Movie day - Blow-up, 1966

In an effort to nurture my wilted journalistic roots, I'll be writing the occasional film review. We'll call it "Movie day."

I will rarely bore you with my take on currently playing films. Instead, we'll take a glance at the forefathers of cinema, those perennial classics that still inspire talk and discussion.

My inaugural review takes us back to 1966. The film is Blow-up, one of the most influential and controversial films of its era. It's also quite pretentious. Come with me to the swinging 60s.


Director Michelangelo Antonioni's first English film focuses on the superfluous lifestyle of London photographer Thomas (David Hemmings, incapable of a smile), who shoots supermodels in his appropriately mod flat. Tired of the staged look of fashion photography, Thomas take to the park and photographs what he believes to be an innocent tryst between two lovers. Upon further examination of the negatives, however, he realizes that he might just have captured a murder on film.

The film offers a fascinating look at the dichotomy between what is real and what the lens wants us to believe. Unfortunately, this message becomes a bit too heavy-handed when symbolic indicent after symbolic incident reveal a cold, indulgent way of life for our anti-hero and his equally bizarre friends.

At the film's close, we see a friendly group of playful pantomimers who take to a tennis court to watch an imaginary game of tennis. We hear what sounds like a tennis match. We see what looks like an audience observing a tennis match. Yet, as the film reminds us, that line between what is real and what is implied is too fine to be blurred.

Much has been written about Blow-up and its multiple deep meanings. Though I got the general idea, I can't help but feel that deeper meaning was implied but never realized. Still, the film has many merits.

In an otherwise heavily censored decade on both sides of the pond, the film's frank sexuality and nudity paved the way for the latter-60s stylistic revolution. And though the many nonsensical moments amount to very little plotwise, they are fascinating to watch in terms of both style and setting.

Ultimately this film is quite self-aware, which prohibits it from being high camp. And Antonioni's point about our obsession with what's on the other side of the lens is even more potent today. We're in the midst of an era saturated with media projections of what we're supposed to believe life is like for the beautiful and famous.