blow up

Melissa Lebor

Com 232

2/24/10

Paper #3

Blow Up Movie Review

Blow up made in 1966, is a British Italian film directed by Michelangelo Antonioni. This movie tells the story of a photographer’s accidental and incidental involvement with a murder. This film was provoked by the 1959 short story “ Las Babes del Diablo” which translates to mean “ The devil’s drool/drivel”. This movie was also inspired by the work habits and mannerisms of swinging London photographer David Bailey. Blow up takes place in London during the swinging 60’s, a time for drugs sex and rock and roll. Antonioni uses the materials of a suspense thriller without the reward. He places them within a London of cold-blooded fashion photography, groupies, uninterested rock audiences, leisurely pot parties, and a hero whose dead soul is roused briefly by a challenge to his craftsmanship.

The plot is set in the day in the life of Thomas Hemmings a good-looking, young fashion photographer. Thomas is egotistical, self-centered, and controlling, only caring about himself. This is transparent by the way Thomas parades around. For example,” he can spend a night dressed up like a hobo shooting a layout of stark photographs of derelicts in a flophouse, then jump into his open-top Rolls-Royce and race back to his studio to shoot a layout of fashion models in shiny mod costumes. Doing this without changing expression or his filthy, tattered clothes.”¹

This entire movie is based on a murder that might or might not of happened. It all begins when Thomas wanders into a park and sees, at a distance, a man and a woman playing, struggling or fighting nobody knows. He becomes intrigued and starts to snap pictures. Vanessa Redgrave’s the woman in the park does not like the idea of this and wants the film back. We see her track Thomas down and try her best to seduce him, but this doesn’t work. He is way to captivated to give up the film. Vanessa fascinates Thomas and thus is why he photographs her. But we must ask the question what were Vanessa and her male friend doing in the park in the first place? From this point on the movie reaches its climax and draws in the audience.

When Thomas develops the right roll, he suddenly notices something. He see’s something in the bushes, and starts making blowups of the pictures. Switching them around, studying the blow-ups with a magnifying glass. He finds a hand pointing a gun. I believe if you blow a picture up enough you can make anything out of anything. Thomas wanted there to be a gun there. These pictures are too pixilated for there to be anything important inside.

Although this movie is long it always keeps the audience wondering weather or not there was a murder, and who committed it? The audience’s only connections to the so-called murder are the pictures. This movie takes us on a journey with a blasé photographer with an excessive sex drive. At the end of the day his one true love is his photography.

1 http://movies.nytimes.com/movie/review?res=EE05E7DF1739E361BC4152DFB467838D679EDE