is its total, complete and utter preoccupation with film itself as a medium," wrote Vincent Canby in his New York Times review. The film "is exclusively concerned with the mechanics of movie making, with the use of photographic and sound equipment and, especially, with the manner in which sound and images can be spliced together to reveal possible truths not available when the sound and the image are separated." If Canby's review was cautiously positive, Pauline Kael was utterly rapturous in her piece in The New Yorker. "Seeing this film is like experiencing the body of De Palma's work and seeing it in a new way," she wrote. "It's a great movie." Quentin Tarantino cited Blow Out as one of his three all-time favorite films and cast Travolta in Pulp Fiction (1994) because of his work in the film. During a meeting between the two directors, he told De Palma that he thought the film's final scene "was one of the most heartbreaking shots in the history of cinema."

Sources:

Garret Brown Interview, video interview produced by Susan Arosteguy. Criterion Collection, 2011.

Noah Baumbach Interviews Brian De Palma, video interview produced by Susan Arosteguy. Criterion Collection, 2011.

De Palma, documentary directed by Noah Baumbach and Jake Paltrow. A24, 2016.

"Screen: Travolta stars in De Palma's 'Blow Out'," Vincent Canby. The New York Times, July 24, 1981.

"Portrait of the Artist as a Young Gadgeteer," Pauline Kael. The New Yorker, July 27, 1981.

Brian De Palma Interviews, ed. Laurence F. Knapp. University Press of Mississippi, 2003.

AFI Catalogue of Feature Films

Blow Out (1981)

Blow Out (1981)

