Blow Up

Mary Kate Gowl

Prof. Hammond

Visual Literacy

2/20/10

Blow Up Analysis

In 1966 Michelangelo Antonioni directed a controversial art film consisting of fashion photography, orgies, pot, and groupies. Blow Up is the highest-grossing art film to date, was picked as the best film of 1967 by the National Society of Film Critics, and got Oscar nominations for screenplay and direction. Today, you rarely hear it mentioned.

In the beginning of the movie you are introduced to Thomas, a good-looking young photographer with a Beatles haircut, a convertible and "birds" beating on his studio door for a chance to pose and put out for him. My first impression of him was very sleazy. I think that his weight played a major role in this because it gave the impression that he was a skinny, perverted photographer that was only after sex and money. After getting to know his character, my thoughts about his personality remained the same but I was more intrigued. He is very artistic and knows what he wants and I find that very interesting and became more involved in his life.

The second main character you meet is Jane. She is frolicking in the park that Thomas wandered into to take photographs. Thomas finds her and her companion very appealing and takes pictures of them from a distance. When Jane finds out she is enraged, but why? Is it because she is married? Is her companion married? Even after her attempts to make him stop he refuses.

Jane: What are you doing? Stop it! Stop it! Give me those pictures. You can't photograph people like that.

Thomas: Who says I can't? I'm only doing my job. Some people are bullfighters, some people are politicians. I'm a photographer.

This is when the movie becomes interesting. It pulls the audience in and starts the journey to the climax of the film.

Following his run in with Jane at the park she proceeds to follow him to his apartment where she begs for the roll of film and even strips for him. Since Thomas is an artist, and very sleazy, he misleads her into taking another roll instead. After Jane leaves he develops the film and makes a shocking discovery. He sees, or thinks he sees, a man in the bushes with a gun and it is pointing at Jane’s companion. He also sees, or thinks he sees, a body lying in the grass. Even though I watched this movie on my free time and paused and zoomed in on the picture he was probing and can’t see the gunman or the dead body. The bushes where this suspected gunman is hiding are too pixilated to see anything important. Which brings me to the understanding that he is seeing what he wants to see.

After he sees the pictures, and of course has an orgy with two young models, he goes back to the park where he shot the photos of Jane, her companion, and the possible gunman. He finds a body, but has not brought his camera and is scared off by the sound of a twig breaking. When he returns in the morning, the body has disappeared and Jane is nowhere to be found.

Whether or not there was a murder isn't the point. This film is ultimately about a character caught up in boredom with an over active sex drive, but his photographs are the only thing that truly excite him. As Thomas moves between his darkroom and the blowups of the park, we recognize the happiness of an artist lost in what behaviorists call the Process; he is not thinking about money, ambition or his own nasty personality defects, but he is lost in his work, he is lost in his blowups. His mind, hands and imagination work in rhythmic sync. He is happy with what he is doing.

All in all, as with anything that we love it all disappears. The photos, the body, Jane, and ultimately Thomas all disappear. Antonioni has described the disappearance of his hero as his "signature." It reminds him of Shakespeare's Prospero, whose actors "were all spirits, and are melted into air." This film daringly involves us in a plot that promises the solution to a mystery, and leaves us lacking even its players. Something that many movies this day can rarely do without major criticism.

“A picture is worth a thousand words.”