On August 28, 1981, “Body Heat”, the first work by director Lawrence Kasdan, known until then as co-writer of two extraordinary successes as the first sequel to the Star Wars saga “Star Wars – The empire strikes again “(later known as” Star Wars – Episode V – The empire strikes again “), released the previous year, and” Raiders of the Lost Ark “, higher box office than that year. A problematic debut for the author who would later be highlighted with masterpieces such as “The big cold” (1983), “Tourist by chance” (1988) and “Grand Canyon” (1991, Golden Bear at the Berlin Film Festival ), “Protected” by his companion George Lucas who supervised him and acted as guarantor of the production, who immediately came into conflict with Kasdan for the initially disputed casting choice of entrusting the main role to the hitherto unknown Kathleen Turner alongside her equally still little well known but already very launched William Hurt. The film had a fair response at home, but almost nil in the rest of the world (we only came out in March 1982, without cashing in a lira): yet it is a work that over time has assumed a fundamental position in the history of neo- noir of the Eighties, when the genre lost those theoretical and “political” characteristics that had distinguished it in the previous decade to become in effect, in the best cases, a continuous formal recognition in the myth of Hollywood of the golden age updated to the problematic nature of the times and extreme in form and content. Not surprisingly, the screenplay of the film (signed only by Kasdan) is a clear, declared (and “complicated”) re-reading of James Cain’s novel “Death pays double”, already at the basis of Billy Wilder’s masterpiece “The flame of sin “(1944).
28 August 2021 | 10:11
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