Brian De Palma's reputation as a master craftsman of psycho-sexual thrillers and stylish suspense films looms so prominently over his career that his interest in political and social themes are often forgotten. Blow Out (1981) is a marriage of the two, a thriller that spins themes and events from political crimes and scandals into a tense conspiracy thriller steeped in political cynicism, moral corruption and bureaucratic complicity.John Travolta stars in the film as Jack Terry, a sound technician working on low-budget horror movies. While scouting sounds for a new production, he inadvertently records a car wreck that kills a political candidate and ends up investigating a political conspiracy and cover-up. Nancy Allen, De Palma's then wife and frequent star, plays a part-time call girl who gets caught up in the cover-up and the investigation. The title makes clear the inspiration of Blow Up (1966), Michelangelo Antonioni's film of a fashion photographer who becomes obsessed when he thinks he inadvertently photographed a murder. Blow Out, uses tools of filmmaking in Terry's investigation. The situation, meanwhile, draws from such real-life crimes and incidents as Chappaquiddick, Watergate and the assassination of John F. Kennedy.It was a personal project for De Palma, who had been developing the story for a few years. "What I wanted to do in the film is to show how haphazard—as opposed to precisely worked out—a conspiracy is." De Palma was, by his own admission, an assassination buff, which inspired the political setting. While making Dressed to Kill (1980) he became interested in the work of his own sound technician recording wild sounds for new sound effects for the film. After working for over a year on the film Prince of the City (1981), De Palma was suddenly replaced, and some of his ideas for that film were worked into the screenplay, notably a flashback to a police surveillance operation involving an undercover officer wired for sound by Terry.De Palma originally had Al Pacino in mind for the lead but Travolta lobbied for the role after reading the script. De Palma had directed Travolta in Carrie (1976) and reconceived Terry as a younger man. It gave the actor an opportunity to play against the kinds of roles that made him a star in Saturday Night Fever (1977) and Grease (1978). It was Travolta who suggested Nancy Allen, De Palma's wife, for the not-too-bright call girl, and he talked Allen into it. "I never doubted that she could play it but we both agreed that she should follow up Dressed to Kill with something other than a prostitute," De Palma explained in a 1981 interview. "But John convinced both of us that she should do Sally." According to Travolta, who had previously worked with Allen on Carrie, "the chemistry was so good between us, I just knew we'd be perfect together in Blow Out." Other De Palma regulars were cast in key roles: John Lithgow took another sinister part in the reckless, cold-blooded killer Burke and Dennis Franz, who had been in The Fury (1978) and Dressed to Kill, plays a sleazy private investigator. Cinematographer Vilmos Zsigmond previously shot Obsession (1976) for De Palma and Blow Out became the director's fourth collaboration composer Pino Donaggio.The film was shot largely on location in Philadelphia, with sets built at the Port of History Museum in downtown Philadelphia. As De Palma explained it, "I come from Philadelphia and I wanted to play this sort of contemporary political story against the old conceptions of liberty and independence and truth." The film's major set piece, a surveillance/chase sequence through a Liberty Day Parade (an event created for the story), required over 1,000 extras and 25 stunt drivers and was shot with 11 cameras, including one mounted on a custom-made helicopter rig.The production faced a serious setback when 2,000 feet of original film negative was stolen from a freight company truck. The footage included an expensive stunt sequence of a Jeep racing through City Hall and crashing through a display window at the department store Wanamaker's and scenes shot in the first days of principle photography. To reconstruct the sequence, the production team had to recreate the parade, and it took two days of filming with over 500 extras. Zsigmond, the film's cinematographer, was unavailable, so his colleague and close friend László Kovács stepped in for the reshoot.De Palma returned to his favorite cinematic devices, using split-screens and long takes for key sequences and turning to split diopter lenses to stage action in close-up on one side of the screen and long shot on the other side. And he used the Steadicam camera system for the first time on the suggestion of Zsigmond. They even secured Garrett Brown, the creator of the Steadicam, to operate it for the opening sequence, a long take point-of-view shot from a cheap horror film that Terry is working on. Brown, excited to outdo Halloween's (1978) memorable opening, was disappointed to discover he was hired to create a parody of a bad slasher movie, and thus had to be purposely sloppy. He was, however, impressed by how well prepared the entire cast and crew was for the challenge of the elaborate long take. The Steadicam long take became a staple of De Palma's work and ultimately became one of his directorial trademarks."[M]ore important than anything else about Blow Out is its total, complete and utter preoccupation with film itself as a medium," wrote Vincent Canby in his New York Times review. The film "is exclusively concerned with the mechanics of movie making, with the use of photographic and sound equipment and, especially, with the manner in which sound and images can be spliced together to reveal possible truths not available when the sound and the image are separated." If Canby's review was cautiously positive, Pauline Kael was utterly rapturous in her piece in The New Yorker. "Seeing this film is like experiencing the body of De Palma's work and seeing it in a new way," she wrote. "It's a great movie." Quentin Tarantino cited Blow Out as one of his three all-time favorite films and cast Travolta in Pulp Fiction (1994) because of his work in the film. During a meeting between the two directors, he told De Palma that he thought the film's final scene "was one of the most heartbreaking shots in the history of cinema."Sources:Garret Brown Interview, video interview produced by Susan Arosteguy. Criterion Collection, 2011.Noah Baumbach Interviews Brian De Palma, video interview produced by Susan Arosteguy. Criterion Collection, 2011.De Palma, documentary directed by Noah Baumbach and Jake Paltrow. A24, 2016."Screen: Travolta stars in De Palma's 'Blow Out'," Vincent Canby. The New York Times, July 24, 1981."Portrait of the Artist as a Young Gadgeteer," Pauline Kael. The New Yorker, July 27, 1981.Brian De Palma Interviews, ed. Laurence F. Knapp. University Press of Mississippi, 2003.AFI Catalogue of Feature Films

Blow Out - John Travolta in Brian DePalma's BLOW OUT (The Criterion Collection Edition)


Of all the interesting young directors to emerge from film schools in the late 1960s, Brian De Palma remained the most true to his student-filmmaker roots. While Francis Coppola worked on scripts in the Hollywood mainstream and Martin Scorsese turned out interview features and dark short subjects, De Palma was filming with a young Robert DeNiro (Hi Mom!) and working up elaborate gimmick movies mixing formal cinematic techniques with a sense of improvisation from the French New Wave. De Palma entered the mainstream with the horror film Sisters, a frenetic encyclopedia of Hitchcock thriller situations and visuals. Obsession is screenwriter Paul Schrader's reworking of themes from Vertigo, and the Stephen King adaptation Carrie became De Palma's first solid hit. Before moving on to a wider range of subjects, De Palma would make three more murder thrillers that lean heavily on his adoration of Alfred Hitchcock: Dressed to Kill, Body Double and the paranoid conspiracy show Blow Out.

