Isabella Rossellini corrects the record on Blue Velvet
"I was 31 or 32. I chose to play the character," Rossellini said of the controversial David Lynch film
Aux News Isabella Rossellini
Considering the constant stream of actresses speaking out about the ways they were made to feel uncomfortable and exploited by male directors during past shoots, it’s nice to hear at least one account where the feeling went the other way. In a recent interview, Isabella Rossellini opened up about the response to her breakout role in the controversial 1986 film Blue Velvet—directed by her then-partner David Lynch—in which she plays a lounge singer held captive by a psychopathic gangster. “I remember I was told that Roger Ebert said that [Lynch] exploited me, and I was surprised, because I was an adult. I was 31 or 32. I chose to play the character,” she said (via IndieWire).
The legendary critic gave the film one star in his 1986 review. In a particularly scathing passage, he writes: “Rossellini is asked to do things in this film that require real nerve… She is degraded, slapped around, humiliated and undressed in front of the camera. And when you ask an actress to endure those experiences, you should keep your side of the bargain by putting her in an important film.”
Given how unfortunately often we’re still having the same conversation around male-directed sexploitation films today, Ebert’s insight is in many ways ahead of its time. Rossellini, however, thinks we should also allow space to question the “rigidity of if you make a film about a woman, it has to be a woman [director].” “First of all, Blue Velvet is also about men, so who’s going to make the film?” she continued. “If you make a film about the aliens, they have to have aliens direct? It doesn’t make any sense.”
Even though Rossellini and Lynch are no longer together, she also had a lot of kind words for her former director. “I’m glad Blue Velvet was directed by David Lynch,” she said. “He’s such a great author. I think my character was the first time we did an abused woman, a portrait of an abused woman, but also she camouflaged herself behind what she was asked to be, which was sexy and beautiful and singing, and she obeys the order, and is also victimized it. That’s the complexity of Blue Velvet but also the great talent of David Lynch. I thought he did a fantastic film. I love Blue Velvet.”
In her current life, Rossellini is still advocating for understanding nuance in film. There’s a small movie theater in her town that did a Charlie Chaplin series, she explained, and she was surprised by how many parents had never seen a silent film before but was heartened by how many took their children. “He was a discovery,” she said, and then echoing Martin Scorsese (another director ex-partner): “The children… are getting used to watching black and white, and not to look at film as this spectacular thing, like an amusement park.” She’s right, but also… look out, Isabella!
28 Comments
Isabella is one of the greatest human beings ever. Full stop.
I loved Ebert growing up and remember his review of this (I had a book of his reviews that I used to help me seek out movies I wanted to see). Kind of surprised this is being brought up again after all these years. It’s an interesting discussion about what is exploitation, especially if the actor herself never felt it was exploitive.
He was a hysterical idiot that was all in on the moral panic of slashers in the 80’s
That’s an obvious lie. He gave positive reviews to multiple slashers. He gave Halloween 4/4 stars. Most slashers are garbage, and giving bad reviews to garbage movies is not “moral panic.”
Maybe not a moral panic, but certainly pearl-clutching overreaction. “Garbage” or not, he went way beyond just giving them bad reviews. There’s a reason John Carpenter went after him at the end of They Live
Wait till someone tells him about that exploitation movie like 500% of people online now know Ebert wrote. You couldn’t make that movie today Tee Emm. After all, most of the cast and creatives are dead; only the big studios with the big franchise movies could handle the logistics of something like that.
I’m still sad that that the planned Ed Wood like comedy about the making of Beyond the Valley of the Dolls entitled Russ and Roger Go Beyond seems to be stuck in production limbo and will probably never get made.However, one thing to take into account before accusing Ebert of hypocrisy for writing this movie and yet being against others he saw as exploitative, was that 1960s/early 1970s Ebert was an alcoholic and drug addict — the popular persona of Ebert is from later after he got clean.
I think the reason Ebert gets the shrapnel for 80’s slashers is that Siskel essentially doxxed the producer and Betsy Palmer by giving out their addresses and spoiled the ending of Friday the 13th, in his printed review of the movie. People attribute that to having been on done their show.
Yeah, as a lifelong fan of shitty horror and Ebert, it was really Siskel that had the moral panic about 80s horror movies. Don’t get me wrong, they both hosted their special episode about the evils of slasher movies, but Ebert seemed much more willing to judge the movies individually while Siskel lumped them all together no matter what.And the whole Betsy Palmer thing was truly awful. I’d like to think that, had he lived longer and seen the dangers of stalking in the modern age, Siskel would have learned enough and realized how gross it is to NAME AN ACTRESS’ HOME TOWN AND DIRECT ANGRY FANS TO CONTACT HER, but we’ll never know.
You know that Halloween was probably the first entry in the slasher genre proper? So citing that early film in the subgenre as an example of one he likes isn’t the “gotcha” that you think it is because, as the 80’s rolled around and slashers began to dominate the horror genre, Ebert openly detested them.
