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Freedom, revolt and pubic hair: why Antonioni’s Blow-Up thrills 60 years on
The movie that broke my brain : Blow - Up (1966) By my favourite writer director
Michelangelo Antonioni 😍 #mytop20favouritefilms
Watching "Blow-Up" once again, I took a few minutes to acclimate myself to the loopy psychedelic colors and the tendency of the hero to use words like "fab" ("Austin Powers" brilliantly lampoons the era). Then I found the spell of the movie settling around me. Antonioni uses the materials of a suspense thriller without the payoff. He places them within a London of heartless fashion photography, groupies, bored rock audiences, languid pot parties, and a hero whose dead soul is roused briefly by a challenge to his craftsmanship.
The movie stars David Hemmings, who became a 1960s icon after this performance as Thomas, a hot young photographer with a Beatles haircut, a Rolls convertible and "birds" hammering on his studio door for a chance to pose and put out for him. The depths of his spiritual hunger are suggested in three brief scenes involving a neighbor (Sarah Miles), who lives with a painter across the way. He looks at her as if she alone could heal his soul (and may have once done so), but she's not available. He spends his days in tightly scheduled photo shoots (the model Verushka plays herself, and there's a group shoot involving grotesque mod fashions), and his nights visiting flophouses to take pictures that might provide a nice contrast in his book of fashion photography.
Thomas wanders into a park and sees, at a distance, a man and a woman. Are they struggling? Playing? Flirting? He snaps a lot of photos. The woman (Vanessa Redgrave) runs after him. She desperately wants the film back. He refuses her. She tracks him to his studio, takes off her shirt, wants to seduce him and steal the film. He sends her away with the wrong roll. Then he blows up his photos, and in the film's brilliantly edited centerpiece, he discovers that he may have photographed a murder.
Antonioni cuts back and forth between the photos and the photographer--using closer shots and larger blowups, until we see arrangements of light and shadow, dots and blurs, that may show--what? He is interrupted by two girls who have been pestering him all day, and engages in wild sex play as they roll around in crumpled backdrop paper. Then his eyes return to his blowups, he curtly sends them away, he makes more prints, and in the grainy, almost abstract blowups it appears that the woman is looking toward some bushes, there is a gunman there, and perhaps in one photo we see the man lying on the ground. Perhaps not.
Thomas returns to the park, and does actually see the man lying dead on the ground. Curiously, many writers say the photographer is not sure if he sees a body, but he is. What's unclear is whether he witnessed a murder. The audience understandably shares his interpretation of the photos, but another scenario is plausible: Redgrave wanted the photos because she was having an adulterous affair, her gray-haired lover dropped dead, she fled the park in a panic, and his body by the next morning had simply been discovered and removed. (The possibility of a scandalous affair plays off the Profumo scandal, in which a cabinet minister was linked to a call girl; the analysis of the photographs recalls the obsession with the Zapruder film.)
Whether there was a murder isn't the point. The film is about a character mired in ennui and distaste, who is roused by his photographs into something approaching passion. As Thomas moves between his darkroom and the blowups, we recognize the bliss of an artist lost in what behaviorists call the Process; he is not thinking now about money, ambition or his own nasty personality defects, but is lost in his craft. His mind, hands and imagination work in rhythmic sync. He is happy.
Later, all his gains are taken back. The body and the photographs disappear. So does Redgrave. (There is an uncanny scene where he sees her standing outside a club, and then she turns and takes a few steps and simply disappears into thin air. At Virginia, we ran the sequence a frame at a time and could not discover the method of her disappearance; presumably she steps into a doorway, but we watched her legs, and they seemed somehow to attach themselves to another body.) In the famous final sequence, back in the park, Thomas encounters university students who were in the film's first scene. (These figures were described as "white-faced clowns" in Pauline Kael's pan of the film, but a British audience would have known they were participating in the ritual known as "rag," in which students dress up and roar around town raising money for charity.) They play tennis with an imaginary ball. The photographer pretends he can see the ball. We hear the sounds of tennis on the soundtrack. Then the photographer wanders away across the grass and, from one frame to the next, disappears--like the corpse.
Antonioni has described the disappearance of his hero as his "signature." It reminds us too of Shakespeare's Prospero, whose actors "were all spirits, and are melted into air." "Blow-Up" audaciously involves us in a plot that promises the solution to a mystery, and leaves us lacking even its players.
