Blow-Up -- What Makes This Movie Great? (Episode 91)
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Michelangelo Antonioni moved out of Italy to shoot Blow-Up in swinging London in the mid 1960s. The result? A tale of an domineering photographer obsessed with what he photographed.
One of the most lauded movies ever, Blow-Up is reviewed and analyzed in this video, which shows the importance of the first and last shots. Like its predecessors, Rear Window and Peeping Tom, Blow-Up criticizes artists who use images and viewers who want only certain elements in those images. What the photographer finds in Blow-Up leads him to question what his business in life really is. This is the analysis from which the video proceeds.
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Disclaimer: All reasonable comments are welcome, including reasoned disagreements. You will be banned for foolish talk, harassment, and hate speech on sight; it's a tremendous waste of life. I believe in freedom of association and, by extension, freedom of dissociation from you. - ภาพยนตร์และแอนิเมชัน
My favorite moment in the film is when he goes back to the park at night and is examining the body and it is so silent. And into that silence as we sit holding our breath comes the faint of a gun being cocked. He flinches. We flinch. Suddenly aware of the danger he scurries out of the park. Gives me chills every time.
Im going to make a critique of your analysis, but I wanna say I like the video and I think its great to keep talking about such great stuff so long after it came out. Thank you.
You don't mention that he wants to be free of being a photographer? How he was always trying to make his art meaningful before the movie started? You didn't mention that the murder didn't happen? You didn't mention that the body was gone when he went back in the morning? The fact that he vanishes in the end? Its all really important. That is, to start to say: We can be distracted by the importance of our art and want to believe that it's helping society but art is an object covered in imagination. Think of the broken guitar. After its broken and its outside, its just a broken guitar and gets tossed aside. In the end, when our protagonist vanishes, he's being thrown away just like the guitar. It no longer has a part to play. The film itself, and his photography comes to the same conclusion. He can't go back to photography because he realizes, after he's HEARING the tennis game that isn't real, that he imagined the whole death. Therefore his photography truely isn't important, although he wanted it to be since he was stuck trying to make money doing it. But now that he realizes its not important, he chooses to stop, or vanish, instead of being stuck. And finds imagination elsewhere in the world. Anywhere.
End of Rant. I still like the video. Cheers to more discussion.
appreciated, thank you. this film deserves many books on it, which is not true of most films.
The one woman he seemed to care about chooses the "real" artist.
The murder didn’t happen! Yes!! That’s my take. His life is empty and, like the mimes invent a tennis ball, Hemmings invents the murder. It fills his life with something. There was no gun in the photo, the corpse was SO FAKE that Antonioni wants us to know that it isn’t real. Just a life-size tennis ball. Anyone I submit this to thinks that I am nuts. This could be an example of “masking” that Orson Welles introduced to be a fantasy, a facade, and more interesting (like magic) than ordinary real life.
The idea that the murder never happened didn't occur to me. Is that the consensus on what people think? Did Antonioni confirm this?
@@clemdane that’s not my opinion, fwiw
My favourite film ever I think. I grew up in London during this time, and was aware of all that was going on (music, fashion , sexual freedom, drugs etc) - and I wanted a part of it. At 11yo though I was slightly too young though and my mum wouldn't let me! A fabulous document of the times.
Despite seeing this movie multiple times and writing on it in my undergrad, you’ve given me an entirely new perspective and appreciation for it (especially in the phallic nature of the camera). This is the first video I’ve seen for yours but certainly not the last
thanks, glad to help
HI, thank you for your analysis of the movie. I was amazed and blown away when I first saw it. If you don't mind, I would like to extend your interpretation of the movie's existentialist themes. I see the film as radically existentalist in that it explores the very concept of reality - to what extent does it reflect something objectively real (a murder) vs. an individual and social creation. It does this, primarily by presenting reality as something both created and observed by the artist. To the extent reality is "observed" one is non actively engaged in it, but is actually dissociated from it, failing to take responsibility for one's creation. That is the stance of the main protaganist through most of the film. A key scene is the rock concert (brilliantly utilizing a real, and top-notch band, the Yardbirds) in which the audience is completely non-engaged until Jeff Beck destroys his guitar and throws the broken pieces into the crowd. The crow suddenly erupts in a frenzy to get ahold of the pieces. In other words, they are non-engaged as "observers" and only become engaged when they have an opportunity to interact directly with the artist through the physicality of the pieces of a guitar (the director was probably inspired by Pete Townsend, who identified and utilized this way of "connecting" with the audience who he once described as, "a bit thick"). My interpretation of the end of the movie is that the protagonist finally becomes conscious of his subjective creation of reality (the tennis players) which serves to send him into a new "crisis" of realizing his completely inconsequential existence in the "real world" and thus feels very small and alone in the field. P.S. my favorite comedic take on this subject was in the book, "hitchhikers guide to the galaxy" where the protagonist was thrown into a machine designed to drive him mad by showing him how tiny he was in relation to the vastness of the universe. It backfired because he was such a narcissist that he experienced this an reinforcing his outlandishly self-centered view that he was the most important and awesome thing in the universe!
great comment. thank you very much for it.
