Blood Simple - A murderous night

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Movie
German title Blood Simple - A murderous night
Original title Blood Simple
Country of production United States
original language English
Publishing year 1984
length 99 minutes /
Director's Cut 95 minutes
Age rating FSK 18 (Director's Cut)
Rod
Director Joel Coen ,
Ethan Coen
script Joel Coen,
Ethan Coen
production Ethan Coen
music Carter Burwell ,
Jim Roberge
camera Barry Sonnenfeld
cut Roderick Jaynes ,
Don Wiegmann
occupation

Blood Simple - A murderous night (alternative title: Blood Simple - blood for blood) is a thriller from 1984 and the first work of the Coen brothers . A Director's Cut that was around four minutes shorter was shown again in the cinemas in 2000. The film pays homage to the film noir of the 1940s, a so-called neo-noir . The title is a quote from the crime thriller Red Harvest by Dashiell Hammett . If I don't get away soon I'll be going blood-simple like the natives. Translated by Gunar Ortlepp as "blood fever".

action

In Texas ' deepest province, Abby, the wife of a bar owner named Julian Marty, begins a relationship with his employee Ray. When her husband hears about it from private detective Loren Visser, he instructs him to kill them for a bounty of US $ 10,000 . Visser, however, steals Abby's revolver instead and meets with Marty in his office after he has been fishing for an alibi. There he gives him a fake photo as evidence of the alleged murder and shoots Marty after he has taken the promised money from the safe and, without Visser's knowledge, put the photo in the safe. However, Visser then forgets his lighter at the crime scene.

When Ray enters the bar to clear the cash register there, he finds Marty's body and Abby's revolver and concludes that she was the murderer. He wants to make the body disappear to protect his girlfriend and puts the body in his car. On the drive into the area, however, it turns out that Marty is still alive but seriously injured. Ray then buries the wounded man alive in a field and then returns to Abby. He only tells her fragmentarily what happened, but then misunderstands her confused reaction and leaves.

Visser returns to the crime scene because of his lighter. He discovers that all traces have been removed, but does not find his lighter because it is hidden on the table by Marty's fish lying there. Abby suddenly appears too. Visser hides and watches as she investigates the crime scene, but does nothing.

Meurice, another clerk at the bar, has a message from Marty on his answering machine accusing Ray of stealing the money. Marty had made that call before he died to explain the disappearance of the money. Meurice then drives to Ray and confronts him about it. Ray hardly reacts due to the murder the previous night and Meurice drives away again. Later, Ray and Abby meet again. When he tells her that he buried Marty alive, she fled to Meurice. He believes the message on the answering machine that Marty is still alive and also convinces her of it.

Ray returns to the crime scene again and finds the supposed corpse photo in the safe. He concludes that someone faked his and Abby's deaths, that Marty apparently paid money for it, that whoever probably shot Marty and will now try to kill anyone who knows about the murder. He meets with Abby in her apartment. When she turns on the light, Visser shoots him through the window. Abby escapes into the neighboring apartment through a bathroom window. Visser now enters Abby's apartment and searches the dead Ray for his lost lighter. Then he goes into the bathroom, looks out the window and tries to open the window of the neighboring apartment. Abby then rams a knife into his hand and uses it to fix it on the wooden window sill. While Visser tries to break through the thin partition in order to free his hand again, Abby returns to her apartment, takes her revolver and waits. Visser actually manages to get through the wall, frees his hand, and walks towards the door. Now Abby shoots him through the closed door and says, "I'm not afraid of you, Marty" because she thinks she hit him. Visser, lying on the ground seriously injured, then starts laughing and replies: "I'll tell him if I meet him." Immediately afterwards, he dies.

Reviews

The Coen brothers' critically acclaimed feature film debut became the cornerstone of their continued success to this day. The Newsweek wrote: ". The most inventive and original thriller in many a moon" shines in her first leading role Frances McDormand , who is married to Joel Coen since 1984.

“For every film by Joel and Ethan Coen (Fargo, O Brother, Where Art Thou?) , Monuments should be set to the two filmmakers. Her debut, the famous low-budget crime thriller Blood Simple, is also a masterpiece: Abby (Frances McDormand) cheats on her husband (Dan Hedaya), and he hires a detective (M. Emmet Walsh) to kill them ... After more than 15 years, the director's cut of the brilliant thriller has now been released. "(Source: TV TODAY , highest rating)

The Lexicon of International Films wrote: “What begins as a marriage drama develops into a gloomy, technically not uninteresting psychological thriller in the tradition of suspense films; formal brilliance and the effort to create an atmospherically dense narrative style cannot hide individual inconsistencies and lengths. "

Others

The film gains its special charm from the unusual perspective: While the thriller viewer usually pursues the solution of a riddle / murder, here he is always ahead of the protagonists. So warns z. B. Marty, when he confronts Ray, Ray is about to trust Abby: "If she looks at you with her innocent eyes and says: I don't know what you're talking about!" When Ray then after burying Marty's body the alleged murderer Abby says, "He took care of everything", she looks at him unsuspectingly out of those innocent eyes and says that she doesn't even know what he's talking about. She no longer understands Ray, Ray feels betrayed and leaves her, and the only one who knows why all of this is happening is the viewer.

The mix of bizarre figures is also typical of the Coen brothers. A husband who thinks $ 10,000 is appropriate for a double homicide. A detective who leaves more traces than it removes. And Ray, a reluctant murderer who can think of no better hiding place for a corpse than half a meter deep under a field, which should not only be dug up sooner or later, but on which two screamingly conspicuous tire tracks in the soft ground directly to Lead grave site. Nevertheless, the film does not expose its characters to ridicule: one suffers with Ray, with Abby and also with Marty.

In 2009, Zhang Yimou shot a Chinese remake with A Woman, a Gun and a Noodle Shop .

The parallels in lighting and sound guidance to Blade Runner by Ridley Scott (1982) are striking. The cast of M. Emmet Walsh as a private detective, who plays the cold-blooded superior of the replicant hunter Deckard for Scott, testifies to the bowing of the Coen brothers to cyber punk noir.

In the film, when Ray tries to bury the dying Marty (approx. 50 min.), Three red billboards appear on the road on the right. Martin McDonagh took up this motif in 2017 with Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri , also with Frances McDormand in the lead role.

Awards

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Certificate of Release for Blood Simple (Director's Cut) . Voluntary self-regulation of the film industry (PDF; test number: 55852-a / K). Template: FSK / maintenance / type not set and Par. 1 longer than 4 characters
  2. ↑ Horst Fleig: Notes on Hammett. Retrieved March 30, 2017 .
  3. ↑ Blood Simple - A Murderous Night. In: Lexicon of International Films . Film service , accessed March 2, 2017 .Template: LdiF / Maintenance / Access used