Blow Up
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Movie Reviews of Blow Up
Movie Review: What May Lie Beneath the Surface of Life
Summary: 5 Stars
There is at least one big misconception about BLOW-UP: it's not a film 'about' swinging 60s London, as it is usually characterized. It's not a critique or condemnation of that 'scene'. Antonioni--although his roots are in documentary--tends to use locations for their visual impact and whatever moods they may invoke and not, at least in his films of the 60s, to make political statements. He chooses the fashion scene of London because of its preoccupation with surface (literal surface, appearance) and with a primary-color palette. Thomas the photographer, (David Hemmings) seems to function as an 'artist' in this scene--recording the surface effect of what he sees--but he is very clearly not engaged with it artistically. It's something he does by rote, offhandedly and very importantly, without PASSION (as a number of famous scenes show. Ironically, these brief scenes of sexual titillation were exploited to sell the film as 'erotic', the very opposite of their intention within the context of the film).
The director had much of Thomas's neighborhood in the film repainted to intensify the bright, primary color scheme. A scheme in which red seems to dominate, but not symbolically. Red (as well as blue) just identifies Thomas's milieu. When the photographer goes into the park, he enters a world of green. Beautiful, almost intoxicating green (a real feature of the DVD transfer, by the way, is the brilliance of the color in this film). Green connects obviously to nature, even in a park landscaped by city planners. But, again, it's not really symbolic (Antonioni does not tend to use symbolism in any conventional sense, if at all, until perhaps the end of this film). Rather, green establishes this alternate environment where Thomas will make a significant discovery.
Earlier in the film, we meet Thomas's neighbor, a painter named Bill (John Castle) who introduces the notion of looking at a work of art and seeing something in it after it's complete (he demonstrates this in his own painting). When Thomas develops his photos of Redgrave and her presumed lover in the park, he begins to notice other details that are far more interesting. This leads to an investigation that sort of encapsulates, or stands in for the long wandering segments of Antonioni's previous films: a gradual uncovering of some kind of knowledge or truth. What does Thomas discover? Perhaps that there's something under the surface of life that we don't want to think about, rushing around in our driven lives; perhaps it's mortality, or just something that SEEMS to be serious and important. When he pursues the investigation by going to see the actual body, the film takes on an almost sinister aspect. There is something primitive and slightly disturbing about the nearly silent scene of Thomas finding the body, accompanied only by the soft rustling of wind through the trees. He's shaken by it. But importantly, the whole experience has awakened a passion in him, not so much as an artist but as a human being. When the body has disappeared on his second visit, Thomas seems deeply disillusioned. Was any of this real? Does it matter if it was or not? But for a brief moment this jaded young man cared about something that did appear to be serious and important. The encounter with the mimes at film's end actually does seem symbolic, and it's a fairly obvious move on this director's part. Here's where it all gets so subjective. It's deliberately up for grabs: what, if anything , do the mimes stand for? Why does Thomas join their game and then disappear? To some, it's a surrender to the illusory nature of being, so complete that he no longer needs to even exist himself.
The DVD issue of BLOW-UP looks extremely good. The sheer visual beauty of the colors and images really gets its due. There is a critical commentary that leaves more questions than it answers and is among the least useful recorded for a challenging film of this kind.
Movie Review: Anyone For Tennis? A tentative review of "Blow-Up"
Summary: 5 Stars
Funky Herbie Hancock music, title's that can only be Swinging London and the dirty green grass of an English park (whose significance will only emerge later). We see a troupe of mimes who race around for no apparent reason causing some confusion and embarrassment. We see the David Hemmings character of the Photographer coming out of a dosshouse and jumping into his Rolls Royce. The old and the new London are shown in a series of beautiful and simple establishing shots. We are increasingly aware of a use of bold colour contrasts by Antonioni - a blue van and a yellow van, an entire street of red houses and a blue house, two black nuns in white habits and a guardsman who seems to be guarding a public street - juxtapositions galore.
The opening minutes of Antonioni's movie are stylishly cold but sexy, perhaps a little dated to contemporary eyes and extremely ambiguous.
Ingmar Bergman said a few years ago that Antonioni had made at least two masterpieces; that is "La Notte" and "Blow Up". It's quite useful to look at Bergmans "Persona" and contrast it's extremely ambitious intentions with the equally challenging "Blow Up", which was released in the same year. Antonioni doesn't immediately appear to go as far as Bergman in deconstructing the established form of the movie but in a slightly less self-conscious way he seems to be pushing the medium into new areas of expression.
An incredible sequence shot in a London park follows. A growing sense of unease and dislocation with the world is being created. The wind is picking-up, leaves are rustling. He is taking pictures of Vanessa Redgrave and an older man in some kind of clandestine encounter. Redgrave try's to get the camera, she bite's his hand - "What's the rush!" is the Photographers response. We sense the dialogue is moving into a more expressionistic area also, it's going in the direction of a kind of minimalist-surrealism. The Redgrave character goes back to the Studio with Hemmings. They share a joint and some wine and she moves awkwardly to the music; almost embarrassingly so. Hemmings starts to process the film and in a series of shots, we hear the rustle of leaves once again, he starts to construct a sequence of events from the seemingly innocent rolls of negatives. The inversion of the increasingly detailed photos yielding a more difficult to interpret image is a satisfying puzzle. The photographer is being challenged with a startlingly different reality from the one he expected to see.
