Blue Velvet (film)
"Blue Velvet" is a 1986 film directed by David Lynch, known for its unsettling exploration of the contrast between idyllic Americana and its darker undercurrents. Set in a fictional American lumber town, the film opens with a nostalgic 1950s vibe, leading viewers into a disturbing narrative. The story follows Jeffrey Beaumont, played by Kyle MacLachlan, who becomes embroiled in a sinister web involving sultry nightclub singer Dorothy Vallens (Isabella Rossellini) and the violent thug Frank Booth (Dennis Hopper). The film features a mix of disturbing imagery, including a severed ear, and moments of surrealism, highlighting the tension between innocence and corruption.
"Blue Velvet" received mixed reactions from audiences due to its graphic violence and explicit themes, yet it garnered acclaim from critics and earned Lynch an Academy Award nomination for Best Director. The film's innovative use of surreal elements and its commentary on the darker aspects of middle America influenced both cinema and television, notably inspiring Lynch's later work, "Twin Peaks." Its legacy continues to resonate, as it raised questions about the nature of human relationships and the complexities of societal perceptions of innocence.
Blue Velvet (film)
Identification American art-house crime film
Director David Lynch
Date Released September 19, 1986
Blue Velvet shocked audiences with its violence and sexuality, establishing David Lynch as one of the most controversial directors of his generation.
Key Figures
David Lynch (1946- ), film director
Lynch was known to several different audiences for his early works, including the unsettling experimental film Eraserhead (1976). However, few filmgoers were prepared for Blue Velvet, which simultaneously employs and subverts a host of familiar settings, images, and characters. The film is set in an imaginary American lumber town, and while it apparently takes place in the present, its opening scenes create a bucolic atmosphere evocative of the faraway 1950’s. Lynch’s main character is the seemingly innocent Jeffrey Beaumont (played by Kyle MacLachlan), who finds himself drawn all too willingly into a frightening situation that might have been lifted from one of the film noir mysteries of the same period.
The film’s audience learns by degrees that the husband and son of sultry nightclub singer Dorothy Vallens (Isabella Rossellini) are being held captive by drug-crazed thug Frank Booth (played with manic intensity by Dennis Hopper). Dorothy submits sexually to Frank but also lures Jeffrey, who has discovered the situation, into a sadomasochistic affair. At the same time, Jeffrey is falling in love with girl-next-door Sandy Williams (Laura Dern), who is the daughter of a police detective and is surreptitiously helping the young man investigate the mystery.
The film includes a number of disquieting and incongruous episodes. In an early scene that sets the tone for the film, Jeffrey discovers a severed human ear lying in a field and crawling with ants. Sometime later, Frank, who has been presented as a foul-mouthed monster, sits enraptured as Dorothy sings the 1963 Bobby Vinton hit “Blue Velvet” (written by Bernie Wayne and Lee Morris) at her club. Later still, the kidnapped Jeffrey watches brothel owner Ben (former child actor Dean Stockwell) lip-synch another famous 1963 song, Roy Orbison’s “In Dreams,” into a trouble light that grotesquely distorts his features. The inclusion of Orbison on the film’s soundtrack proved significant, because it helped the singer regain a popularity he had lost in the 1970’s. Before he died in 1988, Orbison enjoyed a few years of regained success.
Whether they were alive in the 1950’s or not, Americans of the 1980’s tended to think nostalgically of the earlier decade as a period of innocence and tranquillity. Lynch contrasts this perception with a dark and menacing vision of human relationships, but nothing in the film suggests that either version is more “correct” than the other. Thus, the film’s nominally happy ending merely reinforces the mood of unease that has prevailed since its opening scenes.
Impact
The violence, frank sexuality, and dark vision of Blue Velvet drove many filmgoers from the theater during early showings, but critics recognized it as one of the most innovative motion pictures of the decade. Lynch was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Director, and along with Hopper and Rossellini, cinematographer Frederick Elmes, and the film itself, he won several other important awards. Beyond critical praise, the film’s central motif—the use of surreal images and experimental formal elements to suggest a dark underbelly to idealized middle-America—became extremely influential. Lynch himself employed it again in his television series Twin Peaks (premiered 1990), and it became a staple of independent film and occult television in the 1990’s and the early twenty-first century.
Bibliography
Atkinson, Michael. Blue Velvet. London: British Film Institute, 1997.
Chion, Michel. David Lynch. London: British Film Institute, 1995.
Sheen, Erica, and Annette Davison, eds. The Cinema of David Lynch: American Dreams, Nightmare Visions. New York: Wallflower, 2004.
Woods, Paul A. Weirdsville USA: The Obsessive Universe of David Lynch. London: Plexus, 1997.