Discussing Antonioni's "Blow-Up"
ฝัง
- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 17 เม.ย. 2017
- On the occasion of The Criterion Collection release of the newly restored 4K digital transfer, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack
A conversation between David Forgacs (NYU) and Kim Hendrickson (The Criterion Collection)
Casa Italiana Zerilli-Marimò
New York University
April 17, 2017
I've always wondered why in these discussions about Blowup there's nothing said about a recurring and obvious theme in the film: the characters pursue something desperately and then , when they get it, they throw it away and pursue a different thing. It happens with Hemmings character (the propeller, the broken guitar, the food he orders in the restaurant and never eats), but also the Redgrave character (the roll of film).
Jorge Perez - That’s the first insightful take I’ve ever heard of Blow Up. Seriously, I keep thinking of more examples, but you sold me on the broken guitar because they’re so intent on the sound problem, and then they just trash the whole performance. The guy fights for a piece of the broken guitar and then tosses it. Not to mention he apparently loses interest in the most important event in the movie, the murder.
the dissatisfaction with society goals, jobs, careers, love, monogamy in another words, we are not free, society has parameters that some people never meet, and we are always looking for something that can fill that gap, a new partner. But what a waist be attached to a person the all life when we have so many beauty around the world
But does the Redgrave character lose interest in the roll of film? There is a break-in and the photos + negatives are stolen, presumably by the shady guy trying to break into Hemming's car. This guy is connected to Redgrave, because there is a brief glimpse of them tailing Hemmings after he leaves the restaurant.
@@cameramanboyfriend6177 You're right, but there's no doubt that after pleading desperately for the roll of film, she then nonchalantly discards it when the kissing starts. It would seem Redgrave's cronies were more worried by the situation than her, and went on to destroy the photographs. I would guess the film in a subtle way is making a philosophical point -about life, and how we are never satisfied and end up always wanting something else after we get what we want
@@jorgeperez9842 Also, how even when we know what we want and are actively pursuing it, we get sidetracked. Like Hemming's at Ron's place. Like talking to the antique shop owner about selling the shop, and he gets immediately obsessed with the propellor: "I can't live without it!" "Hard luck," she says, "That'll teach you to fall in love with heavy things on Saturday mornings." The sale of the shop has been totally forgotten.
This scene also revolves another major issue in the movie: money, or materialism. The shop owner says: "Money's always a problem, isn't it?" Hemmings says to Ron: "I wish I had loads of money. Then I'd be free." Ron points to a picture of a vagrant: "Free? Like him?"
I've heard many interpretations of this film. To me, Hemmings is a very self-absorbed charcater who only lives for his pleasures. Seeing the alleged murder makes him think of something other than himself as he tries to figure out what happened. The movie seems to end with him being a bit more involved with others and less self-centered as he plays the mime tennis. Yes, it's mod and psychedelic, but that's what I got out of this movie. I love the haunting scene in the park with the wind blowing through the trees when he goes back again toward the end of the movie.
Oh, well said! I think you'll notice similarities in what I say below - -
Clearly, Thomas has come to despise his life as an elite fashion photographer and I think the doss house photos explain why. His fashion photos, while striking, are trivial and artificial and meant to manipulate the buying choices of a well heeled audience. The photos in the doss house suggest a hunger to use photography to penetrate illusions rather then create them, to plunge into the depths of real, unadorned humanity.
Consider, in this light, the Yardbirds pop concert and the pot smoking party. The rock audience stands in mesmerized silence until the guitar is thrown from the stage and they go crazy, desperate to grab a souvenir of their rock idols. Moments later Thomas tosses the guitar neck onto the sidewalk and we are shocked to realize that this fetishised object is really just worthless junk. The pot smokeing party also shows us a group of people eager to be part of a hip scene. But, as with keeping up with this year's fashion line and idolizing rock stars, isn't this most sought after crowd in fact unconsciously conformist, and, as the hottest trend setters, leading many others down the path of unconsidered conformity?
