Blue Velvet (1986)

Blue Velvet has two levels of reality. On one level, we're in Lumberton, a simple-minded small town where people talk in television clichés and seem to be clones of 1950s sitcom characters. On another level, we're told a story of sexual bondage, of how Dorothy Vallens' (Isabella Rossellini) husband and son have been kidnapped by Frank Booth (Dennis Hopper), who makes her his sexual slave. The twist is that the kidnapping taps into the woman's deepest feelings. She finds that she is a masochist who responds with great sexual passion to this situation. Everyday town life is depicted with a deadpan irony; characters use lines with corny double meanings and solemnly recite platitudes. Meanwhile, the darker story of sexual bondage is told absolutely on the level in cold-blooded realism. Beneath the American Dream, Lynch invites viewers to believe, as he did in Eraserhead (1978), lie "dark and troubling things."

Lynch has his inversion of the American Dream emerge from blue skies, red roses, and white picket fences of Lumberton, North Carolina. Strains of Bobby Vinton's "Blue Velvet" fill the air, firemen wave a friendly hello, and school guards help the kiddies across the street, but something is wrong beneath this superficial tranquility. Beneath the surface As Dad, Mr. Beaumont (Jack Harvey) calmly waters his healthy green lawn, the water spigot begins to malfunction. It emits a loud, thundering rumble; there is a kink in the hose; Mr. Beaumont suddenly experiences a stroke, and he drops squirming to the ground. As the water sprays from the hose, the family dog excitedly drinks from it, blissfully unaware of his master's condition. The camera burrows underneath the lawn, to penetrate soil that is overrun by insects. Lynch has just lured his audience into a dark, mysterious, and troubling world.

Arriving home to visit his father in the hospital is Jeffrey Beaumont (Kyle MacLachlan), a handsome, square-jawed college kid—the archetypal perfect young man. While wandering through a deserted field, Jeffrey finds a severed human ear, decaying and crawling with ants. He picks it up, drops it in a brown paper bag, and takes it to a police detective, Williams (George Dickerson). With the detached manner of an investigative professional, Detective Williams declares that it is indeed a human ear. The coroner's report indicates that the ear was cut off with scissors. Later that night, Jeffrey stops at Detective Williams' house, finding him strangely elusive about the ear.

As he leaves, Jeffrey is approached by Detective Williams' daughter Sandy (Laura Dern), a vision of innocence, who appears from out of the shadows, hoping that her father won't catch her with Jeffrey. After engaging in some small talk, Jeffrey presses Sandy about some of the details he believes Detective Williams is hiding from him. Sandy admits she has overheard her father discussing the case, and she tells Jeffrey that a singer, Dorothy Vallens (Isabella Rossellini), who lives in the eerie Deep River apartment complex near the vacant field, seems to be a suspect in the investigation. "It's a strange world," Jeffrey naively observes. Sandy shows him the apartment building, further sparking his curiosity.

The next day Jeffrey stops by the high school to pick up Sandy. He takes her to a local snack shop and asks her to help him sneak inside Dorothy's apartment. Posing as an exterminator, Jeffrey climbs the stairs to the seventh floor (the elevator, which played so prominent a part in Eraserhead is out of order) and is admitted to Dorothy's apartment. While a visitor, a man in yellow (Fred Pickler), momentarily distracts Dorothy, Jeffrey seizes the opportunity to steal a spare apartment key. Digging deeper into the mystery, Jeffrey, with Sandy's help, plans to sneak into the apartment later that evening while Dorothy is doing her nightclub act.

The two visit The Slow Club and, while awaiting Dorothy's performance, discuss the quality of Heineken beer and share a toast to "an interesting experience." When Dorothy is on stage, performing as "The Blue Lady," she wears a blue velvet dress, a curly black wig, blue eye shadow, and bright red lipstick. Seduction at knifepoint Jeffrey and Sandy leave before the show's end and drive to Dorothy's apartment. While Sandy waits in the car to signal Dorothy's return, Jeffrey goes inside to find clues. Surprised by Dorothy's sudden appearance, he hides in a closet, peeking through the lowered doors as she undresses. She receives a telephone call, which apparently informs her that her husband and child have been kidnapped. Then Dorothy discovers her visitor and, holding him at knifepoint, begins to seduce him.

A knock at the door interrupts her. Frightened and now thoroughly confused, Jeffrey heads back into the closet. The entrance of Frank Booth (Dennis Hopper), dressed in a leather jacket and exuding evil, arouses terror in Jeffrey (and in every viewer). The man demands that Dorothy provide a setting to accommodate his preferences. He wants his bourbon poured and the lights turned down low; he doesn't want to be looked at; and, most of all, he wants her to wear blue velvet. After inhaling an unidentified drug from a gas mask, he proceeds to rape her—a scene that is as difficult for Jeffrey to watch as for the audience. Before Frank leaves he warns Dorothy, "You stay alive, baby … do it for van Gogh."

