562 Blow Out

[matrixschmatrix]

It's not a show I like overall, but Lithgow's performance on Dexter is something of an extension of his DePalma work, and it is hands down terrifying.

Travolta really is stunning in Blow Out- there's a totally unforced charisma to him that made it difficult for me to believe it was the same actor as the obnoxious ham that's showed up in most of his latter-day roles, and it pushed me to seek out more of his early performances. Nothing quite compares, although there's moments in Saturday Night Fever (and even a sequence or two in Staying Alive.)

[Jeff]

I don't even have rational thought so all is good. I'm assuming the cheap as shit Universal is just fine.

Yeah. I think the elements are pretty beat up, but that seems oddly appropriate, and it's a perfectly serviceable anamorphic transfer.

[knives]

That's good. As to the rest of your recommendations I have been really curious to see Body Double since reading American Psycho and Phantom of the Paradise just sounds right up my alley, but never had the opportunity. I really should see M:I though at least since I really enjoy the next two movies in the series more than most of these sorts.

[MichaelB]

The real star though is Lithgow... His voice is too childish and high pitched compared with his massive build so he turns into a giggling phantom. I'm interested in seeing more De Palma films to an insane extent almost entirely because of how deformed this performance was.

I'm sorry, Knives, but I think you're going to have to watch Raising Cain. It's gloriously awful in the best possible way. DePalma gone wild. The tagline "DeMented, DeRanged, DeCeptive, DePalma" should give you a clue as to what you're in for. It's Lithgow's show all the way, and his giddy, unhinged, over-the-top performance must be seen to be believed. I don't guess that in good conscience I can actually recommend it, but it's certainly goofy fun if you're willing to completely suspend disbelief and abandon all rational thought.

I can certainly recommend it, and for all those reasons. It's all too rare that a supposed non-comedy has me giggling pretty much throughout in sheer pleasure - while knowing that all the laughs are entirely intentional. (I read an interview with De Palma in which he said that people who laughed at Raising Cain were "getting it" - and that genuinely didn't come across as someone excusing a critically mauled film: he actually meant it).

It's a damn sight better than its immediate predecessor Bonfire of the Vanities, that's for certain.

[The Elegant Dandy Fop]

The most shocking improvement is in the split screens. As far as I can tell there isn't any split screen in the movie, but De Palma always has the widescreen split into two fullscreens.

Maybe he's more discreet in it, but I'm pretty sure there's some split-screen in Blow Out.

[knives]

He does mention as much during the interview on the disc which makes is rather disappointing, but should have been expected.

[colinr0380]

I think what knives is referring to isn't just split screen but split diopter lens shots (as illustrated by Dandy Fop in the linked video above where the shot begins split diopter and then moves to split screen), where both the foreground and background is in focus at the same time - I love the 'heightened paranoia' effect it brings to a shot - they're all over De Palma's films but also 70s thrillers such as All The Presidents Men. Robert Wise also seemed to like them, using them extensively in both The Andromeda Strain and Star Trek: The Motion Picture. Abel Ferrara's Body Snatchers film from 1993 used them particularly effectively as well (as did a couple of shots in Reservoir Dogs and Pulp Fiction), but I think for some reason they've seemed to fall out of favour in recent times (presumably with the move away from anamorphic lenses towards digital?)

In terms of De Palma recommendations here are my tips:

I would recommend going back to the previous film Dressed To Kill as it features a much better use of Nancy Allen than Blow Out - she's in far fiestier form (as is Angie Dickinson who opens the film with what seems to be a homage to the shower scene of Carrie!) Michael Caine is in what could be considered the Lithgow role in this one. Plus Dennis Franz is in there too.

