It’s still hard to believe that David Lynch is no longer with us. A master of surrealism, Lynch was one of the few contemporary filmmakers whose style could be called singular and influential on an entire generation of directors. There was simply no one else in the industry who could so masterfully blend 1950s kitsch with nightmarish imagery, all while straddling a careful balance between campy humor and a disorientating atmosphere. At the heart of his work was a lifelong balance between light and darkness in everyday life and how they intersected and informed each other.
While it was only debatably his greatest work in a career seemingly full of masterpieces, none of Lynch’s films so effectively captured this dynamic as Blue Velvet. While initially garnering controversy for its explicit sexual content, it was nonetheless widely acclaimed by critics, serving as a career resurrection for Dennis Hopper and a breakout for both Kyle MacLachlan and Isabella Rossellini. Yet despite now being seen as one of the greatest films of all time, Blue Velvet had its dissenters — perhaps mostly infamously the late, great Roger Ebert.
Why Did Roger Ebert Hate ‘Blue Velvet’?
Despite being widely renowned as maybe the single most influential film critic ever, as he emphasized populism and emotion in a field seemingly full of elites, Roger Ebert didn’t always get it right. He wasn’t afraid to go against the grain of popular consensus on occasion, as he gave negative reviews to films now considered classics, including Fight Club, Full Metal Jacket, and The Usual Suspects. Hilariously, he was also the only major critic to stick up for the widely maligned Cop and a Half.
But maybe none of his reviews proved more controversial than his takedown of Blue Velvet. He hated the film, giving it only one out of four stars and condemning David Lynch for exploring disturbing subject matter in a way he found overly satirical. Despite praising the actors, he asserted, “The sexual material in Blue Velvet is so disturbing, and the performance by Isabella Rossellini is so convincing and courageous, that it demands a movie that deserves it… given the power of the darker scenes in this movie, we’re all the more frustrated that the director is unwilling to follow through to the consequences of his insights.”
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Additionally, he condemned Lynch’s handling of Rossellini’s character: “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.” This remark led to a particularly vicious on-screen argument with Ebert’s former colleague, Gene Siskel, who praised Blue Velvet and rightly acknowledged that Rossellini knew what material she would have to play and consented to it.
It’s also important to note that, for years, Roger Ebert never understood the hype surrounding David Lynch. Up until 1999’s The Straight Story, he gave a negative review to every one of his pictures, finding his movies bizarre simply for the sake of it, and it wasn’t until his rave review of Mulholland Dr. that he fully came around to Lynch. But despite eventually considering him a great filmmaker, he still maintained his hatred of Blue Velvet until his death. He also admittedly sometimes got a bit moralistic about overly violent content, as evidenced by how he infamously called Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter “an immoral and reprehensible piece of trash.”
Why Roger Ebert Missed the Mark on ‘Blue Velvet’
With all due respect to Roger Ebert, even the truly great critics get it genuinely wrong once in a while. Lynch’s experimental style of filmmaking wasn’t for everyone, and it’s possible that Ebert confused his frustrations with his films as simply personal taste rather than objective fact. Interestingly, even Ebert seemed to realize this in his later years; in his four-star review of Mulholland Dr., he noted, “there is no explanation. There may not even be a mystery… Lynch takes what was frustrating in some of his earlier films, and instead of backing away from it, he charges right through.”
But it’s still not hard to feel that Ebert genuinely missed the mark with Blue Velvet. To begin with, as Siskel noted, it was unfair to accuse Lynch of degrading Isabella Rossellini when she willingly chose to play the role and knew what she was getting into (and Rossellini herself corroborated this). Additionally, Ebert believed that following up the scenes of disturbing sexual material with the tongue-in-cheek satire of 1950s Americana undermined the material.
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This couldn’t be further from the truth — Lynch’s entire career was built around exploring idyllic suburban life, balanced with the darker, seedy underbellies lurking underneath. This dichotomy was especially present throughout Twin Peaks, which mostly used the death of Laura Palmer as a catalyst to explore the dark secrets unearthed in a seemingly picture-perfect small town. For Lynch, disturbing violent or sexual behavior was every bit as much a part of life as the cherry pie and the d*mn fine cup of coffee, and contrasting them simply reflected the inherent absurdity of existence itself.
Nonetheless, even if Ebert never came around to Blue Velvet (it’s also possible that he was just understandably disturbed by the film), it is nice to see that he eventually came to recognize Lynch’s genius. It’s even more encouraging that the rest of the world eventually came to recognize Blue Velvet as the masterpiece it is and one of the crown jewels in the career of one of the greatest filmmakers ever. Blue Velvet is streaming on Max.