Blow-Up (1966) A Mod Swinging Sixties - Jazz Noir

"The Accidental WeeGee, or it Breaks Bad for "Love That Bob.""

Directed by Michelangelo Antonioni (Il Grido, L'Avventura). Written by Michelangelo Antonioni and Julio Cortázar based partly on his short story "Las babas del diablo"  Screenplay by Michelangelo Antonioni and Tonino Guerra with English dialogue by Edward Bond. 

Cinematography by Carlo Di Palma (Mighty Aphrodite, Manhattan Murder Mystery) and Music by Herbie Hancock. 

David Hemmings as Thomas, Vanessa Redgrave as Jane, Sarah Miles as ex girlfriend Patricia. John Castle as Bill the artist, Jane Birkin as blonde girl, Gillian Hills as brunette girl, Peter Bowles as Ron, Thomas's agent, Veruschka von Lehndorff as herself, Julian Chagrin as mime, Claude Chagrin as mime.

Story

We first see Thomas in rumpled dirty clothes clutching a paper bag and walking with a cue of men being let out of a flop house (doss house in the UK). 

David Hemmings as Thomas

They mill about the streets for a while, then when finally by himself Thomas slips away and heads for his car a 1965 Rolls-Royce Silver Cloud III Drophead Coupé with a car phone and tail fins. You see Thomas is a professional photographer and he was slumming for a series on the destitute which he plans to include in his latest book on photography. 

Thomas heading for his wheels

1965 Rolls-Royce Silver Cloud III Drophead Coupé

He makes a calls on his way to back to his studio. He's late for a solo photoshoot with Veruschka, and after that for the a group shoot for a fashion line. 

A Rolls with slanted headlights and tail fins

Tail fins

The drive back to the studio and the photo shoots are depicted in a very stylistic manner. Below the Veruschka shoot.

Veruschka 

Thomas finally loses his inspiration for the shoot and leaves the studio, meeting his groupies, two "mod" teenage girls in pastel colored tights who want to be models on the way out. He tells them to come back another time.

Thomas first drives to an antique shop where he eventually purchases a wooden propeller for the studio. He then grabs his camera and walks into Maryon Park. 

Thomas first drives to an antique shop where he eventually purchases a wooden propeller for the studio. 

He then grabs his camera and walks into Maryon Park. Thomas looking at various subjects finally follows a couple he thinks are two lovers. 

He shoots them at a distance but the woman Jane sees him and follows after Thomas. She tries to snatch away the camera. She is unsuccessful and runs off while Thomas shoots her departure. 

Later Thomas has lunch with his agent and while eating notices a man looking into his car. When Thomas gets back to his studio Jane is there again asking for the film. He talks her into posing. Later Thomas tells her he cut out the section she wants and hands her a roll. When he asks for her phone number she writes one out.

Vanessa Redgrave as Jane

Now even more curious about the film Thomas develops it and begins to blow up the frames to see what he has. 

The Blow-Up

Like a photographic detective, he follows the facial expressions of Jane he notices that as she is embracing the man he assumes is her lover she's looking intently in a direction that is towards the fence at the border of the grass. Blowing up that section reveals a man's face and subsequently blowing that up reveals an automatic in the man's hand.  

Thomas calls up Ron and excitedly tells him that he may have have saved a man's life and prevented a murder. A knock on his door turns out to be the two teenage girls again. He gives them both a romp and they all fall asleep. 

The Romp

When Thomas wakes up he shoos the girls out telling them he will film them tomorrow and he goes back to the film. Blowing up more frames he discovers something out of place in the grass. That evening it all goes Noirsville first, when going back to the park the something in the photograph turns out to be the man he photographed with Jane and he's very dead, and second, when he goes back to the studio the place is tossed and all his film is gone.

Noirsville

An Existentialist Noir from Antonioni filled with images within images, diagonals, high and low angles, shadows, juxtaposed textures, transparent planes, reflections in glass, and frames within frames  sprinkled here and there with psychedelic colors.  If it's not there was it real? Is it all an illusion? The mime sequences that bookend the film leave things open to interpretation.

Beautifully lensed by Carlo Di Palma, David Hemmings pretty much carries the film as Thomas and we are immersed into his almost blasé swinging sixties world as he wheels around London, a world that is turned on it's head when he is ignited by his craftsman's curiosity over the deadly implications of what seemingly was an innocent shoot of lovers in a park. 

"MGM" created "Premiere Productions". This was a dummy company which had no agreement or affiliation with the Production Code and, therefore, did not have to adhere to its standards. "MGM" did not have to cut the full frontal nudity or other sexually explicit scenes and maintained all rights to the film. When the film opened to rave reviews and excellent box office, this defeat was considered the final blow for the Production Code's credibility and was replaced with a ratings system less than two years later. (IMDb)

We get treated to a diegetic music set by the Yardbirds with Jimmy Page and Jeff Beck, and Herbie Hancock provides a beautiful jazzy score. This film is more on the "mod" side of London in the 1960s. I like it's style. 9/10

Col cuore in gola a 1967 Noir Giallo film directed by Tinto Brass is another film that gives you a nice archive of swinging sixties London but that one was more on the psychedelic side.

Roger Ebert described the film as "a hypnotic conjuring act, in which a character is awakened briefly from a deep sleep of bored alienation and then drifts away again. This is the arc of the film. Not 'Swinging London.' Not existential mystery. Not the parallels between what Hemmings does with his photos and what Antonioni does with Hemmings. But simply the observations that we are happy when we are doing what we do well, and unhappy seeking pleasure elsewhere. I imagine Antonioni was happy when he was making this film."

"Michelangelo Antonioni felt that the film marked a "radical" departure from his previous films. "In my other films, I have tried to probe the relationship between one person and another--most often, their love relationship, the fragility of their feelings, and so on. But in this film, none of these themes matters. Here, the relationship is between an individual and reality--those things that are around him. There are no love stories in this film, even though we see relations between men and women. The experience of the protagonist is not a sentimental nor an amorous one but rather, one regarding his relationship with the world, with the things he finds in front of him. He is a photographer. One day, he photographs two people in a park, an element of reality that appears real. And it is. But reality has a quality of freedom about it that is hard to explain. This film, perhaps, is like Zen; the moment you explain it, you betray it. I mean, a film you can explain in words, is not a real film." (IMDb trivia)