Film Reviews

Blow Up

• Rating:
• Director: Michelangelo Antonioni
• Starring: David Hemmings
• Details: UK, Italy, 111mins, 15s.

Thomas (Hemmings) is a London fashion photographer in the swinging '60s who enjoys the parties and frolicking with his models without ever getting truly emotionally involved. His existential life is soon disrupted however, when he photographs a beautiful girl (Redgrave) in a park; later he finds something interesting in the background when he develops the shot in his darkroom - something to suggest that a crime has been committed and this mystery insists on involving him. Misinterpreting Blow Up as a depiction of the fashion scene in mid-'60s London would lead to a gross misunderstanding of the film but 'understanding' this film is another subject altogether. Buried somewhere in the superficial plot is an idea of the perception of reality; the young photographer cannot discern the truth with his eyes, only with his lens. This, runs the theory, gives reality an objective viewpoint if one can take a step back and look at it from different angles. 'We see what we want to see' seems to be the theme of the film and this theory is hammered home by the mimed tennis match at the climax, when Hemmings watches two mimes play but can 'hear' the ball hit the rackets. Blow Up was pooh-poohed by the critics for being pretentious when first released in 1966 but what is wrong with a little pretension? Antonioni mixed art-house cinema with a mainstream thriller and came up with his first commercial hit.

Review by Gavin Burke