I'm chucking from your example in the book. Gotta read that one
Hi I'm film student in US. I can't understand why I found this great movie now. It contains the negative film technology so I really wanna say this film is great film which includes 60s elements in film history. I didn't understand about British swing culture but now I know with your detail explanation!! Thanks 😊
you're welcome.
The Smiths used an image of Blow Up for a t shirt in the late 80s, honestly this is how I even discovered this amazing film.
When Blowup came to my midwestern, university hometown, I was a high school kid, ushering in one of the two movie theaters. Deliveries were Thursdays, and Blowup got held up for some reason. Thursday night, I had to go out and tell the line of college students, filing past the newspaper and around the corner to the radio station, that it hadn't come. Maybe the college kids were primed, having seen L'Eclise, L'Aventura, and Red Desert, in which Antonioni struggled, through his characters, with modernity. In Red Desert, he seemed to reach a rapprochement with the 20th century, and found the beauty in its ugliness. It seemed to me that Blowup, the story of an artist for whom people are real only as photographs, was the modernist critic turning his lens on himself, after battling the modern demon. Remember, the book of photos the David Hemmings character is working on is a documentary about the downtrodden.
thanks, and we can hope in the future for university students interested in thoughtful art like this.
Thanks. I think the ‘mimes’ are students doing ‘rag week’. It’s theoretically for a ‘good cause’, but mainly an excuse for superficial silliness. And I think the ‘workers’ were leaving a homeless shelter. You see the pictures the protagonist took of them later in the film. So the contrast is even greater, perhaps, as he sees them, and the couple in the park, as just striking images he can exploit.
how can we tell that's a homeless shelter? good comment!
@@LearningaboutMovies Thank you. I couldn’t tell when I first saw them leaving. They seemed a bit too downtrodden to be factory workers after a night shift, and almost seemed like prisoners being released, but I wasn’t sure. But later you see the pictures he’s supposed to have taken, and I thought it must be a homeless shelter. I think you see them washing, and a row of beds. I think at least one of the pictures is actually by Don McCullin and is of someone who is ‘Down and Out’. There’s a conversation about the homeless men being ‘more free’ than the photographer, who is complaining about his own ‘burdens’ of success. He’s very hard to like!
that makes a lot of sense. great observation.
@@LearningaboutMovies I think its mentioned at some point to be a low cost lodging or something like that...I am not completely sure though
@@adamrasheed257 It says on wikipedia that: "After spending the night at a doss house, where he has taken pictures for a book of art photos"
Worth mentioning is that the movie is inspired by Hulio Cortazar s short story. I forgot the name but it s probably the best short story I ever read.
thank you.
"Las Babas del Diablo"...but only the centre idea about discovering a murder inside the photographs and the doubling of reality: whats inside the photographers head and what happened in the park. The rest came out from ideas from Antonioni, Italo Calvino and of course Tonino Guerra.
Absolutely loved the film. I read the inspiration for the film, Julio Cortazar's Blow-up (formally called Las babas del diablo before the success of the film). The story is very different, but it adds another layer of artistic insight. If anyone enjoyed the film and hasn't read the short story by Cortazar, I urge you to do so. Great analysis, by the way. Thank you!
Blow up is Antonioni's masterpiece.
a contender, and bonus points for you for using the word "masterpiece" in its original definition.
End Game. FIN
Brilliant movie - I watched it twice on the wide screen (remember those?) and drank it in! Wonderful 'subjective' shots where the visuals and focus around the protagonist shift as his view shifts - far shots are sharp when he looks in that direction, far scene goes soft focus as he turns around toward the camera - small detail to remember, but had never seen that effect before. The movie is killer good! (no play on words intended) Loved it then (1966) Love it still!
excellent, thank you.
I think this is my favorite movie. That is saying a great deal because I have seen a lot of movies. I love the message of artistic illusions vs reality. I like the ending being so open ended. Isn't life like that? What you think you know is ultimately ephemeral and fleeting. Love the respect paid to photography and film as art forms to take seriously.
excellent, thank you Elaine.
@@LearningaboutMovies Also most major artist expression are present here, music, photography, painting and filmmaking. No literature as far as I know. I like how you talk about the artistic image as tyrannical. Someone once said that art competes with God in creating. Something like that. I love this movie because of how art is destructive and beautiful simultaneously. The photographer is creating but losing his grasp on owning it. The musicians destroy their instruments which produced the music. The painter can't quite make out make of what he is trying to express.
Was shown this in my English aesthetics class at Berklee in 2013 and it stuck with me, not so much cerebrally cause it was alot to take in at 19 🤣 but I literally had to describe the poster to a Canadian cat I was talkin to at a bar gig around 2018 to get the movie title back in my mind; then I said I'd watch it again. Never did, but have the time now and searched it, then saw your review, wanted to recap first and man amazing job! I love how layered this movie is and as a composer/artist, it really speaks to how easily you can get lost in your own loop of self indulgence and somewhat separate from what makes you human! Thank you for this, gonna go watch it again now foreal this time 😆
excellent, and well said. thank you.
did you take Wayne Wild lol?
