Blow Up | David Hemmings, Vanessa Redgrave | I used to hate this film, but....

Blow Up | David Hemmings, Vanessa Redgrave | You Can't Photograph People Like That: The Controversial Art House Masterpiece

DVDs:

Blow Up

	Blow Up David Hemmings, Vanessa Redgrave Warner Home Video, 2004 average customer review:based on 157 reviews view larger image
	for more information click here

highly recommended

I used to hate this film, but....

I used to hate Antonioni. I took some film classes years ago, and all the "professors" were raving about Antonioni, and this film in particular. They talked about what everything means, the "symbolism", the deeper meanings. They were determined to take out all the joy of the film before I even saw it.

Now that I've been out of school, I've forgotten all the BS they spewed, and I like Antonioni's work. This is a great film, as great as its reputation suggests. Antonioni is one of a small number of filmmakers who immersed himself entirely in a different culture (in this case, Swinging London), and made a film worthy of it (some examples of this phenomenon are Kurosawa's Dersu Uzala, Kubrick's A Clockwork Orange, Tarkovsky's The Sacrifice, and recently, Eastwood's Letters from Iwo Jima). If you didn't know that Antonioni was Italian, you would have sworn the film was directed by an Englishman. It's a unique, fascinating piece of cinema. There isn't much dialogue, but most of it is pretty good. It has some great setpieces, including The Yardbirds' concert at the end, the tennis game, the walk in the park, the "wrestling" scene, and the "blow up" scene. At the end of the film, you're not sure what happened, but you know something did. It's really an exceptional, thought provoking film, one of the best films of the 1960's and one of the most successful art films ever made. Don't let film teachers ruin films for you.

for more information click here

You Can't Photograph People Like That: The Controversial Art House Masterpiece

Few directors are as divisive as Michelangelo Antonioni, best known as creator of the 1961 L'AVVENTURA and the 1966 BLOW UP, both of which present largely unresolved mysteries in order to make thematic statements. In the case of BLOW UP, which is easily Antonioni's best English-language film, the unresolved story is one of a possible murder captured by accident on film; the themes involved are those of reality, illusion, and the distractions that prevent us from seeing the difference between the two.

Thomas (David Hemmings) is an obnoxious, self-centered London photographer who alternates between fashion and art photography. In search of a tranquil subject to counterpoint an otherwise dark collection of photographs, he takes several photographs of a couple in an otherwise empty park---and is unconcerned when the woman (Vanessa Redgrave) pursues him to his to studio to demand the negatives. Thomas agrees to give them to her, but secretly switches rolls of film; later, when he develops the photographs, he is startled to find he may have photographed a murder.

The film is perhaps most memorable for its disturbing sense of irony. Near the beginning of the film Thomas is plagued by two would-be models; he escapes them by visiting an antique shop and then wanders into the nearby park. As the film progresses, he finds his meeting with the unwillingly-photographed woman interrupted by the delivery of a purchase he made at that antique shop; still later, and now aroused by the mysterious woman, he is once more visited by the would-be models and has sex with them---an incident that delays his inspection of the photographs and effectively derails him from receiving assistance from various friends who are now themselves distracted by sex and drugs. Each detail coils back upon itself in a series of frustrating interruptions, driving Thomas in directions that repeatedly delay any action he might take that could answer his questions, much less solve the riddle.

The greatest irony is that we are watching pictures of a photographer taking pictures, and indeed much of the film involves looking at pictures of pictures of pictures without any clear indication of whether or not anything we see is actually real---which is, of course, exactly the nature of the illusion a movie creates. That said, if you come to film expecting a murder mystery with a neatly explained solution, you are in for a rude shock: BLOW UP is not "about" plot; it is about how difficult it is to know anything factual from a medium that is intrinsically illusionary in the first place. Not only is the nature of film as a medium the movie's greatest irony, it is also probably it's ultimate statement.

BLOW UP really is a film that tends to jack people's jaws all over the place, partly because it defeats their expectations in terms of character and plot, but more specifically because it is so open-ended that you can pretty much impose any meaning upon it that you like. Was there a man with a gun---or was it just a trick of the light? Was there a murder---or was it something else? And if so, what? And what does it all mean at the end? But there are no fixed "meanings" in the film at all, and if you want a strong storyline with clear-cut ideas, well, you're out of luck here. So no, BLOW UP isn't a film for every one. It will most greatly appeal to people with a fondness for European cinema and art movies.

The DVD presently available is at best acceptable; it would be really nice to see this film given the royal treatement by a company such as Criterion. In any case, recommended to as a masterpiece of the "art house" kind.

GFT, Amazon Reviewer

for more information click here

mmm...

Well...I was under the impression of Zabrisky point. This movie is a bit slow...I didn't finish it...Maybe another day.

A Mod London Mystery

Blow-Up is a look at a London that may or may not have existed. It is rather slowly paced at first with a lot of emphasis in setting up a mood, the Mod mood, with a lot of seemingly irrelevant material. The cover photo on the sleeve is one example, showing the photographer in an action which has nothing to do with the main plot. When the movie gets down to the real story, things things pick up considerably.
In the end, the movie does create an atmosphere of mystery. The movie is better seen twice to get things in perspective.

for more information click here