Sadly Over-hyped

It’s fine. It's literally the definition of a fine movie. You’ve seen it before, you know every beat and outcome before the characters even do. Only question is how much escapism you’re looking for.

Let me be very fair here, this is not the best movie in my opinion. But, this movie is fun, it has purpose and is very enjoyable to watch.

The acting is good, and the firecracker script has some excellent ideas.

Michelangelo Antonioni is a director whose work(after only two films) I highly admire, but has so far left me feeling cold and uncaring. First things first Blow-Up is a brilliantly constructed film. Set in London during the 'swinging sixties' the film follows David Hemmings fashion photographer Thomas. Whilst out shooting various locations Thomas comes across a couple in a park, piqued by his interest he begins to photograph them. When he's caught by Jane(Vanessa Redgrave) she demands they be handed over. As he becomes curious by her erratic behaviour, he hands over the pictures but keeps the negatives. Upon blowing them up, he starts to realise something more sinister may of been in play.Blow-Up is a film of it's time, and in some places it hasn't aged well. The films pacing was at times frustratingly ponderous. Though the film felt unfocused by design, it still left me itching to see what was going to happen. I also don't think it helped that I watched Brian De Palma's remake Blow-Out first(which I preferred far more then this film). Blow-Up is more interested in the sex, drugs and rock and roll of the time, spending large portions just hanging out with it's main character, as he goes about his daily activities. Whilst I did enjoy parts of this carefree attitude to film-making. I was more interested in the potential murder plot.Part of me thinks that I went into this film expecting something I wasn't going to get, whilst that's probably true to some degree. I still stand by my original assessment that Antonioni is a director whose work for me is admirable but ultimately unlikable.

A noteworthy period work, this movie is set in London in the 1960's, a time when youth were questioning conventions and thinking critically. It was also a period when behaviour mocked established standards. In fact, the sixties hit London a few years before it reached North America, possibly because their society was overdue for a shakeup. Judging from this 1966 movie, the drug and sex culture were well underway. At one point, we see a rock group The Yardbirds smashing a guitar during a performance. This bizarre practise became commonplace at the time but might have started here. A young Londoner played by David Hemmings is caught up in the spirit of the time and uses his studio to earn a lucrative living photographing models. A photoshoot usually involved easy sexual encounters. At one point the photographer and two youthful models get into a wild orgy. A well-dressed, preppy guy, he is shallow and mean to the young models who fall all over him. This landscape is the canvas for Director Michelangelo Antonioni to create his work. One effect I particularly like is the muted soundtrack while the camera pans over the streets and alleys of London. At one point, the photographer goes on a walk into a rolling meadow-like park and everything is silent as he seeks out material for a photo book. There he spots a couple running freely and as they embrace in the middle of a meadow, he wildly shoots photos. Later, the young woman, Vanessa Redgrave, finds him and demands the photos be returned. This stimulates his interest and he carefully looks at the negatives. As she becomes more insistent, he looks at them one by one and is convinced there was foul play. The two are also attracted to one another and he finds her an ideal photo subject. She is all too ready to cooperate. Interestingly, she seems to bare her breasts in one scene but we never actually see them on the film. At the same time, his suspicion of her becomes more evident and he finds himself in a dilemma. He begins to doubt himself and on another visit to the park, he witnesses a group of mime artists demonstrating a tennis game that is so real, he becomes a participant. What is real and what is not? How do we know that what we know is real? A great Antonioni movie that soon achieved cult status, this movie is still interesting to watch and trip back in time.