Then definitely watch Body Double - that's my vote for favourite of these early 80s opulent De Palma thrillers which all manage to out-giallo anything coming out of Italy. It's a film which I had trouble appreciating on a first run through as it feels like it abandons the protagonist, and the audience alongside him, halfway through the film until he muscles his way back into the action (though that's another way in which this film reveals that it is a fantastic, delirious, wonderfully bad taste homage to Vertigo) but it grows on me more and more. Following on from the perfectly observed comment by knives about the opening sequence of Blow Out revealing its grindhouse roots, he might be pleased to learn that the main action of Body Double is bookended between two short scenes taking place on the set of a schlock horror film! Franz appears here too as the rather angry director (Was the film all just a dream/acting exercise to enable a young chap paralysed with fear at the opening to turn into a man of action and take on the role of sexually predatory vampire? Is Craig Wasson essaying the 1980s version of Robert Pattinson?)

It is also the other notorious 'naked Melanie Griffith film' after Something Wild! Though be aware that Griffith's portrayal of porn star Holly Boddy in this film is in a similar 'grating and annoying' vein to the one that was mentioned regarding Allen's character in Blow Out. But she is not really in it that much until near the end of the film - or rather she is, but since this is a film about voyeurism and allusions to Vertigo the character is used more as a 'low-class' stand-in for an adored from afar and over idealised 'classy' figure who occupies the first half of the film.

I would second all the suggestions about going for Raising Cain for the fantastic multiple performances by Lithgow, seemingly trying to outdo Alec Guinness's multiple roles in Kind Hearts And Coronets! (Though for his best comic/dramatic role I still think his sensitive portrayal of a pro-football player turned transsexual turned confident to Robin Williams in The World According To Garp is still his best performance!), though I think there is much else to recommend about this film, especially the way that it seems tolerably looney up until the halfway point and then has the courage to follow through with its twisted logic and goes totally, deliriously off the deep end, to the extent that I still have trouble working out exactly how everything fits together! It was also great to see Steven Bauer in a De Palma film again (albeit as a relatively callow character - playing the equivalent of John Gavin's boyfriend character in Psycho, say) following his defining role as Pacino's sidekick in the Scarface remake.

While Lithgow gets the most opportunity to chew the scenery, Frances Sternhagen almost steals the show in the couple of scenes in which she appears - one of which involves a beautiful long take single shot that seems to outdo the opening sequence of Bonfire of the Vanities as Sternhagen explains all about the creation of multiple personalities to the cops whilst walking through almost the entire building (I think later on these kinds of expositionary scenes were given the name 'walk and talks' in The West Wing, but I don't think that TV show would ever have turned the camera 90° whilst the group of characters walk down the stairs!)

Spoiler

And then of course there's that very amusing scene where she gets beaten up and Lithgow steals her wig!

I think of Raising Cain as a film very similar to the Scorsese remake of Cape Fear (which also features lots of split diopter shots!), especially in their deranged climaxes where all sense of 'tangible realism' goes out of the window (the extended slow motion in the climax to Cain also seems to refer back to the extensive use of that technique in The Fury) and gets replaced with highly amusing blatant symbolism (or Freudianism in Cain's case) and sharp objects pointing into frame that you just know someone is going to end up impaled upon!

[knives]

That all sounds fantastic and yes I was referring to the great usage of split diopters. The one in the medical office and of Lithgow on the bench are truly stunning. There's also a couple of fascinating uses of it that seems to be mixed with back projection ala Taymor. It's really a film that fully uses every part of it's form.
I also managed to watch Murder A La Mod this morning and in a handful of respects I was even more amazed with it. That theme song and really the whole open before we get to the 'story' is so fun to watch in the manner of a Jeff Keen film. When the story improper does start it might actually be even crazier. I especially loved the ice pick fellow, Finley I believe, whose inner monologue is just delirious. The whole experience was like smashing Lester and Klein together for something that amounts to an excellent lark. If nothing else it got me to spend the $2 needed for Hi, Mom which has to be worth at least that much.

