Synopsis
In the picture postcard town of Lumberton, the calm of a “sunny, woodsy day” is broken when a man watering his lawn suddenly collapses. His son Jeffrey Beaumont (Kyle MacLachlan) returns from college to find his father stricken in terror over his ailment. Strolling home from the hospital, Jeffrey stops to throw rocks in a field. Sifting through the weeds, he uncovers what appears to be a human ear.
A police detective agrees with Jeffrey, but in spite of the young man’s curiosity, he refuses to divulge details of the investigation. The detective’s teenage daughter Sandy (Laura Dern) approaches Jeffrey. Her room is above her father’s office and she’s heard a few things. The name of a woman singer named “Dorothy Vallens” has come up. Sandy takes Jeffrey to see her apartment building, which lies on the edge of the suburbs on the dark side of town.
Jeffrey invites Sandy to a soda parlor and makes her a proposition, “There are opportunities in life for gaining knowledge and experience. Sometimes it’s necessary to take a risk.” Jeffrey hatches a scheme to snoop around Dorothy’s apartment by posing as a pest control man. Sandy feels it’s too dangerous, but goes along to protect Jeffrey. The couple goes to hear the mysterious and fragile Dorothy Vallens (Isabella Rossellini) perform at a club. Then Jeffrey sneaks into her apartment with keys he stole from her.
Hiding in Dorothy’s closet reveals things better left unknown. Amyl nitrate inhaling psychopath Frank Booth (Dennis Hopper) has kidnapped Dorothy’s son and husband, cutting off her spouse’s ear to keep the songstress dependent on him. Jeffrey is attracted to and repulsed by Dorothy, who asks him to hit her while they’re having sex. Frank catches Jeffrey leaving Dorothy’s apartment and takes the kid on a “joyride.” Jeffrey makes it through the night, but finds he can’t get Dorothy out of his mind.
Production history
In 1980, director David Lynch established himself as a director of singularly unique vision with the surrealistic black and white mood mystery The Elephant Man. For his next picture, Lynch had written a script called Ronnie Rocket that was so off-beat, no one in Hollywood was interested in it. This included producer Richard Roth, who was intrigued enough with Lynch to ask him if he was working on anything else.
Lynch mentioned a project he’d started getting ideas for as early as 1973. It began with Bobby Vinton’s song “Blue Velvet,” which had inspired Lynch to think about a mystery set amid the quiet neighborhoods of a small city. The idea of sneaking into a girl’s room and watching her – uncovering a clue in the process – came next. Then Lynch had the idea of a character discovering a human ear in a field. The ear would be an opening into another world. Enough of these fragments came together for Lynch to form a story.
Lynch wrote two drafts for Warner Bros. The studio hated it, and Lynch couldn’t figure out how to end it. He accepted an offer from Dino De Laurentiis to make a film version of Frank Herbert’s novel Dune. The $40 million science fiction epic was a failure, but De Laurentiis was undeterred, and asked Lynch what this script Blue Velvet was about. He offered to produce it, if Lynch agreed to cut his salary, and slash the budget to $6 million. Too savvy to give away final cut, De Laurentiis did promise Lynch full creative control.
With Kyle MacLachlan already in place, Lynch’s choice to play Dorothy Vallens was Helen Mirren. The actress helped Lynch develop the character, but ultimately passed on the part. Lynch had met one of Mirren’s co-stars from White Nights, Isabella Rossellini. He felt Rossellini had the mysteriousness and vulnerability he was looking for, and cast her as Dorothy. It was only her second American film. For Frank Booth, Lynch arrived at Dennis Hopper, accepting his first acting gig since emerging from drug rehab.
De Laurentiis was so taken aback after seeing Blue Velvet that he formed his own distribution company, doubting anyone else would dare to release the film. The resulting enterprise – DEG – was still at a loss on how to sell it. While some critics despised the film (Rex Reed called it “the sickest wallow in filth and sleaze”), others championed it. Pauline Kael wrote, “This is American darkness - darkness in color, darkness with a happy ending. Lynch might turn out to be the first populist surrealist - a Frank Capra of dream logic.”
While not many moviegoers saw Blue Velvet – it only grossed $8 million in the U.S. – many of those who did couldn’t stop thinking about it. Even Woody Allen – who rarely comments on movies now playing – said he didn’t feel comfortable accepting awards for Hannah and Her Sisters the same year David Lynch made Blue Velvet. The acting careers of his cast soared, while Lynch received his second Academy Award nomination for Best Director.
Opinion
David Lynch’s career might not have exactly lived up to the hype of the “Frank Capra of dream logic,” but Blue Velvet is his best work and one of the great movies of the last quarter century. On the surface, it’s the most primal tribute to Alfred Hitchcock ever conjured. Where Shadow Of a Doubt uncovered evil in a small town and Rear Window informed voyeurs to the dark deeds of their neighbors, so does this film, which is even more unsettling in its portrait of evil than Psycho.
