Movies - Blowup

	Movies - Blowup

Blowup is a 1966 British-Italian art film directed by Michelangelo Antonioni, his first to feature an English language screenplay and also the first British film to feature full frontal female nudity (although expurgated in the VHS videotape release). The film featured David Hemmings, Vanessa Redgrave, Sarah Miles, John Castle, and Jane Birkin. The Yardbirds perform in one scene near the film's end (in a legendary scene where Jeff Beck smashes his guitar long before the Who did).

The plot, such as it is, is loosely based on Las babas del diablo, a short story by the Argentinian writer Julio Cortázar, and the work, habits, and mannerisms of Swinging London photographer David Bailey.

Plot

The story concerns a photographer named Thomas (Hemmings) who may or may not have inadvertently preserved evidence of a murder, which may or may not involve a mysterious woman (Redgrave) who visits the photographer in his studio.

As is typical with Antonioni films, the story does not include a great deal of action, mystery, or explosive dialogue. Antonioni's visual and verbal emphasis is on the environment surrounding the principal character and how it affects him or fails to do so.

As a famous fashion photographer, Thomas mixes with the rich and famous. But he is disillusioned with his work and rich lifestyle, where even casual sex is mechanical and contrived. Then one day he secretly takes photos of two lovers in a park. The woman of the couple pursues him; eventually finding his apartment and trying to seduce him for the film. This leads Thomas to investigate the film, making blowups (enlargements) of the photos. This seems to reveal a body, but the director cleverly used the heavy film grain and black & white imagery great effect and it might just be a the countour of the ground. This drives Thomas to keep making blowups and try to find the truth.

He does eventually find the body, but it shows no signs of foul play. This isn't important, though. "Inevitably, the cause of the man's death is immaterial. Like many of Antonioni's films, Blowup is a parable of answered prayers: the idea that the distraction of wealth and fame cannot fill the void of loneliness, nor substitute for a soul's unrequited passion"

Awards/Praise

The film won the Palme d'Or at the 1967 Cannes Film Festival.

The film has been cited as being the inspiration for two later Hollywood films, Francis Ford Coppola's 1974 The Conversation
and Brian DePalma's 1981 Blow Out
.

This movie also inspired the Indian movie Jaane Bhi Do Yaaron, where two photographers inadvertently capture the murder of a city mayor on their cameras and later discover this when the images are enlarged. The park in which the murder occurs is aptly named "Antonioni Park". The movie remains one of the finest black comedies ever made in India.

In Mel Brooks's film High Anxiety
, one minor plot line involves the bumbling chauffeur: a picture taken by him showing the evil assassin (wearing a latex mask of Brooks's character's face) firing a gun at point-blank range at someone; he makes blow-ups until he can see the real Brooks's character, standing in the elevator in the background.

[ Visit the complete Wikipedia entry for Blowup ]

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Movies - Blowup

Plot

Awards/Praise

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