@@carmenrheeder Yep! lmao
I only watched it as the park scenes were shot in Maryon Park in Charlton, South East London, where I spent most of my childhood days playing in the 70’s. Great memories. Thankyou
you're welcome.
If aliens ever visit and ask what was the 60's all about I would say to them to watch Blowup, the film is a masterpiece that captures the heart and spirit of the 60's and David Hemmings was the best person in the world at the time to play the lead.
He was good in "Thirst", an Australian "new wave" film released in 1979.
@@peteywheatstraws4909 Thanks for that, will have to check it out.
Thank you for some new insights...In short I always thought the film was about perception and point of views( for instance, there is no actual ball in the end) and the malleable nature of truth as well as how its depicted in different forms of media and the responsibility of art to present the truth ..I also feel the film is relevant in a post truth world like ours in that way...Although i must say i have only seen the film once and it was some time ago😅
you are certainly correct: it is in part about those things.
You've got a good point. Julio Cortázar, who wrote the story the film is based on, was concerned with perception and reality. Looking at spider gossamers floating in the air he wonders if these are the threads of the Virgin or the dribble of the Devil. Photographs are capable of revealing what we've missed. The painstaking process of blowing up gradually subverts truth as perceived in the first place. The Devil is in the detail. Cortázar was one of the first authors to look at photography from a post-modern perspective back in 1956.
@@luisbustamante9869 To me the movie is all about esthetics. When I watched it I did not really get the plot, somehow vaguely assuming from the biginning that it would be of secondary importance.
You get carried away by the atmo, the colors, the green lawn, the wind shaking branches, the fashion models giggling, the objects (like the propeller in the antics shop), the silence, without any feeling of emptiness or vanity : the film works.
I just found this movie on a flea-market.
It's a great movie as you say.
It speaks to the subconscious.
I liked your views on the movie very much. Thanks a lot! It was very interesting!
you're welcome.
Wonderfully done --- great analysis of the films (and Director's) likely intent here. Thanks for your interesting work. Also, you mention *_Rear Window_*_ (1954)_ and *_Peeping Tom_*_ (1960)_ as being predecessor's to *_Blow-Up_*_ (1966),_ I would like to mention that in my opinion, a couple of spiritual _successors_ to Antonioni's great film are Coppola's *_The Conversation_*_ (1974)_ and De Palma's *_Blow out_*_ (1981)_ --- the former in a more subtle way and the latter much more obvious.
thank you very much.
Awesome breakdown and fantastic film!! I always considered a type of chaos seems to follow the photographer. The rock concert maybe a datum for a sort of unraveling or at least a realization of the various factors in his life converging and intensifying. The way Jeff Beck’s guitar amp starts cracking more and more the closer the photographer gets to the front of the venue. Meanwhile, the concert goers are basically at a lifeless idle, until they break into a frenzied mob when Jeff finally has enough of his amplifier shorting out and just smashes his guitar on stage.The photographer gets a coveted piece of the guitar just to dump it outside, seemingly completely relieved to be out of there.
I was talking to a college students about Blow-Up and your critique came up. For what it's worth, I think you're clearly bon the right track about themes and topics. Near the closing, you venture that "Blow-Up" might be his masterpiece--I would agree, though perhaps it would be "The Passenger"
thank you, Scott.
LOVE this movie! You made such a great analysis of it. What a great video. Thank you so much for your exceptional channel!
I'm using this film in my media essay on codes and conventions. But, I think I'll use it to show the philosophical meaning of this film. That haunting closing scene. The insanity that we see is indefinite when we hear the tennis game in reality, in his mind. Art vs Reality. It's something that engulfed me, when I watched it a month ago, as a 16-year-old. I think it's deeper than an arrogant artist. Where his mind is the antagonist, the curiosity that drives him to insanity! Also, I need a plane proppeller! Great video.
thank you. best of success to you.
Now nearly 20 years old, 1966 seems to be far away from me. Originally, I had nothing to do with this movie, but in some videos of ytber's trip to Philadelphia, a word ~blow up(physical) was given to me. I looked it up and found this movie, or the illustrations of this movie. The idea of a man grabbing the feet of another sexy woman who couldn't resist struck me (all kinds of innuendo), so I got into this 60-year-old work, which was right up my alley. Sure enough, life is ridiculous
Isn't the final shot in "Blow Up" the point when the David Hemmings character inexplicably vanishes?
I thought I put the final shot in the video. can't recall.
The Conversation (1974) also had a mime at the beginning of the film. Wondering if that is just a reference to Blow-Up or has a deeper meaning.
definitely a reference. not sure about more -- I haven't seen that one in a long time. Should discuss it for this channel. thanks.
@@LearningaboutMovies Please do - I love that film too
I never saw this movie until I was old.
Now that I'm fifty years old and I deal with images, I can say that Blow up was a fundamental obsession. It's a film that young people who grew up with social networks should see. They don't know that they are all there playing a game without rackets or balls.
I'VE WANTED TO WATCH BLOW-UP FOR SO LONG. 😫
go for it.
Now I need to rewatch this! In my memory Blow-Up is overshadowed by his Italian movies, but I guess I need a rewatch to reconsider.
