The Film Experience

by Nathaniel R

We thought that a nice subversive way to end our 1981 retrospective party would be to focus on the year's most memorable beginning.

A lot of very famous actors began their big screen careers in 1981 including (but not limited to) Ben Affleck, Kim Basinger, Kevin Costner, Tom Cruise, Jeff Daniels, Holly Hunter, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Bill Nighy, Alfred Molina, Kenneth Branagh, Demi Moore, Sean Penn, and Meg Ryan. Some of those debuts were quite promising. Others gave no clear sign of a superstar to come, just the site of an unknown actor with the ink not yet dry on their SAG card. But the year's most exciting debut, hands down, belonged to Kathleen Turner. She was the only one of them to emerge fully formed right out of the gate; a movie star merely waiting at the bar for her filmography to arrive. Risking the ghosts of both Lana Turner (figuratively) and Barbara Stanwyck (literally) for your debut and coming out the other side without remotely suffering from the comparisons is an all time flex...

It's not every day that a great movie star's introduction to the cinema also aligns with a great cinematic introduction for their first character but such was the case in Lawrence Kasdan's Body Heat (1981), a modern reinterpretation of the 1944 noir classic Double Indemnity.

So let's look at Matty Walker's first scene which is also Kathleen Turner's first scene in cinema.

Introducing... "Matty Walker"
[you can click on any of the images to see a larger version]

The first shot in all of cinema of one of the great film stars of the 1980s

We're seven minutes into the sweaty sinister Body Heat when Matty Walker (Kathleen Turner) first appears, the camera holding on her, if passively, in longshot, as she stands up and strolls out of the outdoor concert that Ned Racine (William Hurt) has just strolled into. He can't take his eyes off her.

Ned's eyes follow Matty as the camera loses her just offscreen. Hurt somehow conveys the jaw-drop of all this new erotic information without even letting his cigarette slip. He lets his eyes do the jaw-dropping via a perfect squint. How can what I'm seeing even be real? Moviegoers had to have been asking the same question about Kathleen Turner in 1981.

He follows this stranger just a few yards away where she's stopped for a smoke and a steady ocean gaze. He saunters up and drops a slimy-funny icebreaker, invading her space.

NED: You can stand there with me if you want but you'll have to agree not to talk about the heat.

Turner holds her pose looking out to sea for a beat too long. It's a delicious bit of go-away warning -- why is this man bothering her, but then she turns and stares him down. It's brutal dismissal by silence at first. Her eyes drop and then size him up, before she turns back to the sea; he's nothing to see.

MATTY: I'm a married woman.

NED: Meaning?

MATTY: Meaning I'm not looking for company.

NED: You should have said I'm a happily married woman.

MATTY: That's my business.

NED: What?

MATTY: How happy I am.

NED: And how happy is that?

Ned isn't giving up and his badgering flirtation produces a surprising response. Turner's hairpin performance pivot is sensational, Matty Walker suddenly shifts without warning from annoyed to interested... or at least playing along. His persistence prompts what became an immortal line of movie dialogue:

You're not too smart are you? I like that in a man.

As she smiles and pivots, the film cuts and pivots with her, shifting camera angles with her sudden mood swing. While Kathleen Turner's debut has been amply (and correctly) praised over the years it's worth noting that Body Heat, the movie, always keeps up with her. It's expertly written and directed by Lawrence Kasdan (also his directorial debut - The Big Chill followed to even greater success) and this meet cute sleazy sequence is an elaborate dance between gestural performance, killer line readings, interesting blocking, and long-game arousal.

Ned sees a window with Matty suddenly flirting back.

NED: What else do you like... Lazy? Ugly? Horny. I got 'em all.

MATTY: You don't look lazy.

Hurt chooses a perfect half giggle at her insult, like Ned can't believe his luck that this scorchingly sexy bitch is not giving him an inch despite the fact that he's got several for her. It's the genius of Turner's nimble effortless playing that Matty's reads so simultaneously sensual and utterly removed. Every time she cuts him off, she also invites him to continue.

MATTY: Tell me does chat like this work with most women?

NED: Some. If they haven't been around much.

MATTY: I wondered. Thought maybe I was out of touch.

Ned sees the now strangely relaxed Matty as confirmation that oh yeah, we're gonna fuck. But Matty isn't done keeping him guessing, and turns the ice back on, mid thaw.

