In Dreams, You’re Mine, All The Time…

By Christopher P. Jacobs
Movies Editor

After premiering at the Cannes Film Festival, Telluride, and other festivals, twenty-five years ago this fall David Lynch’s “Blue Velvet” received a limited theatrical release on 98 screens. In fact, producer Dino De Laurentiis, who allowed Lynch complete artistic control over the film, realized no U.S. distributor would likely touch it and formed his own distribution company so “Blue Velvet” could get into theatres. Critical reaction was deeply divided over Lynch’s disturbing vision, and it was not a commercial success, its widest simultaneous release by that November being only 188 prints (according to boxofficemojo.com).

Despite such a limited run, “Blue Velvet” somehow made it to Grand Forks and actually played for two weeks in December 1986 at the Empire Theatre at the time I was managing it. At every single showing, there would be people walking out within a half-hour to forty-five minutes after it started, usually right after the entrance of Dennis Hopper’s “Frank’ character. More than a few complained that it was disgusting and the worst film they’d ever seen. And also after every single showing there would be viewers thanking the theatre for playing it, expressing how glad they were that the film came to Grand Forks and that it was the best film they’d seen all year.

Understandably controversial in the 1980s, the film rapidly built up a cult following yet remains no less challenging and no less polarizing for viewers in the 21st century, provoking equally opposite reactions from today’s introductory film students. Some find it fascinatingly unpredictable, visually and aurally mesmerizing, thematically intriguing, and/or a darkly comic masterpiece that requires multiple viewings and gets better with each one. Others consider it routine and predictable crime melodrama, badly acted, thematically and visually disturbing, morally repulsive, frequently confusing, just plain stupid, and/or virtually unwatchable.

The plot, on the surface, is a familiar formula of drug dealers, small-town police corruption, and an appealing couple (a young Kyle MacLachlan and a teenage Laura Dern) trying to solve a mystery but getting into something much deeper than they’d expected. The dialogue and its delivery by the actors is often mundane, even corny. But that is part of the film’s overall design and viewers, just like the characters, must search below the surface for clues as to what is really going on. And there is enough going on that different people can come up with a variety of diverging interpretations of what it all means. Former model Isabella Rossellini is still best-remembered for this, her second starring movie role as the deeply disturbed Dorothy, the abused object of Frank’s twisted affection.

A bland, picture-perfect portrait of the all-American middle-class life soon becomes a twisted nightmare as the story unfolds. It’s easy to see it as a creepier variation on Alfred Hitchcock’s frequent theme of voyeurism, but Lynch’s approach can make a viewer wonder - is it all really happening, is it exaggerated imagination, or is it all just a dream? Are all the characters real, or are some characters merely symbolic projections of the darker personality of others, their alter egos? How are we meant to compare Jeffrey and Sandy with Frank and Dorothy? How much of it is meant to be taken deadly seriously, and how much is outrageous, perverse satire or bizarre comedy? Why are there people like Frank in the world?  “Blue Velvet” is a complex, multilayered exploration of the human dichotomy that lends itself to numerous questions and deeper analysis on several levels (much deeper than can be done in this brief space).

The film’s first two minutes are to some extent a film-within-the-film, presenting clues that summarize and foreshadow the major themes and action that will unfold during the rest of its two hours. Lynch’s careful, artistic use of colors, settings, props, costumes, sound design, and editing convey an intensity of information far beyond the words and actions of the characters. Fans familiar with Lynch’s other work will recognize his distinctive style and thematic motifs, yet “Blue Velvet” looks almost like a commercial mainstream movie compared with many of his other films, which veer off on even more obscure excursions into the surreal, supernatural, and outright fantasy.

For all its peculiar and quirky approach, “Blue Velvet” is almost childishly simple in its basic, explicit meaning. It’s a strange world. The attractive life we see on the surface always has less pleasant things constantly going on just beneath the surface, things we’d rather not know about but which may sometimes affect us deeply. There are things we are drawn to that we know are dangerous and may even be wrong, but might also seem irresistible. We all have darker sides to our personalities that most of us can usually ignore, suppress, or at least control, but some people can’t. “Blue Velvet” is an allegorical statement on life of the past half-century just as timely now as it was 25 years ago.

On November 8th, “Blue Velvet” came out on Blu-ray in a 25th anniversary edition that all fans of the film will be sure to want. The old VHS version, a “full-screen” pan-and-scan transfer that eliminated about half the picture was finally superseded by a bare-bones but at least somewhat letterboxed DVD in 2000. Then came a “special edition” DVD in 2002 with more accurate letterboxing and a number of interesting bonus features, including a retrospective documentary and a photo-montage of deleted scenes. When the assets of the short-lived De Laurentiis Entertainment Group were sold off, the new owners got the rights and a negative to the film but all the outtakes and deleted scenes from the original three-hour cut had apparently been misplaced or discarded and destroyed.

About a year ago, however, those scenes were rediscovered, and the new Blu-ray includes 51 minutes of those missing sequences, transferred in full high-definition and stereo sound. These show numerous complete scenes and extended portions of sequences that could previously only be read in the screenplay (which can be found on line) including the early scenes of Jeffrey at college. The series begins with the missing segment inside the “Barbary Coast” bar after Frank abducts Jeffrey from Dorothy’s apartment (starting with scene 150). This is greatly expanded from the screenplay and has a surreal flavor similar to Lynch’s later “Twin Peaks,” “Lost Highway,” and “Mulholland Drive.” After this section, the scenes jump back to the beginning of the film and are presented pretty much in chronological order with fade-outs to indicate where the regular film would resume.

The HD picture quality and DTS-HD audio are both excellent and very clean, although the Blu-ray image is still not quite as sharp as I remember seeing projected theatrically from the original 35mm film. Bonus features, besides the extra 51 minutes, include the trailer in HD, and SD copies of the same documentary and “Siskel & Ebert” review ported over from the last DVD version, plus a few outtakes, four very brief featurettes, and some TV spots. There is no audio commentary track, but there are 28 chapter stops on the feature and 12 chapter stops for the set of deleted sequences. Unfortunately there is no option for seamless branching to view the theatrical cut or the continuous extended cut with the deleted scenes re-inserted into their original positions. Also unfortunately, this MGM/UA Blu-ray release through Fox Home Video has no main menu, so all special features must be accessed through a popup menu as the movie is playing.

BLUE VELVET on Blu-ray—Movie:  A+  /  Video:  A   /  Audio:  A   /  Extras:  A-

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