Last night I watched Blow-Up again. It is my go-to movie whenever I start feeling nostalgic for the 60's. It's also one of my all-time favorite movies from my favorite decade for movies. I watched a lot of movies in the 60's, by the way. My maternal granddad, a Stetson-wearing, boot-scootin', skirt-chasin' rancher, was a big movie buff, though his tastes generally ran towards the dynamic pairings of two Johns: Ford and Wayne. All the better if Jane Russell or Maureen O'Hara were co-starring. I mention my grandfather because he is central to my development as a film lover; together (and sometimes with my grandmother), we watched countless old movies on television when I was growing up, as well as at the local drive-in picture show. My grandfather did not introduce me to Blow-Up, by the way. To be honest, I doubt if he ever heard of it. By the time 1970 rolled around, he, like many of his kinfolk, pretty much lived fulltime in a John Wayne western (minus the gunfights, alas) so films like Blow-Up would have been well outside his purview.
I didn't see Blow-Up until I was a young adult in my twenties, probably on a VHS tape. By that time, the film was already emblematic, legendary, even. I remember liking it okay when I saw it, but I didn't love it the way I do now, after dozens of subsequent viewings over many years. Made in 1966, the movie captures the vibrant fashion trends of the period, which actually manage to look cool again 56 years later. Herbie Hancock's score is jazzy and comfy, and reminds me of mellow FM and the Clint Eastwood California of Play Misty For Me. The Yardbirds show up to perform Stroll On for a room full of zombified stoners, and Jeff Beck stomps his guitar to smithereens, finally snapping the crowd out of their stupor and causing a melee. It's a funny, evocative scene that begs the question: do rock groups still smash their guitars onstage?
Michelangelo Antonioni directed Blow-Up but don't let that deter you from watching it if you've never seen it. Antonioni can be intimidating, or downright annoying, depending on your tolerance for ennui. Both L'Avventura (1960) and L'Eclisse (1962) are renowned among cineastes, and much-beloved by many, but, sweet Jesus, they do test one's patience. Try watching them sometime along with Fellini's La Dolce Vita (1960) and 8 1/2 (1963). Fellini's films are bursting at the seams with chaotic life, whereas Antonioni's work seem sedate by comparison. Happily, Blow-Up is full of chaos, life and color! Lots and lots of color! There are echoes of the old Antonioni, of course, but he infuses this film with interesting characters and compelling situations that viewers found tremendously appealing when the film first came out. It's also a playful movie, which certainly cannot be attributed to other films in the Antonioni canon: Blow-Up wound up being his biggest hit and best film (in my opinion).
The movie starts out with a rowdy group of young people done up like mimes. They show up sporadically throughout the movie to act as a Greek chorus of anarchic spirit.
A young and very pretty David Hemmings is cast as fashion photographer, Thomas, who is universally dickish to all and sundry, particularly the high-fashion models who pose for him. Hemmings is quite good in the role although some of the things he's called on to do border on the outlandish--do Englishmen really skip up steps and click their heels together? Or dive over a couch to frantically answer a phone after it's been ringing for five minutes? Hmmm. Maybe Antonioni was trying a little too hard to capture the youthful spirit of the 60's. These sequences look extremely awkward to me but not enough to detract from the movie's many charms.
Anyhow, after the miserable old sod manning the store delivers his own tongue-lashing to Thomas, the photog grabs his camera out of the Rolls so he can take some shots in the park. This is where he skips up the park steps clicking his heels together. I really wish he hadn't done that.
This is also the scene where the oddest character in the film--Vanessa Redgrave, as Jane--makes her first appearance. Thomas spies Jane and an older, well-dressed gentlemen snuggling amongst the few trees at the top of the steps and immediately begins photographing them. Soon he is noticed by Jane who turns out to be surprisingly fleet of foot as she dashes gazelle-like across the acreage to confront Thomas.
"Give me the fucking pictures," she demands, in her low, no-nonsense voice.
"No fucking way!" Thomas counters peevishly.
There is a slight chance that I may be misremembering some of the dialogue, having added variations on the f-word for clarity, but the conversation goes on like this betwixt the two of them before a frustrated Jane finally tears back up the hill and disappears through the shrubbery, her aging suitor nowhere to be seen. Where'd he go anyway?
Thomas, being more interested in talking to the owner of the antiques store (he wants to buy it and turn it into a studio), returns to speak to the owner, an attractive lass who, it turns out, looks exactly like a younger cousin of mine. Instead, he winds up buying a huge wooden propeller but when he and the shop owner attempt to load it into his Rolls Royce.....oh, didn't I mention the Rolls? When he's not busy photographing people, places and things, bedding down with or berating models and fashion groupies, or lusting after Sarah Miles, the wife (girlfriend?) of John Castle, his best friend (brother?), Thomas cruises around London in a cushy Rolls convertible and chats with his office manager on a CB radio. Anyway, the propeller doesn't fit so the shop owner tells him she'll have it delivered later. A car may or may not be following Thomas after he leaves the shop, I'm not sure.
Once Thomas gets back to his office/studio/apartment--which, by the way, looks like a rundown hovel but was, in fact, owned by a Vogue photographer in real life--Vanessa Redgrave comes rushing up to demand he give her the fucking pictures. "No fucking way," he replies. Did she run all the way from the park, I wonder? They go upstairs to his place where he puts a jazz album on the record player and they smoke a joint. Pretending to be a cool girl, Jane jives to the tunes and starts twitching like she stuck a fork in the wall socket. Oh dear. This is not an attractive look for Jane. She's a very strange bird, this woman. While sitting on the couch, she throws back her head and laughs like Garbo. She is serving serious Greta Garbo in this scene, and it looks so fake. I like her outfit okay. I guess. It's decidedly uncomelier than the wardrobes of her female co-stars: her blouse and mini(ish)-skirt are both sort of staid and understated, which gives her an upper-class feel. That neckerchief, though! Was that supposed to add a youthful touch to the character? Because she seems very matronly in this movie, even though she wasn't yet 30 when she made it. Jane and Thomas argue, make out and take off their shirts but never actually do the deed and she finally goes away after Thomas gives her an alternate roll of film that he assures her contains the park photos. Well I, for one, thought she'd never leave!