[Cold Bishop]

I think what knives is referring to isn't just split screen but split diopter lens shots

And unless I'm mistaken, there is a whole scene in Dressed to Kill which uses split-screen, then uses split diopter lens shots on each half of the screen, dividing it up into four distinct sections.

[Zumpano]

From @mrbeaks Twitter feed:
"Has anyone noted that Baumbach v. White pretty much went nuclear with the BLOW OUT Criterion?"

Can anyone tell me what he's talking about?

[Jeff]

From @mrbeaks Twitter feed:
"Has anyone noted that Baumbach v. White pretty much went nuclear with the BLOW OUT Criterion?"

Can anyone tell me what he's talking about?

I think it's just referring to the schism created by Armond White's deranged ongoing revulsion for Noah Baumbach and his simultaneous unconditional love for all things DePalma. Seeing the two of them share the screen in that lengthy interview may very well cause White to implode.

[bjboyer]

I think it's just referring to the schism created by Armond White's deranged ongoing revulsion for Noah Baumbach and his simultaneous unconditional love for all things DePalma. Seeing the two of them share the screen in that lengthy interview may very well cause White to implode.

Hopefully this actually happens, so that we can continue to pretend that he's never existed in the first place... just now without the annoyance of him continuously crying out for people to notice him.

[colinr0380]

It's a damn sight better than its immediate predecessor Bonfire of the Vanities, that's for certain.

I took the opportunity to rewatch Bonfire of the Vanities for the first time in many years last night and have to agree that its not a great film. I really like the utterly cynical attitude towards all of the characters here - they're all corrupt, indefensible and unlikeable, with the point at which we enter and leave the various character's arcs of highs and lows being the rather arbitrary way in which we have to finally come to see them. Perception of guilt (or of winners and losers) all just seems to be dependent on the point at which the film ends - the ones on top will soon be brought low, and the ones down on their luck will assuredly claw it all back by fair means or foul. I particularly liked the calculated manner in which finding a white, WASPish, privileged patsy to take the rap for all the ills of society will help to placate the masses (such as the Jewish politicians or black preachers) and allow the privileged classes to continue their work without consequence (Hanks is playing an unwitting Oliver North, or perhaps a more appropriate comparison would be to Fred Goodwin, an unlikeable over privileged figure pushed into the limelight to take responsibility for a crisis without any particularly serious punishment meted out, while the corrupt institutions that perpetuate that crisis blithely continue on their merry way. Plus Bonfire does nail the way that these 'bad guys' then become kind of folk heroes amongst their peers for their unwilling sacrifices - at least until they start shooting up the place at their welcome home party!)

However the film feels like a rather uncomfortable fit in De Palma's filmography (similar to the way Cronenberg's M. Butterfly is in keeping with a lot of his core ideas but still feels like a strange failure in a number of other respects). In some ways it is a perfect film to tackle in which the damning immersion in heightened superficiality previously mostly focused on women, callow men, voyeurism and sex here expands to tackle money, class, race, religion, politics and the media. Combined with the sheer unappealingness of all of the characters is the quite audaciously shocking caricaturing of every possible 'group' in the film - they're all unsympathetically self interested, even (perhaps more so, since they are in some senses the originators of the corruption, on whose watch the rot was allowed to set in) fathers and mothers. No one is innocent, all are horrible role models in so many wonderfully distinctive ways.

I've always had a theory that some particularly distinctive directors have certain films which 'expose' their style too much. While I don't think Bonfire is a shockingly bad film (though I've not read the Tom Wolfe novel to compare it with), it is a film where the De Palma style is extremely subdued but when a few particuar 'trademark' elements appear (the split screen sequence; the split diopter shot of Griffiths walking away from Hanks at the party; the opening tracking shot, later to reappear to better effect in Raising Cain and Snake Eyes) they seem rather half-heartedly thrown in and, at least on my viewing, feel like they distract the viewer more than immerse them into the story.