It is the whole of this supposedly hip London scene, which actually involves being lead on by conformist illusions, with which Thomas is discontented. As with the doss house photos, his avid photo taking in the park, photo developing, and attempt to communicate to Ron what he finds is likewise a search for what is real. And that search, as it progresses, shows up the unreality of the rock concert and the pot party by comparison.
Finally, consider how much Thomas changes as the film progresses. In the beginning he is a highly successful, controling, self-important prick who treats women abysmally. But is this his actual personality or simply another expression of his discontent with his life? Because, as the film progresses, he increasingly looses control, is shaken by events, is fearful, and, finally, is willing to be captivated by the mime tennis game and seems vulnerable, emotionally open and alone. What a contrast! (The playful, ironic humor of a mime frees our imaginations from the the control of manipulative fads, the control of the hip scene.)
Perhaps then this most hip and modern film actually debunks the faddish seduction of hip modernness, and is in fact about the oldest subject of art of them all, about a human being going through a process that tears down his grandiosity so that he is open to life in a new way. Traditionally this is called "being saved."
p.s. Like you I found the sound of the wind in the trees shattering, wonderful! Antonioni clearly signals how important this sound is because we hear it at one point when Thomas is looking at blown up photos of the park. The disconcerting power of that sound, it's inexhaustible, openended fecundity, reminded me of the magic of the Forest Sauvage of the Arthurian legend. Perhaps in human terms the wonder of life available to the creative human heart?
Thank you for your attention.
Chris Diver
I thought the Hemmings character was *ALWAYS* self absorbed, self-centered, not very likeable and a user of people. I don't think he ever stepped out of himself. Seeing the body - the alleged murder - piqued his curiosity because like any good photographer, I suppose, he studies his photographs and wants to know exactly what's in the shot. If he was less self absorbed and thought of something or someone other than himself, then he would have gone to the cops.
I saw this movie in the mid 1970's, thereabouts, and there's one word that comes to my mind regarding Vanessa Regrave in this movie: *Incandescent* .
Lll
Guy on the left: "I don't think it's questioning the nature of reality". Antonioni, interviewed during the making of Blow-Up: "I'm really questioning the nature of reality". Such a bad talk.
i think that statement doesnt exclude the validity of the following idea made by the guy on the left when he says that the film is more about one's, specifically photographers, perception of reality
Antonionni, siempre tuvo la pregunta, sobre la realidad! De hecho pintó el auto, intervino varias veces la película!
Esta película hay que saber un poco, de Antonionni, Cortázar, y Larraín. Ellos era amigos. De hecho en ese tiempo Cortázar y Larraín vivían en Paris! Todos intelectuales de alto vuelo. Es muy interesante la película, además porque Antonionni la sitúa con una realidad social! A mi me gustó mucho. Pero la he visto varias veces!
book-marked for later . . i love this movie
I don't agree that this film was not a philosophical movie.
To me...the film is about reality un-reality. Did that happen? What are the mimes fore? It's pure cinema.
A great film! Always loved it and Always Got It. No one has to tell me about certain artworks that I believe I intuitively Understand and I find my self Fortunate in that way. I love that certain films this among them one can see over and over again and their mysterious power never fades. Polanski has that and Herzog, Haneke, Fellini, and many more but not that many.
I couldn't agree more. I share the exact same sentiment. Especially the part where you can see them again and again and they still carry the same power as you mentioned. That's what makes Antonioni so special. And presumably that's what he's going for, and all the great filmmakers are, and the specifics of a certain genre, or little fictional story or scenario it's centered around are almost immaterial, or at least distinctly secondary. It's the movie itself, and the power of the viewing experience that he has created that is everything, and the details and characterizations are simply a given means to that more transcendent end. And talking about it too much tends to diminish it's power....
I think that the mime are symbolic of Hemings own mime in which he creates the murder in his imagination, giving the photos meaning, as is paralleled by his painter friend who says something along the lines of this- that his works don’t make sense until later and even compared this to investigating a murder like a detective scene.
