I like the barrenness of this beautiful film poster for 1988’s BACKFIRE. I like the way the paucity of information fires up the feverish search for meaning in a thunderstorm of firing synapses. I like the way its emptiness invites us to pour our feelings into it.
It gives us
nothing, as if it has nothing to give away. There’s only color, and light, and
shadow, and a pair of beautiful leg, and a gun. And us. Mesmerized. There’s no
place to speak of. Just surfaces. Somehow I think of a beach house. And of a
summer morning. Maybe it’s the way the light pours in from left side that makes
me think if that shadow is that of an open door. A door that opens onto the
beach, onto the ocean. If so, his she leaving the house? Is she waiting for
someone to come? Is someone lying behind her on a rumpled bed with light linen
sheets, in a pool of blood? Blood, yes. Red is the color we don’t see on the
poster but as a flimsy trim around the film title. But that’s the red of
burning embers. It speaks of passion, of sweaty sex. The idea of blood comes
from the huge gun on the woman’s slender, elegant, left hand. Somehow one feels the imminence of something drastic. A
crime, perhaps. Is she the perpetrator? Is she about to become the perpetrator?
And who is she? We
don’t know. We see only those long, firm and sexy legs. Are they Karen Allen’s?
Are they the same shapely legs we saw dangling above the Well of Souls in RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK (1981)? It doesn’t
matter, for that is just the actress playing the mysterious woman whose light
summer dress the cool summer breeze – a sea breeze, perhaps, coming through the
window above the blood-soaked bed? – is pulling aside to allow us to ogle. Those
legs. Those enticing legs, so relaxed. No, if there is a crime, the deed has
already been done. And, again, somehow, one feels she’s the culprit. Those legs,
so perfect, suddenly bring to mind images of a slim anklet, and other mesmerizing
legs, those of Barbara Stanwyck as the primordial femme fatale in DOUBLE INDEMNITY (1944). Surely, that’s
what our girl must be. A femme fatale. A killer. A man eater.
And yet, all that
blue, all that sense of a luminous morning seem to want us to dispel the nightmare.
That light, that summer dress, those naked legs, I don’t know why, makes me
think of my favorite of all Edward Hopper’s paintings, 1943’s Summertime. It's as if they are the same
girl; perhaps some kind of girls find themselves in the same situation, facing
the same choices, having to overcome the same adversities, throughout time. In
Hopper's painting, there’s also a wondrous summer morning, awash with light. A
curtain flutters on an open window, just like the skirt of our unknown woman’s
summer dress. Also, in Hopper’s, there’s a girl with a half-bent leg and a
summer dress, a light seethrough summer dress that also reveals much of the
girl’s legs. And she is there waiting for someone (or maybe just leaving the
building where a similar drama has played itself out?). Her left hand is hidden
from view. And one wonders, is she holding a gun? Has there been a crime? Is
she the culprit? I love that painting. The paucity of information fires up the
feverish search…