Redgrave's character is a veritable symphony of bad choices. After Blow-Up, Redgrave went on to have a distinguished career as an actress, and she'd worked for Fred Zinneman and Karel Reisz before this, so I have to assume Antonioni was largely responsible for exaggerating the eccentricities that comprise her performance. All the high-strung tics, the Garbo nuances and emo weirdness is extremely distracting and the neckerchief looks wildly out of place. I've never thought of Vanessa Redgrave as a great beauty but she has an interestingly attractive face that is all sharp angles and steely looks; if Blow-Up had been made by, say, Alfred Hitchcock, Redgrave would have been an ideal femme fatale for the Hemmings character to play against. In Antonioni's film, she's determined, and sneaky too, but, alas, no femme fatale.
After Thomas develops his film, he discovers that his walk in the park was not exactly a walk in the park, particularly for the old-ish dude canoodling with Jane on the hill. As Thomas blows up each picture larger and larger, he sees a gunman crouched in the bushes and--maybe--a man's body lying at the edge of the forest. The deliveryman comes over with the propeller, followed by the arrival of the fashion groupies (Birkin and Hills). Or vice-versa. Anyhow, Thomas proceeds to rip the clothes off the shrieking ladies and suddenly a sexual assault turns into a giggling, tickling, consensual 3-way. What? After Thomas has his way with them (apparently without bothering to take off his pants), he tells the girls to hit the road and then gets back to work examining his photo stash.
Deciding to return to the park under cover of night, Thomas discovers the dead body of Jane's paramour exactly where the photograph placed him. Instead of rushing to Scotland Yard, Thomas heads back to his place, only to find it trashed and the incriminating photos gone. Uh-oh. Thomas then jumps in the Rolls and conveniently spots Jane going into the club where the Yardbirds scene happens. Finding no trace of Jane in the club, Thomas drives over to a posh party where his agent is getting good and fucked up. Way too fucked up to be of any use to Thomas. Having had enough mishegas for one day, Thomas crashes in an upstairs bedroom and returns to the park the next morning.
The body is gone! Well, gasp, dude!
Puzzled, Thomas starts back down the hill. The unruly young mimes pile out of a Land Rover and begin playing tennis on a nearby court in the park. Except there is no tennis ball because they're mimes! The tricksters watch intently as the imaginary tennis ball is lobbed back and forth, back and forth. Thomas finds himself doing the same thing. Back and forth. When the "ball" is knocked over the fence and lands near where Thomas is standing, one of the players indicates that he should toss it back to her. Finally, Thomas complies and the game starts again. Back and forth. As he watches, Thomas (and the audience) hears the ball bouncing off the tennis rackets. Hemmings smiles enigmatically and begins walking away. Cue the Herbie Hancock musical score.
The End.
Blow-Up examines the nature of reality filtered through a camera lens--the photographer's eye--and the infrequent appearances of the mimes in the film. In fact, the none-too-subtle ending drives home Antonioni's idea that reality is subjective. Given what we have seen in the USA over these past few years, I think the film is current and very relevant, especially at a time when politicians are caught repeatedly lying, and saying and doing unseemly things on-camera, only to deny it and still be believed by half the population. With that in mind, Blow-Up is actually about cognitive dissonance. The movie audience knows that Thomas saw a body--we're with him when he finds it--although we're never certain that the photographs offer as much evidence as he thinks. Does his Mona Lisa smile at the "sound" of the tennis balls indicate that he's already convincing himself that the murder was a product of his overworked imagination? Possibly. But I don't think he's really changed much by anything that happens in the movie. More likely, given what we know of the character, he'll continue his career as a surly twat and not give much further thought to what happened in the park, or to the oddball played by Vanessa Redgrave (besides, it's Sarah Miles who has his heart; the other women in his life are mere products or distractions). Yet, Thomas never comes off as shallow. Arrogant, ambitious, angry, frustrated, sexist, even a little bit rape-y, yes. But not shallow.
Earlier, I mentioned Alfred Hitchcock. At the time Blow-Up was being filmed, Hitchcock was completing the unloved Torn Curtain, which improbably paired Julie Andrews with Paul Newman. Had Hitchcock directed Blow-Up instead, it would have been a very different movie. It would certainly have been better than Torn Curtain, and succeeded as a bona fide suspense thriller rather than the enigmatic tease created by Michelangelo Antonioni (it's considered a "suspense thriller" by movie sites but there are very few thrills and precious little suspense in its 111 minute running time).
Yet, despite the negatives I've mentioned in the paragraphs above--and there are a few--I continue to love this movie more each time I revisit it (roughly, once a year). I love Carlo Di Palma's fine cinematography, the mod fashions, the whole Swinging Sixties vibe. David Hemmings is so good as Thomas that he repeated the role (with a few variations) a decade later in Dario Argento's classic giallo, Profondo Rosso (aka Deep Red).
And there's the fantabulous Veruschka and her sublime retort: "I am in Paris." You'll have to see it to know what I'm talking about but I understand if you decide not to. Blow-Up may not be everybody's cup of tea--a lot of my favorite movies aren't--but it's a scavenger hunt for adults, and I do enjoy a good scavenger hunt.
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