Similarities Between David Lynch’s Mulholland Drive, Brian DePalma’s Body Double, and Alfred Hitchcock’s Vertigo

It’s cool, I didn’t like Mulholland Drive that much when I first saw it, but I really like it now. The most interesting thing is the many, many references to Brian DePalma’s Body Double; it’s almost as if David Lynch set Mulholland Drive in the world of Body Double.

Take the car crash for example on the hill in Mulholland Drive; this is taken right out of Brian DePalma’s Body Double. The funny thing is that in Body Double, there’s this car crash on the hill up on Mulholland Drive–but we never find out what happens, it’s just kind of in the background. Now, David Lynch took that scene, that car crash, and actually used it as the pivotal starting point for his whole movie, Mulholland Drive–now that’s inspired genius! Also from Body Double is the scene with the husband walking in on his wife having adultery and getting kicked out of the house–the only difference is that in Body Double the husband is an actor, in Mulholland Drive the man is a movie director.

There are many cues taken from Body Double and inserted in Twin Peaks as well–the music in Body Double, I think the theme when he’s kissing the woman on the beach, seems to have inspired part of the music for Twin Peaks, maybe Laura’s theme music? I’ll check on that later. Bob in the railroad car is partially similar visually to the “Indian” lit up by the welding sparks in Body Double. Body Double is an awesome film, very similar in theme to Alfred Hitchcock’s Vertigo. Also interesting is that David Lynch took the eerie highway, and the burning shack out of the Cohen Brother’s Blood Simple, and made a movie out of that theme–the highway becomes the highway in Lost Highway, complete with the burning shack! What a great remixer of themes!