Critical Reception and Legacy (Blow Out) Blow Out
Blow Out lost a third of its budget at the box office
Blow Out was a commercial failure:
| Metric | Amount |
|---|---|
| Budget | ~$18 million |
| Domestic gross | ~$12 million |
De Palma was blunt about what the numbers meant:
"There was no bigger disaster than Blow Out." — Brian De Palma, Interview Magazine (2011)
The failure was especially painful because the reviews were the best of his career. The audience simply didn't come — possibly because of the bleak ending, possibly because Travolta's star power was waning, possibly because the film was too smart for the summer marketplace.
Contemporary critical response was De Palma's strongest
Roger Ebert gave the film 4 out of 4 stars and called it De Palma's "best and most original work":
"De Palma is more successful than ever before at populating his plot with three-dimensional characters. We believe in the reality of the people played by John Travolta, Nancy Allen, John Lithgow, and Dennis Franz." — Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times (1981)
Pauline Kael wrote the review that placed De Palma alongside the New Hollywood masters:
"De Palma has sprung to the place that Altman achieved with films such as McCabe & Mrs. Miller and Nashville and that Coppola reached with the two Godfather movies — that is, to the place where genre is transcended and what we're moved by is an artist's vision." — Pauline Kael, The New Yorker (1981)
Kael praised both the fluidity and the hallucinatory quality of the filmmaking:
"You don't see set pieces in Blow Out — it flows, and everything that happens seems to go right to your head." — Pauline Kael, The New Yorker (1981)
"It's hallucinatory, and it has a dreamlike clarity and inevitability, but you'll never make the mistake of thinking that it's only a dream." — Pauline Kael, The New Yorker (1981)
The film holds a 95% on Rotten Tomatoes (from later aggregation) and has a Metacritic score of 84/100.
Tarantino declared it one of the greatest films ever made
Quentin Tarantino named Blow Out as one of his three "desert island" films, alongside Taxi Driver and Rio Bravo:
"It's Brian De Palma's finest film, which means it's one of the finest movies ever made, because as we all know, Brian De Palma is the best director of his generation." — Quentin Tarantino, Far Out Magazine (1994)
"John Travolta gives one of the best performances of all time in this movie." — Quentin Tarantino, Far Out Magazine (1994)
Tarantino's admiration had practical consequences: he cast Travolta in Pulp Fiction (1994) specifically because of his work in Blow Out, resurrecting Travolta's career.
The Criterion Collection canonized the film
Blow Out was released as Criterion Collection #562, with a 2011 restoration supervised by De Palma. The release includes:
- 4K digital restoration
- Interview with De Palma by Noah Baumbach
- Excerpts from a 2001 Steadicam documentary featuring De Palma
- An essay by Michael Sragow
The Criterion imprimatur — joining a catalog that includes Kurosawa, Bergman, and Fellini — is the clearest signal of the film's canonization. A further 4K UHD release followed in 2021.
Criterion released the film twice, in Blu-ray and 4K UHD
| Format | Year | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| VHS | 1982 | First home release |
| Laserdisc | 1990 | |
| DVD | 2001 | MGM |
| Blu-ray (Criterion) | 2011 | Spine #562; 4K restoration |
| 4K UHD (Criterion) | 2021 |
Sources
- Blow Out review — Roger Ebert (1981)
- Blow Out at 40 — Roger Ebert (2021)
- Pauline Kael Blow Out review — Scraps from the Loft
- Blow Out interview — Interview Magazine (2011)
- Tarantino desert island films — Far Out Magazine
- Blow Out — The Criterion Collection
- Blow Out — Rotten Tomatoes
- Blow Out — Wikipedia