Blowup

This article is about the British-Italian film. For other uses, see Blow up (disambiguation).
Blowup

theatrical release poster
Directed by Michelangelo Antonioni
Produced by
Screenplay by
Story by Michelangelo Antonioni
Based on "Las babas del diablo" 
by Julio Cortázar
Starring
Music by Herbie Hancock (credited as Herbert Hancock)
Cinematography Carlo Di Palma
Edited by Frank Clarke
Production
company
Distributed by
Release dates
  • 18 December 1966 (1966-12-18) (US)
  • 29 August 1967 (1967-08-29) (UK)
Running time
 111 minutes
Country
  • United Kingdom
    Italy
Language English
Budget $1.8 million[1]
Box office $20,000,000[1]

Blowup, or Blow-Up, is a British-Italian 1966 film directed by Michelangelo Antonioni about a fashion photographer, played by David Hemmings, who believes he has unwittingly captured a murder on film. It was Antonioni's first entirely English-language film.[2]

The film also stars Vanessa Redgrave, Sarah Miles, John Castle, Jane Birkin, Tsai Chin and Gillian Hills as well as sixties model Veruschka. The screenplay was by Antonioni and Tonino Guerra, with English dialogue by British playwright Edward Bond. The film was produced by Carlo Ponti, who had contracted Antonioni to make three English-language films for Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (the others were Zabriskie Point and The Passenger).

The plot was inspired by Julio Cortázar's short story, "Las babas del diablo" or "The Devil's Drool" (1959),[3] translated also as "Blow Up" in Blow-up and Other Stories, and by the life of Swinging London photographer David Bailey.[4] The film was scored by jazz pianist Herbie Hancock. The music is diegetic, as Hancock noted: "It's only there when someone turns on the radio or puts on a record."[5] Nominated for several awards at the Cannes Film Festival, Blowup won the Grand Prix. It was also ranked No. 144 in the Sight & Sound magazine greatest films poll.[6]

The American release of the counterculture-era[7] film with its explicit sexual content (by contemporary standards) by a major Hollywood studio was in direct defiance of the Production Code. Its subsequent outstanding critical and box office success proved to be one of the final events that led to the final abandonment of the code in 1968 in favour of the MPAA film rating system.[8]

Plot

The plot is a day in the life of a glamorous fashion photographer, Thomas (Hemmings), inspired by the life of an actual "Swinging London" photographer, David Bailey.[9] After spending the night at a doss house where he has taken pictures for a book of art photos, Thomas is late for a photo shoot with Veruschka at his studio, which in turn makes him late for a shoot with other models later in the morning. He grows bored and walks off, leaving the models and production staff in the lurch. As he leaves the studio, two teenage girls who are aspiring models (Birkin and Hills) ask to speak with him, but the photographer drives off to look at an antiques shop. Wandering into Maryon Park, he takes photos of two lovers. The woman (Redgrave) is furious at being photographed. The photographer then meets his agent for lunch, and notices a man following him and looking into his car. Back at his studio, Redgrave arrives asking for the film, but he deliberately hands her a different roll. She in turn writes down a false telephone number to give to him. His many enlargements of the black and white film are grainy but seem to show a dead body in the grass and a killer lurking in the trees with a gun. He is disturbed by a knock on the door, but it is the two girls again, with whom he has a romp in his studio and falls asleep. Awakening, he finds they hope he will photograph them but he tells them to leave, saying, "Tomorrow! Tomorrow!"

