Blowup has scenes that are too memorable for its own good. What has remained in popular memory – the photographic seduction session with Verushka, the three-way romp with Jane Birkin on the purple photographer’s backdrop, the footage of the Beck/Page era Yardbirds, and the fact that it’s David Hemmings’ finest hour-and-a-half as the strawberry-blond, tousle-haired fashion photographer, obscures the quieter intent of the film, which presents a brilliantly-focussed snapshot of an emerging rootless generation for whom the attraction of the here and now has an insistence that clouds any wider search for meaning or solid ground.
There is a pervasive melancholy to this cinematic close-up of a certain section of mid-60s London with its fashions and stoned parties. Every conversation seems to take people further apart than they were before they began and the distance between people is carried beautifully by Edward Bond’s dialogue which is filled with dead-ends, false leads, non sequiturs and hanging conversations. In all the words, relationships and actions throughout the film, there are none that add up to anything meaningful. Even when the precocious, bullying photographer who may or may not have unwittingly photographed a murder in a park tries to find the story behind the photographs, his skilled endeavour yields no reward. He is pulled ever further away from a meaningful use of the knowledge he might have gained. Finally, he is left with nothing but a ransacked studio and an enormously enlarged arrangement of light and shadow on a sheet of photographic emulsion. It’s a photograph that’s a decent enough symbol for society as represented in the film, fractured to the point of decomposition and in the search for meaning, finding only objects that are valueless out of context.
It’s a film that’s full of disappearances too - the murdered man disappears, Redgrave disappears (where does she go in that street scene?), and before the final credits even the photographer disappears from one frame to the next. It’s a tease of a film that gets under your skin like the rustling of the trees in the park.
Not just a cinematic close-up of mid-60s London based around the life of a fashion photographer but a brilliantly-written snapshot of an emerging rootless generation. Filled with dead-ends, false leads, non sequiturs and hanging conversations, the attraction of the here and now has an insistence that clouds any wider search for meaning or solid ground. Oscar-nominated first English language picture for Antonioni. Brilliant.
Truly an I-conic film and actor David Hemmings , who is in every scene. Some comedic moments and an uplifting capture of the 60's. The selection of music was perfect a... more >
Truly an I-conic film and actor David Hemmings , who is in every scene. Some comedic moments and an uplifting capture of the 60's. The selection of music was perfect and tasteful.I did not see till 40 years later for the first time and loved it. < less
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Blow-Up 