There were of course obvious reasons for the film's great initial success. It became notorious for the orgy scene involving the groupies; it was whispered that one could actually see pubic hair (this was only seven years after similar breathless rumors about Janet Leigh's breasts in "Psycho" (1960)). The decadent milieu was enormously attractive at the time. Parts of the film have flip-flopped in meaning. Much was made of the nudity in 1967, but the photographer's cruelty toward his models was not commented on; today, the sex seems tame, and what makes the audience gasp is the hero's contempt for women.
Blow Up is an absolute masterpiece that gets better with each viewing. At the beginning of the film we see the city of London as if it was one of the cities of the Italian realism films by Federico Fellini, then a journey in the world of the beloved photographer Thomas as if he was the hero of one of the French New Wave films, then a murder and Hitchcocky mystery, and then .. blowing up all of the above with illusion..
After I finished this film, I thought to myself: If I become a filmmaker one day, I will do what Antonioni did in this film? Do I have the guts? Now my answer is no. Who am I to finish my film with a tennis match without a tennis ball or rackets?
'Blowup' is frequently mentioned as one of the most influential movies of the twentieth century. And I believe it is. But it is no dry and dull document that the viewer must force himself to "appreciate" while he stifles his yawns. Like 'Citizen Kane', 'Breathless' and 'Psycho' it is not only an important movie milestone, it is still a living and breathing work of art that will fascinate and impress any movie lover who approaches it with an open mind. 'Blowup' lures you in with its snapshot of swinging 60s London, and it's tease of being a murder mystery, which it really isn't, but by then you're hooked. This movie is a puzzle with no solution, a text with any interpretation the viewer cares to bring to it. That may sound heavy going and off putting, but this is a surprisingly watchable movie. Even the "boring" sequences are interesting! Anyone who enjoys David Lynch, Dario Argento (whose 'Profundo Rosso' deliberately referenced this), Nic Roeg or Jim Jarmusch, movies where atmosphere and visual images are more important than characterization, plot or dialogue, will appreciate this 60s classic. I think it gets better with every viewing.
© Lousystone + Roger Ebert 🤣
#Love&love #drama #film
Michelangelo Antonioni 😍 #mytop20favouritefilms
Watching "Blow-Up" once again, I took a few minutes to acclimate myself to the loopy psychedelic colors and the tendency of the hero to use words like "fab" ("Austin Powers" brilliantly lampoons the era). Then I found the spell of the movie settling around me. Antonioni uses the materials of a suspense thriller without the payoff. He places them within a London of heartless fashion photography, groupies, bored rock audiences, languid pot parties, and a hero whose dead soul is roused briefly by a challenge to his craftsmanship.
The movie stars David Hemmings, who became a 1960s icon after this performance as Thomas, a hot young photographer with a Beatles haircut, a Rolls convertible and "birds" hammering on his studio door for a chance to pose and put out for him. The depths of his spiritual hunger are suggested in three brief scenes involving a neighbor (Sarah Miles), who lives with a painter across the way. He looks at her as if she alone could heal his soul (and may have once done so), but she's not available. He spends his days in tightly scheduled photo shoots (the model Verushka plays herself, and there's a group shoot involving grotesque mod fashions), and his nights visiting flophouses to take pictures that might provide a nice contrast in his book of fashion photography.
Thomas wanders into a park and sees, at a distance, a man and a woman. Are they struggling? Playing? Flirting? He snaps a lot of photos. The woman (Vanessa Redgrave) runs after him. She desperately wants the film back. He refuses her. She tracks him to his studio, takes off her shirt, wants to seduce him and steal the film. He sends her away with the wrong roll. Then he blows up his photos, and in the film's brilliantly edited centerpiece, he discovers that he may have photographed a murder.
Antonioni cuts back and forth between the photos and the photographer--using closer shots and larger blowups, until we see arrangements of light and shadow, dots and blurs, that may show--what? He is interrupted by two girls who have been pestering him all day, and engages in wild sex play as they roll around in crumpled backdrop paper. Then his eyes return to his blowups, he curtly sends them away, he makes more prints, and in the grainy, almost abstract blowups it appears that the woman is looking toward some bushes, there is a gunman there, and perhaps in one photo we see the man lying on the ground. Perhaps not.
