Neo-Noirvember: Criterion’s ‘Body Heat’ Reviewed

Ned Racine (William Hurt) might not be much of a lawyer, but he is delusional enough to start to think he could get away with murder in Lawrence Kasdan‘s neo-noir, Body Heat. The reason for this sudden interest in crime is a woman – a married woman named Matty (Kathleen Turner) who Ned pursues aggressively until lust turns to love. While Matty’s husband (Richard Crenna) is loaded, Matty signed a pre-nup, meaning she won’t walk away with much in a divorce. The same way Ned didn’t let marriage stop him from starting an affair, though, he’s not about to give up so easily on being rich, which means contemplating a solution most lawyers would call illegal.

In most films, a title like Body Heat would be an exaggeration, but constant sweat is a trademark of this Florida-set movie, where the temperatures start out being erotic but quickly turn into fueling some bad decisions. It’s amazing how important and convincing the setting is to this film because, while it looks like Turner and Hurt are sweating, they were actually freezing according to archival interviews. A lot of the appeal of this movie, though, comes from the contrast of Ned’s sloppiness with Turner’s performance as the ultimate femme fatale. In one of the archival featurettes from 2006 that’s carried over for this release, her voice and legs are compared to Lauren Bacall’s, but it’s Gene Tierney in Leave Her to Heaven that she evokes the most.

Criterion’s Blu-ray includes a new video interview with writer-director Kasdan. Body Heat would be his first film as director (Body Heat was Turner’s first film as well, having started in soaps and theater), but he had written two little screenplays called Raiders of the Lost Arc and The Empire Strikes Back. In the interview, Kasdan brings up how losing his backup plan to become a teacher (during the Vietnam War, being a teacher was a way of avoiding the draft, so the job market was saturated) ensured that he kept going when success took a while to arrive.

There’s also an interview with editor Carol Littleton by film historian Bobbie O’Stein. While listeners are left to look up her other credits on their own (which include E.T. and an ongoing working relationship with Kasdan for films like The Big Chill), it goes so much deeper than an overview interview to break down certain scenes and the choices that were made, like helping to sell the narrative that Ned is steering the relationship. It’s a great interview to come away with a better understanding of what the job of an editor does, and apparently Kasdan specifically wanted a female editor to work on this film.

None of the five deleted scenes feels missed from the final movie. “Practice Run” does show what the drive should’ve been like if the fog hadn’t complicated matters. “1st Murder Attempt” and “After the Attempt” show how the plot was streamlined for the better. Lastly, there’s a pamphlet essay by crime novel writer Megan Abbott who, among other things, considers the costuming in this movie, which was done by Renié (Cat People).

Body Heat is available now on 4K and Blu-ray from Criterion and is well worth picking up at this month’s Criterion sale at Barnes and Noble.