Meteorically successful society photographer goes about his work in Swinging Sixties London. While scouting further shots for his forthcoming book he chances on and photographs an ostensibly romantic couple in a park. The woman notices, but her vehement demand for the negatives is denied. Back at his fashion studio, progressive enlargement of the images seems to reveal a murder, made more mysterious by the urgent re-appearance of the woman (who has followed him) and her renewed pleas. Our hero returns to the park at night, and finds a body in the location suggested by his photographs. Meanwhile, his studio has been ransacked, and nearly all the photographs stolen. Early the next morning he returns, finding the corpse vanished. While in the park, he watches a group of young people play a make-believe game of tennis. At first only slightly amused, he finds himself joining in. At that moment he too vanishes, and the film, which covers only a 24-hour period, ends.So much for the nominal plot. When I first saw it in 1967, I was only impressed by its modern decadence. The many subsequent viewings have however revealed an extending layered interest. Part of that must be nostalgia, for whatever the fashion insiders of the time say, it paints a thoroughly vivid picture of how London life felt and was perceived in that period.It appears to be generally accepted that Carlo Ponti withdrew funding for this the first Antonioni film made both in colour and in English when it ran extravagantly over-budget, with the crew sent back to Italy and Antonioni told to make the film from the footage already in the can. Ronan Casey, playing the corpse, says there was an extended murder plot involving Sarah Miles, Vanessa Redgrave and her lover, (Jeremy Glover) (except for Reg, Ron and Bill, the conduits of photographic and painted images, none of the characters has a name in the film, although they do in the script). This version of events is supported by Redgrave and Glover's appearance in the film in unexplained circumstances (Glover spying on the hero in the restaurant, and both in a Rover 2000 following the photographer's car). Of course, that does not mean that, as edited, the 'full' film would have amounted to no more than a conventional murder mystery.At least three main threads interweave (apart from the ideas of image and reality which have been extensively addressed by others). The first is the character of the hero. The young protagonist has found extreme success early, most youthful ambitions already satisfied. Beautiful and naked girls, treated as no more than the foot soldiers of the fashion industry, throw themselves at him. Ennui has set in ("I'm off London this week" – "If I was rich I would be free") and he seems bored by a (then) outrageous society marijuana party, and by a Yardbirds performance. He has already seen through, but not wholly rejected, the excesses of 60s culture. Although often off-hand and abrupt, sometimes arrogant, he is searching for a worthwhile commitment, for meaning and for value and is open to ideas. Thus, his luxurious Rolls Royce is always, rain or shine, open-topped (unusual in England), he donates to rag-week collectors/student protesters (an important feature of the 1960s) with a smile, and accommodates their anarchic rejection placard ("Go Away"), again with amusement. He tries to find serious meaning in his disguised and gritty doss-house photography but perhaps it only adds up to a business opportunity. He is interested in an antique- shop, but only in the end for redevelopment potential. He describes a non-beautiful wife, easy to live with, and children, but then denies their existence, perhaps because they are simply his present ideal. The possible murder represents the first glimmer of challenge to his humanity. When this fails, he is drawn into the tennis-game, and becomes one with both reality and disappearance (unreality), when he makes himself complicit in the group fantasy.The second layer consists of the language of cinematography. The colour and framing are stylised, stylish as well as realistic. Camera and protagonist viewpoints sometimes do not coincide, in a way that is non-neutral, giving the camera a narrative function. Most important is the highly original sound design. Long takes of only ambient noise (not silence- with audible planes overhead, road-drills, ice-cream vans) including of course the famous wind in the trees. There is no background music (except extra-diegetically over credits). All other sound, including music, is strictly diegetic – we are always shewn the radio, the spinning gramophone record, the switching on and off. The tennis match is not in fact silent – we hear footsteps, and the wind – the noise of a mimed performance. We then hear, but do not see, ball on racquet, the only non-diagetic moment in the film. Simon and Garfunkel's Sound of Silence reached Nr 1 in the US in January 1966. Possibly Antonioni had this in mind – the reference to neon gods perhaps the inspiration for the scaffolded neon tower he built behind Maryon Park. The invisible sounds are almost the most real features of the film.The third thread is the symbolism. In most indoor locations in the film there is a bust – perhaps life and death, history, or another, 3D, type of image. The occasional child – the hero particularly looks at the child each time. Communication: the white telephone in the studio, the red telephone in the street, the blue radio-telephone in the car (Blue 439). Maryon Park is green, and the photographer wears a green jacket. But the park is surrounded by urban life (Antonioni built the neon tower and the white gable-ends to emphasize this point), so it is only nominally wild, natural or real, or perhaps an oasis (as well as the Kennedy grassy-knoll and the staple location for Cold-War spy-thrillers). The students, a linking theme, are also a Greek chorus, commenting on the search for truth, meaning and value.

What you see in reality is definitely different from what you see behind the camera. With reality, you will have your hopes and fears, which makes any object behind the lens much better if you want to. The cameraman or the photographer will have his mind set to what the outcome of anything will be inside the frame, knowingly making it more beautiful that it really is. As of Thomas (David Hemmings), the lost and hollow lad from London, he is having trouble figuring himself, figuring how to differentiate between what he sees in real life and behind the lens, and finally figuring what's real and what's not. Picking a character like that to be the lead and then mixing it with the subject of mind-losing artists, is just brilliant writing.