Discover on Prime Video: One of America’s Greatest Thrillers, a Box Office Failure, Then a Late-Life Icon

Among the many classics that mark Brian De Palma’s career is Blow Out. It is not the most famous and it attracted the ire of the public and critics upon its release. Since then, time has taken its toll. Today it is clear that this is one of the greatest thrillers of American cinema. A film that would not envy the actions of the director’s mentor, Alfred Hitchcock.

The story tells about Jack Terry (John Travolta), a sound recordist who works on low-quality films. One night, as he hopes to capture atmospheric sounds from outside, a car accident occurs on the bridge. A loud noise causes the car to veer off course and fall straight into the river. The technician rushes to save the victim, but only manages to save the passenger.

Jack Terry discovers that the dead driver was the governor and a very serious candidate for the next presidential election. First, he realized by re-listening to his recordings that the dull noise was actually gunfire. The accident turns into a murder, and the engineer will do everything to find its author.

Conspiracy madness

If Blow Out is among the worthy successors to Alfred Hitchcock’s cinema, it borrows heavily from Michelangelo Antonioni’s Blow Up. Its concept is also similar. In Antonioni’s film, he is a fashion photographer who thinks he sees a murder in a photograph. Image is the answer to everything. In De Palma’s version, everything is focused on sound.

When it was released in the United States in July 1981, the political landscape was trying to recover from the Watergate scandal in 1974 and the end of the Vietnam War in 1975. In Hollywood cinema, many paranoid thrillers appeared in the background. From conspiracy theories. Exploding There is a part of this movement that feeds into the conspiracy craze – unfortunately still relevant today.

John Travolta, with the success of Saturday Night Fever and Grease, is one of the biggest stars of the moment. Here he discovers Brian De Palma, who had directed Carrey, five years earlier, in his first film. When the actor signed on for Blow Out, the budget was multiplied by six.

The public and critics expect to see an ordinary film, but in the end they find a disturbing mirror of their time, which ends with a particularly dark – and yet surprising – ending. Reception is frosty. Not many will forgive Brian De Palma for his disappointing end. Blow Out was a box office flop and significantly damaged the career of John Travolta, who couldn’t find such dark roles.

It wasn’t until years later, and thanks in particular to Quentin Tarantino and his love of the film, that Blow Out finally found its letters of nobility – well-deserved. Impressed by John Travolta, the director of Kill Bill decided to hire him for Pulp Fiction, which won the Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival in 1994.

Blow Out is available on Prime Video.