Instead of cranking out a popcorn thriller, Lynch and cinematographer Frederick Elmes submerge the film in hypnotic imagery, alternating the sensual with the disturbing. The cast – which includes a hysterical appearance by Dean Stockwell – gives career finest performances, notably Dennis Hopper, whose white trash intensity almost puts a crack in the frame. Angelo Badalamenti composed a lush musical score. Whether you love it or hate it, odds are this unique, masterful film will stir you to feel something.
Dan Mancini at DVD Verdict writes, “Blue Velvet is Lynch’s finest work. It’s as narratively coherent as The Elephant Man, and as personal (which for Lynch means delving into his own subconscious) as Eraserhead. It’s all the uniqueness that makes Lynch an interesting artist, in perfect balance in a single film. If someone asked me what David Lynch is about, I’d answer by showing him Blue Velvet.”
“The biggest mystery in Blue Velvet is not its story but how one film can keep evolving in a viewer’s perceptions more than 20 years after it was first made,” writes Edward Copeland at Edward Copeland On Film.
Tim Dirks at The Greatest Films classifies Blue Velvet as, “A controversial film often criticized for its depiction of aberrant sexual behavior, the surrealistic, psychosexual film was a throwback to art films, 50s B-movies and teenage romances, film noir, and the mystery-suspense genre. Although highly ridiculed and disdained when released as an extreme, dark, vulgar and disgusting film, it also won critical praise.”
View Gene Siskel and Roger Ebert debate whether Blue Velvet is a masterpiece or sick and depraved on the 9/20/86 episode of Siskel & Ebert At The Movies.
11 responses so far ↓
1 cjKennedy // Feb 12, 2008 at 10:57 pm
Shadow of a Doubt is a terrific comparison that I’d never really thought of before, yet it’s right there in front of me.
Im an unabashed fan of Lynch. I even like huge chunks of Lost Highway and Fire Walk With Me. Except for Straight Story, they all seem to exist in this odd dream state that no one captures quite like Lynch. Sometimes funny, sometimes nightmarish, always amazing and memorable.
And yeah, Blue Velvet is still his high water mark in many ways.
As much as I loved Inland Empire, I miss the lush sensuality of the cinematography in stuff like Blue Velvet.
2 Adam R // Feb 13, 2008 at 8:28 am
What impresses me the most on a technical level about Blue Velvet is Lynch’s framing. Watch scenes like the confrontation with Frank and Co. in the apartment hallway or the party at Ben’s: there are many characters in view but the frame is perfectly balanced and doesn’t feel cluttered, it’s almost like a painting.
I always come back to Frank’s introduction to “the neighbor boy” and subsequent ride to Ben’s. How horrific must that be for Jeffrey? One minute he’s sky high as a dopey guy turned hero to two women, the next he’s being psychologically dominated by a group of men who barely seem human.
Great insight as always Joe, I didn’t know anything about Dino’s involvement.
3 Chuck // Feb 15, 2008 at 6:29 am
I think Blue Velvet is one of the finest movies ever made: period. I tend, even with movies I love, to play the “its so great with the exception of this” game that drives people not as into movies crazy sometimes. Can’t play that game with Blue Velvet. Nothing to change, and its the perfect balance of everything that has ever fascinated David Lynch. The real ballsyness of it though is its unexpected, un-ironic sentimentality. And, as you guys have said, its really damn funny.
It terms of favorites, Mulholland Dr. is my FAVORITE Lynch movie, but BV remains, again as you guys have written, the high water mark of Lynch’s career. What a beautiful, one of a kind picture.
4 Marilyn // Feb 18, 2008 at 11:48 am
Joe, As usual, you’ve found a lot of information to illuminate a film we all think we know very well. I agree that this is his high-water mark (though I’m a big fan of Mulholland Drive), giving us something that seems familiar but skews us out of our expectations. This is what the great Martin Scorsese wanted After Hours to be.
5 Piper // Feb 18, 2008 at 1:51 pm
The biggest feat Lynch was able to pull off with Blue Velvet was to make the surreal seem so real. No one artist has been able to warp good old fashioned America the way Lynch does.
While his other movies have taken the strange too far, the all-American backdrop of Blue Velvet kept Lynch honest in his material and the material was so strong that his audience followed in step which is a testament to Lynch’s talent.
I have been a long time fan of Lynch but this, along with Twin Peaks, might be my most favorite.
“Dennis Hopper, whose white trash intensity almost puts a crack in the frame”
Great line Joe. Great post.
6 Tim // Feb 19, 2008 at 9:57 pm
Since Inland Empire came out and I fell head over heels in love, I’ve gotten into the bad habit of thinking of that film and Eraserhead as the be-all and end-all of Lynch’s art. So I thank you for reminding me of how good he can be when he wasn’t actively trying to make the audience go insane.
As far as being the director’s high water mark among his “normal” movies, I don’t think Blue Velvet is quite as good as the pilot episode of Twin Peaks (a series that, as has been noted, covers the same ground as BV, but in a serial TV way that somehow strikes me as infinitely more subversive), but I’d stack it up against Mulholland Dr. any day, as much as I love that film. MD is a lovely head trip, and a fine experiment in genre, but BV is more audacious: it takes all sorts of safe and comfortable tropes like Capra’s small towns, Fifties pop music, boy detectives, and robins as a sign of rebirth, and proceeds to pervert every one of them, and it does this without seeming even slightly exploitative.