The commentary by Peter Brunette is a slight disappointment.
He seems to make several inexplicable omissions, although the majority of his insights are useful. For instance, he mentions that Antonioni probably had a house painted blue; just after the Photographer has just driven down an amazing street of all red houses. He also doesn't mention the introduction of the sound of the ball being struck by the racquets at the films remarkable finale. I find some of the best commentaries on DVD are a constant stream of interesting background information; Mr Peter Cowie being probably it`s greatest exponent. Mr Brunette seems to leave silence where I'd have really preferred comment.
The trailer and teaser trailer are great pieces of 60's kitsch and if you think the movie seems dated these will seem positively prehistoric.
The quality of the transfer is absolutely spot-on with only a couple of imperfections (a rather irritating vertical line over Redgrave for a minute and the odd rogue hair on the screen) and perhaps the colour seems slightly less saturated than it should be. These are very minor quibbles though, and anyone interested in the potential of films should really own this movie.
Movie Review: All Buildup, No Pay Off...Still a Masterpiece
Summary: 5 Stars
"Blowup" was the English-language debut of already famous Italian filmmaker Michelangelo Antonioni, was a massive success upon it's release, still ends up on lists of Great movies, but is rarely seen by today's audiences. Sad, since this is a great movie. It's great because it leads us into a plot where we think we know what's going to happen, then it doesn't. Not only does IT not happen. Nothing really happens. It deserves comparison to Antonioni's "L'Aventurra" a movie in which a character disappears, setting up a mystery about what happened to her. Instead, that's it right there. She disappears and is never heard from again. In this movie, a photographer believes he has witnessed a murder and, at one point, even sees the corpse. But did he really witness a murder? Did he even really see a corpse? Is it a dream? This movie actually (something I've never heard anyone mention) seems to be an inspiration to filmmakers like David Lynch; We're presented with images that don't really make sense, but intrigue us nonetheless and don't take away from the story. David Hemmings plays Thomas, a popular London photographer, who spends his days taking photographs of "birds" who crowd outside wanting to get their pictures taken and, possibly, seduce him. Thomas isn't a particularly likeable guy; He holds an unexplained contempt for women and is rude to people around him. One day, while walking through a park, he spots a woman (Vanessa Redgrave) and a man and begins lurking around taking pictures of them. This scene gives us no hint of what he's going to encounter later. As he takes pictures of this woman and man, the woman spots him and chases after him. She asks Thomas to give her the film, but he declines and leaves. When he gets back to his apartment/studio, she appears. She takes off her shirt, tries to seduce him, he succumbs and gives her the film, and, finally, she leaves...She leaves, of course, with the wrong film and as soon as she's gone...Thomas develops the pictures. After a quick interlude, in which he has a sexual romp with two women who want their pictures take, he returns to the photographs and notices something odd. He blows the photos up, does it again, and then begins to believe he has witnessed a murder. There appears to be a gunman hiding in some bushes, the woman appears to be looking towards him, and finally he appears to have photographed a corpse. The pictures are abstract, but seem clear enough. He returns to the park later that night and sees a corpse...This scene is completely misleading. This isn't a shot where he appears to see a corpse in the distance, to make the audience ask themselves
"Does he really see it?" There's a close-up of the corpse that seems to leave no other conclusion except that there is one. Then we get a haunting scene where he stops his car in front of a club and sees the woman standing there. She turns, takes a couple steps, and is gone. She literally disappears into thin air. By the end of the film, we realize that the murder isn't even the point of the film. Odd since that's exactly what the movie leads us to believe almost to the final shot. And the final shot is a great one. If you've seen a movie by Antonioni (I've seen L'Aventurra and The Passenger), then you know that he's not a director that cuts to the chase. He paces his film very slowly. So slow, some people have called his films dull. This movie is not dull; it's fascinating...Whether you have any idea what's going on or not. It's not an extremely entertaining movie, but I didn't find it dull or boring and I frequently found myself glued to the screen. I'd have to watch the other two again to be sure, but as of now I'd say this is my favorite Antonioni film.
GRADE: A-
Movie Review: You Can't Photograph People Like That: The Controversial Art House Masterpiece
Summary: 5 Stars
Few directors are as divisive as Michelangelo Antonioni, best known as creator of the 1961 L'AVVENTURA and the 1966 BLOW UP, both of which present largely unresolved mysteries in order to make thematic statements. In the case of BLOW UP, which is easily Antonioni's best English-language film, the unresolved story is one of a possible murder captured by accident on film; the themes involved are those of reality, illusion, and the distractions that prevent us from seeing the difference between the two.