It feels rather too much like De Palma playing it too stylistically safe with a bit of fan service in a couple of moments while taking on the task of juggling so many disparate story elements, which is probably something which could have had a knock-on impact on Raising Cain, which feels liberated in the way that it takes an incredibly flimsy premise and embellishes it to such an extent.

However I still think Mission To Mars has to stand as being my least favourite De Palma - while Bonfire of the Vanities features unappealing people doing terrible things to each other with little to no consequence, and holds little repeat value for that reason, unfortunately Mission To Mars features stupid people doing things for idiotic reasons (the final sequence with Tim Robbins in particular) and is handicapped by an almost beatific heart-on-the-sleeve sincerity which feels far more calculated than the more controversial but expected De Palma cynicism! I can only assume that the sci-fi framework turned out to be just as resilient to being brought within the director's oeuvre as a novel adaptation had been.

[MichaelB]

I've always had a theory that some particularly distinctive directors have certain films which 'expose' their style too much. While I don't think Bonfire is a shockingly bad film (though I've not read the Tom Wolfe novel to compare it with), it is a film where the De Palma style is extremely subdued but when a few particuar 'trademark' elements appear (the split screen sequence; the split diopter shot of Griffiths walking away from Hanks at the party; the opening tracking shot, later to reappear to better effect in Raising Cain and Snake Eyes) they seem rather half-heartedly thrown in and, at least on my viewing, feel like they distract the viewer more than immerse them into the story.

The biggest problem with Bonfire is the galumphing miscasting of the central roles. Julie Salomon's riveting book 'The Devil's Candy' (the most worthwhile legacy of the whole project, and all credit to De Palma for letting her complete it) tantalisingly posits an alternative version in which either William Hurt or Steve Martin (instead of Tom Hanks) was partnered by Lena Olin (instead of Melanie Griffith) and their story was chronicled by John Cleese (instead of Bruce Willis). I'm certain that any of these would have been better - Tom Hanks is simply not credible as a Wall Street hotshot, and casting Bruce Willis wrecked one of the book's main satirical points, which is that journalist Peter Fallow may be an absolute scumbag, but because of his English accent, he's taken seriously in circles where he really shouldn't be. (Having the screenplay narrated by Fallow makes great dramatic sense, but De Palma apparently wasn't keen on the voiceover being in an English accent, despite Wolfe's specific reasons for Fallow's nationality).

The book also goes into considerable detail about how Walter Matthau was rejected as the judge on the grounds of cost, only to be replaced by the equally expensive Morgan Freeman after Warner Bros got cold feet about the fact that every character seemed to be a venal opportunist with few redeeming features, and wanted someone nice to act as a role model. So instead of the book's explosive courtroom set-pieces that deliberately plonked a Jewish judge into the middle of a largely black environment and watched sparks fly, the same scenes in the film that should be bristling with barely disguised racial tension just fall completely flat.

The fundamental problem with Bonfire is that it plays everything far too safe - which may well explain why he went on to make Raising Cain...

[matrixschmatrix]

Julie Salomon's riveting book 'The Devil's Candy' (the most worthwhile legacy of the whole project, and all credit to De Palma for letting her complete it)

Does the book work if you don't actually remember the movie? It sounds interesting, and I've been wanting to read it for a while, but I watched Bonfire a long, long time ago and all I remember about it is that I don't want to watch it again.

[colinr0380]

Ah, that explains why Willis's boss is British! Having the burnt out reporter American does dilute from the idea of the British being just another subset of self interested characters in the world of the film. I don't mind about the other casting decisions (I don't find Hanks credible in any of his roles, except perhaps for Bachelor Party, but the use of empty star power in Hanks and Griffiths seems to work quite well, whereas Hurt or Olin would perhaps have fully rounded out their characters more, to the detriment of the satire! Olin even managed to make her character in Romeo Is Bleeding in some ways understandable rather than simply contemptible! Even Steve Martin at this point in time would probably just have done a variation on tortured clown as in Parenthood, L.A. Story or Grand Canyon, so we would be waiting for the inevitable pathos to arrive as soon as he appeared), but Willis does sound like unfortunate miscasting and misinterpretation, likely just to shoehorn an in-demand actor into the film during his most indulgent period (didn't the combination of Hudson Hawk and Bonfire almost sink Willis's career?)

