Blow Out

Brian De Palma - known for classics such as Carrie and Scarface - shows another, often overlooked side of his skills with Blow Out: that of the precise, formally virtuoso auteur filmmaker. What appears on the surface to be a classic paranoia thriller turns out to be one of the smartest and most melancholy works of New Hollywood.

John Travolta delivers the best performance of his career here. He plays a sound engineer for cheap B-movies who accidentally records a political assassination on tape while filming outside. He can prove what he heard - but who will believe him? And who has an interest in him keeping quiet?

De Palma uses the figure of the sound engineer as a formal principle: Blow Out is a film about listening, about recording, about the question of what image and sound can prove together - and what's happening when no one wants to look. Editing, montage and sound are not only used for narrative purposes, but become the actual theme of the film. This is cinema that reflects on itself without ever losing the ground of the story.

The ending is hard to forget. And even harder to get over.