Blow-Up (1966)

For most casual movie-goers, Michelangelo Antonioni’s films can be difficult to get through. They appear slow, overly drawn-out, and at times they seem to ignore plot for long stretches of time. Blow-Up, Antonioni’s first English speaking film, is probably one of the director’s most accessible films. That isn’t to say that the film is any less challenging, but the bright, mod-British palate the film is in gives it an energy that previous Antonioni films lacked.

Thomas (David Hemmings) is a photographer. His day job consists of him taking pictures of beautiful models. Thomas hates his models, talking down to them and generally treating them like disobedient children. In his free time, Thomas has takes pictures of working class, mostly poor, but real people that he hopes to make a book out of. One day, while walking through a park Thomas notices a couple in the middle of a field. Without hesitating, he begins taking pictures of them embracing, only stopping when the woman (Vanessa Redgrave) runs up to him demanding to have the pictures. After he agrees to give her the pictures later, the woman runs back across the park, only now her partner is no longer there.

The woman, whose name we find out to be Jane, comes to Thomas’s house, unannounced, asking for the photographs. After spending the day together, Jane leaves with the roll of film. Thomas, though, has kept a duplicate film roll, and begins to develop it. While looking over the pictures, Thomas discovers what he believes to be a murder taking place.

From here the movie turns into a sort of murder mystery, at least for as long as Antonioni allows. In the hands of most filmmakers, a story like this would be a nothing more than a predictable Hitchcock-thriller wannabe. You could imagine Thomas racing to put the puzzle pieces together, with Jane playing the femme fatale. Perhaps a showdown would take place towards the end of the movie, where Thomas discovers that he is wrapped up in cover-up more complex than even he initially thought.

Instead, Antonioni allows the story to breath, never letting the tension overpower the film. For example, as Thomas is trying to explain what he has discovered over the phone to his boss, he is interrupted by two women who want him to take their pictures. What follows is five minutes of the three of them playing around Thomas’s house. And later, when Thomas goes into a nightclub in search of Jane, the camera focuses on the band (the Yardbirds) playing on stage.

The film as a whole can be seen as a commentary on perception versus reality. In the scene at the nightclub, one of the guitarists (Jeff Beck) breaks his guitar and throws a piece of it into the crowd. The crowd nearly causes a riot as people scramble to grab the piece of broken guitar. Eventually Thomas comes out of the club with the piece of guitar, and no sooner does he get to the street does he throw the piece to the ground. A random person standing on the sidewalk sees it, picks it up, but throws it back down when he realizes that its just a piece of broken guitar. The scene illustrates that something that seemed to have so much value, once judged by a new audience is essentially worthless. To the people inside that club, that piece of broken guitar was something important, but to everyone else, its just garbage. The people in the club aren’t wrong in how they value the broken guitar, it’s just their perception.

The murder itself can be seen as a comment on this topic. Did it really happen, or was it all just in Thomas’s head. While the film could be looked at in both ways, perhaps Antonioni gives a hint at the end of the story. After going back to search for the body, only to find out it has disappeared, Thomas walks by a tennis court where he sees a group of teenagers miming a game of tennis. At one point the pretend ball appears to over the fence in the direction of Thomas. Trying to help them out, Thomas throws the pretend ball back to the teens. The camera stays fixed on Thomas’s face as he watches them play, only now you can distinctly hear the sounds of tennis actually being played. Perhaps the tennis game was real, and that it was Thomas who just perceived them to be miming. Perhaps the entire murder was just a story made up in the mind of a bored photographer.

In the end it is not important whether or not the story happened or not. To get caught-up in how much was real is to miss the point. In Blow-Up, like in most of Antonioni’s work, story and narrative takes a back seat to mood, atmosphere, and symbolism. Early in the film, Thomas’s neighbor, a painter, remarks that while he’s painting he has no real feeling towards his works. That it’s only afterwards that he notices something that he can hold onto. This sentiment holds true with not just Blow-Up, but with many great works of art.