Blow-Up

Here Antonioni takes the British New Wave and completely makes it his own. We see the elements of singing 60’s London, but the Mods do not run rampant. This is the real underbelly of the society. We have a fashion photographer who has everything yet doesn’t like it. He wants to be something more but never exactly knows what. This makes his predicament with the supposed murder all the more encompassing to him. It is the first and only time something has happened to him in such a meaningful manner. This is a film with the famed British color stocks of Peeping Tom and with an indifference not felt in any other 60’s work. Instead of focusing on the fashion and music culture, we are given only glimpses of just how meaningless it all is. Yes, those are The Yardbirds, but why should we care? Jeff Beck can’t even care enough to emphatically smash his guitar. (Something Pete Townshend would have never done.)

Was there a murder in the park? Did we or the photographer really witness anything? It doesn’t matter. Supposedly Antonioni spent his entire budget lavishly and was thus unable to shoot the rest of the script. He then took what little material he had and formed it into this haunting tale of indifference. I think this is exactly what happened. It absolutely makes the movie. We need not know about Vanessa Redgrave’s character or her motivations. The Sarah Miles character is pointless. And why in the hell do we end with mimes playing a game of tennis? Because they were there and because of this Thomas would have run into them anyway. They serve as a framing device to his crazy and inexplicable life. We begin and end with mimes of all things.

Despite all of the wealth, women, and elements of the high life no one is happy. No one knows what to do because they are going about at what they are supposed to want. The film mimics this in that it goes about playing at a narrative that really isn’t there. Here is one of the true founding films of the Hollywood Renaissance, produced in England and directed by an Italian.

Let’s go and buy a giant propeller. Why? Because it takes my fancy.

Blow-Up is a blow-up of a time where our excesses revealed just how empty our lives were. It simply hides under the pretense of an “art movie”. The masses were drawn in by the promise of interesting looking pudenda but were given a glimpse into the excesses of the high living and in turn into the nature of living. On the surface the film is meaningless. However, by just taking a glimpse beyond you can start to see the grain take shape. We are Thomas the photographer and the film is the still he examines through the magnifying glass.