By 1984, director David Lynch was on top of the world. He had received critical acclaim and eight Academy Award nominations for The Elephant Man in 1980 and was on the verge of releasing his next film, Dune. Many speculated on how this young auteur would be able to translate such a complex text to film. Dino De Laurentiis, who poured over $50 million into the project was hoping that it would become the next Star Wars (1977). If anyone could pull it off, it was the man who brought us that cult classic, Eraserhead in 1977. Dune promptly flopped. Critics despised it and crowds stayed away in droves. To his credit, it wasn't all Lynch's fault. Studio executives moved in, took away final cut privileges from Lynch, and tried to condense over four hours of footage into a watchable two hour film. The result was an unorganized, if not visually stunning motion picture that seemed like the highlights of the Dune books.

Drained from such a harrowing ordeal and frustrated over the whole mess, Lynch took some time off to develop a more personal project that he had been working on while filming Dune. Surprisingly, De Laurentiis decided to give Lynch another chance, but only with the stipulation that he take a cut in his salary and work with a reduced budget of only $6 million. In return, the young director could have total artistic freedom and control over the final cut of the film. Lynch surprised everyone with his hauntingly beautiful ode to small-town America, Blue Velvet (1986).

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"In a way, this is still a fantasy film. It's like a dream of strange desires wrapped inside a mystery story. It's what could happen if you ran out of fantasy."

- David Lynch (Chute 35)

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The brilliance of this film is apparent right from the opening montage that begins with the image of blood red roses in front of a stark white picket fence and continues with a fireman waving from his truck, to a crossing guard motioning children across a street. Everything is heightened in colour and slowed down to an almost surreal level which invokes the feeling of being trapped, as one critic observed, in a "nightmarish image of small-town life in America." Lynch reinforces these romantic images of 1950's Americana with Bobby Vinton's classic version of "Blue Velvet" playing on the soundtrack. By using colours and music to create a dreamy, nostalgic mood, Lynch draws us into his strange world.

Jeffrey Beaumont (Kyle MacLachlan) has returned home from college after his father suffers a stroke. While walking home from the hospital one day, he finds a severed ear lying in a field. The ear, for Lynch was like "finding a ticket to another world you know, it would change your life" (Borden 62). The ear draws Jeffrey into a mysterious world of intrigue and dangerous characters. There is Dorothy Vallens (Isabella Rossellini), an exotic looking singer who is involved in a bizarre, sadomasochistic relationship with local psycho, Frank Booth (Dennis Hopper) a man of truly frightening proportions. To aid Jeffrey in his adventure, he enlists the help of Sandy Williams (Laura Dern), the beautiful girl next door, whose father just happens to be the detective in charge of investigating the severed ear. As the film progresses, Jeffrey is torn between the dark, seductive world of Dorothy and the safe, wholesome world that Sandy represents. The mystery culminates when these two worlds inevitably collide.

Blue Velvet's origins ultimately lie in Lynch's childhood a period of his life spent deep in the forests of Spokane, Washington. For Lynch, there was a definite "autobiographical level to the movie. Kyle is dressed like me. My father was a research scientist for the Department of Agriculture in Washington. We were in the woods all the time. I'd sorta had enough of the woods by the time I left, but still, lumber and lumberjacks, all this kinda thing, that's America to me like the picket fences and the roses in the opening shot. It's so burned in, that image, and it makes me feel so happy" (Chute 32). Clearly this fascination with wood translates over into the film with not only the name of the town Lumberton, but also a scene where a truck transporting huge logs goes by the camera to gorgeous shots of tree-lined streets that all contain echoes of Lynch's childhood memories. The director would delve even deeper into the forests of his childhood with Twin Peaks which contained numerous references to wood and trees.

If Lynch's childhood memories inspired the setting of Blue Velvet, the actual story of the film originated from three ideas that crystallized in the filmmaker's mind over a period of time. Ideas for Blue Velvet had begun to form in Lynch's head as early as 1973 but at that time he "only had a feeling and a title" (Bouzereau 39). After finishing The Elephant Man, he met producer Richard Roth over coffee. Roth had read and enjoyed Lynch's Ronnie Rocket script but didn't think it was something he wanted to produce. He asked Lynch if the filmmaker had any other scripts Lynch only had ideas. "I told him I had always wanted to sneak into a girl's room to watch her into the night and that, maybe, at one point or another, I would see something that would be the clue to a murder mystery. Roth loved the idea and asked me to write a treatment. I went home and thought of the ear in the field" (Bouzereau 39). The idea of sneaking into a girl's room survived the many drafts and changes to appear in a scene where Jeffrey sneaks into Dorothy's apartment one night. However, Lynch took the idea one step further and Jeffrey evolves from being more than just a voyeur to an actual participant in the very mystery that he is fascinated by.

The image of a severed, human ear lying in a field has since become one of the most striking visuals of the film. "I don't know why it had to be an ear. Except it needed to be an opening of a part of the body a hole into something else...The ear sits on the head and goes right into the mind so it felt perfect," Lynch remarked in an interview (Robertson). For the filmmaker, the severed ear was the perfect way to draw Jeffrey into a secret world that lies at the heart of Blue Velvet.

The third idea that came to Lynch was Bobby Vinton's classic rendition of the song "Blue Velvet" and "the mood that came with that song a mood, a time, and things that were of that time" (Borden 62). This song proved to be such a favourite with Lynch that he not only has Vinton's version in the film but Dorothy also sings it during one of her performances at the Slow Club. The song continues the blue velvet motif that appears throughout the film from the curtain or robe of velvet in the opening credits to the piece of material that Frank carries with him. There is something unsettling, yet also beautiful about the texture of velvet that Lynch's film locks into and uses quite effectively.