As evening falls, the photographer goes back to the park and finds a body, but he has not brought his camera and is scared off by a twig breaking, as if being stepped on. The photographer returns to his studio to find that all the negatives and prints are gone except for one very grainy blowup showing the body. After driving into town, he sees Redgrave and follows her into a club where The Yardbirds, featuring both Jimmy Page and Jeff Beck on guitar and Keith Relf on vocals, are seen performing the song "Stroll On." A buzz in Beck's amplifier angers him so much he smashes his guitar on stage, then throws its neck into the crowd, the photographer makes a grab for it as a souvenir. The photographer grabs the neck and runs out of the club before anyone can snatch it from him. Then he has second thoughts about it, throws it on the pavement and walks away. A passer-by picks up the neck and throws it back down, not realizing it's from Jeff Beck's guitar.[10]

At a drug-drenched party in a house on the Thames near central London, the photographer finds both Veruschka, who had told him that she was going to Paris – when confronted, she says she is in Paris – and his agent (Peter Bowles), whom he wants to bring to the park as a witness. However, the photographer cannot put across what he has photographed. Waking up in the house at sunrise, he goes back to the park alone and finds that the body is gone.

Befuddled, he watches a mimed tennis match, is drawn into it, picks up the imaginary ball and throws it back to the two players. While he watches the mime, the sound of the ball being played is heard. As the photographer watches this mimed match alone on the lawn, his image fades away, leaving only the grass as the film ends.

Cast
  • Veruschka von Lehndorff as herself
  • Julian Chagrin as Mime
  • Claude Chagrin as Mime
  • Tsai Chin as Thomas's receptionist (uncredited)
  • Susan Brodrick as Antique shop owner (uncredited)
  • Harry Hutchinson as Shopkeeper (uncredited)
  • Ronan O'Casey as Jane's lover in park (uncredited)

Noted cameos

Several people known in 1966 are in the film; others became famous later. The most widely noted cameo was by The Yardbirds, who perform "Stroll On" in the last third. Antonioni first asked Eric Burdon to play that scene but he turned it down. As Keith Relf sings, Jimmy Page and Jeff Beck play to either side, along with Chris Dreja. After his guitar amplifier fails, Beck bashes his guitar to bits, as The Who did at the time. Antonioni had wanted The Who in Blowup as he was fascinated by Pete Townshend's guitar-smashing routine.[11] Steve Howe of The in Crowd recalled, "We went on the set and started preparing for that guitar-smashing scene in the club. They even went as far as making up a bunch of Gibson 175 replicas ... and then we got dropped for The Yardbirds, who were a bigger name. That's why you see Jeff Beck smashing my guitar rather than his!"[12] Antonioni also considered using The Velvet Underground (signed at the time to a division of MGM Records) in the nightclub scene, but, according to guitarist Sterling Morrison, "the expense of bringing the whole entourage to England proved too much for him".[13]

Janet Street-Porter can be seen dancing in a silver coat and stripy Carnaby Street trousers during the scene inside the nightclub.[14]

Place of murder – Maryon Park, London

Filming locations

The opening mimes were filmed on the Plaza of The Economist Building in St. James's Street, London,[15] a project by 'New Brutalists' Alison and Peter Smithson constructed between 1959–64. The scene in which men leave The Spike was shot on Consort Road, Peckham.[16] The park scenes were at Maryon Park, Charlton, south-east London, and the park is little changed since the film.[17] The street with maroon shopfronts is Stockwell Road[16] and the shops belonged to motorcycle dealer Pride & Clarke. The scene in which the photographer sees the mysterious woman from his car and follows her was in Regent Street, London. He stops at Heddon Street[18] where the album cover of David Bowie's Ziggy Stardust was later photographed.[19] Outside shots of the photographer's studio were at 77 Pottery Lane, W11, and 39 Princes Place, W11. Photographer Jon Cowan leased his studio at 39 Princes Place to Antonioni for much of the interior and exterior filming, and Cowan's own photographic murals are featured in the film.[20][21] The exterior for the party scene towards the end of the film was shot outside 100 Cheyne Walk, in Chelsea. The interior, which is believed to be the same address, was shot in the apartment of London antiques dealer Christopher Gibbs.[22] The restaurant on the corner where Hemmings stops is on Blacklands Terrace, Chelsea SW3, there is still a restaurant there but no longer the one used in the film.