Does anybody think that the murder never happened? Hemmings drums it up as real to fill the deficiencies in his life. His emptiness, and boredom. Just like the mimes dream up the tennis balls because, well, they need the balls to play. So some sort of Wellesian "masking" could be at play - masking (faking the audience) in the movie is more interesting than humdrum reality. It really didnt happen, but we are seeing the body (and gun, if you'll accept that), as if we are seeing thru Hemmings' eyes. But it never really happened. The other slant, more towards the commonly accepted interpretations, is that what is real is what is accepted as real. With the mimes they all accept the tennis balls as being real, so they are. Hemmings grabs one and throws it back. We can all hear the balls. So they are real to everyone because they are accepted by everyone. But no one accepts that the murder happened. And since no one accepts it (except Hemmings'), it didnt happen and is not real. In the end, he accepts that it didnt happen as well because no one will believe it. Therefore, without acceptance, the murder never happened. To me, the first I mention is more aesthetically pleasing to me. The murder (and gun) never really happened, and Hemmings is imposing his reality on us. Thus, the really fake looking body under the bush is really not there, just a "mask" to show us want Hemmings wants to believe.
I agrre - it's his master piece
I agree that it doesn't question the nature of reality, but through the use of the mimes at the beginning and end, it questions the nature of one's acceptance of reality. The mimes are in a permanent state of unreality. Hemming's character has an uncomfortable reality thrust upon him with the discovery of the murder. In the end, it's all too much for him and he decides to let it go, metaphorically disappearing (when he literally disappears). It's an issue that all people face at all times. Today, maybe it's people's worries of climate change, or black lives matter, or UK grooming gangs, or London knife crimes, or cancel culture, and on and on and on. Much easier to check out and not believe your lyin' eyes than possibly ruin your comfortable lifestyle to try to address problems.
In addition to the thoughts expressed here that I agree with, I believe Thomas is part of a world that doesn't sit still, where 'yesterday's news' is felt, hence the lack of care of how he treats people as he has no intention of forming long term relationships (his own marriage is on a shoe string).
The removal of the dead body, which makes the victim yesterday's news is too unjust and immoral for Thomas. His wife asks who he was and he replies that he was 'someone' - acknowledging he was a human with friends, colleagues, family, and has disappeared without remembrance or ceremony.
By the end of the movie, we see Thomas has crossed a precipice where he cannot return to the shallow photography and lifestyle he occupied. I like to think he would have stayed a photographer, but focused his energies on preservation (portrait work etc). His involvement in the world has been impersonal from behind the camera, and now the mime's make him a participant in play, and there is a powerful non-verbal communication and acceptance there.
Is it just me or was the earlier photo shoot scene an inspiration for Austin Powers lol? Also, I remembered in the movie 'The Conversation', the literal conversation takes place in a park, and features a mime :)
3 Questions....
1, Ur the 1zt doc on this flik mentioning Hancock by the way and WUT further comments on his work AND the minimal role heard therein?
2, The bedroom 🛏️ True SEX shot... Whuh? happens...Where? was it GOING... WHY'S It there?!? How No Continuity 2 the whole???
Three, the Nigerians who were run out of the street? Related to what....
Made it REEL comparatively 2 daze & thymes etc....
Oopz, there's mention (?) of that sex scene only on the Herbie Hancock SOUNDTRACK titled "The Bed" 🛏️ that is ALL 2 be found
Oopz, there's mention (?) of that sex scene on the SOUNDTRACK titled "The Bed", that ALL I found.
So disappointed at the question and answer has a mistake that is frequently made. Unmiked audience members with hosts who don't repeat the question.
Hemming said he did not know what " Blow Up" portrayed
Suicided like his father before him............."Blow Up"
Esta basada en un cuento de Cortázar, este cuento lo escribió Cortázar ya que una vez conversando el fotógrafo chileno Sergio Larrain, Larrain le contó que había tomado unas fotos y se veía una sombra, unas personas haciendo el amor!