Now I have to go lie down and imagine the film with Mirren instead of Rosselini - my head refuses to get around that concept.
7 Jeremy // Feb 20, 2008 at 10:35 am
I wish I was in love with the films of David Lynch as I used to be. I just haven’t really engaged with anything he has doen though since M. Drive…that said, Blue Velvet is an absolute masterpiece and still one of the most unnerving films I have ever seen.
I really enjoyed reading your thoughts on it and you do an excellent job at essaying many of its complexities.
8 Joe Valdez // Feb 20, 2008 at 12:46 pm
Craig: While I want to go back and watch Lynch’s other films (I remember enjoying Wild At Heart quite a bit) I agree with your assessment of Blue Velvet as his high water mark. That said, one of the things that makes Lynch an original among American filmmakers is that he never attempted to make the same style of film over and over again, when there was probably a business incentive for him to do so. Twin Peaks had the most similarity, but was at least novel in that it was a serialized TV show.
Adam: If I didn’t know that Lynch went to Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, his framing and overall aesthetic would certainly have suggested an art school background. That’s a great observation and another thing that makes his work stand out. As for Frank and his lackeys, they remind me of Lee Marvin and his gang in The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance. I feel as bad for poor Jeffrey as I do for Jimmy Stewart when he’s being tormented.
Chuck: I’ve never seen Mulholland Dr. all the way through. I’ve also never heard a satisfactory explanation from anyone when I’ve asked them what it was about, so that, plus your appraisal makes me very curious to check it out now. Thanks!
Marilyn: You and Chuck have me very interested in giving Mulholland Dr. a look. Both of you guys have cinematic pedigrees that put mine to shame. Thank you for commenting!
Pat: I think you may have touched on what upset so many critics at the time. This was the middle of the Reagan Years after all, and here was Lynch sort of mocking the wholesome Main Street values Reagan championed. I can’t recall a time when I didn’t love Blue Velvet though. I always appreciate your acerbic yet insightful commentary. Thanks!
Tim: I believe you illustrated why the Rex Reeds of the ’80s were so upset by this movie, but I’ve always found Lynch’s take on Americana funny, as opposed to mean or spiteful in any way. Like you, I cannot imagine Helen Mirren playing Dorothy Vallens. She was such a siren in her youth - playing Morgan Le Fay in Excalibur - but Rossellini has more vulnerability.
Jeremy: It’s possible we all go through our David Lynch phase, like The Doors phase in high school or the Ayn Rand phase freshman year of college. It sounds like you’ve moved on. As always, thanks for sharing your insights and eclectic taste in film with my readers.
9 Robert // Feb 25, 2008 at 9:15 am
Joe,
A pleasure to read your review as always. One detail that opened up Blue Velvet for me (I think it was mentioned either in the DVD extras or in some interview with Hopper) was that Lynch’s script originally had Frank sniffing helium and not nitrous oxide. Helium has no psycho-physiological effects but makes the voice high pitched. Hopper thought at the time that nitrous would be a better choice since it’s often used for sex, but on later reflection realized that Lynch was right. Helium would’ve simply been sicker!
Your comparison to Hitchcock is spot on, as usual. It might also be fair to compare Lynch to Fellini in terms of the surety of his filmmaking. Inland Empire was a good film (like some of your other readers, I find Mulholland Dr. to be his best work, both for its structural complexity and its emotional depth — its empathy — the latter of which I don’t think Blue Velvet or Inland Empire achieves), but for all of its problems (for me, his handling of the DV medium was a major one) it follows its own course and makes you accept it on its own terms like Fellini’s best work (or like Antonioni’s Red Desert to take another example). The Straight Story is a great film too for the same reason. Why it hasn’t found as much favor with hard-core Lynch fans is a bit of a mystery.
Have you read David Foster Wallace’s essay on David Lynch in A Supposedly Fun Thing I’ll Never Do Again? And the short film of Lynch making quinoa on the Inland Empire DVD is not to be missed if you have a chance to see it.
Keep up the great work!
10 christian // Mar 6, 2008 at 2:36 pm
This was one of the premier movie-going experiences in my life. It’s still my favorite Lynch film and I’m always surprised that few people note that if anybody was the progeny of Hitchcock, it’s David Lynch.
If you’re interested, here’s my interview with him from 2001. He has the greatest voice in the world:
http://www.lynchnet.com/mdrive/hgcs.html
11 AR // Mar 12, 2008 at 12:19 pm
One of my favorite movies, one that I’ve been meaning to watch again. So I can remember why I liked Lynch so much in the first place. My boyfriend dislikes most of Lynch’s other films, but he simply adores this one.
And now that I’ve seen more Hitchcock, yes, Lynch is definitely his progeny. In a bastard surrealist kind of way.
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