Great interpretation. Now I need to reread Kierkegaard as well :D. Loved the connection you made there - his life as an aesthetic way of life, with seduction (loved the chapter in Either/Or) and his existential moment when seeing the corpse - potentially pointing him towards the ethical? But then again as you state its not a moralizing movie and Antonioni is right to leave open just how this existential moment/crisis is worked through (the solutions are usually much more boring than the crisis itself).
thank you. enjoy rewatching!
Great video - will be sure to watch the movie and then come back here to watch this video again. Btw, this movie is loosely based on the unusual short story by Julio Cortazar of the same name (it's what led me to your channel)
thank you. Have you read that story? I assume it's noirish, but have not read it.
Dr. Matthews, I don't understand why you don't have 200 K subscribers. I'm serious. You are extremely interesting, knowledgeable, and intelligent. Your videos are all extremely interesting. You get a few thousand subscribers and an insignificant man like Pewdepie gets millions. Shows how much the West has declined.
thank you very much. this channel is only just 15 months old. the long-term Socialblade predictions are encouraging, though a Pewdeepie audience would be more of a curse than blessing, with the exception of allowing me to retire to a remote location and do this full-time. but we dream.
@@LearningaboutMovies Keep going you are on the right path. I will be with you, if God allows, for a long time. With the high caliber analysis and videos you make, you cannot go wrong. Did you make one on "The Tree of Life" by T. Malick ? I loved your analysis of "Days of Heaven" which I saw as a teenager and which influenced me profoundly.
Yes, there is a Tree of Life video on the chanbel.
@@LearningaboutMovies Oh good, I must have missed it. Thank you !
@@LearningaboutMovies Here is a movie I highly recommend : The Promised Land (1975) by
Andrzej Wajda -- an extremely powerful Polish movie about the horrors endured by miserable workers during the Industrial Revolution in the city of Łódź, in Poland, during the 19th century. The misery created by the Industrial Revolution is almost forgotten today.
This movie, or should I say film, is one of the films that documents London at a time when it was the epicentre of cool. The first time i saw it, I was bored but later I appreciated it for what it was, a record of an extremely rare time and place.
Yeah, I've tried with this film a bunch of times - there are interesting ideas and some good scenes, but it's missing a bit of forward motion.
@@willisryan4576 that lack of forward motion is something that the film wasn't a priority for the director. In the 1960s a lot of creative films were made so that the entire action took place entirrely in a day. This increased the realism of the film.
I am a huge Antonioni fan, and my favorite is L'avventura , another great Antonioni film is Deserto Rosso.
yes, very good. "The Passenger" is next on my list for a video to make.
I loved this movie so much. Big David Hemmings fan 👍
very good.
Good analysis. A key shot not here is when he is watching the tennis game and his distracted expression changes to being concentrated, thoughtful and serious. Like the mime artists he has been pretending, pretending to be poor and homeless, pretending to be important in his fashion photography world. He's now self aware, he's changed and when he picks up his camera and instantly vanishes from the park perhaps the old Thomas has gone forever. His new existence to be discovered.
Keen to see this after your review, thanks
have fun!
Oh, I got a lot out of your video here. Thanks a million. Subscribed.
thank you, and welcome.
I am crazy about this movie, watched it many times. One thing you missed, at the end, when those mimes play tennis, he actually starts to hear the sound of a tennis ball. He creates artificial world, artificial emotions, very strong emotions, he is very good at it (he can translate a passion of a sex game into his art), at creating those canned emotions, and people start to live in the world he created. He is very well paid for this, but the ones who are providing money for creating this illusion, beneath this illusion are killing people. The real life is rough, the illusion is better, at the end, he, himself, crosses the line, into the illusion, starts to play this imagined game, the ones who are controlling the world are too strong.
This is excellent movie, in 1966 the world we know today was created, and Antonioni perfectly painted the whole picture, which is relevant even today, timeless. The art was imposed on us by patrons, to occupy us, to deceive us, while they are doing their dirty work beneath it.
This is a great movie. After seeing it on TV I bought it on DVD long ago. Did you watch it on bluray or did you stream it? It’s a movie that dwells at certain scenes without dialog with more than enough time to dive in to the images - time to reflect on what is going on in the mind of leading role. But you will never know for sure and that is great.
Bluray and watched it on a giant screen
Esta película tiene una idea de fondo muy clara que se puede resumir en una frase que dijo una vez Godard:
"Los que no tienen imaginación, se refugian en la realidad".
Well stated, and a great quote.
Just watched this. Loved it. I actually found it to be pretty hilarious at times. He's such an art douche. Reminds me of the episode in the Crown where a similar kind of fartsy photographer does Princess Margret's portrait. Him being immediately distracted by the threesome with Jean Birko and the other girl was also laugh-out-loud funny (although that would distract me too).
exactly! great comment.
Very relevant for 2023. Everyone is a photographer now as we carry cameras with us everywhere in our phones. The film poses questions about privacy, peace, and the inherent intrusion of photography. Do we use this miracle of technology for good, for art or only to satisfy our voyeuristic tendencies?
all conspiracy theorists should watch this masterpiece and learn how they project themselves into an image no matter how granular - Rear Window is definitely an influence - all classics
heh, thank you.
