Blow Up [1966]

Customer Reviews:

One up for Blow Up.......2007-08-20

Reading the various reviews of Blow Up, some for, some against, prompted me to at least add my tuppence worth on a film I've long liked and would recommend as being at least as honest a representation on 60's London as was made at that time.
The film's music was very hip and the director deserves real credit in getting a then little known(at least in the U.K.)Herbie Hancock and luminaries to write the soundtrack after apparently failing to find anybody here able to handle what was required (although I'm sure Tubby Hayes or Georgie Fame could have written just as suitable scores had they been asked). Not every film of that period would have included a clip of the Yardbirds as well, even if their music by then had veered away from their old R&B trip.
Blow Up was made just prior to the psychedelic era and to a large extent avoids the trap that so many films depicting the 60's fell into by including large amounts of peace, love and hippy imagery.
The clothes are very representative of that time, right down from the girls with their very skinny Mod clothing, to Hemmings' white strides and black Chelsea boots and looking back at the street scenes in London, Antonioni gets pretty well everything spot on, unlike so many others doing 60's retrospectives a few years later. Yes, Hemmings is full of arrogance but his treatment of women in general is once again very true to life and mirrored very closely the prevailing attitudes. Women's Lib was hardly on the radar screen in '66, despite the presence of Germaine Greer in and around town. Politically correct simply didn't come into it.
As for the film and plot ? It must have been the only film that I'd seen not to have any background music running throughout and with it being shot in black and white, simply added to the overall starkness. A strange meandering plot for sure, but who cares ? There have been plenty of whacky plots that nobody understood before without distracting from the overall enjoyment. Even Vanessa Redgrave's very hammy performance at smoking a spliff is worth the watch.
So for students of the Sixties this is certainly worth shelling out for. Not being a film buff or film nerd I've no interest in comparing Blow Up with art house contemporary films from around that time. But as a film that depicts London in '66 and the attitudes that existed, Antonioni gets it as right as anybody could have and gets my thumbs up.

A bona fide masterpiece, pretentious or not.......2007-07-16

This is still one of the most mesmerising films I've ever seen and one of those I rarely get tired of rewatching. It IS pretentious and arty, there's no getting away from it, but the brilliance of its premise, its theme, the unresolved mystery, but most of all its direction and photography are things that burn this brilliant movie into the mind. It was of course manipulating its audience at the time of its release and fully exploited the swinging London scene, but it really does have the feel of its hedonistic age about it - In fact I think it somes up the 60s better than any other British movie. Its famous (or infamous) plot is really beautifully handled by Antonioni, and teases us right up to the end. The lovely airiness of the film's atmosphere owes much of this to location filming on quiet days, or very early in the morning, but most probably on Sunday, and the use of non-central locations, including the park. The photography is quite sensational and how this avoided getting a nomination for an oscar is really beyond me. The cinematographer uses great angles and slow zooms to make London look like it was having a model shoot itself. The film is such a fantastic piece of work, even despite the one element that does make me cringe-the dreaded miming students-that I just cant see why so many are still either sceptical about its brilliance, or just don't get the whole thing. Come on, this is cinematic magnificence!

An iconic film about sight and perception........2006-03-16

It seems that Blow-Up has been re-evaluated somewhat in recent years, no longer being hailed as the iconic classic it once was, and instead being criticised for the meandering plot (more of an anti-narrative than anything else) and the somewhat dated depiction of swinging 60's London. This is a real shame, but at the end of the day, it's a film that I still enjoy so really, I don't care!! For me, Blow-Up is a film that holds up to repeated viewing, with each subsequent re-viewing revealing more and more (possible) interpretations of the plot. It's a film that requires the viewer's participation and imagination to elaborate on the ideas that Antonioni suggests through movements, composition, actions and sound, and mostly works for me because of an obsession I have with British 60's culture... so the chance to revel in the colours and locations is fantastic, with the film standing as something of a cultural time capsule as well as a slight (though no less enjoyable) murder mystery.

The basic plot revolves around a feckless and self-infatuated photographer at the heart of the happening 60's scene, with Antonioni sketching a world of no-ties sex-orgies, pot parties, protesting students, shallow scenesters, chic fashionistas, gaudy colours, bizarre camera angles, extended jazz-numbers, waif-like models and the gradual disintegration of the hippie era and the sense of innocence lost (see the director's follow up Zabriskie Point for more). Amongst all of this, he and co-writer Tonino Guerra manage to comment on the urbanisation of most major metropolitan cities moving towards the 1970's (with the newly built concrete housing blocks that our protagonist drives past a number of times during the film now being an all too familiar presence, particularly in areas around London, Manchester and Birmingham). It also taps into the existentialist idea of a character lost in his own abyss, finding little comfort in the scene he has immersed himself in, whilst simultaneously struggling to find something more tangible and worthwhile within the mire of 60's caricatured excess.