I'm trying to think of a British actor who would have worked in the role though. Maybe Julian Sands? Hugh Grant could have been good in the part if he had been a star at the time (even better if he had done that cynical reporter role playing up scandals instead of Nine Months after his own troubling indiscretions were revealed!)

[MichaelB]

I think John Cleese was considered because they wanted someone over the hill - washed up in terms of London media circles but still able to exert some influence in New York society thanks to his accent. Of course, all that went flying out of the window as soon as Bruce Willis and his smirk were cast.

[colinr0380]

A Piers Morgan-type of character, but without the additional modern element of reality TV show compering as a second job!

[Parneix]

Does anyone know the name of the designer who created to cover for the Criterion edition of Blow Out?

Thanks a lot. Glad to see it coming on Blu-Ray.

[Thomas Dukenfield]

...tantalisingly posits an alternative version in which either William Hurt or Steve Martin (instead of Tom Hanks) was partnered by Lena Olin (instead of Melanie Griffith) and their story was chronicled by John Cleese (instead of Bruce Willis). I'm certain that any of these would have been better - Tom Hanks is simply not credible as a Wall Street hotshot...

This post is very well put, and reflects my own problems with the film (the casting mostly). I'd just like to add that the biggest mistake, in my eyes, was to cast Hanks instead of William Hurt. For me, the central problem of Bonfire is that the main character Sherman McCoy (Hanks) is too much of a "good guy" that you root for to overcome and rise above a society of selfish individuals, when he should be portrayed as being, deep down, just as selfish as everyone else, blinded by the illusion of his own morality. I think Hurt would've conveyed more of the latter than the former, although maybe the script would've also needed a rewrite to convey this.

[colinr0380]

Watching Blow Out tonight for the first time in years (and the first time in widescreen!), I was struck by how beautifully made it was. I do think that this and Body Double especially make for a great matched pair - they are both about a rather naive hero trying to act idealistically (slash selfishly due to his wish not to compromise his feelings above all) and causing more havoc than would have occurred had the bad guys managed to get away with their plot.

John Lithgow's hitman is a good example of this - if Jack had not got involved in the assassination at the start and Sally was left to die in the car (as we can assume that Dennis Franz's character was going to do - his only involvement was to be the Zapruder-esque witness before he gets doubled/upstaged by Jack), then the whole assassination could have been presented to Lithgow's superiors as a fait accompli. Instead he has to get his hands dirtier and seemingly goes off the rails as the need to silence Sally and the inital accident of killing the wrong person leads to a plan (a liberation of suppressed urges?) to create a series of sex murders within which he can hide the politically necessary murder. While it might be seen as a political compromise to have the scene where Lithgow's politician contact is disgusted by the murders and explictly tells him that none of what the hitman had done was given the go ahead, it does help to connect Lithgow's and Travolta's characters together as people who are caught up in their own game together, their actions going beyond whether they are accepted within the system or not to the more dangerous extremes of doing what they think is 'right' or 'necessary' or which 'needs to be done', whatever the consequences.

I know there were some earlier coments about Nancy Allen's Sally being rather insufferable. But I think Sally and Melanie Griffiths's Holly in Body Double are very similar characters in that they're both girls 'hired for jobs' - while both characters may be naive, dumb (in both senses of the term) and rather childish they do however at least know enough to try and not be more involved in the situation than they already are, at least until the 'hero' reels them back in and forces them into an uncomfortable coalition. The thing that condemns Sally to death in some senses is that she actually falls for Jack's charms and hopeful plans of exposing a conspiracy, while Holly in Body Double is much tougher and far less romantically inclined!

