Lost Highway vs. The Blackout

This is a repost from the "The Blackout" board, an Abel Ferrara film also from 1997, which bears more than a few passing resemblance to Lost Highway.

Thought perhaps it deserved to have a home on this board too...


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There is apparently something to be said about Ferrara's "The Blackout" having some similarities with David Lynch's films and especially to "Lost Highway", which came out the same year (1997).

Let's see what similarities and parallels we can identify...


First the trivial ones:

- Dennis Hopper in both films, at times channelling his Frank Booth character from "Blue Velvet", especially in his final "Get out of my life! Get out of my memory!..." scene in The "Blackout"

- The recurring line "Where's Annie?" in "The Blackout", which recalls Cooper's repeated final line "How's Annie?" in last episode of "Twin Peaks".

- Use of blue strobe lights with no reasonable diegetic source (every Lynch film / when Matty awakes in his hotel room after his dream of having sex with Annie and choking her to death (two-thirds into "The Blackout") and after waking up in a car and fantasizing about Annie 2 (45 min into the film, before the "18 months later" cut)).



Now for Lost Highway, I think there's quite a lot of them, some of which very interesting:

- Two women, a brunette and a blond, with opposite personalities in both films (Renee/Alice in "Lost Highway", Annie/Susan in "The Blackout").
Also, in "Lost Highway", the same actress (Patricia Arquette) plays two women with different names (Renee/Alice), whereas in "The Blackout" two different actresses (Beatrice Dalle and Sarah Lassez) play two different women with the same name (Annie). In both films the two women's identities are confused by the protagonist at some point.

- Shots of a cigarette-lit face in the dark (first shot of Bill Pullman after the opening credits in "Lost Highway" / Matty in "The Blackout").

- Scene in red room inside a club (when Fred phones his wife from the red room at the Luna Lounge at the beginning of "Lost Highway" / When Matty smokes crack in the toilets of the club where they are shooting the film, 35 min. into the "The Blackout").

- Ominous man dressed in black, filming the protagonist with a video camera (Mystery Man in "Lost Highway" / Mickey Wayne (Dennis Hopper) in "The Blackout").

- Several cuts to screens filled with video noise in both films.

- Resurfacing of the repressed violent murder of their wives into the consciousness of both films' protagonists.

- Protagonist listening to his recorded voice without recognizing, or wanting to recognize it (Fred saying "Dick Laurent is dead" to himself through the intercom at the beginning of "Lost Highway" / Matty listening to the recording of him telling his wife to have an abortion at the beginning of "The Blackout").

- Bookending scenes expressing the inner mental state of a delusional protagonist escaping the real world (highway at night in "Lost Highway" / sea at night in "The Blackout").


If anyone spotted any other similarities and parallels, or has any interesting theory about why these two 1997 film share so much thematically and aesthetically...