Damn it - I'm getting sucked into 50's '60s movies. It started with Akira Kurosawa and TOHO movies, then I just watched "Le Samourai" by Melville. Now I gotta watch Blow-Up. Can somebody here just tell me the next 5 foreign films ( from that era ) I need to watch?
I saw this movie twice when it was on the wide screen. Not sure if ever figured it out then or now. There was just enough off-kelter enough to make me love. I saw one other of Antonioni's movies. I believe it was called subrinsky's point
that's remarkable. thank you, Larry.
If you watc the last scene, when the photographer is walking to fetch the imaginary ball, It looks like there's a real ball in the grass, just before he bends to pick up the imaginary one (you can see a small white speck). It seems to point to the previous scene in the park when he photographs the lovers, not knowing the real gravity that lies nearby: a murdered body. Here, frolicking among the mimes, he fails to see the reality of an actual tennis ball, that doesn't fit in with the current context.
Definitely need to watch this film soon. On a side note have you seen La Hain? Watched it years ago back when I was in high school, and just recently I picked up a 4K Blu-ray copy....what a film
yes, it's a stylistic tour de force.
I've seen 4 of this directors films which I struggled to enjoy. Blow-up I am yet to see. I am curious to see it but alot of his other films I found visually beautiful but they didnt really connect with me. Though I did love the dialogue in The Eclipse. I will have to check this one out after seeing your video.
they are slow and ponderous, deliberately about bad modernist art and architecture and their alienating effects. I don't blame you for having a hard time with Antonioni. He's an acquired taste, and even I do not enjoy L'Avventura in any way, for example.
I liked your critique. To me, it is a film about coveting as much as anything. How we covet, what we covet, how we use interpretation to fashion self, other and reality. Keep up the great work.
thank you.
An interesting take on Blow Up which I saw in 1967 and was amazed at as a student at London university. I couldn't stop talking about it. Why isn't it in the top 10 of Movie Greats?
I'm not sure. Not as much love these days for Antonioni, except for L'Avventura.
It’s widely considered among the 5 best films of 1966.
Thank you. The photographer does not simulate sex with model Verushka. He kneels over her and whispers something naughty in her ear twice. That’s it
Just watched and loved it
excellent!
Movies from this time are always unsettling for me, no matter the genre. The world of back then, scares me a little. I watched the movie anyway because I like Cortázar, I can't say I enjoyed it, but it made me think. Thanks for the analysis! 👍
you're welcome.
Dude this movie will change your life
Having just watched the movie (again), I found myself baffled. Thanks for your intelligent deconstruction. I am still thinking many things - did Vanessa's character perhaps "set her lover up" to be killed? Why, otherwise, would she be so mysterious and non-forthcoming? That she finds the photographer and is even willing to sleep with him to get the photos back? Because she would be incriminated in the murder? I think maybe something is missing in the editing.
I had a chance to watch Blow Up in a theatre few days ago for the first time.
I liked it, and for sure I can see why it is praised so much, as a very influential film.
But I will be honest here, it bored me at times, especially when our protagonist was trying to solve the mystery.
It reminded me of some silly giallo's plot, but without everything that made giallos interesting :)
But I understand that using genres tropes with out completing them is a part of this particular movie making style.
I also have noticed the dead body right away, while he was taking pictures.
So I knew what to expect right from the start.
I found all of the incidental subplots/sequences way more interesting, like the rock concert or mime's tennis game, then the main crime solving plot.
But again, I think that's the point.
Cheers!
thank you.
Giallo films didn’t exist until the 70’s, so that doesn’t make the least bit of sense. Also, the plural is ‘gialli’, there’s no such world ‘giallos’.
@@DeanH92 What I ment is this movie was plaiyng with murder mystery movie tropes, and might have been an influence on Italian crime thrillers/horrors also known as gialli.
Does it make sense to you know?
Thank you for reminding me about Italian plural adjective "giali", however I've got a feeling your intention was to discredit my comment, and not to share some valuable knowledge (unlike the channel's owner).
Cheers
I did not quite understand the significance of Patricia's scene when she asks Thomas why was the man killed
People ask me why I became a photographer, I tell them I saw Blow Up in 1966 that's why.
That's great, thanks.
yup me too
I thought it was a reflection of what is art. For instance when photographing came around, many argued that it could never compare against a painting. The labor of a photographer is not as great as a painter. However, in Blow Up it feels like the theme is central to this, that there is an art to photography and labor. I believe the allegory between a mime and how it imagines or even fabricates a reality is compared to the work of a photographer and perhaps painter along with artists. It shows that our imagination can go as far as we want to it to go and it’s how we put it to use that creates art. Anyways! I’m not an expert in film these were just the questions I came up with as I watched and finished the movie. Definitely watching your video helped clarify a ton for me and just wanted to share my initial pov
thank you.
No Sixties photographer ever drove a brand new Rolls Royce with a then-new, radio telephone. An original Mini Cooper or Lotus Elan would have been more appropriate.
are you gonna review/analyze Bones & All? i thought i'd like it more than i did but I still enjoyed it
They are not workers leaving work, I think they are homeless men leaving an overnight shelter. Thomas has spent the night with them. It's a nod to Don McCullin's work, I think.
thank you.
