Blow-Up

Danielle Salm
Prof. Hammond
Visual Literacy
February 22, 2010

Film Review of Blow Up

Blow-up takes place in the 1960’s and the main character, Thomas, is a photographer in swinger London. The movie starts off, with his everyday life of taking photographs of women in his studio. Throughout these first few scenes, he shows the audience his egotistical, materialistic and controlling tendencies. He frequently uses his male dominating characteristics to womanize the females taking part in his sessions. He is extremely controlling and mean to the woman and shows no respect. In frustration he tells them “close your eyes, stay like that, it’s good for you”. That comment can be interpreted in many different ways. First off it contributes to his lack of respect for them in saying your only good for beauty and sex so rest up because it is all they have to give in life. It also can be looked at in terms of keep your eyes shut because what you see can lead to problems that you could never foresee. The eye can take you many places when the brain tries to translate what one sees.
He then decides that he needs a change of scenery and travels over to the park. Upon entering, he takes a picture of the four pillar like trees that somewhat symbolize the pillars of a temple. He is entering the temple of an unknown world other than his own. He lives in a world where he is very sure of everything he does, says, and sees. In this world, what he sees is not always what is really there. There is a brief second where yellow flowers flashed on the screen while entering which symbolizes clarity, knowledge, and intelligence. This is done to show that something is about to unfold for him that he didn’t expect would happen. Thomas catches staged romance occurring in the park. He sees this as an ample opportunity to finish off his book of pictures that tells a story of chaos. The girl sees him taking the pictures and rushes over to get back the proof of what she has just done. He denies her the photos and leaves to go show his friend the pictures.
While showing his pictures at lunch, he spots someone that seems to have a particular eye out of him. He proceeds to try and follow this man. He loses his target because the man and woman are slyly pursuing him. The photographer arrives back at his home and is greeted by the woman from the park who continues to insist on the pictures to be put in her possession. The propeller arrives slowly after she throws herself at him desperately. He seems to have lost interest in the propeller, which seemed to have much more importance when he originally found it. He goes into the dark room and intentionally takes the wrong negatives and hands them over to the woman whom we now know as Jane. She leaves and he goes to develop the pictures to see what she was fussing about.
Once developed, the pictures are blown up and hung on a clothing line, compared side by side. While analyzing the pictures he sees something odd but out of focus behind the fence where she is looking. He then goes to re-develop that picture but more focused on the fence area. When that process is done, a faint visual of a hand holding a gun is seen. The story begins to unfold.
Girls show up at his house soon after repeatedly asking for him to take their pictures. They end up getting into a sexual play fight with Thomas’ purple paper hanging over the wall. Earlier he had the woman demanding for the pictures stand in front of this purple screen. She also had been wearing a purple shirt throughout the scenes. Purple in Thailand, the U.S and England has sometimes been portrayed as a color of mourning and can also be looked at as an unlucky color. This plays well into what is soon to be uncovered by the photographer. He proceeds to make the girls leave so he can evaluate the pictures further. A body is seen in the far background lying by a bush. That night, he goes to see if what he thinks he sees is in fact real. The body is there, cold and lifeless. He touches it and leaves, not knowing what he should do.
When he gets back home, his house has been ransacked. Thomas finds his neighbors girlfriend there who he obviously has some interest in. She came to see what was going on with him because he had stopped by her boyfriend’s house and left when he saw they were busy. He told her about seeing the body but that he didn’t really see it. She asks why he didn’t call the police and he dodges the question. He needs to figure it out on his own. He doesn’t know if this is real and needs to get to the bottom of it.
He sees the girl outside of a store called Permutit and as fast of a glimpse he saw of her, was how fast she vanished. It looks as if she disappeared out of thin air which plays even more into this imaginary world he is caught up in. He enters a club where everyone is standing zombie like listening to the band. When the broken guitar is thrown into the crowd, Thomas grabs it out of the crowd and is chased out of the building with it in hand by the rampaging audience. The guitar neck that he took symbolized something of value or worth because everyone wanted it. Once he was outside on the streets with people who weren’t at the show, the guitar neck lost its importance and he lost his attraction to it so dropped it on the floor. Someone picked it up but then put it back down because it was now merely trash. This to him symbolized his work and the confusion he had for the value of his work after he unraveled the secret behind the pictures.
He goes to his friend Ron’s where everyone is doing many drugs and socializing. The photographer tries to explain to his friend about the body but he is not taken seriously. Ron brings him to a room where he passes out and wakes up in the following morning. He looks out the window and sees the park where the murder took place. He walks down to the bush where he had been the night before and the body is gone. Now the question is, was it ever really there in the first place?
In his utter confusion he decides to take a walk. He finds school kids dressed like mimes driving around recklessly. The idea of a mime is to see something that isn’t actually there. They pass him a few times before stopping at a park. Two of the teenagers enter the tennis courts and engage in an imaginary game of tennis. He watches from the gate as they play. He sees this ball go back and forth, as the other kids watch in amusement. The imaginary ball is hit over the fence and they stare in anticipation for him to go get it. He walks over and picks up the ball and throws it over. He watches carefully to make sure that this ball got back over the fence. He now saw what was not really there. This scene ties up the theme of the movie very nicely. It portrayed the fact that through different interpretation the real world and the imaginary one can run very close together. He is stuck between the real world he lives in and the one within his photographs. One could get lost in trying to differentiate the two. It is all about how you look at things, what you focus on, and the meaning that slowly forms from those feelings.