This article is about the British-Italian film. For other uses, see Blow up. Blowup (as in screen credits, also rendered as Blow-Up) is a 1966 British-Italian art film directed by Michelangelo Antonioni and was that director's first English language film. It tells the story of a photographer's involvement with a murder case. The film was inspired by the short story "Las Babas del Diablo" ("The Droolings of the Devil") by Argentinian writer Julio Cortázar, and by the work, habits, and mannerisms of Swinging London photographer David Bailey. The film was scored by jazz pianist Herbie Hancock, although the music is diegetic as it is played on a record by the main character. Nominated for several awards at the Cannes Film Festival, Blowup won the Grand Prix.
Blowup stars David Hemmings, Vanessa Redgrave, Sarah Miles, John Castle, and Jane Birkin. The screenplay was written by Antonioni and Tonino Guerra, with the English dialogue being written by British playwright Edward Bond. The film was produced by Carlo Ponti, who had contracted Antonioni to make three English language films for MGM (the others were Zabriskie Point and The Passenger).
Synopsis
A professional fashion photographer (Hemmings) begins his day after spending the night at a doss house, where he has taken pictures for a book of art photos he hopes to publish. He is late for a photo shoot at his studio with a famous French fashion model, which in turn makes him late for another photo shoot with many other models later in the morning. He grows bored, leaves the shoot and goes out for a drive. Wandering into Maryon Park he sees two lovers and takes photos of them. The woman (Redgrave) is nettled at being photographed and chases him down back to the studio. After they have made love and she has left, he wonders what is on the film, and becomes inquisitive enough to make numerous blowups (enlargements) of the photos, which seem to reveal both a body lying in the grass and a murderer hidden in the trees with a gun, but the photos have been blown up so much, it is hard to understand what can be seen through the very rough grain of the black and white film. Two of the models return, earlier he had explained his one-sided 'open marriage', but he is now too distracted to be interested in them.
Later that night he goes back to the park, and indeed finds a body but he has not brought his camera and is scared off by what seems to be the sound of someone treading on and breaking a wooden twig. At a drug-fueled party at a house on the Thames river near central London, he finds both the French model (who still thinks she is in Paris) and his publishing agent (Peter Bowles) and hopes to bring the latter to the park as a witness, but the photographer cannot put across in meaningful words what he has photographed and by the time he gets back to the park alone, as the sun comes up, the body is gone.
Befuddled, he watches a group of university students playing and watching a mimed tennis match, is drawn into it, picks up their unseen, make-believe ball and throws it back to the two players. While he watches the mimed match, the sound of a ball being played back and forth is soon heard. As the photographer stands alone on the grass lawn, he fades into thin air, and the film ends.
Celebrity appearances
Sundry people who were widely known in 1966 are seen in the film, others would become famous later.
In the last third of the film, The Yardbirds perform "Stroll On". As Keith Relf sings, Jimmy Page and Jeff Beck play side by side. After his guitar amplifier fails, Beck smashes his guitar (as The Who was wont to do at the time). Michael Palin of Monty Python fame can be seen very briefly in the crowd in this scene,[citation needed] and future media personality Janet Street-Porter dances in stripey, Carnaby Street trousers. A poster on the club's entry door bears a drawing of a tombstone with the epitaph, Here lies Bob Dylan Passed Away Royal Albert Hall 27 May 1966 R.I.P. An obvious reference to Dylan's use of electric instruments at this time.
Antonioni had considered using The Velvet Underground in the nightclub scene, but according to guitarist Sterling Morrison, "the expense of bringing the whole entourage to England proved too much for him."[1]
In their book 'Yardbirds' (edited in 1983 by Sidgwick and Jackson Ltd. in London), writers John Platt, Chris Dreja and Jim McCarthy claim Antonioni wanted the Who to perform in Blow-Up as he was fascinated by Pete Townshend's guitar-smashing routine. Although smashing up guitars was not at all in the Yardbirds' act, Jeff Beck bashed one to bits for the film.
Steve Howe, in an interview for Pete Frame's Rock Family Trees,[2] said The In Crowd was at first called in to do the scene:
We went on the set and started preparing for that guitar-smashing scene in the club. They even went as far as making up a bunch of Gibson 175 replicas ... and then we got dropped for the Yardbirds, who were a bigger name. That's why you see Jeff Beck smashing my guitar rather than his!