"After spending the night at a doss house, where he has taken pictures for a book of art photos"
-Wikipedia.
Read George Orwell’s wonderful book Down and Out in Paris and London. During the Depression people had to move from one of these flop houses to another to keep them moving. He did that in the London portion of the book. Hemmings is trying to add meaning to his life, rather than continuing with the vacuous shots of models and fashion.
Going back in the Park, I'm surprised he didn't take any Pictures of the actual Dead Body?
This movie influenced my perceive of cinematography 😊
Cloud-gazing. Do I see a whale in the drifting cloud, while another sees a bowl of pudding in the same? In either case, it is only a cloud and it is we who impose meaning and ascribe value on the meaninglessness of the drifting cloud. While some elements of Blow-Up are noteworthy; cinematography, sets, and costumes, I feel it falls far short of a cinematic masterpiece. Experimental, yes, but many experiments fail. And this contrived story used to link together unbelievable characters, with inconsistent motivations, requires us to overlay meaning for there to be any. It requires us to imagine value where there is little.
世界で一番好きな監督だった。
I just finished watching this and i wasn’t a huge fan to be honest. But after listening to your review i may have to rewatch.
The film seems to be about a search for meaning and satisfaction and how uncertain and relative this is. I've heard some commentators describe the park as being a 'natural environment' but to me its the opposite. The park (any park) isn't a natural environment like a jungle or forest is, it's another form of artistic creation like the photographer's fashion photos or perhaps the murder itself. Flower beds and trees are like the photographer's models in his studio - deliberately planted/ 'positioned' for aesthetic effect. The photographer is shown walking past a park-keeper picking up individual leaves to maintain the neat artificiality... The film repeatedly seems to contrast artificiality or subjectivity with some objective reality but in the end decides it may be impossible to separate these things.
when it comes to Antonioni, you just have to find "your" film, I guess. I didn't like Blow-Up or L'Avventura that much but loved The Passenger.
I agree. Watch four of his films before giving up.
Blow-up is all about a captured moment, and the discovery of the mystery that was initially hidden from the photographer. I hope you find your own answers to your moment.
Sadly i struggled to love this .
Somehow i felt there are moments which have no implucations whatsoever .The scene of the blowing up of the photos was outstanding though .Moreover any idea who ransacked his place when he out and destroyed the photos ?
Love L' Avventura much more .
I have the same issues with L'Avventura. That's the struggle with Antonioni -- when do his seemingly extra/long shots contribute and when are they just extra? I feel in Blow-Up, with L'Notte and L'Eclisse, that he really wants to deal with the layouts of urban European cities, including how architecture affects the characters (which is Tati's interest as well).
@@LearningaboutMovies agree with that .But i think playtime does it much better than say l eclise or even la note
Why didn’t the photographer bring his camera when he first finds the corpse ?
Exactly my question everytime i got to see this movie!I honestly do'nt get why this movie got to be so iconic!Apart from the Jane Birkin's nudity scene and the iconic movie poster and soundtrack i can't even begin to imagine how did they sold this poor script to the producer!But hey,what do i know?!It's just my opinion.
I watched BLOW UP with the commentary of a film professor (sorry; can't remember who. Same last name as a food item?). The commentary was good and not so good. Or maybe I just have a different opinion. The commentator, for instance, claims the threesome with the wanna-be models sharpens the photographer's intuitive abilities. I would say the distraction cleared the photographer's conscious mind and allowed his unconscious mind to work unfettered by preconception. I once became dizzy tutoring math because of the whirling reflection of a fan on the computer screen that my focus on teaching math did not make conscious, but my brain was aware of (the spinning) the whole time. Daniel Defoe got his best story ideas waking up in the morning. The mind lets go of conscious reality and sees things on its own. A minor point, I must admit. I did like the commentator's discussion of an analogy between filmmaking and 'real' life. A filmmaker (like the photographer in BLOW UP) strings together images to create a narrative which makes sense of the images. Look closely, and you see. Look too closely and, again, you don't see. The images feed the narrative and the narrative provides meaning to the images. Some films go 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, like the photographer going from 'park entrance,' to 'hug,' to 'frightened woman looking to her left,' to eyeline match to 'someone in the woods with a gun.' She expects to see the man with the gun, I expect, but is in over her head. A recent film, MOTHERING SUNDAY, breaks up the narrative line, much like 24 GRAMS, and asks the viewer to work harder to construct a narrative, and thus meaning, from the images. The commentator on my DVD of BLOW UP makes the analogy to 'real' life. We all have experiences - images - which make up our lives. We try to construct a narrative from those images to give meaning to our life. Has life come at us 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, or have we experienced life in a disjointed fashion? Can we construct meaning from our lives? Is our constructed meaning valid in an individual sense (out of group context), or must our experience be a general one to have meaning? The mimes at the end of BLOW UP stare at the photographer until he goes to pick up the 'ball.' He has joined the group context, but it is a false, 'delusional' context. Is this good or bad? I fear the 2022 mid-term elections. Too many people have picked up an invisible ball.