Siskel and Ebert launched a moral crusade that led to the film Silent Night, Deadly Night being pulled from theaters by its distributor. They even devoted an entire episode of their show to the subject of “women in danger films” where Ebert brought up his praise of Halloween, “I think a lot of people have the wrong idea. They identify these films with earlier thrillers like Psycho or even a more recent film like Halloween, which we both liked. These films aren’t in the same category. These films hate women, and, unfortunately, the audiences that go to them, don’t seem to like women much either…”.
In fact, Ebert wasn’t even consistent about his disdain for these films. One of his examples of “women in danger movies” was the relatively tame When a Stranger Calls. But he praised Re-Animator a few years later, a film that uses sexual assault to shock, titillate, and even illicit laughter from the audience. How is that any less “misogynistic” than When a Stranger Calls? Or for that matter, while not horror, how is Ebert’s own exploitation film Beyond the Valley of the Dolls not misogynistic? I mean, if accounts of the making of their doomed Sex Pistols vehicle Who Killed Bambi? are to be believed, Meyer literally hired buxom women selected from a pool of glamour models and exotic dancers at the very start of his time in England and Ebert was tasked with writing a script to incorporate them.
You know that Halloween was probably the first entry in the
slasher genre proper? So citing that early film in the subgenre as an
example of one he likes isn’t the “gotcha” that you think it is because, as the 80’s rolled around and slashers began to dominate the horror genre, Ebert openly detested them.That’s like saying someone hates comedy because they hate the Scary Movie franchise. The original Halloween was a brilliant and original film. The Friday the 13th movies and other lazy paint-by-numbers ripoffs of the idea, not so much.
The original Friday the 13th was DAMN original, thank you very much. A middle-aged woman as the killer, likeable victims like Annie (we first see her playing with a dog, she was adorable) and the twist that maybe there was a monster at the camp all along. F13th may have been a knockoff of Halloween, but it was one of the better ones.
Which is… interesting posturing from Ebert, especially if you’ve seen Ebert’s own film Beyond the Valley of the Dolls.
A film that I guess was supposed to be a satire of exploitation but was really just ended up being one of the most exploitative movies I’ve ever sat through, and I think a way for him to air out his own kinks.
[citation needed]
Oh ffs. Are you 10?
Siskel was worse about that
Even worse is that Ebert’s example of a non-exploitative role is Schneider in Last Tango in Paris…
Ouch — aged poorly!
It was nice to see him come around a little on Lynch by the time Mulholland Drive came out. I had a really lovely chat with him at the Music Box and he gushed about it for a long time. I think I blurted out something about revisiting Blue Velvet, but he just kept gushing and enthusing over my 20something mumble.
Although I despise Vincent Gallo for his public persona, I do love the story between him and Ebert over their feud with Brown Bunny.
And how did he review “Beyond the Valley of the Dolls”?
Ebert just doesn’t gibe with horror films on first blush at all, and Blue Velvet is arguably a psychological horror movie
He also had a problem with stuff that was just weird but not arguably exploitative — he hated the Coen’s “Raising Arizona” because he felt it “wasn’t realistic” — as if that was the goal. To be fair, he came around on both Lynch and the Coens and became huge supporters of them.
Ebert had triggers and he wasn’t consistent with his reviews. He had a lot of misfires, but some things just sent him into some kind of anger spiral and it was hard to predict what. Maybe he was a victim of abuse? Maybe he suffered from mental illness? Maybe he just became a primadonna after so much praise and fame? I don’t know. If he had these issues then he never publicly disclosed them. I remember when he gave the silly Zoolander movie a very negative review because he was angry that there was an assassination subplot. There’s no real explanation for this other than he was seemingly unwell in ways and certain things set off his moral outrage trigger.
She’s right, but also… look out, Isabella! *link to article about Martin Scorsese’s thoughts about Marvel moviesStop. Please.
It took me a long time to appreciate Ebert, because all I knew were these huge misfires and the simplistic TV show. I don’t love the guy and he had some huge fuck ups, but whatever, he was better at embracing movies of all genres than many. That said, she’s of course right and he was of course wrong here (and he was overbearing and pretty patriarchally sexist to think she couldn’t make her own choices and he had to protect her). Obvi Blue Velvet is a masterpiece and she is a genius.I saw her on the street like a year ago, she had so much charisma it was like a giant reality warping forcefield bubble. Fwiw, w/r/t the resurrected comments section and our new overlords, Paste’s lists, of best albums, best songs, and even of best beers (which is rare) are actually fairly defensible, which is very high praise for a process that is basically always doomed to fail. The AV Club’s music coverage has been fucking terrible for a few years now, so I am cautiously optimistic. Hopefully they will hire back some people in Chicago or some old time favorites like that Leonard guy who could see the future. If they truly want our love they will find and bring back Z0diacM0therfucker.
This is stupid. She’s responding to something Ebert didn’t say. His problem was with Blue Velvet as a movie. He thought she and the rest of the cast (notably MacLachlan) gave great performances and Lynch wasted them by putting them in with a facile satire of Donna Reed and similar shows. He said Lynch took advantage of the cast by apparently not sharing any info about the satire part of the movie with the cast.
Ebert’s review, while misinformed, was at least trying to provoke thought. Compare that to Rex Reed’s review, where he said Blue Velvet “should score high
with the kind of sickos who like to smell dirty socks and pull the wings off
butterflies.”