Like so many De Palma movies, Blow Out can best be described by the elements it cannibalizes from earlier classic thrillers. The story is a familiar paranoid conspiracy about the systematic elimination of witnesses to a political assassination. Philadelphian Jack Terry (John Travolta) is a sound designer and editor for cheap horror movies. While recording natural sounds one night, he sees a car crash from a bridge into a river and rescues the female passenger, Sally (Nancy Allen). As it turns out, Sally was the illicit date of a married presidential candidate, whose associates want to suppress what could become a Chappaquiddick-like scandal. Jack's recording reveals the sound of a gunshot before the tire blew out on the death car. Synchronizing his audio with images filmed by a private detective (Dennis Franz), Jack realizes that the accident was really an assassination. He enlists Sally to help him gather enough evidence to prove that a major cover-up is underway. Meanwhile, the assassin Burke (John Lithgow) is still at large. He has plans to destroy Jack's evidence and silence Sally, permanently.

Critic Pauline Kael's exuberant over-praise of Brian De Palma never seemed to connect with the director's stylish but essentially hollow exercises in sub-Hitchcockian cleverness and exploitative misogyny. De Palma always showed a knack for experimentation, re-examining visual motifs from the work of masters like Hitchcock and Michael Powell. Blow Out is a true Frankenstein's creation. The idea of an artist discovering a hidden crime through his medium comes directly from Michelangelo's Antonioni's celebrated Blow-Up. De Palma lifts that movie's entire premise almost intact, and even works a variation on its title. The scenes of Jack Terry re-imagining the fatal car crash in his cutting room are stylishly handled, as his recorded sounds of a blustery midnight bring together a Snow White- like vision of frogs croaking, an owl hooting and trees blowing in the night wind. Yet even those scenes come off as a replay from Francis Coppola's The Conversation, where surveillance expert Gene Hackman analyzes taped conversations in search of clues to a murder. De Palma even takes the opportunity to lampoon horror practitioner John Carpenter, through a Halloween- like slasher film-within-a-film. If one takes into account De Palma's increasing reliance on exploitative sex thrills, the horror film parody is also a reflexive statement on the director's own voyeuristic preferences.

Blow Out moves from one mechanical suspense set piece to the next, taking care to keep Terry and Sally one step behind the evil conspirators. John Travolta gives a pleasing performance, whether trying to chat up Sally or concentrating on the audio-visual evidence that "develops" before his eyes and ears, much like David Hemmings' photo enlargements in the Antonioni thriller. We can see Jack Terry underestimating the forces against him and not doing a better job of securing his editing room, but we throw our hands up when he doesn't duplicate the all-important film and tape evidence, and allows Sally to walk away with the only copy.

Brian De Palma's reputation for stylishness is based on his slick visual technique. Aided by the recently developed SteadiCam system, his camera tracks and stalks about, creating smooth P.O.V. shots that recreate the dreamlike feel of scenes in Hitchcock classics. We see only a couple of instances of De Palma's favored split-screen technique. When the film requires a burst of action to keep the audience interested, De Palma has Travolta drive his Jeep through a Liberty Bell parade, even though it makes no sense that Jack Terry is not under police guard after endangering all those celebrants.

Vilmos Zsigmond's cinematography is stunning, especially in the complicated night exteriors with fireworks going off in the background. We're grateful that Zsigmond abandoned the grossly over-diffused look he used on Obsession. But De Palma still organizes his film along genre exploitation lines. The assassin makes his killings look like the work of a serial strangler, which drags in the seamy diversion of a hooker having sex with a sailor in a train station. De Palma's females are relegated to the status of objects far more than their counterparts in Hitchcock films -- think of Angie Dickinson's interminable shower scene in Dressed to Kill. Nancy Allen's Sally is conceived as a clueless bimbo, and her pre-ordained fate is to become just another victim. Blow Out's final macabre irony goes even farther, reducing Sally to a "snuff sound effect". If the film generated any real interest in its characters this revelation could have been much more than just another clever throwaway.

