Blow-Up (1966) is the weirdest Italian movie I’ve seen. It doesn’t have zombies, cannibals, demons, cowboys, sharks, witches or slashers. It was, like, normal.
Blow-Up is about a swinging photographer who accidentally photographs a murder. Instead of going the standard thriller route, director Michelangelo Antonioni decided to make one of those films that actually mean something.
What does Blow-Up mean exactly? We’ll see if we can puzzle out. Major spoilers will happen.
Blow-Up
Unlike Argento, Bava, Margheriti, Leone and the like, Antonioni operated in the more elevated realm of film. Antonioni was known for “enigmatic and intricate mood pieces” rather than the more lurid films of his Italian counterparts.
Blow-Up is certainly an enigmatic and intricate mood piece. It forgoes standard plotting to follow the journey of a photographer searching for truth.
Antonioni definitely has a style. His setups do not have a slick, commercial appeal. Rather, his eye seems to take a more distant, oblique approach to its subjects. Viewers are conditioned to expect a certain rhythm to how standard scenes of people talking or walking are filmed, but Antonioni puts a more individual spin on things.
None of this is overt enough to take a person out of the movie, like, say, the style Ang Lee used on Hulk. Antonioni’s method will simply make viewers aware that they are watching a different type of filmmaker here. In this regard, he accomplished the goal of making his style the proverbial “transparent curtain.”
Meanwhile, Antonioni is not afraid to let what he is trying to say remain vague. This can be a blessing or a curse. Some filmmakers are too diffuse and leave viewers scratching their heads. Blow-Up is probably right up against that line. In the end, Antonioni seems to provide enough data points for people to be able to figure out what he is trying to say.
Blow-Up Periscope
David Hemmings plays the photographer. Hemmings is an English actor who also starred in the Argento giallo film Deep Red. When it comes to possessing mysterious leading man charisma, Hemmings has it. He looks a bit like Rowan Atkinson, but no one can deny he owns the camera with his moppy hair, sleepy blue eyes and Chalamet slouch.
Hemmings is pretty much the waifish, pasty-boy type that young girls go ga-ga about, and Hemmings’ character inhabits that stereotype onscreen. He’s a hip photographer that all the models want to be photographed by, to the point they will crash his pad and seduce him in the hope he puts them on film and captures their truth.
Hemmings’ behaviour while photographing models will be familiar to Austin Powers fans. It would not surprise me if Mike Myers used Blow-Up as inspiration for Powers’ penchant for fashion photography.
Meanwhile, Hemmings is clearly dissatisfied with trying to capture the truth of vapid models. He is trying to find real truth by photographing doss houses and leaving his studio to shoot photos of people out in public.
This leads to Hemmings taking pictures of Vanessa Redgrave with a man in the park. Once spotted, Redgrave insists that Hemmings stop and that she wants the film. He refuses. Later, when he develops the film, he discovers that he accidentally photographed a murder.
Blow-Up or Blow Out
If this sounds familiar to people, it is because De Palma used Blow-Up as inspiration for his conspiracy thriller Blow Out, where John Travolta realizes he accidentally recorded an assassination. Blow-Up and Blow Out end up being completely different films, however.
De Palma fully leans into the conspiracy aspect. Meanwhile, Antonioni doesn’t care about conspiracy. He never bothers to explain anything about the murder. All he is interested in is the effect such a thing has on the Hemmings character.
Interestingly enough, both films succeed in their endeavors. De Palma wants to have his cake and eat it, too. He successfully delivers a conspiracy thriller while adding an ironic touch of how it affects the main character. De Palma goes full-flamboyant with his style. He is clearly having fun playing with his camera, and he does it with such confidence that the viewer really has no choice but to have fun going along for the ride.
On the other hand, Antonioni is much more muted. He achieves a lasting impression with quiet elegance instead of flamboyance. His ending is more haunting than ironic.
Blow-Up The Man Down
As said, at the end of the day, Blow-Up is not about the murder. It is about the Hemmings character waking up to “truth.”
Hemmings spends the bulk of the film lost in the dream of the swinging ’60s. His life is a blur of beautiful women, his art and shagadelic parties.
He is clearly dissatisfied with this and recognizesthat something more has to exist. This produces creative huffs and a constant searching. Photographing a murder narrows the character’s focus so that all of the distractions fade away.
The end of the movie sees Hemmings go to a drug party to ask his agent to come with him to verify the murder. The journey includes a brief stop at a club where The Yardbirds perform, complete with a young Jeff Beck and Jimmy Page. Hemmings escapes the club with a broken guitar neck that everyone wants to possess at the club, but Hemmings throws away as garbage on the street, signifying he is about done with the party lifestyle.
Protestors and mimes also operate at the periphery of Blow-Up. They represent the reality of life Hemmings has, to that point, ignored. That is how far he is gone. Truth has all of the reality of mimes to him.
The elegant end of the movie sees Hemmings watch mimes play tennis with an imaginary ball. They hit the imaginary ball over the fence. Hemmings retrieves the imaginary ball and throws it back to them. He continues to watch the mimes play tennis and the ball is now heard.
The “truth” of the reality Hemmings has ignored is now real to him. Life is not about shagadelic parties. The murder woke him up to the fact that the party ends for everyone…
Blow-Up
Blow-Up could be labelled boring. That is totally fair. It appears random on a surface level. It does not take the satisfying plotline. It contains no action. Yet, Antonioni achieves something magnetic. His style, vision and the performance by Hemmings keep one watching.
I’ve watched Blow Out probably five times. I’ve watched Blow-Up twice. That shows where my preference lies. Yet, I also recognize a simple truth. Movies aren’t all about zombies, cannibals, demons, cowboys, sharks, witches and slashers…
