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Blood Simple

1984, Movie, R, 97 mins

Blood Simple: Review

BLOOD SIMPLE
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Stylish shoestring noir, and an admirable filmmaking debut for the brothers Coen — Ethan (writer/producer) and Joel (writer/director). Visser (M. Emmet Walsh) is a sleazy, greasy private eye in a mustard-yellow leisure suit, hired by Texas strip-bar owner Julian Marty (Dan Hedaya) to kill his wife Abby (Frances McDormand) and her lover Ray (John Getz). Instead, Visser fakes the double hit by doctoring photographs and then fills Julian with lead. When Ray discovers Julian in a pool of blood, he goes "simple" — foolishly cleaning up after the murder on the assumption that Abby committed it. His actions distorted by his blinding passion, Ray then takes the body to an empty field to bury it, only to find that it is he, by a brutal twist of fate, who's being buried. Apparently inspired by the hardboiled crime novels of James M. Cain and Dashiell Hammett (the phrase "blood simple" comes from Hammett's Red Harvest), Coen's characters have none of the Cain complexities one might hope for, existing simply as chess pieces to further flashy stylistics. The Coens' concern isn't emotional intensity but bravura camera moves and chic lighting of cinematographer Barry Sonnenfeld. McDormand, however, is wonderfully naturalistic as the not-too-bright girl with a homey sensuality, and Hedaya somehow manages to be vile yet sympathetic. Hailed by some as the best American independent film, BLOOD SIMPLE was completed on an astonishingly small budget of less than $1.5 million and looks as if it cost ten times as much. In a break with common practice, the director's cut of the film released to theaters in 2000 was actually shorn of some five minutes of footage by the filmmakers. "We doubt whether anyone needs to see more of anything done by anybody in their twenties," Ethan Coen wrote on both their behalves, explaining that with the minor edits "a pace that was once glacial is now merely slow and scenes that were once inept are now merely awkward." The Coens also added a snarky prologue featuring a pontificating film preservationist who lauds BLOOD SIMPLE for having opened to universal acclaim, done record-breaking box-office and single-handedly launched the independent film movement. leave a comment
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