Criterion's Blu-ray of Blow Out shows off Brian De Palma and Vilmos Zsigmond's stylish thriller to its best advantage, with a sharp and bright transfer at its full Panavision width. The film's active, dynamic soundtrack is also a big plus -- De Palma's audio recordists and designers rose to the challenge of a soundtrack meant to be closely examined by the audience.

Disc producer Susan Arosteguy assembles an interesting collection of extras. Noah Baumbach conducts a long and candid interview with Brian De Palma. Nancy Allen talks about the filming experience (she was very impressed with John Travolta) and inventor-cameraman Garrett Brown takes us into his workshop to demonstrate his SteadiCam and discuss its use. A gallery of Louis Goldman's photos is present along with the film's original trailer. The insert booklet contains a glowing appreciation of De Palma by critic Michael Sragow and the original Pauline Kael New Yorker review that lauds De Palma as a film director for the ages.

Most welcome is a full HD transfer of De Palma's barely-released 1967 feature film Murder à la Mod, a playful concoction that displays many of the director's pet themes already fully developed. De Palma repeats a major scene from multiple points of view as in Stanley Kubrick's The Killing and mines the voyeuristic appeal of film as if directing a Valentine to Michael Powell's Peeping Tom. The fetishistic details of his murder scenes pre-echo the Italian giallo thrillers of Dario Argento. Murder à la Mod comes off as a smug cinematic jest, a quality that the undeniably talented Brian De Palma has never really shaken.

For more information about Blow Out, visit The Criterion Collection. To order Blow Out, go to TCM Shopping.

by Glenn Erickson

Blow Out - John Travolta in Brian DePalma's BLOW OUT (The Criterion Collection Edition)