Besides all the movie stuff: the basics of the plot were taken from Julio Cortázar's most unsettling short story "Las babas del diablo".
thank you.
I saw the movie with my parents in the sixties and at that age the scene that it my imagination was, obviously, the mimicked tennis match. As an adult the beauty of the framing mesmerized me (I have a problem with this being an Art Historian and Antonioni, Kubrick and Kitano are among my most loved directors).It's almost counterproductive for me.
As Adam Rasheed said I've always thought the movie is about perception and truth, but your idea is likely very weighty. The main character existential crisis is a theme that interest Antonioni in almost all his movies from the beginning to the end of is work.
excellent, thank you.
Cortázar a genius
not workers at the start - they're exiting a doss-house.. and he blows his image up so much it resembles abstract grainy art / painting.. like drilling down into the truth of an atom and just finding a quantum blurry soup of potentials
thank you.
Why does no one ever mention the fact that someone stole his copies from his apartment?
Much prefer The Conversation as it’s a more capturing work.
min 3:09 dude, is this movie about JFK ? Apparently, Antonioni knew President Kennedy.
you know ... I doubt it but that angle is there, given the historical proximity and the fact that at that point it was an unknown. I don't think the Zapruder film had been discovered yet.
Jimmy & Jeff
They're not mimes per se: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rag_(student_society)
helpful.
Red Desert is a very good movie from Antonioni.
Borges’ “Blow Up”
Reality Or Illusion ... To Be Or Not To Be ... World Or Maya ... The Watcher And The Actor ...
thank you.
And wasn't the person killed Vanessa's companion in the park that day
David Hemmings was excellent
agreed. Americans, generally, don't know him at all.
Influenced Austin Powers?
I regard Blow Up amongst the best ten films of all time. Blow Out (with John Travolta) was awful. I've often wondered if it's possible for there to be a remake that rivalled the original. It would take a very special director to do it. I think Martin Scorsese could pull it off but I guess there isn't the interest in anything that doesn't involve wokeism and that would ruin it. Maybe a scene for scene remake _set_ in 1966 would work?
couldn't touch this because they'd screw it up. Wouldn't have the pacing or the patience. Some writer would get ahold of it and introduce MORE TENSION.
Woke is a fad (I hope) that has no core theory of art, other than to reduce it to next to nothing. The anglophone countries seem to be in love with it, but the rest of the world does not, and so an update/remake from those regions could work.
I think he finds out that his Fashion art is meaningless... that it's not making real Art.
The dead body, versus the mindless hipsters smoking dope and chasing a broken guitar piece. He's realized the difference between the real thing in life, and phony pursuits.
Antonioni is my favorite director but Blow-Up is probably my least favorite movie of his. I think it's partly because David Hemmings is no Monica Vitti.
Vive La Sainte Vierge.
The film itself is well crafted. But, I'm afraid the point is that there IS no point.
One scene in particular, the "Propeller Scene" seems to express the ethos of the film. The propeller is the most useless and random and impractical and pointless thing to "fall in love with on a Saturday morning". It's preciselly because of this that the David Hemmings character WANTS it. And as an added bonus, he would come off as indifferent & un-predictable and self-possessed.
The 60s was when the popular culture was starting to embrace youth and rebellion , the dismantling of traditional values: Nihilism. It's the idea that there really is no purpose, it's all relative, it's all illusion.
Why? Because when you dispense with all those nagging, traditional values of knowing right from wrong, of exercising restraint, and having a purpose, then the sky's the limit! When you discard all of that (like antiques in an antique shop?) then there's nothing to get in the way of having unrestrained, hedonistic fun! ( bountifully on display in this movie ).
Blow-Up is so revered because it takes the traditional mystery thriller and then turns it on its head. There is always a PURPOSE that drives a traditional Mystery: to SOLVE it.
But instead: Nihilism. "Nothing matters,.". Blow Up proceeds to veer from purposeFUL, to purposeLESS. At the start, the protagonist is gathering more evidence and honing in on solving what appears to be a murder, but then the evidence of the murder's reality, the film negatives, are stolen.
And, right on cue, the film itself becomes disjointed. The need to have some resolution, some catharthis, seems to fade from importance. The film becomes full of flashes of hedonism: raunchy, unrestrained, but also, purposeless sex. What is real (the murdered body) is suddenly gone, and all he has left is a photograph to be scrutinized. But it's not real, it is film, much as the movie itself is just film. And so, nothing is real, it's all relative truth. No Absolute Truth.
And so Blow Up completely dismantles the traditional Mystery Thriller. (It Blows it Up).
Your expectation is that a story has structure, a resolution, a satisfying conclusion. But Blow Up subverts that (back then, way before Game of Thrones, subverting expectations was a Good Thing, a marvellous thing!). The film takes away the heart of a story: a moral, a driving purpose, a message, (even the simplest of traditional stories have a message). The murder never gets solved, because it's all pointless, or maybe it was all in his head, now a distant memory...
Then, in the process, you also dispense with something else: meaning.