Correct, the title of Julio Cortázar's short story is "Las babas del diablo". I do strongly recommend it to interested readers.
One question I've always wanted to know is why this film wasn't made in widescreen?
Love that film.
If it weren't for these deep and thoughtful dissections of the film, I'd think it were strange, slightly masogenistic, unnecessarily sexual, and dull. But, I respect it after hearing these breakdown discussions on the plot, script, and the cinematography.
I only watched it to see Jeff Beck and Jimmy Page playing in the Yardbirds, in the club scene.
Can't hear the questions.
The frequent and main interpretation of the film is that in effect it is about the blurring of differences between reality and unreality, in this case provoked by the technology of photo development and enlargement, and how it eventually makes the protagonist question and even his hold on reality... or sanity, even. But it also makes a potent statement about the human condition: to never be satisfied, to always wish for something else after obtaining what one wants...
It's obvious that a real (an event = a body = death = maybe the truth) is available to the photographer either through medium (the photography once the editing is done = analysis = blow up) or as a consequence of a fictional procedure (the sound of a tennis ball once he decides to play "the game"). Maybe that's why he disappears from the shot (= an image) at the end.
I would argue that this isn't so much the case as it is that the film argues that the value of things is as dependent on perception as reality is. For instance, when Thomas discards the broken guitar arm, it's lost its value not only to him, but also to the people around him. This suggests not that it's lost its luster because it was acquired, but that its only value in the first place was created by a context not shared by the people on the sidewalk - i.e, awareness that it was used by Jeff Beck.
0:45 '66 ('67) so glam, it's absurd
Blow up is a sort of "dolce vita" transposed in London
Both movies directed by Italians, except Fellini was a better director than Antonioni, and Mastroianni was a far superior actor than Hemmings. Vanessa Redgrave was in a class by herself.
No it isn't. Not even a little bit.
@@jamesanthony5681 Spot on.
Not remotely. La Dolce Vita, is exactly what it says in the title. It's about Marcello's search for the sweet life or the meaning of life. Blow up, like many of Antonioni's movies, is about the nature of reality and perception.
min 17:50 I think its about the JFK assassination.
I wonder why Michello Antonioni chose. Discovered the park.
?
Its a layed back psychedelic snapshot of 1966 London, full stop. Stop trying to make sense of it just enjoy it
Sheesh
totally agree. And this is just one TH-cam video of analysts scouring every fricking frame for some ultra deep meaning.
so the #metoo movement is also after antonioni? Jesus, gives us a break. What’s next? Henry VIII?
I thought it was a murder mystery !
Both these moderators are disappointing, IMO. --At the beginning, the guy twice says the ending is "weird", as if that's some sort of agreed upon interpretation, which is utter BS. The ending is great. The film is about what is real and what isn't, --what the photographs mean and what they may not. At the end, the main character himself, disappears into unreality. One of the all time great endings to a film. --Also, the woman says that in the 1974 interview, Hemmings didn't like the film when he saw it. He did say that, but then said that after a second viewing he understood it and liked it. She conveniently manages to leave that fact out. Not to mention the guy practically blinds himself at the beginning with the laser pointer. Any other moderator (such as the guy with the glasses in the front row) would have been a better choice.
Maryon park is a very odd place.
Lively audience...
I remember watching this movie, and actually thought is was rather intriguing, until the point where the guy goes into a shop and buys a propeller. Then I turned it off, and I never saw the rest of it. It was just too stupid.
flakiest movie ever made. ridiculously overrated
Antonioni's ending is absurdist. That's how it lost its sheen.
The retro is in the old London and the actors of the time.
I thought the scene at the end was very good, if not perfect.
@@jamesanthony5681 For movie making, I agree with you. It concluded the story within its context. It just had an absurdist or nihilistic subtext. Nihilism has no appeal to me.
However one views that, it is still a classic film.
@@davegibbs6423 Nihilism has little or no appeal to me as well, but the Hemming's character had a distaste and boredom for *certain* aspects of his job: the vapid, shallowness of glamor and beauty. He wanted a million bucks to do what he probably preferred, and that may have been to photograph the poor and the homeless, to make a difference with his art.
