RARA-AVIS: Blood Simple

From: Joe Hoffman ( ljhoffman@worldnet.att.net)
Date: 11 Aug 2000


The Joel & Ethan Coen's filmmaking debut, Blood Simple has just been re-released with a polished soundtrack and a few (IMHO unnecessary) minutes trimmed.

For those of you who never saw it, it touches on traditional noir themes of greed, jealously, angst and fatalism. What made the movie memorable for me is that the Coens let the audience in on things the characters didn't know.

The following will be A SPOILER for those who never saw the original movie issue...

There were two classic scenes, both of which play out with almost no dialogue: first, a character tries to bury a corpse that refuses to stay dead; and second, a killer traps his victim inside an apartment, only to discover that this target is more resourceful than he is. These two sequences, very gory but strangely funny, owe more to Hitchcock than Double Indemnity.

Although Fargo was probably a better movie as the filmmakers grew and matured, both share the twisting plot and film-noir roots. See it is you can.

Enjoy.

Anita Hoffman

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