Blow-Up (1966, UK)

In writer-director Michelangelo Antonioni's breakthrough, absorbing first English language film - it presented his view of the world of mod fashion; the taut and provocative film about perception and voyeurism was a combination murder mystery, a critique of the world of mod fashion, and one of the greatest films ever made about watching and making movies (literally composed of a succession of still images).

It followed the day-and-a-half long quest of an unnamed, mid-20s mod desensitized-to-life, nihilistic, high-fashion photographer who believed he saw something intriguingly objective via his camera that turned out to be very tragic and possibly unreal. Its conceptual plot was similar and influential for two other film-makers: Francis Ford Coppola's The Conversation (1974) and Brian De Palma's Blow Out (1981).

Antonioni's story was inspired by the 1959 short story "Las Babas Del Diablo" ("The Devil's Drool") by Julio Cortazar. The 111 minute arthouse film was set in the Swinging mid-60s London; it was an engaging, provocative murder mystery that examined the existential nature of reality interpreted and perceived through photography (and also via painting and pantomime). The film's cinematographer was Carlo di Palma. The film's tagline was:

Antonioni's camera never flinches. At love without meaning. At murder without guilt. At the dazzle and the madness of London today.

The central theme was that the mere presence of an observer of a phenomenon always altered the reality of the event due to perception (similar to the theme of Alfred Hitchcock's Rear Window (1954)). Antonioni's film strongly resonated after the intense frame-by-frame scrutiny received by the short Zapruder film of the Kennedy assassination in Dallas (November of 1963).

The countercultural film was nominated for two Academy Awards (with no wins): Best Director, and Best Original Screenplay (Michelangelo Antonioni and Tonino Guerra, and Edward Bond), and it won the Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival in 1967.

It quickly became one of the most important landmark films of its decade, and was the director's first international box-office success, made on a small budget of about $2 million while grossing $20 million. It was also a milestone in liberalized attitudes toward film nudity and expressions of sexuality (reportedly the first British film to display full-frontal nudity), and forced changes in Hollywood's Production Code that led to the MPAA rating system in 1968.

• the title credits were viewed atop a verdant green lawn (at Maryon Park, later a crucial location in the film), with the transparent letters revealing a bikinied model undulating during a photo-shoot on a roof-top against a light blue sky
• in the film's opening, a group of white-faced and masked mime pranksters caroused and drove through the streets in an open Land Rover, urging cars and drivers to contribute to their charity and activist causes
• a hip, disinterested, often introverted and jaded fashion photographer Thomas (David Hemmings) had just spent the night in Camberwell Reception Centre, a shelter or hostel (dosshouse or flophouse) for sick and elderly homeless tramps - to take photos of the dark side of life for a photo-book; unexpectedly, the disheveled male then drove off - unexpectedly - in his parked Rolls-Royce Silver Cloud III convertible; Thomas's car was surrounded and besieged by the pale-faced pranksters
• Thomas was an hour late for an appointment in a photo studio to engage in a frenzied camera-shoot scene with various 'birds'; during the solo shoot, he snapped photos of skinny, writhing, self-absorbed model Veruschka (Herself); she was wearing a loose, low-cut glittery dress with open sides and was obviously naked underneath; he urged her orgasmically as he straddled her on the floor with his phallic camera to give everything for his art:
  • "On your back. Go on. Yes. Now really give it. Come on. Come on. Work, work, work! Great. Great. And again. Come on. Back. Back. Arms up. Arms up. Stretch yourself, little lady. Great. And again. Go on. Go. Go. That's great. That's it! Keep it up. Lovely. Yeah, make it come. Great. No, no, head up, head up. Now for me, love. For me. Now! Now! Yes! Yes! Yes!"

