Blood Simple

Director: Joel Coen
Screenwriters: Ethan Coen, Joel Coen

Institute History

Description

“Black humor, abundant originality and a brilliant visual style make Joel Coen’s Blood Simple a directorial debut of extraordinary promise,” says Janet Maslin in the New York Times. A great deal of dying is done in Blood Simple and none of it done right. The plot concerns four people—a bar owner, his wife, the bartender with whom the wife runs off, and the unscrupulous and scuzzy private detective hired by the forlorn husband to kill the runaway couple.

Their paths cross, re-cross and tangle to the point where the plot becomes a series of ingenious mistakes and misapprehensions. When the bartender, for instance, finds the bleeding, lifeless body of the bar owner, he thinks the wife shot her husband; he loves her so much that he cleans up the mess and takes the body away to bury it. But the body is not so dead as it should be. This film has a ghoulish potential, but its visual cleverness and hilarious mood make it ultimately a real audience pleaser.

Screening Details

Sundance Film Festival Awards

As you use our Online Archives, please understand that the information presented from Festivals, Labs, and other activities is taken directly from official publications from each year. While this information is limited and doesn't necessarily represent the full list of participants (e.g. actors and crew), it is the list given to us by the main film/play/project contact at the time, based on the space restrictions of our publications. Each entry in the Online Archives is meant as a historical record of a particular film, play, or project at the time of its involvement with Sundance Institute. For this reason, we can only amend an entry if a name is misspelled, or if the entry does not correctly reflect the original publication. If you have questions or comments, please email [email protected]