Bridget Savage Cole and Danielle Krudy’s Blow The Man Down (2019) has a lot of great things going on in terms of technique. Every frame of this film evokes the sea in its use of blues and grays while simultaneously the framing grounds the film in the tradition of “film noir”. Location is such a vital part of their aesthetic and they really pull it off.
Inevitably, when discussing Blow The Man Down, audiences and critics focus on the central device of the film; the re-gendering of archetypal roles. Krudy and Cole recast the genre of “neo noir”; Blow The Man Down is about women, not men. This device is kind of ingenious in its simplicity and long over due because why can’t you replace the men in any classic noir film with a female identifying character?
The issue is that, for the most part, that is all Cole and Krudy seem to have done. These archetypes, despite now being women characters, haven’t really been modified and just feel too familiar, too played out. Likewise the narrative itself follows a paint-by-numbers sort of direction in terms of literally following the traditions of the classic noir maestros Fritz Lang, Robert Siodmak, and Nicolas Ray.
That men are only seen as this mostly faceless social and political force of wickedness in Easter Cove could have been explored at greater length. In the scenes where Enid (Margo Martindale) recalls how “bad things were then” (roughly 25 years ago) I couldn’t help but feel that it was there that a really compelling movie lived. A film about Enid and Mary Margaret taking control of the town via prostitution would have been endlessly fascinating and a far more original story in the noir canon.
My favorite scene in Blow The Man Down is the last one. No words are spoken, it is a moment of pure camaraderie between two generations of women. Priscilla (Sophie Lowe) and Mary Beth (Morgan Saylor) are walking home when they pass Susie (June Squibb) in her side-yard hosing out the cooler that contained the corpse of Gorski (Ebon Moss-Bachrach). As the sisters look on, tears come to their eyes as Susie turns, smiling softly at them. Suddenly Enid’s line “A lot of people underestimate young women. That’s why they can get away with a lot.” takes on a new resonance.
