The 3-Act Paradigm at Work: Body Heat

written by Lawrence Kasdan


Body Heat is film noir at its best, a dark mystery about how a femme fatale cleverly gets an incompetent lawyer to murder her husband - and then take the rap for it.

Structural Analysis

  1. Hook (6 min.)
    • On a hot, humid night at Miranda Beach in Florida, Ned follows Matty and makes a move on her. We've already seen him with one woman in the opening scene. Will he score again?
  2. Complication (10 min.)
    • But when he returns from the men's room, she is gone.
  3. Call to Action (11 min.)
    • Ned learned she was from the upper-end Pinehaven - and sure enough, later he finds her in a bar there. He has gone out of his way to track her down - and boy will he regret it.
  4. Act One Plot Point (31 min., 44 min.)
    • Ned and Matty start a passionate, highly erotic love affair. But her husband is in the way. "I wish he'd die," she tells him (31 min.). Ned tells her later that they will kill him themselves (44 min.)
  5. Midpoint Plot Point (67 min.)
    • Matty wants Ned to change her husband's will but he refuses. She'll get enough inheritance as it is. But after the murder, Ned is called in about an error in the new will he supposedly wrote for Matty's husband - and the invalid will means Matty gets everything after all. She forged the new will as written by Ned.
  6. Act Two Plot Point (88-90 min.)
    • Ned gets other clues that someone may be setting him up. On the night of the murder, someone phoned him repeatedly and he didn't answer. So much for an alibi. And the husband's glasses are missing. Later (90 min.) Ned learns that meeting Matty was not accidental - he was suggested to her by another lawyer, and she knows about earlier incompetence in his will writing. Is she setting him up? Apparently so.
  7. Climax and Resolution (97-108 min.)
    • Matty fakes her own death in an explosion meant for Ned - and Ned is jailed, taking the rap for it all. But in jail he guesses that she's still alive. As indeed she is, spending her inheritance at a beach resort with a new lover.

    Notes

    Body Heat is worth careful study for the tightness of its clues and the subtle suspense that gets built along the ride. Scenes also demonstrate the great efficiency of all good screenwriting. For example, a sequence that proves important later, when Matty's niece catches her giving oral sex to Ned, lasts no more than ten seconds. Visual storytelling also is very strong here, letting pictures alone tell the story whenever possible.


    MODULE 4: SCREENWRIGHT: the craft of screenwriting

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