When Jeffrey emerges from the closet to console her, he finds she has retreated into another world. Completely submissive, she surrenders herself to Jeffrey, begging him to hit her. He refuses and prepares to leave but, before doing so, finds a treasured photo of Dorothy's husband and child. The next evening Jeffrey tells Sandy what happened—that Frank has kidnapped Dorothy's husband and child in order to force her to have sex with him. Rather than tell the police, Jeffrey decides to get additional, more solid evidence. He stakes out Frank's hideout and takes photos of his secret meetings with the "yellow man" and a well-dressed man, following a drug dealer's murder.

Jeffrey later returns to the Deep River Apartments because, as he tells Sandy, "he is seeing something that was always hidden." Dorothy admits to a genuine liking for him. They make love; but when she again asks him to hit her, he is torn between his conscience and his desire to please her, until he finally gives vent to a heretofore contained violence and brutalizes her. Joy riding As Jeffrey prepares to leave Dorothy's apartment, he is met in the hallway by Frank and his gang of degenerates, who invite him to come along for a "joy ride," which ends up at a bizarre bar called This Is It. Run by the ridiculously "suave" Ben (Dean Stockwell). Dorothy's son is being held in the bar, and she is visiting him behind closed doors while Frank guzzles down Pabst Blue Ribbon beer and enjoys Ben's lip-synched rendition of Roy Orbison's mellow tune "In Dreams."

After a short stay the gang takes to the road again. The joy ride turns ugly when Jeffrey, upset by Frank's treatment of Dorothy, denounces Frank and punches him in the face. Frank replies, "You're like me," before dragging Jeffrey out of the car for some abuse. With "In Dreams" again playing in the background, Frank has his pals restrain Jeffrey while he threatens to send him a "love letter straight from [his] heart" and then explains that one of his love letters is a bullet from a gun. Promising to "send him straight to hell." Frank rubs Jeffrey's face with lipstick and blue velvet and then brutally beats him while a helpless Dorothy stands by screaming. When he comes to on the following morning, Jeffrey visits the police station to meet with Detective Williams. Passing through the halls, he notices the "yellow man" sitting behind a desk—a police lieutenant. Revelations Later, at Detective Williams' house, Jeffrey reveals everything he knows.

Jeffrey and Sandy admit they are in love and, while out together, find a naked, bruised, and catatonic Dorothy wandering across Jeffrey's front lawn. They take her home to Sandy's house and call an ambulance. Frightened and emotionally disturbed, she clings to Jeffrey while Sandy looks on in horror. When Dorothy begs for Jeffrey to love her and cries out that Frank has "put his disease in me," Sandy breaks down. Jeffrey tries to explain, but Sandy slaps him and makes him leave.

Still obsessed with the mystery, Jeffrey heads back to Dorothy's apartment, arriving just before Frank, disguised as the "well-dressed man." Jeffrey runs into the apartment, where he finds the corpses of the "yellow man" and Ben. Jeffrey takes a gun from the "yellow man" and once again hides in Dorothy's closet—no longer just to engage in passive voyeurism but, he hopes, to destroy the evil Frank.

When his hiding place is finally discovered, Jeffrey shoots Frank. Detective Williams and Sandy arrive to find Frank dead. The trouble passed, Lumberton returns to normal. Jeffrey's father has been released from the hospital; Jeffrey and Sandy watch from a kitchen window as a robin munches on an insect; and Dorothy sits on a park bench hugging her young son. The film ends with the hint that Detective Williams might be a part of the underworld.

In 1986, David Lynch brought his "disease" of dark mysteries before the public, exploring the connections between sex and violence, light and darkness, good and evil. Lynch's dark vision As expected, Blue Velvet drew scathing criticism from those who viewed Lynch and his film as nothing more than sick. In Lynch's world disturbing truths exist underneath the surface. Rather than ignore them, he probes deeper in order to reveal them. In Blue Velvet Lynch is digging under the lawn at the Lumberton home to see what vermin lies beneath the wholesomeness that we see; he examines a decaying human ear, to see what infests what we cannot hear. What Lynch reveals is a disturbing evil that not only cannot be ignored but must be destroyed before it destroys what is good in the world.