The difference is on emphasis - while Blow Out is a rather sweet crusading adventure which shades into bitter irony (in the end injustice is never exposed and while the hero brings the story to a conclusion, it is a shoddy, compromised one which is highly unsatisfactory for our protagonist, ableit a perfectly operatically judged one for the audience), the 'normal world' in Body Double is an utterly compromised, empty sham from which the characters managing to build any sort of life from themselves out of the emptiness at the end can be seen as a certain kind of victory in itself (Body Double also manages to have its cake and eat it in the way that it is able to have both a tragic end to an idealised relationship along with a happy continuance of another, more pragmatic, one). There is also the way that Body Double involves a rather intimate conspiracy, taking after Vertigo, rather than the main action taking place underneath the framework of a larger political scandal.

I also noted the use of the train station in Body Double seems to prefigure the way a train station is similarly used as a dangerous location in Carlito's Way, with tannoy announcements becoming a voice of doom at moments of greatest tension or violence! Both films (along with the train sequence involving Nancy Allen in Dressed To Kill, which seems to bear some relation to the 'running from carriage to carriage' as well as the 'use of a cop as a temporary human shield' sequences that both turn up again Carlito's Way) fully utilise the tension between being tenuously safe from attack in a crowd of strangers, but also the possibility that as soon as the crowds disperse the characters are going to be in immediate danger. Although the ordering of the sequence is reversed between the two films - Blow Out moves from a main terminal into the local subway trains, whilst Carlito's Way moves from the local trains into the main terminal as Pacino races towards his liberating train out of the city.

(I also casually wondered whether that sequence in the train station in Hannibal, where Clarice Starling tails Hannibal Lecter through the terminal using sound clues could have had a Blow Out influence?)

In terms of things I liked about Blow Out, along with the split diopter shots knives mentioned above I particularly liked that shot twirling around Jack's office as he runs back and forth playing all of his tapes only to find they have been degaussed - the white noise building up and swirling around directionally whilst the visual interest is built with the increasing number of reel-to-reel machines being frantically turned on and the camera which has initially followed Travolta circling around the room with him taking on a momentum of its own and continuing to spin in the same direction whilst catching small moments of Travolta running back and forth or against the direction of the circular movement. It is a high mannered movement, but a fantastic one and one of the highlight scenes of the whole film (with a good companion shot for Lithgow's character being the amusing controlled straight line back and forth, rather than panicily circular, movement across the row of phone booths as he watches whilst the sailor and his companion fail to be discreet about their transaction!)

This is probably just my imagination running away with itself but I also liked to think while watching the climactic sequence this time around that it could have been playing as De Palma's homage to Ashes and Diamonds(!) - the assassination set against a firework display celebrating the end to a conflict whilst the hero runs futilely through a landscape that is almost mocking his values.

Perhaps something a little more plausible is that it was nice to note the ubiquitous-in-Italian-genre-film yellow and red label J & B whisky bottle in Dennis Franz's apartment and from which both he and Allen take direct swigs from before the bottle gets used as a weapon! There is an entire thread at the AV Maniacs forum devoted to cataloguing the appearances of this particular brand of whisky and it turns up in quite a lot of different films - that company either had a lot of product placement dollars, great relationships with filmmakers and producers or it could have just been ubiquitous on the sets of many genre films!

I also liked that moment of the overly sweating cop in Jack's flashback giving a fine illustration of the way that somebody can be literally hoist by their own petard! (There is an amusing call back to this moment at the end of Jack's Liberty Bell parade car rampage when he flies through a window and his car seems to knock the doll with the noose around its neck off of the stool it was standing on. Yet another illustration, and premonition, of the way that Jack unfortunately cannot seem to save anyone no matter how hard he tries!)

