Feet First: A Response to the Coen Brothers' Blood Simple

In everyday life, we use our feet for navigation. They carry us into the scenes and scenarios of our day-to-day existence. Most directors, however, ignore the feet, cutting them off as irrelevant. On the contrary, the Coens, in this film, lead with their feet (so to speak), and the effect is deliberate. They let us see a place before the character or camera enters a room, giving us sense of atmosphere and tempo just by watching what's going on down there. They match a set of footwear to each character .. and the footwear tells the story as well as the dialogue can.

Blood Simple begins with a foot-level view of the Texas highway with a scuffed-out bit of yellow road line and a blown-out bit of tire in the foreground. To paraphrase the old analogy, tire is to wheel as shoe is to foot. This one, along with the road's center yellow line, is worn out, and it gives us a hint of what we, the viewers are in for. Later, lest we forget, a cowboy boot-shaped wall sign in the bar ("BAR neon boots" complete with a Texas star) sets a prominent tone and provides a continual reminder. Even the peripheral character Meurice, the bartender is defined by his feet: we find out what kind of man he is before he even speaks. The main characters in this film—Marty, Visser, Ray and Abby—are defined and confined by their footwear. 

We meet Marty (played by Dan Hedaya) feet first. The feet in question are encased in showy cowboy boots the color of dried blood, propped up on his desk in a classic power position—which, as he will find, is also a position of vulnerability. Like his boots, Marty is hard and rigid, a shiny exoskeleton of a man showing off. It is fitting that the real estate beside his outstretched foot becomes a tableau that continues after his death. In the final meeting between Marty and Visser (M. Emmet Walsh), the former sprawls open-legged, contemptuous, and shoves Visser's money toward him with the heel of one shiny boot. It is perhaps one insult too  many; the detective shoots him in the chest, and he dies with his boots on.

Visser's feet are, fittingly, more of a cipher. He too wears just one pair of shoes throughout the film: two-toned loafers, polished, of alligator skin. The soles are light and flexible as befits his profession. Our first good look at them is in the beginning, when Marty throws a wad of cash at his feet in typically sneering fashion. We see them again later in the film, after Visser shoots Marty and reaches to set the gun down next to his left shoe. The foot draws away, as if in involuntary disgust, then rears back with a sideways kick that sends the weapon skidding across the floor. Then he rises, takes the money from beside Marty's still-outstretched boot, and leaves, mocking the corpse: "Who looks stupid now?" As he walks out, we see his lighter, hidden under the fish, next to the tableau created by Marty's dead foot.

In contrast to Visser, the man of mystery, Ray (John Getz) and his shoes are stolid and utterly free of guile. Like him, they are non-showy, unimaginative working man's boots—a neutral brown, hidden under frayed blue jean cuffs. Ray's feet mean action, be they stomping on the brakes of a car or shaking off the grasping hand of his downed ex-boss; he is ready to act, but this drama is beyond him, and he doesn't know where his feet should be taking him. Drops of blood dog his footsteps—literally, as when he carries the windbreaker he was using to mop up the blood to the bathroom—and figuratively, from the very beginning when he embarks on an adventure out of his control and beyond his ability to imagine.

Abby, as played by Frances McDormand, is, in terms of footwear at least, a more complicated character than the men in the film. Her boots may be made for walkin' (or so it seems in the first scene), but in fact her footwear is feminine and changeable. We see her, bare feet twisting against Marty's rigid bootheels as he drags her out of Ray's home, but even shoeless she is no victim—as Marty's testicles will soon attest. We see her in heels, but always with naked feet beneath, as though her vulnerability lies just below the surface. Abby is wakened or warned by the sounds of footsteps several times, including once when she looks down to see her own feet crunching on the broken glass in Marty's office—still, she never seems to take it in. It is not until she throws away her shoes (to break a light bulb) that she comes into her own. Barefoot, she engages with Visser and shoots him, his gun falling to the bathroom floor beside his now-dusty loafers. Barefoot, Abby is victorious.

The Coen brothers use an array of tropes to tell their stories—lighting, voiceovers, big men screaming—but I would argue that the telling of Blood Simple stands solidly on the ground ... and the story is the richer for it. 

© Shaii Stone 2013