Although made in Britain and filmed in English, I first watched Blow-Up in a French & Italian Cinema class I took my freshman year at college. We watched it because it was one of the most famous films made by Italian director Michelangelo Antonioni. I was taken a bit off-guard by that, I'm not sure why. How would I feel if George Lucas made a film in Polish?

The film class I took was such that we only had to analyze every other film we watched, giving us a chance to simply sit back and enjoy at least a few movies. Blow-Up was one of the films that I wasn't assigned to write about, and so I didn't play as close attention to mise en scene and other, more technical aspects of the film itself as I otherwise might have. But I will say that the film was interesting enough in its own right to make me watch it again. So a few months ago I went to the library (renting films is great when you're a foreign film fanatic: you can only find them at the library, so they're all free!) and checked this movie out again.

And my impressions the second time (reaffirming my impressions of the first) were this: Antonioni attempts to make a point not only about the frivolity and mindlessness of the fashion world, but about reality and the imagined in general. Which seem like two comparisons impossible to make in one film, but he is at least passably successful at doing so. One of the most crucial (and perhaps intentional) mysteries of the movie is the motivation of the main character, played by David Hemmings. He plays a carefree playboy of a photographer who eventually becomes ensconced in what he believes is a murder mystery, as some pictures he takes of an unknown couple flirting in a park, upon developing appear to show the figure of a corpse lying in the bushes.

The character is set up in such a way, at first carelessly moving around in his glamour- and drug-filled world (buying large airplane propellers at random and speeding around '60s London streets), that the introduction of this mystery into his life, and his fascination with it despite his ultimate irresolution of it, seem to be a commentary on how frivolity in life can erode one's ability to extricate truth out of what we find around us. Perhaps others find different interpretations, but that is what stood out for me, primarily. This is evident to me in a particularly memorable scene that includes a cameo appearance by the Velvet Underground. In his search for Vanessa Redgrave, who he suspects to be an accomplice to the alleged murder, he enters a room where a band is playing and a crowd of people is standing stock still and motionless. Then when one of the band members smashes his guitar against the stage, the crowd quickly turns into a mob, scrambling for the broken guitar. David Hemmings eventually is the one who gets it, although he is searching for something else, and when he walks out onto the street, he looks at the guitar, realizes it's worthless, and leaves it on the sidewalk (only to have someone else pick it right back up). It seemed to be trying to underscore the idea that people become mindlessly involved with things (like band worship, or the implied aspects of the photographer's usual lifestyle), and they lose touch with reality. Over the course of the movie, the photographer goes from droopy-eyed and tired-looking to almost frenetic and anxious as he tries to figure out the truth.

But he never does. And at the end, he stands in a park watching a group of mimes (who also open the movie with a rambunctious jaunt around town) play an imaginary game of tennis. As the scene progresses the sounds of a real tennis match begin to be heard. Then, when one of the mimes "hits a ball out of the court," David Hemmings, with all hope of solving his puzzle lost, decides to go along with their game, and walks over to toss the ball back. Then he keeps on walking across the green field, and disappears. What was real, what was imagined, we never find out. We watch a man struggle against his lifestyle, his preconceptions, and his ignorance to understand something of import that impinges abstractly upon his life. A valiant struggle, indeed, one that certainly we all take part in to some degree or another, but, Antonioni seems to be trying to tell us, try though we might, we will never completely succeed.



Recommended: Yes