I suppose Blow Out has the distinction of being one of the most devastating of De Palma's films (perhaps Carrie coming next closest, but that softens the emotional blow somewhat with the jump-shock ending!), which shows the retreat back into the imperfect, manipulative world of film, where even a moment of captured pure truth can be utterly tainted by the way it is utilised. Throughout the film the terrible screaming of the actress in the shower in the horror film and of the women brought in to try to dub over the scream has been the subject of some rather cruel jokes at their expense, however the ultimate slap in the face is the way that Sally's death scream then gets pressed into service to serve this most pragmatic of purposes. Jack might have lost the girl but he's found the perfect blood curdling scream that he's been needing to find for the entire film.

Is this callousness on Jack's part, showing how little Sally really meant to him and everyone else? As a meta-statement on how even the most horrible events get folded into an artist's work? Or (as perhaps in Casualties of War) is Jack putting himself in a position in which to re-confront himself with his part in failing to prevent Sally's death and broadcast that fact, even if he is the only one who knows the significance of that moment, every time the film is projected.

[Cold Bishop]

This is probably just my imagination running away with itself but I also liked to think while watching the climactic sequence this time around that it could have been playing as De Palma's homage to Ashes and Diamonds(!) - the assassination set against a firework display celebrating the end to a conflict whilst the hero runs futilely through a landscape that is almost mocking his values.

I always thought it was Some Came Running,

Spoiler

right down to the fate of the Shirley MacLaine surrogate

.

[Thomas Dukenfield]

(J&B whiskey) either had a lot of product placement dollars, great relationships with filmmakers and producers or it could have just been ubiquitous on the sets of many genre films!

I don't know what the deal is, but damn near every Italian non-period genre film from the late 60's through the late 70's has a bottle of J&B somewhere in there, hence the thread.

[colinr0380]

Gena Rowlands' character also takes a bottle of J&B out for a drink to steady her nerves just after the fatal car accident that starts off Opening Night!

I also thought it was very funny in the first steadicam sequence of the horror film to see the shadow of the camera reflected in the tiles to the right side of the shower stall at the very end (complementing catching the nerdy killer in the mirror just before!) - the first reveal of the mechanics of cinema in the film!

I don't know whether this could be seen as an easter egg or not, but I like the way that the menu screens change from the pans over the tape players into the shower scene from the horror film with each scream playing in sequence. I have not figured out what causes this particular menu to play instead of the default one, but guess it could be randomly triggered after playing the special features.

EDIT 5th June: Watching Murder A La Mod today, this definitely provides some evidence for the Peeping Tom influence on De Palma mentioned above - the screen test sequences shown through a four-squared viewfinder feels very Peeping Tom-esque, and then once the film gets to the 'Karen's Photobiography' sequence it turns into a kind of homage to the Janet Leigh section of Psycho (a rich person being blase with their money; afternoon liaisons between a couple with money troubles; the tormenting, urging voiceover; the confrontation with a police officer; the shower scene and of course the early murder of what appeared to be the main character halfway through the film), before giving another nod towards Peeping Tom with the ominous trunk in which a body may or may not be hidden (this sequence perhaps also prefigures Sisters - and that scene where the trunk rolls down the hill towards Tracy reminded me a lot of a certain scene in Manhunter!)

It was very nice to see William Finley in the film as the rather strange person talking to himself in voiceover! Apparently in the credits to the film he composed the title song as well! Which must have made him an appropriate choice for the musically betrayed lead role of the Phantom in another fantastic De Palma film Phantom of the Paradise!

[Zinoviev]

Is this callousness on Jack's part, showing how little Sally really meant to him and everyone else? As a meta-statement on how even the most horrible events get folded into an artist's work? Or (as perhaps in Casualties of War) is Jack putting himself in a position in which to re-confront himself with his part in failing to prevent Sally's death and broadcast that fact, even if he is the only one who knows the significance of that moment, every time the film is projected.

Spoiler

Well, she did say she wanted to be in the movies, no?