NED: [leaning in, visibly horny] I wanna buy you a drink.

MATTY: I told you. I've got a husband.

NED: I'll buy him one, too.

I've seen Body Heat many times I'm always fascinated by the physicality of these two performances, both of which deserved Lead Acting Oscar nominations. Turner and Kasdan due a surprising bit of gestural blocking here, Turner's Matty stops to fix or fluff her hair and temporarily cuts off our view of her face completely, just as we've become as horny to "read" her as Ned. It's deliciously disruptive to expectations (most movies would opt for a closeup here, or a shift in camera angle), purposefully opaque, erotically suggestive, and just as teasingly dominating as what Matty is doing to Ned.

MATTY: He's out of town.

NED: My favourite kind. We'll drink to it.

MATTY: He only comes up on weekends.

NED: [Laughs] I'm liking him better all the time.

Though Ned was the aggressor it's obvious that Matty has completely taken the reins. She's flirting now with a complete absence of coyness. Just as she's announced her availability for sex, though, she stops as Ned thinks he's invited to her bed. She drops her cigarette to put it out, suddenly quiet.

Ned is now restless to get on with it and tries to make a joke of it.

You gotta take me up on this quick. In about 45 minutes Im going to give up and go away.

Matty, who might turn any which way given Turner's electric playing, offers Ned another win with another 180 temperature shift with a warm smile.

MATTY: Wanna buy me something? I'll take one of those.

NED: What kind?

MATTY: Cherry.

NED: [to street vendor] Make it two.

[An aside from the genius of Kathleen Turner's star turn for a moment. Can we talk about the location scouting / production design / and camera choice to frame every image of Ned walking away from Matty during this conversation as positioning him between "Ladies" and "Mens" bathroom signs. It's so subliminally brilliant for one of the greatest (and dirtiest) hetero movies of all time.]

Cherry ice procured, Ned returns to attempting to seduce the woman who has already done all the seducing (he's not too smart about who is running this show... and she likes that in a man pawn. But let's not get ahead of ourselves)

NED: You're not staying in Miranda Beach. I would have noticed you.

MATTY: This town that small?

NED: [incredulously, this woman is a goddess] No.

[Trying to guess where she lives...] Pine Haven. You're staying down in Pine Haven. Down on the waterway. You have a house?

MATTY: How'd you know that?

NED: You look like Pine Haven.

MATTY: How does Pine Haven look?

NED: Well tended.

A great mysterious beat in Turner's performance: She has Matty turning back to her ocean view. Ned has entirely vanished from her mind at this moment hasn't he? It's a tantalizing glimpse of something else... but she remains unknowable.

MATTY: [Cryptically] I'm well tended all right. Well tended. What about you?

NED: I need tending. I need someone to take care of me. Someone to rub my tired muscles. Someone to smooth out my sheets.

MATTY: [Bored] Get married.

NED: [A playfully caddish "but..."] I just need it for tonight.

At this second Turner begins to play what we'd argue are purposeful false notes in the scene -- every line from here on out in this introduction is just a notch too-much whatever it is, only one color per line reading replacing the previously enticingly mysterious tones. It begins with Matty spitting out her ice, "spontaneously" as if "shocked" by Ned's lewdness. Matty's hairwire turns of feeling and reactions are suddenly revealing themselves as performative calculations. But to what end? [Aside: That's for you to discover by streaming the movie though if you've never seen it you'll be horrified that Turner wasn't even nominated for the Oscar she probably should have won.]

MATTY: [Embarassed] Ohhhh nice move, Matty.

NED: [Trying out her name] Matty? I like it. [About the stain] It's right over your heart.

MATTY: [Suggestively, whilst sliding her hands up and down her chest] At least it's cool. I was burning up.

NED: I asked you not to talk about the heat.

MATTY: [Damsel in distress] Would you get me a paper towel or something, dip it in some cold water.

NED: I'll even wipe it off for you.

Ned, begins to walk away to "rescue" her, when Matty spins to face him, her tone shifting to hard and raw.

You don't wanna lick it?

Damn, queen!

When Ned emerges from the bathroom, though, his sure-thing sexual conquest has vanished. He's alone again in the heat, in heat, with no relief in sight. At least he's got a cold paper towel to wipe up the sweat.

More from our 1981 retrospective