Brian De Palma
Blow Out

The sad sound of memories.

Tragic and cruel. That fragile echo, lonely in the mind of Jack Terry. Staring into nothingness, the icy stillness of the park, the emptiness and horror in the headphones. And the bleeding heart. It burns without pause nor understanding, that damned wound, it tears your insides and erases all hope. The cold is a habit, enveloping the tired soul and drowning it in the sad days that lack a date. They have no reason, because the executioner demon inside you has enslaved your pain.

Brief frames of a trash movie. Night. Point of view of an unknown, likely voyeur. Long take of a girls' boarding school. In the room, some girl studies. Or listens to music at full volume. Some love to have fun, others 'love' and that's it. Slowly, the gaze of our peeper enters and reaches the bathroom, revealing its grim appearance in the fogged glass of a mirror and sees the body of a young woman behind the shower curtain. A few meters ahead, 'our' hand is that of the killer holding a knife: threateningly moves the curtain, observes (him and us) for a moment the 'nude' victim who terrified explodes in a scream...A depressed meow, perhaps. Stop. The typical shower assault is a cinematographic déjà vu, the climactic scene taking place on the screen of a projection room (a film within a film, therefore). All true, all false. In practice, a declaration of poetics and themes of Brian De Palma's entire cinema. After such a revelation of implicit 'fiction', the viewer watches the just-projected images rewind, in reverse; and realizes that the killer's hand on the curtains, a moment earlier 'murderous' and evil, now seems to close them in a modest, almost shy manner.

The deconstructive metacinematic discourse continues to intertwine with his thriller language (Hitchcockian camera angle, split screen, protagonist identifying with the audience, etc.). As in the past, but with more or less explicit references to manipulation of the 'real' by the demigod director; also through political conspiracies/intrigues and the irony that often returns (the low-budget studio where Jack works, the fictional 'Independent Pictures Incorporated', the discovery of the assassination thanks to the single-frame film and the 'flashbacks' reconstructing its dynamics). In 'Blow Out' (a clear nod to Antonioni), De Palma shifts the point of observation from visual to auditory, and the represented story becomes a metaphor for the mechanism of films and the relationship established with the viewer. A parallel line between screen and audience, where the film's protagonist assumes the dual role of intermediary for the viewers in the theater and 'listens', 'watches' like them. The engine of the whole affair remains the figure of the sound engineer, initially unaware of being in the midst of an intricate and dangerous puzzle, too big to consider a 'simple' car accident, finally dragged by his obsession with truth leading to the death of poor Sally. A sort of 'cognitive' sin, derived from the director's Calvinist upbringing. Even more serious, because Terry had already been years ago (and he himself narrates it) an indirect cause of a fellow police officer's killing; infiltrated in the underworld and identified due to a technical glitch in the microphone provided by Jack. The information short-circuit and the conservative instinct of 'occult powers', the centrality of technology in Travolta/Terry (physically and technically with computers like young De Palma..) and the illusion of a constructed, and 'disappeared', reality by the means of communication: the soundman Jack brings the interaction with filmic narcissism to film, animation cinema (the 'footage' of the incident obtained from newspaper photos, compared by the vile Karp to Zapruder's on JFK), directional microphones, wiretaps (ever-alive post-Watergate), recorders, and TV monitors. Exemplary, in this respect, the formidable panoramic view of the room where Terry works: a virtuosic circular movement of the camera, with no cuts and with the protagonist entering and exiting the camera frame.

Jack Terry (a compelling John Travolta) is a sound effects technician for inferior trash-movies and one night, while recording stock sounds for a new film, is accidentally involved in the death of Governor McRyan, a presidential candidate. Apparently, an accident with the car 'swerving' and ending up in the river. Apparently, because Jack was there (in a scene of extraordinary auditory impact, with sharply distinguished and focused roles of running water, a hoot owl, the microphone-recorder, an unusual crackling, an incoming car engine, and something that reminds horribly of a 'shot'..) and manages to save a girl, Sally (Nancy Allen, vulnerable and heartbreaking), from the submerged car. At the hospital, an old collaborator of the deceased politician asks Jack to forget the young girl's presence next to McRyan: but the technician cannot 'erase' that strange explosion from his memories, before the car plunged into the stream. A shot, perhaps. That becomes a certainty upon re-listening to his tapes. Jack Terry no longer believes in the official version, convinces himself that the governor was a victim of a political machination, a conspiracy. And it is indeed the ruthless killer Burke (a chilling John Lithgow, a regular 'villain' in De Palma) the perpetrator of the murder, hired by an obscure parastatal network trying to conceal all evidence. Including Sally, in the game of the governor's political opponents, and now an inconvenient witness to eliminate: Burke, in seeking the girl, kills other innocents and steers the police investigations towards a phantom maniac. Meanwhile, Jack manages to convince Sally to steal the footage shot by accomplice Karp (Dennis Franz). Terry, having edited the film of the fatal incident with the recorded sounds, finds only skepticism in the police. But TV journalist Donohue believes him, proposing an appearance on his show to present his own version of the events. Burke intercepts every call from Jack Terry, pretends to be Donohue, and contacts Sally to obtain the precious film. The meticulous sound technician this time wants to make no mistakes, takes all precautions, and tucks a hidden transmitter-spy on her. It’s Independence Day in Philadelphia, the appointment is at the city station. Terry kisses goodbye to the girl he gradually realizes he loves. He warns Sally to be careful, not to trust too quickly. He holds her close, protectively, and she looks at him tenderly with a smile..

The great success of 'Dressed to Kill' convinced Brian De Palma to continue on the same thriller path, the temptation of a 'political' film was strong, and together with trusted producer George Litto, managed to mediate an excellent balance in 'Blow Out', at the end of 1981. Assisted by photography wizard Vilmos Zsigmond and the alchemy with Pino Donaggio's music, De Palma crafts a 'manifesto' film of post-modern cinema that cites everything, absorbs and reinterprets everything: metaphor of vision and the hyper-realism of the Author hand in hand, the magnificent technical proficiency at the service of a thrilling spectacle capable of exploring myths and obsessions ('Obsession'..) of an era.

An unsustainable weight on Jack's shoulders, mistakes never die and the shadow of the past covers every noise, every useless step, every eagerly sought word left unspoken. And it stuns the present with ghosts and stammers, among the leaves abandoned in the wind and the stumbles of coming days denying warmth and light. All that remains is to watch, in the darkness of the room, that girl in the shower, the murderous hand moving the curtain, the scream of terror... That scream that will always accompany Jack Terry in his head. That scream in 'fiction' overcoming life. Tragic and cruel. 'A good scream, it's a good scream...'

"But why does there always have to be a conspiracy involved, for goodness' sake?"