@@jamesanthony5681 That is probably true of the character. I am thinking of Antonioni's view in what he portrays in his films. It depends on style.
min 17:50 Is this movie about the JFK assassination? Didn't Antonioni actually visit the Kennedy White House in '61?
The thing which strikes me most on seeing it again recently, is what a completely unlikeable bastard the photographer is. And what an empty and sordid experience the so-called 'swingin' sixties' must have been, particularly for young women in the fashion industry. Nothing cool and groovy about it whatsoever. Antonioni captures that very well, though I suspect it says more about a middle-aged Italian film maker's snobbish contempt for Pop culture and Rock music than it does about anything of broader social significance.
No, you’re quite correct. The theme of ennui and the facileness of the so-called youth revolution was not a snobbish reaction, but rather a further reflection of the critique of post war affluence seen in the earlier Antonioni films starting with L’Avventura. It is a common preoccupation with Fellini as well, in La Dolce Vita. The benefit of middle-aged hindsight may have seemed condescending to the youth movement who were invested in the scene represented in Blow Up, but by the 70s it was clear that confusing personal indulgence with “freedom” or artistic creativity was a razor edge. Common contemporary reactions to the film were focused on disappointment that it didn’t capture the “spirit of the swinging sixties” or was too dour in tone. But it is a beautiful essay on the somewhat grubby and cold carcass beneath the glad rags of the fashion, artistic and youth culture of London. That’s why Antonioni wanted the Yardbirds or someone like them; you can see them as precursors of the “new” rock music growing out of Pop, or you can see them as a pastiche of R’n’B and blues music. They are probably both (and one of my particular favourites). While Fellini progressed into a kind of personal, slightly surrealistic response to what film was becoming and how it could represent a subject, Antonioni seems to have maintained a more distanced perspective on subjects that consistently question how perceptions of reality are distorting filters, but not of something that already “exists”. The filter is the creation of an uncomfortable reality that defies nostalgia. Blow Up has the character of a documentary photograph (in the photographic style of the time) of that moment, but unlike a sepia photograph of Victorian London it doesn’t submit to softening and romanticism. In this sense it is on a continuum with Red Desert and the final montage of L’Eclisse, and not some “departure”. In my opinion it is a mistake to assume that Antonioni was interested in Pop Culture in the late 60s films because that culture was “happening, Man”. He just sees the same human struggle to come to terms with the lack of meaning in social mores (hippie freedoms or The Man, Bourgeoise lifestyle or personal intimacy) as he did in his Italian films. The irony is perhaps that Blow Up is close to what London was like from a number of contemporary perspectives, just not the historical trope that has been constructed from selective memories. In fact, the Hemings character is faced with a momentary reveal of that very process as he comes to both trust, mistrust, and be betrayed by the thing he controls his world with; his camera. Notice he finally abandons it as a means of understanding events at the very end, when he chooses instead to observe, but then interact directly with the “fiction” of the tennis mime. And then Antonioni casts the film viewer in the same role behind the lens of the film when he has the character disappear.
@The MacSo Agreed! I like his character very much. He' desperately seeking for truth and going beneath the appearances of things. It's very interesting because the film can be interpreted many ways as are the characters. I think there are people commenting on here that simply don't have any sense of poetry if you will.
unlikeable bastard. ok sure. But he is one hell of a protagonist in the film. I love that mod period in London. So much good music and fashion. Antonioni is showing us the hard shell of the guy (who wants to break out by do photos in the doss house, rather than of vacant models) being cracked, and introspection setting in, but what he thinks he saw. Hemmings is very charismatic, and great to follow on his little journey. Another film set in the era is the one about playwright Joe Orton. I think made in around 1987 Prick Up Your Ears. It is a good one with Gary Oldham and Alfred Molina.
Blabla boring !
Do not talk on grainy films.
Who is the guy in the bushes holding the gun?
A mime
Ml5