Thomas returns to the park, and does actually see the man lying dead on the ground. Curiously, many writers say the photographer is not sure if he sees a body, but he is. What's unclear is whether he witnessed a murder. The audience understandably shares his interpretation of the photos, but another scenario is plausible: Redgrave wanted the photos because she was having an adulterous affair, her gray-haired lover dropped dead, she fled the park in a panic, and his body by the next morning had simply been discovered and removed. (The possibility of a scandalous affair plays off the Profumo scandal, in which a cabinet minister was linked to a call girl; the analysis of the photographs recalls the obsession with the Zapruder film.)
Whether there was a murder isn't the point. The film is about a character mired in ennui and distaste, who is roused by his photographs into something approaching passion. As Thomas moves between his darkroom and the blowups, we recognize the bliss of an artist lost in what behaviorists call the Process; he is not thinking now about money, ambition or his own nasty personality defects, but is lost in his craft. His mind, hands and imagination work in rhythmic sync. He is happy.
Later, all his gains are taken back. The body and the photographs disappear. So does Redgrave. (There is an uncanny scene where he sees her standing outside a club, and then she turns and takes a few steps and simply disappears into thin air. At Virginia, we ran the sequence a frame at a time and could not discover the method of her disappearance; presumably she steps into a doorway, but we watched her legs, and they seemed somehow to attach themselves to another body.) In the famous final sequence, back in the park, Thomas encounters university students who were in the film's first scene. (These figures were described as "white-faced clowns" in Pauline Kael's pan of the film, but a British audience would have known they were participating in the ritual known as "rag," in which students dress up and roar around town raising money for charity.) They play tennis with an imaginary ball. The photographer pretends he can see the ball. We hear the sounds of tennis on the soundtrack. Then the photographer wanders away across the grass and, from one frame to the next, disappears--like the corpse.
Antonioni has described the disappearance of his hero as his "signature." It reminds us too of Shakespeare's Prospero, whose actors "were all spirits, and are melted into air." "Blow-Up" audaciously involves us in a plot that promises the solution to a mystery, and leaves us lacking even its players.
There were of course obvious reasons for the film's great initial success. It became notorious for the orgy scene involving the groupies; it was whispered that one could actually see pubic hair (this was only seven years after similar breathless rumors about Janet Leigh's breasts in "Psycho" (1960)). The decadent milieu was enormously attractive at the time. Parts of the film have flip-flopped in meaning. Much was made of the nudity in 1967, but the photographer's cruelty toward his models was not commented on; today, the sex seems tame, and what makes the audience gasp is the hero's contempt for women.
Blow Up is an absolute masterpiece that gets better with each viewing. At the beginning of the film we see the city of London as if it was one of the cities of the Italian realism films by Federico Fellini, then a journey in the world of the beloved photographer Thomas as if he was the hero of one of the French New Wave films, then a murder and Hitchcocky mystery, and then .. blowing up all of the above with illusion..
After I finished this film, I thought to myself: If I become a filmmaker one day, I will do what Antonioni did in this film? Do I have the guts? Now my answer is no. Who am I to finish my film with a tennis match without a tennis ball or rackets?
'Blowup' is frequently mentioned as one of the most influential movies of the twentieth century. And I believe it is. But it is no dry and dull document that the viewer must force himself to "appreciate" while he stifles his yawns. Like 'Citizen Kane', 'Breathless' and 'Psycho' it is not only an important movie milestone, it is still a living and breathing work of art that will fascinate and impress any movie lover who approaches it with an open mind. 'Blowup' lures you in with its snapshot of swinging 60s London, and it's tease of being a murder mystery, which it really isn't, but by then you're hooked. This movie is a puzzle with no solution, a text with any interpretation the viewer cares to bring to it. That may sound heavy going and off putting, but this is a surprisingly watchable movie. Even the "boring" sequences are interesting! Anyone who enjoys David Lynch, Dario Argento (whose 'Profundo Rosso' deliberately referenced this), Nic Roeg or Jim Jarmusch, movies where atmosphere and visual images are more important than characterization, plot or dialogue, will appreciate this 60s classic. I think it gets better with every viewing.
© Lousystone + Roger Ebert 🤣
#Love&love #drama #film
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