Ray, in A Certain Tendency of the Hollywood Cinema, 1930-1980, has written: Is the Detective-like Leland Palmer in Twin Peaks four years later-a monster disguised as a Man of Order? It is during scenes like this that Blue Velvet most closely echoes another film that deconstructed the idyllic myth of small-town America: Hitchcock’s Shadow of a Doubt (1943), whose Uncle Charlie operates as an earlier incarnation of Frank Booth, barely restrained by Hollywood’s Production Code. This narrative possibility remains open at this moment, a moment that is among the film’s most terrifyingly ambiguous. There is a look of pity on Detective Williams’s face as he delivers his warning to Jeffrey not to “blow it.” At this point, it’s not entirely clear whose side the Detective is on is his Hollywood stock detective outfit for real, or is he-like the “well-dressed man”-wearing a disguise? His warning to Jeffrey, as he takes him by the arms and looks into his eyes, is like a secret communication, a signal to Jeffrey not to rush things, not dig too deeply because what he might find at the terrible, rotten core of things is not Frank, but Detective Williams himself.
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