Blowup
| Blowup | |
|---|---|
 Blow-Up DVD cover | |
| Directed by | Michelangelo Antonioni |
| Produced by | Carlo Ponti |
| Starring | Vanessa Redgrave Sarah Miles David Hemmings |
| Music by | Herbie Hancock |
| Distributed by | Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM) |
| Release date(s) | December 18, 1966 U.S. release |
| Running time | 111 min |
| Language | English |
| All Movie Guide profile | |
| IMDb profile | |
Blowup is a 1966 British-Italian art film directed by Michelangelo Antonioni, his first to feature an English language screenplay and also the first British film to feature full frontal female nudity (although expurgated in the VHS videotape release[citation needed]). The film featured David Hemmings, Vanessa Redgrave, Sarah Miles, John Castle, and Jane Birkin.
The screenplay was written by Antonioni, along with Tonino Guerra, inspired by the short story "Las Babas del Diablo" by Argentinian writer Julio Cortázar. The English dialogue was written by the English playwright Edward Bond. The screenplay was nominated for an Academy Award, as was Antonioni, for Best Director.
The film was produced by Carlo Ponti, who signed Antonioni to a three-picture deal, in which each film had to be in English and were to be released by MGM. The other two films were Zabriskie Point and The Passenger. Because MGM failed to obtain approval under the then-current MPAA Production Code, it released the film in the U.S. through its subsidiary Premier Productions, a key event in the code's eventual collapse.
The Yardbirds perform in one scene near the film's end (in a legendary scene where Jeff Beck smashes his guitar à la The Who).
The plot, such as it is, is loosely based on Las babas del diablo, a short story by Cortázar, and the work, habits, and mannerisms of Swinging London photographer David Bailey.
Contents |
Plot
The story concerns an unnamed photographer (Hemmings) who may or may not have inadvertently preserved evidence of a murder, which may or may not involve a woman (Redgrave) who visits the photographer in his studio.
As is typical with Antonioni films, the story does not include a great deal of action, mystery, or explosive dialogue. Antonioni's visual and verbal emphasis is on the environment surrounding the principal character and how it affects him or fails to do so.
As a professional photographer, who is also involved in real estate, the main character mixes with the rich and famous in the London of the sixties. One day he chances upon two lovers in a park and takes photos of them. The woman of the couple pursues him; eventually finding his apartment and desperately trying to get the film. This leads the photographer to investigate the film, making blowups (enlargements) of the photos. This process seems to reveal a body, but the director cleverly uses the heavy film grain and black & white imagery to obscure the image. This drives the photographer to keep making blowups and try to find the truth.
He does eventually find the body, but this time, unfortunately and surprisingly, he is without his camera. He tries to get a friend to act as witness but later, the body is not there any more. The viewer never learns whether there has been a real murder or not. Ultimately, the film is about reality and how we perceive it or think we perceive it. This aspect is stressed by the final scene, one of many famous ones in this film, when the photographer watches a mimed tennis match and, after a moment of amused hesitation, enters the mimes' own version of reality by picking up the invisible ball and throwing it back to the two players. Then, we see him going on watching (but we do not see the match any longer) and, suddenly, we even hear the ball being played back and forth. Another version of reality has been created. Then, at the very end, Hemmings, standing all alone in the green grass of the park, suddenly disappears, removed by his director, Antonioni. Was he really there all the time?
Trivia
- Michael Palin of Monty Python's Flying Circus fame can be seen very briefly in the crowd during the Yardbirds concert.[citation needed]
- Janet Street-Porter, media personality can be seen dancing in stripey trousers during the Yardbirds concert.
- Antonioni originally intended to feature the band Tomorrow in the film but instead used The Yardbirds. However Tomorrow did appear in the 'Swinging London' film Smashing Time under the name of The Snarks.
- Antonioni considered The Who as the featured band - their instrument-smashing routine evidently carried itself to The Yardbirds' performance on the screen. Antonioni also considered The Velvet Underground, according to "Uptight: The Story of 'The Velvet Underground' by Victor Bockris and Gerard Malanga. However, guitarist Sterling Morrison's drug convictions prevented the band from getting work permits in the United Kingdom.
- Although the title is sometimes spelled Blow-Up (as on the DVD cover), the title on the film itself is Blowup.
- An interesting reading: Blow-Up… and Other Exaggerations: The Autobiography of David Hemmings, by David Hemmings. ISBN 1-86105-789-X.
- The park scenes were filmed at Maryon Park, Charlton, south-east London and the park is little changed since the making of the film.
- An interesting sequence saw Hemmings driving on a street containing many maroon-coloured shopfronts, the street was Stockwell Road and the shops belonged to motorcycle dealer Pride & Clark.
- Blow Out (1981), starring John Travolta, used sound recording rather than photography as the plot's central motif.
Awards/praise
The film won the Grand Prix at the 1967 Cannes Film Festival and garnered Academy Award nominations for Best Director and writing (story and screenplay written directly for the screen).
The film has been cited as being the inspiration for two later Hollywood films, Francis Ford Coppola's 1974 The Conversation and Brian De Palma's 1981 Blow Out.
This movie also inspired the Indian movie Jaane Bhi Do Yaaron, where two photographers inadvertently capture the murder of a city mayor on their cameras and later discover this when the images are enlarged. The park in which the murder occurs is aptly named "Antonioni Park". The movie remains one of the finest black comedies ever made in India.
In Mel Brooks's film High Anxiety, one minor plot line involves the bumbling chauffeur: a picture taken by him showing the evil assassin (wearing a latex mask of Brooks's character's face) firing a gun at point-blank range at someone; he makes blow-ups until he can see the real Brooks's character, standing in the elevator in the background. (Although, technically speaking, the chauffeur did not make any blow-ups; the joke being that he simply made bigger and bigger enlargements until he had one the size of a wall.)
External links
- Blowup at the Internet Movie Database
- Collection of pictures taken on the set
- Alternative Film Guide in depth review of film DVD
- Where Did They Film That? — film entry
References
- Audio commentary by Peter Brunette on the 2005 DVD (Iconic Films).
Categories
Articles with unsourced statements | 1966 films | British films | Italian films | Palme d'Or winners | Cult films | Films directed by Michelangelo Antonioni | Films based on short fiction