One-dimensional characters In order to illustrate the conflict, Lynch makes his characters (with the possible exception of Jeffrey), one-dimensional. They are archetypes created in small town USA and turned to myth by the Hollywood dreammakers. Jeffrey is the handsome hero, Sandy is his innocent golden-haired love, Dorothy is the dark prisoner of evil, and Frank is the embodiment of that evil. Good vs. evil Jeffrey finds himself caught in a battle of mythic proportions between good and evil (represented by his love for both Sandy and Dorothy). He begins on the side of the good, only to be lured into the darkness of the underworld. It is through contact with Frank that he is contaminated by evil. Only when he can destroy the evil within himself can he destroy the evil in Lumberton. To do so he must journey into this underworld of perversion and violence, come face to face with his nemesis and alter ego, Frank, and defeat the evil forces. Buoyed by Sandy's innocence, Jeffrey does so and ensures that the world will be bathed in the "light of love."

Dorothy, who has been held in the grip of evil, has now been set free by Jeffrey. Avoidance or confrontation Lynch seems to imply that people would rather avoid confronting the dark side of life—sadism, perversion, fetishism, drug addiction, violence—than deal with it. Indeed, many critics complained that exploring these matters was "dangerous," contending that such taboos were better left in the closet. Lynch has addressed that avoidance in the film. Frank, the voice of evil, demands that people not look at him; Jeffrey, the voice of good, not only looks but fights back, uncovering his own dark side in the process. By the rules strategy What makes BLUE VELVET even more impressive is that it was made within the rules established by the Hollywood system. By following a basic narrative structure (from which Lynch occasionally departs) and guidelines defined by the mystery genre (which he occasionally bends), and by casting big-name stars, Lynch has created a guise of respectability (Lynch's "well-dressed filmmaker" disguise?) for his film that enables him to deal with subjects mainstream Hollywood normally avoids. Lynch's strategy also gained bookings for the film in hundreds of theaters across the country. In addition to Lynch's brilliant and totally controlled vision, the film boasts the gorgeous photography of Frederick Elmes and the multitextured sound design of Alan Splet (who worked on all three previous Lynch pictures). The performances are excellent., each actor giving to his role exactly what Lynch intended. While Dern and MacLachlan provide the flavor of corny, idealistic, 1950s America and Hardy Boys-Nancy Drew innocence, Rossellini and Hopper draw on raw emotion, intensity, and underlying evil.

Alfred Hitchcock had frequently forced his audiences to confront dark and troubling things. His Shadow of a Doubt (1943) covered much of the same ground as Blue Velvet in exploring the mind of a killer (Joseph Cotten) who hails from the quiet town of Santa Rosa, California. As in Lumberton, Santa Rosa's inhabitants are oblivious to the murderer in their midst, and they ignorantly go about their daily business. Like MacLachlan, Teresa Wright must face and destroy her alter ego (Hitchcock makes it obvious by giving both Wright and Cotten the same name—Charlie—and by providing a certain extrasensory, as well as familial, link between them).

One need not stretch the imagination too far to think that Hitchcock, were he making films today, would be capable of creating a Blue Velvet. He had already made the connection between sex and violence in Vertigo (1958) and Psycho (1960), before becoming explicit with the brutal rape scene in Frenzy (1972). In that film, Barry Foster's malicious character Robert Rusk, with his repetitive "lovely, lovely" during the rape-murder scene, clearly serves as the cinematic father to Hopper's character, with his disturbing repetitions of "Mommy, Mommy" during the attack on Dorothy.

The soundtack draws heavily on songs popular in the 1950s. Songs include "Blue Velvet" (Lee Morris, Bernie Wayne, performed by Bobby Vinton, reprised by Isabella Rossellini), "Blue Star" (Angelo Badalamenti, David Lynch, performed by Rossellini), "In Dreams" (Roy Orbison, performed by Orbison), "Love Letters" (Victor Yound, Edward Heyman, performed by Ketty Lester), "Mysteries of Love" (Badalamenti, Lynch; performed by Julee Cruise), "Honky Tonk (Part I)" (Shep Shepherd, Clifford Scott, Bill Doggett, Billy Butler, performed by Doggett), "Livin' for Your Lover," and "Gone Ridin'" (Chris Isaak).

CAST:

PERFORMER, CHARACTER

Kyle MacLachlan, Jeffrey Beaumont

Isabella Rossellini, Dorothy Vallens

Dennis Hoppe,r Frank Booth

Laura Dern, Sandy Williams

Hope Lange, Mrs. Williams

Dean Stockwell, Ben

George Dickerson, Detective Williams

Priscilla Pointer, Mrs. Beaumont

Frances Bay, Aunt Barbara

Jack Harvey, Mr. Beaumont

PRODUCTION:

Producer, Fred Caruso

Director, David Lynch

Screenwriters, David Lynch

Editor, Duwayne Dunham

Cinematographer, Frederick Elmes

Music Director, Angelo Badalamenti