Blow Up | Vanessa Redgrave, Sarah Miles | Stunning piece of film-making let down by some dated...

Blow Up | Vanessa Redgrave, Sarah Miles | Stylish Antonioni

DVDs:

Blow Up

	Blow Up Vanessa Redgrave, Sarah Miles Warner Home Video, 2004 average customer review:based on 153 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

Taking photographs of a couple making love proves deadly when the photographer enlarges the image and discovers murder. The film and pictures are stolen from his studio and the body vanishes. In this elegant balance of deciet and trickery the photographer must question the reality of what he has actually seen.Running Time: 111 min.Format: DVD MOVIE Genre: DRAMA UPC: 012569513525

Stunning piece of film-making let down by some dated elements

There is little doubt that "Blow-Up" is a stunning piece of film-making. There is very little dialog in the film, and when people do talk to each-other there is mis-communication. No, Antonioni uses imagery and non-verbal sounds to convey meaning in this film. Combined with a strange, disconnected - seemingly pointless plot - Antonioni creates the feeling of a dream.

David Hemmings is excellent in the lead role of a detached, selfish, impulsive photographer in swinging sixties London - although his character is unappealing to say the least. Unfortunately the film has some dated elements including blatant misogynism, which drag it down one star.

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Stylish Antonioni

I couldn't find a Meaningful Title for this review but I don't think Antonioni would mind. I loved his Italian trilogy in black and white (La Notte, L'Aventurra and L'Eclisse ) (excuse probable faulty spelling)and stood in line to see Blow Up when it hit New York in the 60's. Wow...Antonioni in English and in color! I loved it but I hadn't a clue about what it meant. To me it was surface, color, style and glamour. I was young and arty and impressionable.

Now I'm seeing it again and, of course, the stuff that made it so cool back then--sex, drugs and rock and roll--are funny and quaint. But the film is still so good. I still don't worry my head about what it means--like a Matisse--I personally just enjoy it. I take it in and it feels good and it affects me. Later, I may have some insight about its meaning. It is so good that it has to have something besides surface beauty.

Antonioni had his finger on the happening scene at the time. It was a time of huge cultural change and one can read lots of books about what that meant. He just went there and shot this. It's a snap shot, maybe, of a moment in time--a very nice snap shot. People can look at it, at their leisure, maybe and figure out what it means to them.

I think A. is an artist who escapes being overly arty. Yes, the mimes were annoying but that's because we've seen them copied over and over since then--at the time they were fresh and had some sort of meaning--oops--there's that word again--meaning.

I didn't like it as much as the 3 Italian black and whites but I think I liked it better than Zabriskie Point. Maybe he knew his own culture best.

I do remember that, after this film hit, you couldn't walk around New York without some young guy photographing you. I remember falling asleep on the grass in Central Park, only to wake up, finding a guy's lens right about six inches from my face. The David Hemmings character who was supposed to be shallow bred a whole generation of wannabe sexy guy photographers.

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Yea I "get it", but it's still a bore,....

all the existentialist clichés about context, juxtaposition, ambiguity, one man adrift in the world defining his reality by what he sees through the lens. If most found a body in the park they would call the police and/or see if his wallet was still on him. But our anti-hero decides he needs to take a picture to prove to himself it is really there, only by the time he finally gets back to the park it is gone, so reality remains an open question, lost in a pantomime game of tennis, and we are left to ponder if the ball really exist or not.

This movie was considered shocking & ground breaking 40 years ago and for a movie buff that reason alone makes it worth seeing, but don't come to it expecting more than a walk-thru of 60's culture and pop psychology.

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