Andrew McMurtryREVIEW: Blow-Up (1966)
“Blow-Up” is a film which has something to say about personal involvement and the modern world. David Hemmings character, Thomas the photographer, is a popular freelance photographer. In his mind, he can do what he wants, act like a rock star. Whatever he wants to do, he does. He tears around London in his Rolls Royce buying things on impulse, like a propeller from an antiques shop, taking pictures of whatever he pleases and even dressing up like a homeless person to take pictures of the inside of a homeless shelter. And then he goes back to his studio to take pictures of fashion models in tiny costumes. So withdrawn from everything, he can just leave what he is doing and tear across town without even a thought. He is arrogant, self-centred and demanding of his models.
After showing this, the story breaks off into the true story of the film. While taking pictures of birds in the park one day, he sees a woman romancing an older man. He follows them to a secluded part of the park and continues to take pictures. After he is spotted, the woman chases him away after first trying to get the film. She follows him to his studio. There in order to get the film, she has sex with him. Thomas gave her a different role of film though and develops the park film. When he blows up the pictures he notices the sinister nature of the seemingly innocuous situation. He seems to have foiled a murder.
What seems to be an affair that he captures on his wanderings around the city turns out to be a murder when he blows the pictures up. This shows that what you see is not always reality. Your eyes can deceive you. As can your mind. What you remember may not be reality. This is foreshadowed when Vanessa Redgrave’s character says “No we haven’t met. You’ve never seen me.” We are not to know that this is the theme of the movie, perception and seeing is believing. The mimes (as shown on the next page), which are used in the first and last scenes, show chaos and that reality is perception. They are important to show that in Thomas’ mind, all the events were real just as the invisible ball the mimes are playing with and that Thomas throws back to them is real in their mind if they perceive it. Antonioni cleverly films this part by tracking the path where the ball would have gone.
In the park scenes, Antonioni uses framing techniques to contrast the actors with the background. He uses Thomas running between trees and taking pictures to frame the actor. This is also true at his studio. Everything there is used for framing, whether it be the door frame or geometric shapes formed by other things. He makes great use of squares and rectangles in the studio to frame the models. Antonioni seems to enjoy using the pan and tilt to follow the action rather than cutting, allowing long staging sequences. Antonioni also uses many still frames with the people in the action not always taking up the majority of the shot. He makes great use of the long shot to give a perspective view of the characters, for example, when Thomas is in the park and we are looking from the point of view of Vanessa Redgrave’s character. Antonioni made several interesting choices in what to shoot as well. He often chose to shoot legs separate from the torso. This gives the film the feeling of parts rather than the whole, as in Thomas knew part of the story but not the whole thing, which is why he begins to doubt if anything he had seen was real. Antonioni used the profile shots as well as three quarter shots in medium and close-up shots to give the effect of parts.
This film may be about a murder and perception of reality but it also has several visual commentaries on western culture. For example, Antonioni painted one side of the street red as Thomas was driving down the main road to juxtapose the trendy, new, colourful and vibrant London with the brown, boring, worn-down London that was their before. He also used a lot of different colour on the costuming, lots of vibrant reds and blues for the models as well as dull browns, white and black on Thomas.
"Blow-Up" is a good film. It is a very technically sound movie. But it is not the greatest, most engaging movie I've seen. I found long periods where I lost interest in the plot and began drifting off. I'd give this movie 2 out of 5 for interest, but as I said is brillant technically. Therefore it is moreso a movie student type of film.
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