The Ending Blow Out

Sally dies, the truth is buried, and Jack uses her scream in a B-movie

The ending of Blow Out is widely considered one of the bleakest in American cinema. Jack wires Sally with a transmitter during Philadelphia's Liberty Day celebration, hoping to catch Burke incriminating himself.^b28 Burke, impersonating reporter Frank Donahue, lures Sally to the Port of History rooftop and strangles her with a wire garrote.^b32 Jack arrives seconds too late, kills Burke with Burke's own knife, and lifts Sally's body as the Liberty Day fireworks finale dies out around them^{b34 b35} — De Palma (in Blow Out, as director) composing a tableau of patriotic celebration around a dead woman who was murdered because she got too close to a political conspiracy.

The final scene twists the knife. Back at the studio, Jack plays Sally's actual death scream — the recording the transmitter wire captured — into the slasher film's mix. Sam pushes Jack to bring the scream level up, then asks about the rest of the mix.^b39 Jack can barely answer. Then he says it to himself, three times: "It's a good scream. It's a good scream. It's a good scream." Each repetition is flatter, more desperate — Jack trying to convince himself that the scream is just a scream, that using it is craft rather than desecration. Sam still delivers the producer's line "Now, that's a scream" in the finished film; De Palma's change from the 10/21/80 shooting script (then titled Personal Effects) was to append Jack's three "good scream" repetitions after it, turning professional approval into devastated self-persuasion.¹

De Palma refused to change the ending despite pressure from everyone

The studio wanted Sally to survive. Nancy Allen lobbied for a different ending. The expectation — Travolta (in Blow Out, as actor) as star, Allen as love interest, the conventions of the thriller genre — all pointed toward rescue. De Palma understood what he was denying the audience and did it anyway.

"That's what the public expects, it seems, when you have John Travolta and a pretty girl." — Brian De Palma, Interview Magazine (2011)

Kael recognized what the ending accomplished — it turned the film's opening joke inside out:

"Blow Out begins with a joke; by the end, the joke has been turned inside out." — Pauline Kael, The New Yorker (1981)

The ending makes the argument. Jack has the evidence. He has the recording. It doesn't matter. The conspiracy wins. And the only use for Sally's final moment of authentic terror is as raw material for a cheap horror film — the entertainment industry converting real human suffering into product.

Tarantino called the final scene one of cinema's most heartbreaking

"The final scene was one of the most heartbreaking shots in the history of cinema." — Quentin Tarantino, TCM

Tarantino's use of "heartbreaking" rather than "shocking" or "disturbing" is precise. The ending doesn't work because it's cruel — plenty of thrillers kill sympathetic characters. It works because Jack's decision to use Sally's scream is simultaneously the most devastating and the most logical thing he could do. He's a sound man. He has a perfect scream. His craft demands he use it. The horror is that professionalism and despair produce the same action.

The fireworks create the film's cruelest image

De Palma stages Sally's death against the Liberty Day fireworks — red, white, and blue exploding above Jack as he holds her body. The juxtaposition is savage: American celebration as backdrop to American political murder. The patriotic spectacle continues indifferently while a woman dies. The crowd cheers.

The image also mirrors the film's opening — a cheap slasher movie playing for laughs. Blow Out begins and ends with screaming women, but the final scream is real, and no one in the audience (within the film or watching it) knows the difference.

Allen's performance is what gives the ending its weight. Without her, Sally's death would be a plot device. With her, it's a tragedy.

"Nancy Allen gives the film its soul." — Pauline Kael, The New Yorker (1981)

"She balances depth and shallowness, caution and heedlessness, so that Sally is always teetering." — Pauline Kael, The New Yorker (1981)