Watch: David Lynch’s ‘Blue Velvet’ and ‘The Elephant Man’ Have Eerie Similarities

If I were to say that David Lynch’s ‘Blue Velvet’ was a pillar movie of my adolescence, and remains something of a gold standard against which I measure other films, that wouldn’t speak very well of me, in some senses. But in other senses, it might. The film is indelible for a number of reasons, chief among them being its opening: there are few films I can think of that start in such a settled way, as if the strange universe we are entering at the story’s start has always been there, waiting for us. So, I was delighted to discover this short piece by Liz Greene focusing on ‘Blue Velvet”s opening, honing in on its similarity to the opening of ‘The Elephant Man,’ another great Lynch film but one which has not, perhaps, lodged itself in the public consciousness to such a great extent as the later work. Viewed this way, side by side and simultaneously, all sorts of correlations arise: the movements, the visual cadences, even the music… Take a look.