#13 - Blow-Up (1966)

There was an Antonioni retrospective (and if that doesn't sound the height of pretentiousness in two words, then I don't know what does... maybe cinema vérité) at the Traverse City Film Festival a couple years back when they played a couple of his movies, including this one, which was one of those that eventually got dropped because A) I was already seeing too many, B) I was already spending too much money, and C) I could get it on DVD, so spending 9.50 on it seemed a little excessive under the circumstances, though I freely admit that it would have been cool to see it on the big screen with an appreciate audience as opposed to alone in a basement on a 27'' TV.  Although, it's not really so bad as all that.

The main character of Blow-Up is this sort of douchebaggy photog type and Antonioni lets him gad about and take pictures for about 30 minutes and I can't honestly say I had much of an idea why.  Actually, prior to watching the film, all I knew about it was that there was a photographer and a murder.  At least, I think that's true.  Thirty minutes in there was a photographer, but as of yet, no murder.  In the next 15 minutes, there's a lurker, and the beginning parts of a conflict.  As our main character traipses about, he takes several photographs of a couple in a park, and once the woman realizes that they're being photographed, she asks our lead for the photos, which he declines.  She then shows up at his apartment/workspace/studio to collect.

He (the main character) is just so... odd, that it doesn't make what's going on (or, perhaps, not going on) any easier to comprehend.  I keep noticing that he spends half the movie stepping around things when he's walking: hopping over tables, over bodies (not dead ones), over bars, over giant propellers (okay, one giant wooden propeller), or loping weirdly away, or falling, or,.. I just don't understand what this part of the apparent crucial character development is.  Are we supposed to identify with him because he's different? Are we supposed to find him incredible (in the sense of being "not credible", the way the word was originally intended to mean) and so we don't necessarily believe him at first (or at all)? Of course, his awkwardness is also mirrored in the set, which is a series of labyrinthine houses and other venues.

Regardless, after he fakes out the woman and sends her home with not the negatives he took of her (after telling her he'd give her the negatives), he develops several of the pictures in the series, pastes them around his room like John Nash and newspaper clippings (the general nuttiness is there, too), enlarges them, and thinks he sees something.  Okay, so now I remember that the premise of the movie is basically "Is it there, or isn't it?"  How very existential.  He's taken a series of pictures of the people, and now, after staring at some of them and tracing eyelines, he thinks that perhaps the man met with foul play or something or other, and that might be the reason for the woman's persistence at getting the negatives.

More gadding about and (a fashion show AND an underground rock concert?) nothing is happening.

So after he puts together the pictures and decides there was a murder, he...

Score: 5.5/10

Postscript:

I got the DVD for free a couple of years ago, so let me write to you what the box says:

"...Blowup is an influential, stylish study of paranoid intrigue and disorientation.  It is also a time capsule of mod London, a mindscape of the era's fashions, free love, parties, music (Herbie Hancock wrote the score and TheYardbirds riff at a club) and hip langour [sic]."

All this is very well, but it doesn't take six minutes of watching mimes "play tennis" to get the viewer to understand that the movie wants you to draw a conclusion about the real versus the imagined.  Also, the scene with The Yardbirds: easily one of the most pointless parts of the film that left me most dissatisfied.  The styles depicted in the movie were, actually, among the most interesting things in the movie, but four minute girl wrestling scenes with squeals detract from all that.

Feel free to poo-poo my libeling of a classic film, but I stand behind my criticisms and my overall non-enjoyment (for the most part) of the film.  Until next time!

Post-postscript:

I really want to endorse a different film here, not that it's at all the same, but for area depicted and an approximate time frame, but because it's really quite good and since I'm trying to go for awhile before I watch anything I've already seen, I'll just include it here.  If you want a great character study with some superb acting, check out Withnail and I.  I won't tell you more about it, and after watching you'll appreciate it all the more that I didn't.