Filming locations
The first scene (with the mimes acting) was filmed on the Plaza of The Economist Building in (Piccadilly, London, 1959-64, a project by 'New Brutalists' Alison and Peter Smithson). The park scenes were filmed at Maryon Park, Charlton, south-east London, and the park is little changed since the making of the film. The street with the many maroon-coloured shop fronts is Stockwell Road, and the shops belonged to motorcycle dealer Pride & Clark. The scene where Thomas sees the mysterious woman from his car, then proceeds to follow her, was shot in Regent Street, London. He stops at Heddon Street, where the cover shot of David Bowie's Ziggy Stardust LP was later photographed.[citation needed] The photographer's studio was filmed at 49 Princes Place, London W11, later to become the studio of architects Richard Rogers, and currently the London office of architects John McAslan + Partners.[citation needed]
Controversy
The onscreen title, no hyphen.
Blowup was controversial for its sexual content: it was the first British film to feature full frontal female nudity (sometimes assumed to be in the slightly later if....). MGM failed to obtain approval for it from the MPAA Production Code in America, but released anyway through their subsidiary Premier Productions, a key event in the Code's eventual collapse.
Awards
Academy Awards
BAFTA Awards
- Nominated: Best British Film - Michelangelo Antonioni
- Nominated: Best British Art Direction (Colour) - Assheton Gorton
- Nominated: Best British Cinematography (Colour) - Carlo Di Palma
Cannes Film Festival
Golden Globe Awards
- Nominated: Best English-Language Foreign Film
Influence
Brian De Palma's Blow Out (1981), starring John Travolta, which alludes to Blowup, used sound recording rather than photography as its central motif. In the DVD commentary to his 1974 film The Conversation, which is also about sound recording, Francis Ford Coppola said he, too, was inspired by Blow Up in writing the screenplay.[citation needed]
In Mel Brooks's film High Anxiety, a minor plot line involves a bumbling chauffeur who takes a picture showing the evil assassin (wearing a latex mask of Brooks's character's face) firing a gun at point-blank range at someone; he makes blow-ups until he can see the real Brooks's character, standing in the elevator in the background. (Technically speaking, the chauffeur does not make blow-ups; the joke is that he simply makes bigger and bigger enlargements until he has one the size of a wall.)
This film also inspired the Indian movie Jaane Bhi Do Yaaron, in which two photographers inadvertently capture the murder of a city mayor on their cameras and later discover this when the images are enlarged. The park in which the murder occurs is aptly named "Antonioni Park".
The comedy Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery features a parody of the scene in which Hemmings' character photographs a model while barking commands and voicing enthusiasm.
This film also has a heavy influence on the music video for Amerie's "Take Control", from her 2007 album, Because I Love It.[3]
The opening guitar riff of the track "The Naked Camera" from Herbie Hancock's score served as a centerpiece for the song "Groove is in the Heart" by Deee-Lite.
In the last episode of the third series of the BBC program, "Monarch of the Glen," Molly MacDonald (Susan Hampshire) clarifies for husband, Hector (Richard Briers) , that it was Antonioni who wanted her for the film, "Blowup", back when she was a model in London in the 1960s. One of the models in the film is played by 1960s fashion model, Melanie Hampshire.
References
Further information
- Brunette, Peter. Audio commentary on the 2005 DVD (Iconic Films).
- Hemmings, David. Blow-Up- and Other Exaggerations: The Autobiography of David Hemmings.
External links
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Films directed by Michelangelo Antonioni |
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Cronaca di un amore (Chronicle of a Love, 1950) - I vinti (The Vanquished, 1952) - La signora senza camelie (The Lady Without Camelias, 1953) - L'amore in città (1953, segment "Tentato suicido") - Le amiche (The Girl Friends, 1955) - Il grido (The Outcry, 1957) - L'avventura(The Adventure, 1960) - La notte(The Night, 1961) - L'eclisse (The Eclipse, 1962) - Il deserto rosso (The Red Desert, 1964) - I tre volti (Three Faces of a Woman, 1965, segment "Il provino") - Blowup (1966) - Zabriskie Point (1970) - Chung Kuo (China, 1972) - Professione: reporter (The Passenger, 1975) - Il mistero di Oberwald (The Mystery of Oberwald, 1981) - Identificazione di una donna (Identification of a Woman, 1982) - Beyond the Clouds (Par Dela Les Nuages, 1995) - Eros (2004, segment "Il filo pericoloso delle cose")
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