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Blowup, or Blow-Up, is a 1966 British-Italian 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.
The American release of the counterculture-era[6] 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.[7] In 2012, Blowup was ranked No. 144 in the Sight & Sound critics' poll of the world's greatest films.
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, the woman 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 the body of a man, 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 the woman and follows her into a club where The Yardbirds, featuring both Jimmy Page and Jeff Beck on guitar and Keith Relfon 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 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.
| Blowup | |
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| Directed by | Michelangelo Antonioni |
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| Screenplay by |
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| Story by | Michelangelo Antonioni |
| Based on | "Las babas del diablo" by Julio Cortázar |
| Starring | |
| Music by | Herbert Hancock |
| Cinematography | Carlo Di Palma |
| Edited by | Frank Clarke |
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Running time
| 111 minutes |
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| Language | English |
| Budget | $1.8 million[1] |
| Box office | $20,000,000[1] |