Orgasmic Fashion-Model Photo Shoot With Veruschka (Herself)

• as he was leaving the studio, he also was called upon to photograph (using a tripod) a vapid flock of five, unsmiling, stationary "birds" (Melanie Hampshire, Jill Kennington, Peggy Moffitt, Rosaleen Murray, and Ann Norman); they were standing diagonally before rectangular black glass panes; he was critical of them for chewing gum and assuming "terrible" stylized poses like brain-less mannequins; seeming bored, cranky, demanding, and slightly contemptuous, he cut short the photo-shoot when he realized that he had tired them

Bill (John Castle), Artist Friend

Patricia (Sarah Miles), an Unhappily Married Wife

• afterwards across the yard from his own home's studio, Thomas spoke briefly with his neighbor and artist-friend Bill (John Castle) about his impressionistic paintings, and with Bill's unhappily-married wife Patricia (Sarah Miles); back in his own photo studio, Thomas was confronted by two naive young wanna-be teenage models or "dolly birds" (blonde Jane Birkin and brunette Gillian Hills) in his studio (39) who wanted their pictures taken, but he claimed he was too busy
• he drove off to visit a small, cluttered, and dusty antiques shop looking for landscapes; the elderly, cranky shopkeeper (Harry Hutchinson) warned that there were no cheap bargains for him ("There are no cheap bargains here. You are wasting your time")
• then, Thomas innocently followed and took photographs in East London in the nearby serene Maryon Park; his first subjects were pigeons, a litter collector, wind blowing through trees, and the wide expanse of green grass; and then he came upon what he thought was a tryst between lovers (a distant view of a young female in a tight gray skirt with a black kerchief, and a middle-aged man in a light-gray suit embracing)
• he furtively captured the scene in his voyeuristic camera, but then the female approached angrily and protested his intrusion on their privacy: ("Stop it. Stop it! Give me those pictures. You can't photograph people like that...This is a public place. Everyone has a right to be left in peace"); when she tried to grab his camera away, he refused: "What's the rush?"; afterwards, she ran off, and stood momentarily by a distant tree and low-lying bushes far away at the other end of the meadow

The One Incriminating Frame - A Body Under a Bush Next to a Tree

• [Note: On close inspection, she was standing next to a body lying face up under a bush next to a tree, although most viewers would not notice it on first viewing.]
• during a second visit to the antiques shop, on an impulsive whim, Thomas bargained with the young pretty shop owner (Susan Brodrick), insisting on buying (for 8 pounds) a huge, vintage wooden airplane propeller for decorative purposes; she helped him to try and load the oversized, heavy and unwieldy piece of art-junk into the back of his convertible, but then he arranged for a delivery
• afterwards in a fancy restaurant, Thomas shared his surreptitiously-taken photos of homeless men from the night before with his bearded writer/collaborator Ron (Peter Bowles); he was preparing to have some of his photos included in a high-brow, documentary photo-essay book they were producing together - it was his own purposeful personal project; as he returned home, he was pursued by a 4-door dark gray sedan driven by a suspicious stranger (Dyson Lovell) with the park's Female in the passenger seat
• at his studio/home as he was about to unlock the street door, the Female (Vanessa Redgrave) from the park desperately and seductively asked again for the film; he confronted her: "What's so important about my bloody pictures?"; she nervously claimed her private life was disastrous (was she involved in adultery or something more sinister?), and would be damaging to her, but he countered:
  • "So what? Nothing like a little disaster for sorting things out"

The Demanding Female Desperate to Get the Roll of Incriminating Film From Thomas in His Photo Studio

• she begged and bargained for the roll of incriminating film that he had shot of her in the public park with an unidentified, middle-aged man; she offered her body and sexually submitted herself to him: "Why didn't you say what you want?"; she eventually offered sexual favors by going topless, and although he basically ignored her, Thomas gave her a roll of undeveloped film but kept the one she wanted; they were briefly interrupted by the delivery of the propeller; afterwards as they smoked cigarettes together (it was unclear whether they had sex together), she happened to glance at her watch, hurried off ("It's late") and slipped on her blouse before leaving
• an exciting montage presented Thomas going through the various stages of the pictures' development - printing and magnified enlargement in his darkroom; as tension heightened, he pinned the pictures on the wall of his living room - in sequence - giving them life as if they were individual frames in a motion picture; to his shock, Thomas believed he saw a shadowy figure and a hand holding a gun in the bushes behind a fence, and possibly a dead body; he imagined that he had witnessed a scene of sexual intrigue and now the riveting possibility that he may have accidentally obtained visual, criminal evidence of a murder; was the man in the bushes a voyeur, part of a deadly threesome, or a threatening individual with a weapon, and had a murder-for-hire been thwarted?

Thomas Storyboarding the Photos - A Possible Murder?

