[.ca] Blow Up

From Amazon.co.uk:
It may not stand up as an art-house film (the opening and closing shots of a mime playing tennis belong in the Pretentious Metaphor Hall of Fame), but this head scratcher is an absorbing travelogue of swinging London circa 1967, courtesy of auteur tourist Michelangelo Antonioni. Blow Up is also a meticulous, paranoid murder mystery that has left its fingerprints on dozens of later films, from Coppola's The Conversation to the recent cult item The Usual Suspects. The efforts of a fashion photographer (David Hemmings) to analyse a photo snapped off-the-cuff in a public park, which may have recorded a crime in progress, resonated at the time with conspiracy theories surrounding the Kennedy assassination. From here it looks like an anticipation of up-to-the-minute anxieties about the filtering of perception through metastasising media. The movie marked the film debut of Vanessa Redgrave, and in the justly celebrated purple-paper scene, expat chanteuse-to-be Jane Birkin. --David Chute

Amazon.com Essential Video:
This 1966 masterpiece by Michelangelo Antonioni (The Passenger) is set in the heady atmosphere of Swinging London, and stars David Hemmings as an unsmiling fashion photographer hooked on ephemeral meaning attached to anything: art, sex, work, relationships, drugs, events. When a real mystery falls into his lap, he probes the evidence for some reliable truth, but finds it hard to reckon with. Vanessa Redgrave plays an enigmatic woman whose desperation to cover something up only seems like one more phenomenon in Hemmings's disinterested purview. This is one of the key films of the decade, and still an unsettling and lasting experience. --Tom Keogh

Movies as litmus tests:
Another film that brings out the moral venality in Amazon "reviewers". I particularly love the one who was "forced" to watch it in a friend's film class & found it a "waist" of time. Let's see...the waist is where things ingested pass through on their way to the digestion process. But I doubt he was being that profound. Then there are the ones who find the film dated, London too empty & the main character a horrible nasty. Well folks, it's true there are no friendly wizards, cute goblins or funny ogres in this one, so it may taste like harsh medicine to some. But Blow-Up was a real slice of the 1960s, take it or leave it. Not just the "life-style" (clothes, decor & behavior) which is perfectly rendered (& is probably what dates the film the most) but the sheer fragmentation of time & space, of event & response. This was Antonioni's particular area of expertise: space & emptiness filled with random human collisions supposedly suffused with "meaning". Well, we certainly have adopted different attitudes today, haven't we? Everything with its socio-political subtext. The big problem, I think, with a movie like Blow-Up is that it doesn't easily let you pick which Side to Be On. It's very European in that way (Old Europe, to use current parlance). Hey folks, when you look at a De Chirico (you should, you know), do you find the streets too empty, the perspectives too stark & arbitrary?

WARNING - DEFECTIVE AUDIO:
DESPITE LOTS OF EFFORT, TROUBLE-SHOOTING, AND ASSISTANCE FROM HIGH-TECH-PROFICIENT FRIENDS, I HAVE BEEN UNABLE TO GET THE AUDIO TRACK FOR THIS FILM TO PLAY. I HAVE HAD NO SIMILAR PROBLEM WITH ANY OTHER DVD I OWN OR HAVE RENTED. SO BE WARNED, DO NOT PURCHASE THIS DVD UNLESS YOU ARE ABSOLUTELY CERTAIN THAT YOUR DVD-PLAYER WILL PLAY IT. \oIronically, all the other special features on this DVD, including the trailers and a voice-over commentary track, have fully-functional audio tracks. It's just the main feature - THE FILM ITSELF - that has no audio!\c

The Antonioni step:
A phothographer (David Heminngs) gets a slapshot and he believes there's a murder in that picture. The reality is elusive , and watch about your senses seem to reveal you . Nothing is like it seems . The hidden message underneath the script . Antonioni has beencalled the master of the silence . And in this case , in his first american film he challenges our ancient beliefs , what we usually mean as common sense . What's the truth and where does it begin our disturbed or prejuiced perceptions about the real world . Obviously there's a bit message aboutthe drugs world in this statement. The ending sequence in what we see? a mude tennis game is not pnly a sincere tribute to the timeless genius of the mimo art - Marcel Marceau - , but a clear reference about we state as truth many times what other senses vaguely pretend establish .

An unusual movie about a murder that was photographed:
Director: Michelangelo Antonioni Format: ColorStudio: Turner Home Video Video Release Date: June 24, 2002 Cast: Vanessa Redgrave ... Jane Sarah Miles ... Patricia David Hemmings ... Thomas John Castle ... Bill Jane Birkin ... The Blonde Gillian Hills ... The Brunette Peter Bowles ... Ron Veruschka von Lehndorff ... Herself Julian Chagrin ... Mime Claude Chagrin ... Mime Chris Dreja ... Himself in the Yardbirds Harry Hutchinson ... Shopkeeper Chas Lawther ... Waiter Jim McCarty ... Himself in the Yardbirds Rosaleen Murray ... Model Jeff Beck ... Himself with The Yardbirds Ronan O'Casey ... Jane's lover in park Jimmy Page ... Himself with The Yardbirds Keith Relf ... Himself in The Yardbirds Reg Wilkins ... Thomas' Assistant Reg Melanie Hampshire ... Model Jill Kennington ... Model Mary Khal ... Fashion Editor Peggy Moffitt ... Model Ann Norman ... Model Janet Street-Porter ... Extra Susan Broderick ... Antique Shop Owner Tsai Chin ... Thomas' Receptionist A young English photographer, while making photographs in a park, inadvertently photographs a murder. He discovers it later on a blow-up of the scene. This is an amazing picture, which in 1957 won the picture of the year and drew a great deal of critical comment on what the film meant, since the ending, if not entirely satisfactory, was certainly surprising. This is a strange picture that is better in the viewing than in the telling. You will do well to watch it. Joseph (Joe) Pierre author of Handguns and Freedom...their care and maintenance and other books

Good example of how NOT to make movies:
A fashion photographer discovers a crime. So what??? Big Deal!!! The action is slow, boring and unrealistic. The photographer is arrogant and simply rude both to his assistants, and to his customers. All actors are square and unconvincig, schematic. All the action spins around the daily activities of the photographer and his frozen face. I would understand, if this crap were made in 1920s, but hey! Wake up! The year is 1966! So, this piece of garbage is just an example how NOT to make movies. And I do not care how popular the actors were, and how great the director. Do not waste your time, unless you are A movie major and this one is in you Summer Viewing List.