De Palma effort not a classic

Press, 7 June 1982, Page 7

De Palma effort not a classic

Berner

hans petrovic

BLOW OUT Directed and written by Brian De Palma For those who may wonder. "Blow Out" (Carlton) refers to the noise a car tyre makes just before a fatal crash off a bridge in Brian De Palma's latest movie. This is not to be confused with Michelangelo Antonioni's first English-spoken film. 'Blowup." in which a young photographer believes that he has accidentally captured on film an actual murder. In the second version, read John Travolta, a film sound effects man. for David Hemmings. the photographer of Antonioni's colourful original of this type of "now you see it. now you don’t" movie. With “Blow Out." this has become "now you hear it, now you don’t" — again giving the film's main protagonist (Travolta) the opportunity to wander through a stack of red herrings to keep him as confused as it does the audience. "Blowup" is remembered as a film-maker’s landmark because of the way the Italian director happilybounced boobs and pubes around on our screens. Unfortunately. you can not get quite the same effect working with sound, when the most exciting noise is that of a gunshot. For some reason, the last half dozen of De Palma’s

films have been automatically likened to the work of Alfred Hitchcock — completely forgetting the fact that a relatively new director can make movies in his own right, and steal his technique and inspiration from wherever he wishes. To me, De Palma is such a director — blatantly, and lovingly, echoing earlier styles while trying to cut his own niche in the solid block shaped by his Holly-wood heroes. The trouble is that "Blow Out" is not going to be remembered as one of his major efforts. De Palma’s "Phantom of the Paradise” and “Carrie” will remain i among my favourites, no matter how much anyone" else tries to dismiss them as the works of an immature, prone-to-plagi-arisation director. "Sisters" and "Dressed to Kill,” with their obvious Hitchcockian heritage, also made verygood cinema.

Soon after "Carrie," he came out with another work about extra-sensory powers, “The Fury," the plot of which proved as easily forgettable as its title — and the same applies to "Blow Out." In other w-ords: don't push a good thing too far. De Palma has used the revolving camera trick (from Hitchcock's "Vertigo"') often before, and he does again for good effect — except for that de.io ru feeling. The story starts on a country road, where Travolta is recording sound effects for a film, and spots a car speeding along the roadway. As it approaches a bridge, a tyre explodes and the car careers out of control and plunges into the murky river below. Our hero is certain that he has heard a gunshot just before the tyre exploded. He runs to the river where the car has sunk, dives in. breaks a window and. rescues a S woman (Nancy Allen), is also a man in the car. who is already dead and proves to be a Presidential candidate. The resulting sitution has all the ingredients of a Nixon-in-the- Chappaquiddick cover-up plot. Forgetting American political farce and returning to filmic fantasy, we are left with that old paranoic plot of trying to prove the truth against impossible odds. However, another important ingredient of such work — the inevitable romance — does not work, and the relationship between Travolta and Miss Allen (De Palma's real-life wife) never becomes sufficiently clear to emotionally involve the audience. So. who cares if one of the two may die at the end. (In “Vertigo," I can assure you, I loved and cared about Kim Novak’s fate as much as James Stewart did.) The climactic car chase and fireworks are good — but sufficiently silly to make a ’ master of such pyrotechnics as Hitchcock squirm in his grave. The major interesting factor about “Blow Out” is that this is De Palma’s latest work. From that point of view, it proves slightly disappointing but still eagerly keeps one watching out for the next one.