Reception

Box office

The film was distributed in North America by MGM shell company Premier Pictures. Writing about Antonioni for Time in 2007, the film writer Richard Corliss states that the film grossed "$20 million (about $120 million today) on a $1.8 million budget and helped liberate Hollywood from its puritanical prurience".[1]

According to Variety, the movie earned $5,900,000 in North American rentals in 1967.[23]

Critical reception

Film critic Andrew Sarris said the movie was "a mod masterpiece". In Playboy magazine, film critic Arthur Knight wrote that Blowup would be "as important and germinal a film as Citizen Kane, Open City and Hiroshima, Mon Amour – perhaps even more so".[24]

Time magazine called the film a "far-out, uptight and vibrantly exciting picture" that represented a "screeching change of creative direction" for Antonioni; the magazine predicted it would "undoubtedly be by far the most popular movie Antonioni has ever made".[25]

Bosley Crowther, film critic of The New York Times, called it a "fascinating picture, which has something real to say about the matter of personal involvement and emotional commitment in a jazzed-up, media-hooked-in world so cluttered with synthetic stimulations that natural feelings are overwhelmed".[26] Crowther had reservations, describing the "usual Antonioni passages of seemingly endless wanderings" as "redundant and long"; nevertheless, he called Blowup a "stunning picture – beautifully built up with glowing images and color compositions that get us into the feelings of our man and into the characteristics of the mod world in which he dwells". Even film director Ingmar Bergman, who generally disliked Antonioni, acknowledged its significance: "He's done two masterpieces, you don't have to bother with the rest. One is Blow-Up, which I've seen many times, and the other is La Notte, also a wonderful film, although that's mostly because of the young Jeanne Moreau."[27] Of the film's ending, Roger Ebert wrote in The Great Movies: "What remains is a hypnotic conjuring act, in which a character is awakened briefly from a deep sleep of bored alienation and then drifts away again. This is the arc of the film. Not 'Swinging London.' Not existential mystery. Not the parallels between what Hemmings does with his photos and what Antonioni does with Hemmings. But simply the observations that we are happy when we are doing what we do well, and unhappy seeking pleasure elsewhere. I imagine Antonioni was happy when he was making this film."[28]

Ebert also published a letter by actor Ronan O'Casey which claimed that the film's mysterious nature is the product of an "unfinished" production, and that scenes which would have "depict[ed] the planning of the murder and its aftermath -- scenes with Vanessa, Sarah Miles and Jeremy Glover, Vanessa's new young lover who plots with her to murder me -- were never shot because the film went seriously over budget."[29]

MGM did not gain approval for the film under the MPAA Production Code in the United States.[26] The film was condemned by the National Legion of Decency. The code's collapse and revision was foreshadowed when MGM released the film through a subsidiary distributor and Blowup was shown widely in North American cinemas.[8]

