Blue Velvet

How this film uses it

Lumberton, North Carolina is introduced with images of pure suburban innocence: flowers, white picket fences, children crossing with crossing guards. Lynch holds on these images until they turn eerie. They look too perfect and too arranged. The way the town looks is the film's main claim. That is, the American suburb is a surface, and its job is to hide things.

Where to see it

The opening sequence. The red roses, the white fence and the fireman's slow wave are held in their perfection until it tips into something wrong.

How this film uses it

In the second half of the film, Jeffrey gets more deeply involved with Frank and Dorothy, and it runs on nightmare logic. Frank is menacing the way a figure in a dream is. You can't explain him, he takes over everything and he follows rules the dreamer can't see. In these sequences, Lynch's images deny you the comfort of normal cause and effect.

Where to see it

Frank's joyride. It's a non-linear sequence with the songs, the violence and the strange figures in the bright light. Dream logic takes the place of any normal story explanation.

How this film uses it

Frederick Elmes photographs the film's underworld (Dorothy's apartment, the Slow Club where she sings) in deep shadow broken up by violent color: red curtains, yellow light, the blue of the velvet itself. Lumberton's daylight is overexposed, meaning washed out and too bright. The contrast between them is how the film makes its case in images. The underworld belongs to the suburb. It is what the suburb's brightness is there to keep out of view.

Where to see it

Dorothy's apartment. With the red curtains, the single lamp and the deep shadow, the space feels like the inside of something the daylight world won't admit exists.

How this film uses it

Jeffrey hides in Dorothy's closet and watches something he should not see, and the film puts the camera in there with him. You are inside the closet. Lynch refuses to spare you by cutting away. You are part of the watching, and the film knows it. Jeffrey gets drawn in afterward, and that is partly the film telling you that watching is never neutral.

Where to see it

The closet sequence. The camera is with Jeffrey behind the slats, and you take the peeping tom's position. You have to share in the watching before you can understand anything.