Blue Velvet at the George Eastman House

Date published: February 11, 2005

As I mentioned in my last post, the George Eastman House is showing a Lynch film every Wednesday in February. Two nights ago, Blue Velvet was the film of choice.

Blue Velvet, which premiered in 1986, is the film that Lynch is most well known for. The guy at the Eastman House who introduced the film didn't mention it, but Blue Velvet was such a big hit mostly due to the highly conservative Reagan years in which it came out. When it first came out it was a bit of a bomb, but word of mouth spread that there was this very different, thought-provoking, confusing, and far from conservative movie in theaters.

If I were to give this film a one sentence summary, it would be "An exploration of small town America wherein happiness and innocence is contrasted with a darker, more brutal life." That summary isn't as good at my Eraserhead one, but hey, it'll have to do.

The quality of this print was MUCH better than the quality of Eraserhead. But then again Eraserhead was an independent film that was made 9 years earlier. Just as with Eraserhead, I thought that the shadow/highlight levels of the film were off. Everything was too dark and thus details in the darker scenes are lost. I'm sure this is so apparent because David Lynch has a lot of dark scenes in all of his films. I wonder if Eastman House recalibrates their projector every so often. If so, it's in need of it again.

As with Eraserhead, I'm reminded of the wonders of DVD. Blue Velvet has had a couple different DVD releases here in the US, but the most recent version is by far the best. It's only on one disc, but quality still holds up well. It's also got an hour long documentary, a deleted scenes montage, and a bunch of interesting, hidden clips as well.