IFF Film Review: "Blow-Up" (1966).

"Sometimes, reality is the strangest fantasy of all" in Blow-Up. This mystery thriller film directed by Michelangelo Antonioni, adapted by Antonioni and Tonino Guerra, and based on Las babas del diablo by Julio Cortázar. A successful London based photographer is living the life, he always wanted with beautiful models for easy sex, and some substance for the high of life.

The plot for the film was inspired by Cortázar's 1959 short story, collected in the book, End of the Game and Other Stories, in turn based on a story told to Cortázar by photographer Sergio Larraín. The life of Swinging London photographer David Bailey was also an influence. By early May 1966, David Hemmings, Vanessa Redgrave, Sarah Miles, John Castle, Jane Birkin, Gillian Hills, and Tsai Chin were cast. Several people were offered the role of the protagonist, including Sean Connery, who declined when Antonioni refused to show him the script. Photographer David Bailey was even considered, along with Terence Stamp, who was replaced shortly before filming began after Antonioni found Hemmings in a stage production of Dylan Thomas's Adventures in the Skin Trade. At the same time, principal photography commenced and wrapped in August. Filming took place throughout London, England.

The film stars Hemmings, Redgrave, Miles, Castle, Birkin, Hills, and Chin.

Hemmings spend almost the entire film chasing a ghost, but in doing so are really uncovering the fragility of everything his complacent life had held so concrete.

The film doesn’t seek a conventional framework. It asks the audience the observe, think, and process. It is that type of engagement that makes Antonioni’s film a true classic. Antonioni's film has been bitterly dividing audiences for almost six decades now, and the same viewer doesnt always see it the same way twice. I thought it was pretentious hogwash, now I think it's a masterpiece. An original game changer, Antonioni spun cinema into a direction of new possibilities, down avenues well-traveled now by generations of filmmakers since. Antonioni's cool, beautifully photographed film isn't really a mystery and certainly not a thriller. Audiences over the years have delighted in deciding what it really is all about. The adventure was not merely sexual, however, but a radical rethink of film language: the characters' motivations were left opaque and unexplained, and the story never quite resolves itself -- rather like life. The film eschews conventional narrative drive or sophomoric emotional satisfaction in favour of gorgeous compositions, inimitable style and an acerbic sensibility. Antonioni's film rewrote the language of cinema, questioning its addiction to storytelling and opening up the possibility for other, more enigmatic and poetic forms of expression. There are certain things audiences have come to expect from the plots of motion pictures, and even in 2023, the film feels angry and fresh because it upends those expectations gleefully. Being anti-plot doesn't necessarily mean that its plotless. It's easy to bash Antonioni as passe. It's harder, I think, to explain the cinematic power of the way his camera watches, and waits, while the people on screen stave off a dreadful loneliness.

Simon says Blow-Up receives:

Also, see my IFF review for La Strada (The Road).