• Thomas had finally become aroused by something he could become passionate about; he theorized that his picture-taking might have foiled or interrupted a potential murder attempt; he phoned Ron with ecstatic news:
  • "Something fantastic's happened. Those photographs in the park, fantastic! Somebody was trying to kill somebody else. I saved his life"
• Thomas then experienced a controversial, sexual encounter with the two giggling teen females who stopped by on their second visit; while trying on clothes, the skinny blonde was stripped of her clothes by Thomas, and then she wrestled her dark-haired friend and she was stripped too, claiming: "She's got a better figure than me"; eventually in a pre-threesome orgy sequence, the trio ended up frolicking and rolling around on an extended roll of purple backdrop paper as they tried to disrobe each other; later in the evening, exhausted by the romp, he stood up - and then completely ignored the two groupies, but promised photos with the disappointed girls the next day

The 2nd Visit From Two Aspiring Teen Models

• once again, Thomas returned to further study the photographs, and imagined a more riveting possibility - that he may have accidentally recorded and obtained visual, criminal evidence of an actual murder - the figure hiding in the bushes with a gun in his hand may have shot and killed the female's elderly paramour
• Thomas drove back to the park for a nighttime visit, with the haunting sound of the wind blowing through the trees; he discovered a scene of murder due to the perfectly-posed, gray-haired man's corpse (the cheating Female's middle-aged lover?) next to some bushes at the far-end of the park; without his camera, he couldn't document his find; was the body real, or only a creative figment of his imagination?; he was scared off by a twig snapping
• after returning home, in his next-door neighbor's apartment, Thomas watched as Patricia was underneath her husband Bill who was on top making love to her; she wordlessly entreated Thomas in their flat to position himself and stay in view nearby so she could achieve orgasm - his presence aroused her passion
• upon his return to his photographic studio, Thomas saw it had been ransacked and vandalized; he shockingly realized that someone had stolen all of his negatives and blown-up prints of the incident, except for one large grainy and fuzzy close-up of the body on the ground
• when Patricia stopped after her love-making session, he asked: "Do you ever think of leaving him?" and she responded: "No, I don't think so"; he shared with her that he saw an unidentified "someone" shot and killed in the park that morning; she asked a very grounded, highly-crucial question: "Are you sure?" and uncertainty grew in his mind; before leaving, she also inserted another request about her relationship: "Will you help me? I don't know what to do," but the subject quickly changed
• while driving back to the park, he caught a fleeting glimpse of the female from the park window-shopping on a sidewalk, but then she vanished in a crowd; Thomas also found himself at an indoor Yardbirds rock concert in the Ricky Tick Club; he watched as the group's lead member Jeff Beck smashed his guitar into an amplifier and then stomped on it; Thomas seized the broken guitar piece and ran off with others in hot pursuit, but then discarded it
• he became sidetracked at a fashionable and elegant cocktail party in a gated apartment building, where Ron and others (including Veruschka who had lied about going to Paris) were smoking joints; Thomas attempted to explain his experience in the park with Ron ("I want you to see the corpse. We've got to get a shot of it"), but the disoriented Ron was uninterested and disbelieving; when Ron finally asked: "What did you see in that park?", Thomas capitulated and answered that he also could not comprehend or explain what he saw: "Nothing" - it was the film's last word of dialogue
• eventually by morning, Thomas returned to the park to find the body missing and the murder evidence had vanished; Thomas continued to be befuddled by his experience with the photographs, and began wandering around
• in the final enigmatic scene, Thomas observed as the bizarrely-dressed, clownish university students in white-face careened into the park in their overloaded Land Rover; two of the mimes entered a tennis court to play a mute game of tennis with invisible, non-existent tennis rackets and ball (the soundtrack picked up the sound of the tennis ball however); Thomas volunteered to join in the charade with them, and threw the imaginary ball back to them
• the film ended with an aerial view of Thomas as a tiny and solitary figure standing at a distance in the middle of a grassy field in the park near the tennis court, with his camera in his hand; he faded from view just before the words THE END zoomed forward

The Mime Pranksters At a Tennis Court	Muted and Pantomimed Game of Tennis Without Rackets or Balls
Thomas Watching and Then Participating	Aerial View Ending With Thomas' Disappearance in a Field