FREE ON CINEGEEK.DE THE BEST MOVIES IN OUR VIDEO STORE! Brian de Palma - Blow Out 

Blow Out by Brian De Palma seems strangely familiar and also quite strange. The paranoia thriller was constructed from some events of recent American history, thickened with references from other films and by other filmmakers. Nevertheless: Blow Out is an independent, phanatastic achievement! The title is reminiscent of one of the greatest 60s classics. The story in which a photographer takes a picture of a corpse and finally analyzes his photos for the find. Was there even a dead body on the negative? In Blow Out John Travolta plays the character who is confronted with the same questions. He works for a greasy B-movie production company in Philadelphia. He makes cheap cynical exploitation films - according to De Palma's taste! One night he stands at a bridge in the park. The cry of an owl and similar noises fill the night he records. Suddenly he witnesses a car accident! The car crashes off the bridge, a blowout. Travolta jumps behind, saves a girl (Nancy Allen) and later finds out that the driver of the car was a presidential candidate. Listening to his tape, he thinks he heard a shot just before the accident. Is it a murder? He follows the trail of Nancy Allen, finds out that she was a helper in a blackmail. It's wonderful how the plot now condenses! Apparently De Palma doesn't just have a handful of ideas, he floats in abundance! We meet a series of violent characters like Burke (John Lithgow) as Travolta's character gets deeper and deeper into the swamp of a conspiracy. Something personal is at stake for him: his ability as a sound engineer and his personal pride! "I'm a sound man!" In the best Blow Out scene, he recreates all the events of the night. He follows the tracks of his own recording. De Palma's technique follows that of the greatest thriller specialist of all time. It hitchcocks really powerful! Numerous references like the shower scene are dedicated to the "Master of the Macabre" (De Palma). He gives a whole series of ugly murders in unusual surroundings and a hunt through Philadelphia while Liberty Bell strikes for the big jubilee. Two strategies of "Hitch" are used here: First his patriotically charged images, then the desperate hunt within a human mass that cares for the individual but not further. However, De Palma's film takes all this away and so Blow Out stands alone. The desire for exaggerated violence and nihilism, the sexual insinuations, quite naturally alongside the postmodern quote cinema - all this is Brian De Palma! But you hate or love him. So he unites the cinephiles with the onlookers! Note: As in his best films, De Palma fills the action with three-dimensional plausible, even interesting characters. We like to believe that characters like John Travolta, Nancy Allen or John Lithgow are real. They all have these little quirks, the quirks of life. For me, that's the difference between a good De Palma movie and a big one: The characters! De Palma often uses stencils to throw himself at his beloved surface stimuli. In Blow Out he goes to as much trouble as he does in his greatest works! The protagonists really behave like people in similar situations. They don't just follow the requirements of a plot! But the most beautiful thing: Blow Out is held together by real cinematic intelligence. In scenes like this, where Travolta is following the accident, we are taken on a journey of discovery. We are allowed to find out what he is reconstructing! At last we are more than just passive witnesses of the events - and that really doesn't happen so often in the cinema.