More than that however, the film is a great treatise on the notion of perception... for example, is it really that coincidental that our lead character is a photographer, someone who's entire profession revolves around documenting an abstracted view of reality? Throughout the film, Antonioni is playing with the notion of perception and the way we see things, from the opening scene - in which the photographer emerges black-faced from a factory and dressed in grungy overalls to match his work-mates, before he rounds the corner and jumps into his pristine Rolls Royce - right the way to the end, where a group of students act out a tennis match using mime, in which our hero finally realises the difference between what is seen and what is felt.

The point of the film is not "who was murdered?" or "who murdered who?", but rather, did the murder actually take place at all? Can we trust our central character? And, more importantly, can we trust what we are being shown by the director? The major set-piece here is a tranquil moment in which the photographer (brilliantly played by the late, great, David Hemmings!!) innocently snaps a couple enjoying an intimate moment in a secluded park for the closing chapter of his book. When he is spotted by the couple, the woman, who is much younger than the man she is with, approaches and demands to have the negatives returned to her. Our hero refuses and, in moment of confusion, manages to slink away with the snaps still on his camera. Later, the same woman appears at the photographer's studio and attempts to seduce him in an attempt reclaim the negative. Again, playing off the notion of perception, we assume that the woman's urgent desire to reclaim the photographs stems from a possibly illicit affair, however, once Hemmings has developed the negative and printed the shots he sees a curious shape in one of the bushes that almost resembles a face.

What follows is another tense, low-key set-piece in which Hemmings has large scale blow-ups made of each picture and studies them at length. Antonioni forces the audience to study the pictures along with him and, in a moment of unrivalled cinematic subjectivity, the outline of the face and the possible appearance of a gun begins to become clear. In the last picture, the photographer outlines what could be the shape of a collapsed body, but the images are purposely obscured by the pixilation of the blow-up and the harsh contrast of the picture's black and white. When he should be bringing the photographs to the attention of the police, the photographer instead gets roped into a three way sex-game (an important and historical cinematic moment featuring a young Jane Birkin and Gillian Hills, with the first sight of pubic hair ever glimpsed in a mainstream movie) and later, when he should be tailing the woman from the park, he ends up watching a shambolic performance from the Yardbirds (another iconic moment in the film... though it would have made more sense with Antonioni's original choice, The Who).

The appearance and later the disappearance of a body in the park suggests a possible conspiracy, or it perhaps suggests deeper shades to our hero's personality. Was there really a murder, or was the whole film just part of the central characters need for something more tangible than the routine pantomime of 60's overindulgence? The ending seems to suggest some moment of transcendence for the character, with that aforementioned tennis scene between the mimes and that deep silence that makes the moment into something much more memorable and important than it might have initially seemed. Blow-Up is a slow-paced and meandering film that favours atmosphere over narrative momentum, and, as a result, will no doubt alienate a number of potential viewers. That said, if you're the kind of person who enjoyed the mystery elements of films like Coppola's The Conversation, Argento's Deep Red (also featuring Hemmings) and Brian De Palma's Blow-Out (all of which draw heavily on the influence of this) and can look past the dated depiction of 60's London, then Blow-Up offers a lot be enjoyed.

And a Pint!.......2005-08-24

The late great David Hemmings looking cool, being very arrogant and obnoxious, Mod clothes, foxy ladies and a cool soundtrack. Can't ask for more really. Hemmings' lines are outragious too. "I'm fed up with London this week...it doesn't do anything for me. And I'm fed up with those bloody bitches" he spouts to a bearded Peter Bowles, yes really that Peter Bowles.

Hemmings plays a fashion photographer who becomes embroilled in a murder when he takes some photos of a couple in Charlton Park. That's about it really in terms of plot but in a vague way that's all it really needs because in the same way that Two Lane Blacktop burns up in the final reel, it is nihilistic. To Hemmings' photographer, beautiful women are merely objects to be positioned and they irritate him. He finds photographing tramps much more rewarding.

It's of its time and clearly a great influence on the Austin Powers series; it's pretentious arty nonsense but there's nothing wrong with that. See it just to study how to become an upstart like Hemmings.

Oh dearie me........2004-09-24

This is a stinkeroni. It's a weirdly alien world of 1966 London, but made weirder by its director's obvious lack of knowledge of the city. It could have been an interesting story but the symbolism is so laboured and corny. It reminds me of the joke artists in "The Rebel". Oh yes, it's so meaningful - the mimed tennis game (with that bloke from Vision On) to show that the photographer can't believe what he really sees. How could that have seem clever even then?

The thin and asexual women - the feeble cavorting bit (with Gillian Hills, a lost starlet wonderfully erotic in the TV series of "The Owl Service" in 1969) and the awful grim faced audience in the club - and the guitar smashing. Ah yes, so meaningful.

I have seen afew classic 60s films recently (especially Godard) and this was a let down. The same idea of perception etc is handled much more interestingly, and better directed, in the 1969 Avengers episode "Who was that man I saw you with" - and that's a fairly dull episode.

The sound on the DVD is very poor, low level. Picture excellent.
Was it worth painting that street red?

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