Of all the interesting young directors to emerge from film schools in the late 1960s, Brian De Palma remained the most true to his student-filmmaker roots. While Francis Coppola worked on scripts in the Hollywood mainstream and Martin Scorsese turned out interview features and dark short subjects, De Palma was filming with a young Robert DeNiro (Hi Mom!) and working up elaborate gimmick movies mixing formal cinematic techniques with a sense of improvisation from the French New Wave. De Palma entered the mainstream with the horror film Sisters, a frenetic encyclopedia of Hitchcock thriller situations and visuals. Obsession is screenwriter Paul Schrader's reworking of themes from Vertigo, and the Stephen King adaptation Carrie became De Palma's first solid hit. Before moving on to a wider range of subjects, De Palma would make three more murder thrillers that lean heavily on his adoration of Alfred Hitchcock: Dressed to Kill, Body Double and the paranoid conspiracy show Blow Out. Like so many De Palma movies, Blow Out can best be described by the elements it cannibalizes from earlier classic thrillers. The story is a familiar paranoid conspiracy about the systematic elimination of witnesses to a political assassination. Philadelphian Jack Terry (John Travolta) is a sound designer and editor for cheap horror movies. While recording natural sounds one night, he sees a car crash from a bridge into a river and rescues the female passenger, Sally (Nancy Allen). As it turns out, Sally was the illicit date of a married presidential candidate, whose associates want to suppress what could become a Chappaquiddick-like scandal. Jack's recording reveals the sound of a gunshot before the tire blew out on the death car. Synchronizing his audio with images filmed by a private detective (Dennis Franz), Jack realizes that the accident was really an assassination. He enlists Sally to help him gather enough evidence to prove that a major cover-up is underway. Meanwhile, the assassin Burke (John Lithgow) is still at large. He has plans to destroy Jack's evidence and silence Sally, permanently. Critic Pauline Kael's exuberant over-praise of Brian De Palma never seemed to connect with the director's stylish but essentially hollow exercises in sub-Hitchcockian cleverness and exploitative misogyny. De Palma always showed a knack for experimentation, re-examining visual motifs from the work of masters like Hitchcock and Michael Powell. Blow Out is a true Frankenstein's creation. The idea of an artist discovering a hidden crime through his medium comes directly from Michelangelo's Antonioni's celebrated Blow-Up. De Palma lifts that movie's entire premise almost intact, and even works a variation on its title. The scenes of Jack Terry re-imagining the fatal car crash in his cutting room are stylishly handled, as his recorded sounds of a blustery midnight bring together a Snow White- like vision of frogs croaking, an owl hooting and trees blowing in the night wind. Yet even those scenes come off as a replay from Francis Coppola's The Conversation, where surveillance expert Gene Hackman analyzes taped conversations in search of clues to a murder. De Palma even takes the opportunity to lampoon horror practitioner John Carpenter, through a Halloween- like slasher film-within-a-film. If one takes into account De Palma's increasing reliance on exploitative sex thrills, the horror film parody is also a reflexive statement on the director's own voyeuristic preferences. Blow Out moves from one mechanical suspense set piece to the next, taking care to keep Terry and Sally one step behind the evil conspirators. John Travolta gives a pleasing performance, whether trying to chat up Sally or concentrating on the audio-visual evidence that "develops" before his eyes and ears, much like David Hemmings' photo enlargements in the Antonioni thriller. We can see Jack Terry underestimating the forces against him and not doing a better job of securing his editing room, but we throw our hands up when he doesn't duplicate the all-important film and tape evidence, and allows Sally to walk away with the only copy. Brian De Palma's reputation for stylishness is based on his slick visual technique. Aided by the recently developed SteadiCam system, his camera tracks and stalks about, creating smooth P.O.V. shots that recreate the dreamlike feel of scenes in Hitchcock classics. We see only a couple of instances of De Palma's favored split-screen technique. When the film requires a burst of action to keep the audience interested, De Palma has Travolta drive his Jeep through a Liberty Bell parade, even though it makes no sense that Jack Terry is not under police guard after endangering all those celebrants. Vilmos Zsigmond's cinematography is stunning, especially in the complicated night exteriors with fireworks going off in the background. We're grateful that Zsigmond abandoned the grossly over-diffused look he used on Obsession. But De Palma still organizes his film along genre exploitation lines. The assassin makes his killings look like the work of a serial strangler, which drags in the seamy diversion of a hooker having sex with a sailor in a train station. De Palma's females are relegated to the status of objects far more than their counterparts in Hitchcock films -- think of Angie Dickinson's interminable shower scene in Dressed to Kill. Nancy Allen's Sally is conceived as a clueless bimbo, and her pre-ordained fate is to become just another victim. Blow Out's final macabre irony goes even farther, reducing Sally to a "snuff sound effect". If the film generated any real interest in its characters this revelation could have been much more than just another clever throwaway. Criterion's Blu-ray of Blow Out shows off Brian De Palma and Vilmos Zsigmond's stylish thriller to its best advantage, with a sharp and bright transfer at its full Panavision width. The film's active, dynamic soundtrack is also a big plus -- De Palma's audio recordists and designers rose to the challenge of a soundtrack meant to be closely examined by the audience. Disc producer Susan Arosteguy assembles an interesting collection of extras. Noah Baumbach conducts a long and candid interview with Brian De Palma. Nancy Allen talks about the filming experience (she was very impressed with John Travolta) and inventor-cameraman Garrett Brown takes us into his workshop to demonstrate his SteadiCam and discuss its use. A gallery of Louis Goldman's photos is present along with the film's original trailer. The insert booklet contains a glowing appreciation of De Palma by critic Michael Sragow and the original Pauline Kael New Yorker review that lauds De Palma as a film director for the ages. Most welcome is a full HD transfer of De Palma's barely-released 1967 feature film Murder à la Mod, a playful concoction that displays many of the director's pet themes already fully developed. De Palma repeats a major scene from multiple points of view as in Stanley Kubrick's The Killing and mines the voyeuristic appeal of film as if directing a Valentine to Michael Powell's Peeping Tom. The fetishistic details of his murder scenes pre-echo the Italian giallo thrillers of Dario Argento. Murder à la Mod comes off as a smug cinematic jest, a quality that the undeniably talented Brian De Palma has never really shaken. For more information about Blow Out, visit The Criterion Collection. To order Blow Out, go to TCM Shopping. by Glenn Erickson

Quotes

Trivia

Miscellaneous Notes

Released in United States Summer July 24, 1981

Cinematographer Laszlo Kovacs reshot some scenes of which the negatives were stolen because director of photography Zsigmond was not able to at the time.

Released in United States Summer July 24, 1981