Once these three ideas came to Lynch, he set out to write a screenplay. The director wrote two scripts but both had a weak middle act so he ultimately rejected them. After his experiences with Dune, Lynch returned to Blue Velvet and much to his surprise, "all the right ideas came to me right away, as if they had been on my mind all that time" (Bouzereau 39). And then De Laurentiis became involved and everything came together for the filmmaker.

Blue Velvet clearly demonstrates Lynch as an artist at the top of his form. This is due in large part to the exceptional crew he assembled for this film. Long time collaborator, Alan Splet (who had worked with Lynch ever since Eraserhead) contributed the complex sound scheme that ingeniously complements Lynch's images. This is evident in the unsettling "moaning hallways" of Dorothy Vallens' apartment building that seem almost organic in nature due in large part to Splet's disturbing soundscape. Splet also shines in the film's surrealistic montages where sound and image are distorted to a nightmarish level.

Frederick Elmes' lush cinematography is also a crucial element to the unique look that permeates all of Lynch's films. As film critic Pauline Kael observed in her review of the film, Elmes' photography give Blue Velvet "a comparable tactility; real streets look like paintings you could touch" (Kael 102). This look is Lynch's trademark style and harkens back to his other fascination painting. Lynch's background lies in the fine art of painting and as a result Blue Velvet contains scenes that have a still life quality to them. In contrast, Elmes' technique harkens back to Classical Hollywood Cinema in the way scenes are lit and staged and yet they effortlessly slip into surrealism with the aid of Lynch's often absurd situations. The perfect example of this blend is the famous "joyride" sequence where Frank takes an unwilling Jeffrey and Dorothy to Ben (Dean Stockwell)'s a place where obese women sit passively while Ben, complete with Kabuki white make-up and "suave" demeanour, lipsynchs to Roy Orbison's "In Dreams." In this scene, Elmes combines film noir lighting with a dark colour scheme that enhances and establishes the eerie, dream-like mood synonymous to all of Lynch's films.

Blue Velvet also marked the first time Lynch worked with composer Angelo Badalamenti who provides a seductively lavish score. To complement Elmes' Classical Hollywood look, Badalamenti's score mimics the melodramatic soundtracks of Douglas Sirk's films with its dramatic swells during intense moments and calm lulls with romantic interludes. Blue Velvet would mark the beginning of a longlasting partnership with Badalamenti who has since composed the music for every subsequent project that Lynch has done.

The film's excellent ensemble cast is another area that the film excels in. Lynch has a real knack for reviving the careers of seasoned actors and Blue Velvet is no exception. Who could forget Dennis Hopper's memorable role as the helium-inhaling, demented criminal, Frank Booth? You never know what's going to happen when Hopper appears on screen and it is this unpredictability that really separates Frank from other screen villains. In fact, Hopper was so set on this role that Lynch remembers getting a call from the actor who said, "'David, I love this script. I am Frank.' That scared the hell out of me" (Robertson). It is interesting to note the effect that this role has had on Hopper's career whose villainous roles have all been patterned after his classic turn in Blue Velvet.

Lynch also revived the career of Dean Stockwell who appears in a scene stealing cameo as Ben, Frank's "suave" partner in crime. The "joyride" scene where Frank and company visit Ben is a classic moment where Stockwell's effeminate character and Hopper's macho psycho meet. The two veteran actors clearly enjoy their characters and it shows in their performances as they play their roles to the hilt. "I loved that role, but I knew going in that it was going to be a risk because it was so strange a film and everybody in it automatically got caught up in the strangeness" (Sharpiro 44). The result is a truly unsettling, yet somewhat humourous scene as we're never sure what's going to happen next due to Hopper and Stockwell's unpredictable behaviour. This uncertainty only heightens the terror of the scene as we wonder if Jeffrey will live to see its conclusion.

Lynch not only has the ability to resurrect the careers of veteran actors, but discover new talent as well. Fresh from his role in Dune, Kyle MacLachlan is a dead ringer for the director, adding an interesting autobiographical twist to the film. MacLachlan expertly captures the inner turmoil that Jeffrey struggles with throughout the film and manages to hold his own against such great actors as Dennis Hopper. This role would cement the young actor's place as a Lynch regular, most notably appearing as the beloved Special Agent Dale Cooper in the Twin Peaks T.V. show and feature film. Laura Dern also turns in an excellent performance in what could have been a one-dimensional "girlfriend" role. Dern's performance has a depth that suggests, much like all the other characters, that she harbours some deep, dark secret, kept in check by her all-American purity. She is the perfect contrast to Isabella Rossellini's mysterious, femme fatale character.

It has been almost ten years since Blue Velvet shocked and divided audiences with its peculiar vision of America. Many critics loved the film, some declaring it one of the best films of the 1980's. Almost the same number hated it. For every Pauline Kael who gave it a favourable review, there was a Rex Reed who thought it to be "one of the sickest films ever made." Critic John Simon even went so far as claiming the film to be pornography which, as he put it, "pretends to be art, and is taken for it by most critics, has dishonesty and stupidity as well as grossness on its conscience." Yet for such vehemence, Blue Velvet has endured. Its legacy is widespread. Many articles and essays have been written about Lynch's film since its release in an attempt to unlock many of the film's mysteries and symbols that are buried throughout. Itís look and mood has influenced many films since. One only has to look at Lynchís own career with Twin Peaks, a tamer, televised version of Blue Velvet, to see that the auteur has had a difficult time surpassing this watershed film. Lynch has yet to duplicate the success or the brilliance of this film, but I wouldn't count him out just yet. As he proved with Blue Velvet, just when everyone had him pegged, he released a film that established him as a director with real talent and the ability to create a world with fascinating characters that eerily mirrors our own.

© April 23, 1997. J.D. Lafrance