Thomas (David Hemmings) is an obnoxious, self-centered London photographer who alternates between fashion and art photography. In search of a tranquil subject to counterpoint an otherwise dark collection of photographs, he takes several photographs of a couple in an otherwise empty park---and is unconcerned when the woman (Vanessa Redgrave) pursues him to his to studio to demand the negatives. Thomas agrees to give them to her, but secretly switches rolls of film; later, when he develops the photographs, he is startled to find he may have photographed a murder.
The film is perhaps most memorable for its disturbing sense of irony. Near the beginning of the film Thomas is plagued by two would-be models; he escapes them by visiting an antique shop and then wanders into the nearby park. As the film progresses, he finds his meeting with the unwillingly-photographed woman interrupted by the delivery of a purchase he made at that antique shop; still later, and now aroused by the mysterious woman, he is once more visited by the would-be models and has sex with them---an incident that delays his inspection of the photographs and effectively derails him from receiving assistance from various friends who are now themselves distracted by sex and drugs. Each detail coils back upon itself in a series of frustrating interruptions, driving Thomas in directions that repeatedly delay any action he might take that could answer his questions, much less solve the riddle.
The greatest irony is that we are watching pictures of a photographer taking pictures, and indeed much of the film involves looking at pictures of pictures of pictures without any clear indication of whether or not anything we see is actually real---which is, of course, exactly the nature of the illusion a movie creates. That said, if you come to film expecting a murder mystery with a neatly explained solution, you are in for a rude shock: BLOW UP is not "about" plot; it is about how difficult it is to know anything factual from a medium that is intrinsically illusionary in the first place. Not only is the nature of film as a medium the movie's greatest irony, it is also probably it's ultimate statement.
BLOW UP really is a film that tends to jack people's jaws all over the place, partly because it defeats their expectations in terms of character and plot, but more specifically because it is so open-ended that you can pretty much impose any meaning upon it that you like. Was there a man with a gun---or was it just a trick of the light? Was there a murder---or was it something else? And if so, what? And what does it all mean at the end? But there are no fixed "meanings" in the film at all, and if you want a strong storyline with clear-cut ideas, well, you're out of luck here. So no, BLOW UP isn't a film for every one. It will most greatly appeal to people with a fondness for European cinema and art movies.
The DVD presently available is at best acceptable; it would be really nice to see this film given the royal treatement by a company such as Criterion. In any case, recommended to as a masterpiece of the "art house" kind.
GFT, Amazon Reviewer
Movie Review: Grim vision, beautiful images
Summary: 5 Stars
Someone changed the title music, to begin with. If you leave the menu on your screen and listen, you will hear the original title music, a brief rock interlude followed by a wistful jazz piano. The strident, cacaphonous trumpet you hear under the titles is the wrong music.
If Blowup looks and feels different from the four Antonioni films that preceded it, one reason may be that Antonioni used an English editor, Frank Clarke (uncredited). The pace of the movie is far faster than what a viewer of L'Eclisse or La Notte would expect.
If you watch Hemmings driving the car, you will see sudden, apparently pointless cuts. These are inserted to give the movie a more nervous look than we expect from Antonioni. Perhaps, knowing he was making his first mystery, Antonioni planned this new style with his editor.
There are other mannerisms, not unique to this film, that are always interesting. The camera follows a receding car for some distance, then slows down and lets the car get further away.
A burst of music will suddenly be heard, and just as suddenly fade away. In the studio this seems to signify the photographer's preoccupation with the photos, causing him to forget the music.
-- Critics and the public are correct in viewing Antonioni as a dark pessimist about human nature. He sees us as sadly unequipped for the challenges of reality, relationships, moral judgment, etc. The theme of the movie is how easily the photographer is distracted from the serious business at hand, i.e. the apparent murder captured by his camera. He is no match for the reality before him, and drifts from one diversion to the next. The wonderful scene of the Yardbirds playing to a catatonic audience, and our hero coming away with the worthless trophy, sums up the director's view of him.
But the key scene of the movie is when the photographer, suspecting the murder, leaves his studio without his camera, finds the body in the park, can't photograph it, and returns to the studio to find that all the prints and negatives of the event have been stolen in his absence. One false step and everything is lost. The record of the reality, and perhaps the reality itself.
Antonioni invited the debate about whether anything at all happened -- the murder, the photographs, the scene in the park, etc. -- by having the imaginary tennis ball at the end of the film begin to make plocking noises, and by having the photographer disappear. Why Antonioni called this moment his "signature" is a mystery to me. Possibly to bring more people into the theaters.
The scene in the park is a classic of form and color and movement. Nothing like it has been done before or since. The scenes in the studio, discovering the truth hidden in the photos, have been much imitated. They are wonderful, breathless, dramatic.
Today the question of reality seems far less pertinent than the shallowness of the photographer [who may also be the artist, according to some] and his inability to confront the real in an adult, responsible way. But it can be argued that if human perception is so skewed by selfish concerns and shallow desires, the human race never really perceives a real world at all. Only the next pleasure, the next gratification, the next need or project. The human world we see around us, colored by war, famine, violence, and the colossal indifference of man to his fellow man, may be a world built by creatures who do not have a reality. Only a stubborn need to be safe, to be blind. Possibly this is the sense of those last troubling images.