Awards and honours

Academy Awards

BAFTA Awards

Cannes Film Festival

Golden Globe Awards

In popular culture

Films

Music

Television

See also

References

Notes

  1. 1 2 3 Corliss, Richard (5 August 2007). "When Antonioni Blew Up the Movies". Time. Retrieved 21 February 2011.
  2. ↑ One of the three stories comprising I Vinti was set in London and shot with wholly English dialogue.
  3. ↑ Beltzer, Thomas (15 April 2005). "La Mano Negra: Julio Cortázar and His Influence on Cinema". Senses of Cinema. Retrieved 21 February 2011.
  4. ↑ Brigitte Tast, Hans-Jürgen Tast: light room - dark room. Antonionis "Blow-Up" und der Traumjob Fotograf, Kulleraugen Vis.Komm. Nr. 44, Schellerten 2014, ISBN 978-3-88842-044-3
  5. ↑ Goldberg, Joe. "Catching Action," Billboard, May 1, 1999.
  6. ↑ http://explore.bfi.org.uk/sightandsoundpolls/2012/critics/
  7. ↑ Walter Ryce (2013-11-27). "Ethan Russell’s seminal ’60s rock photos dazzle at Winfield Gallery in Carmel". montereycountyweekly.com. Retrieved 2014-04-29.
  8. 1 2 vbcsc03l@vax.csun.edu (snopes) (25 May 1993). "Re: The MPAA". The Skeptic Tank. The Skeptic Tank. Retrieved 1 August 2012.
  9. ↑ PDN Legends Online: David Bailey. Retrieved 28 July 2012.
  10. ↑ "Yardbirds 1966 Blow Up," YouTube
  11. ↑ Platt, John; Dreja, Chris; McCarty, Jim (1983). Yardbirds. Sidgwick and Jackson (London). ISBN 978-0-283-98982-7.
  12. ↑ Frame, Pete (1993). The Complete Rock Family Trees. Omnibus Press (London; New York City). p. 55. ISBN 978-0-711-90465-1.
  13. ↑ Bockris, Victor and Malanga, Gerard (1983). Uptight – The Velvet Underground Story. Quill (New York). p. 67. ISBN 978-0-688-03906-6.
  14. ↑ Hemmings, David. Blow-up and other exaggerations. p. 23.
  15. ↑ Simon R.H. James (2007). London Film Location Guide. Batsford (London). p. 87. ISBN 978-0-713-49062-6.
  16. 1 2 James (2007) p. 169.
  17. ↑ James (2007) p. 181.
  18. ↑ James (2007) p. 38.
  19. ↑ "Heddon Street, London" The Ziggy Stardust Companion. Retrieved 25 December 2009.
  20. ↑ Staff writer (10 September 2006). "On the Trail of the Swinging Sixties – 'Blow-Up', Antonioni's Cult Film, Hit Our Screens 40 Years Ago. Robert Nurden Goes in Search of the Places Used for Filming, from Notting Hill to a Neglected Park in a Little-Known Corner of South-East London". The Independent. Retrieved 21 February 2011.
  21. ↑ Blow-up: John Hooton's Photography Blog. Retrieved 3 April 2011.
  22. ↑ The Telegraph, "Magical Memory Tour of London" by Rory Maclean. Retrieved 3 April 2011.
  23. ↑ "Big Rental Films of 1967", Variety, 3 January 1968 p 25. Please note these figures refer to rentals accruing to the distributors.
  24. ↑ "Antonioni's Blowup Defines Cool". filminfocus.com. 18 December 2008. Retrieved 25 December 2009.
  25. ↑ Staff writer (30 December 1966). "Cinema: The Things Which Are Not Seen". Time. Retrieved 21 February 2011.
  26. 1 2 Crowther, Bosley (19 December 1966). "Blow-Up". The New York Times. Retrieved 21 February 2011.
  27. ↑ Interview published in Sydsvenska Dagbladet. "Bergman on Film Directors" at zakka.dk. Retrieved 25 December 2009.
  28. ↑ Ebert, Roger (2002). The Great Movies. Broadway Books. p. 78. ISBN 0-7679-1038-9.
  29. ↑ "Antonioni's Corpse from "Blow-Up" speaks!". rogerebert.com. 10 February 1999. Retrieved 8 April 2015.
  30. ↑ "Festival de Cannes: Blowup". festival-cannes.com. Retrieved 8 March 2009.
  31. ↑ Staff writer (19 May 1967). "People: May 19, 1967". Time. Retrieved 21 February 2011.
  32. ↑ Kael, Pauline (1984). "Portrait of the Artist as a Young Gadgeteer". Taking It All In. Holt, Rinehart and Winston. p. 227. ISBN 0-03-069361-6. Blow Out is a variation on Antonioni's Blow-Up
  33. ↑ Sudip, Geetika (7 December 2007). "Of Naseeruddin Shah and Michelangelo Antonioni …". The Hindu. Retrieved 21 February 2011.

Bibliography

External links

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