Much of life becomes meaningless, so why pursue anything meaningful at all? Not even a supposedly spiritual place like Nepal is going to save you. Not with their ancient thousand year old beliefs ("it's all antiques, isn't it?"). This is what happens when all values are relative, what's precious to you is trash to me, and vice versa.
It could get a little slippery from there on out though..
Watching all of Antonioni's filmography, I strongly believe he is not a nihilist. Just the opposite. And this movie could easily be looked at in that way.
The film moves along at an absolutely glacial stagnant pace. It is hopelessly dated with its hokey hipster 60s imagery. When given the opportunity to break a major story, call the cops, take a picture of the stiff in the park he instead decides he has to toke weed first, to "text" his hipster friend Ray in real life. Ruins a perfectly good plot.
Who wants to hang out with anyone in the film... except maybe the band.
yes, Antonioni is a challenge.
This is what Antonioni does. His films don't give you what you want or expect. Ever.
It's Antonioni, and... dated? It was made in the '66.
@@sbozinovic its "dated". when you watch the 1954 film "Godzilla" its impossible to suspend your modern day imagination to believe the clunky monster is real. Its terrible.
In Blowup its ridiculous to have the crowd watching the band standing there totally motionless and social distancing so that Tommy can walk through "look at how apathetic society is" cmon, its silly
@@bobjones2041 Well... that's how Antonioni wanted it. You can like it or not... many don't, but ultimately it was made in the sixties with all that comes with it - style, technology, acting, approach.
I didn’t connect with this film. It felt Mundane, Just the day in a life of a character that didn’t become interesting until the last 15 minutes. I liked red Desert and the eclipse but this one gave me no food for thought until the last 15 minutes. Can’t love them all.
Thoughts on this quote by Antonioni? He said that as a response to American reviews of his film The Passenger.
"I find that you Americans take my films too literally - you are forever trying to puzzle out ‘the story’ and to find hidden meanings where there are perhaps none. For you, a film must be entirely rational, without unexplained mysteries. But Europeans, on the other hand, look upon my films as I intend them to be looked upon, as works of visual art, to be reacted to as one reacts to a painting, subjectively rather than objectively. For Europeans, ‘the story’ is of secondary importance and they are not bothered by what you call ‘ambiguity.’"
This might have been the case in 1975 but as a European myself, I can certainly say that nowadays, blockbuster films and flavor-of-the-month series are just as popular as anywhere else in the world (I can imagine that this further strengthened the emphasis on plot, characters, and the like as they usually are built upon them, i.e. people identify with certain characters, maybe even live vicariously through them, characters' deaths cause outrage online) and few see cinema as a purely visual medium. These "[insert movie name]'s ending explained" videos are also wildly popular here. In fact, I can imagine that Antonioni's films, were they to release today, would be either hated here or subject to over-the-top analysis (much like many of Lynch's films or series - there are hour-long analyses of them on TH-cam alone. Although I believe that comes from Lynch's rather surrealistic style whereas Antonioni's films are often presented in a more realistic style without a soundtrack and so on; people would likely get bored by Antonioni but find Lynch "weirdly interesting").
reading a movie for cryptic meanings, as if it's buried and a critic has the key, is close to pointless. But it's a favorite pastime of a lot of people. I don't get into esotericism. It can be useful occasionally, but few works truly call out for it, because there's so much else to notice that has not been noticed, and yet is quite obvious.
What I try to do is relate the movie to real-world topics. That's where I disagree with Antonioni somewhat, maybe a lot, in that "subjectivity" really is close to useless and, by his probable definition, untransalatable. But, because all art uses content from reality (including emotions and thoughts and dreams and numbers), and because all film combines myriad parts of reality, the film is thereby saying something, or really a lot of things, about it. You can find multiple aspects of reality in any film, especially the complex and well-crafted ones. What do they mean? Really, it's just about noticing things and pattern recognition, and connecting them to real-world subjects and theories and philosophies. That is what we do on this channel, and I have no idea if Antonioni would approve, and yet the artist does not get final say. Once his/her work is released, he/she is yet another interpreter of it, and the work lives as its own entity.
The American vs. European thing seems contrived, just for the sake of a silly put-down. Especially since so many critical theories wandered from over there (Europe) to here, such as pretty much every critical school I can think of, except New Criticism. The Europeans can claim structuralism and Marxism and deconstructionism and psychoanalysis, which are doing the things that Antonioni seems to be complaining about.
Its a work of visionary quality precursing the digital age were you can no longer believe what your eyes see and the manipulation of reality. The real star of this film though Is those killer white jeans
ha! bring back white jeans, somebody.
Thanks for your response, and the time you took to write it. Incidentally, I was just thinking how great a young James Dean would have been in this role. The ambiguity and inner turmoil he brought would have been electrifying.
you've based your whole critique on this idea of tyranny. Where is this seen exactly? ...just because he raises his voice a couple of times? I think you've gotten used much too much to watching netflix! open your eyes... there isn't anything decadent either anywhere. Who said London in the 60s was decadent? perhaps vibrant? exciting? inspiring? fresh? Cutting edge...NOT decadent! ...and yes...in the bushes there's a guy with a gun...wow...