Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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37 of 41 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Very stylistic and avant-garde, but still makes sense. Great, October 15, 1999
By A Customer
Michelangelo Antonioni's 1966 film adaptation of Julio Cortazar's "Blow-Up," perhaps Antonioni's best known work, represents a truly great adaptation of a short story, though the film on its own still stands as a great artistic acheivement. It is a remarkable example of an international work (an Italian director working with a British cast), a project which can easily go awry. David Hemings and Vanessa Redgrave both give excellent performances, but most important, it is a highly stylized somewhat avant-garde work, but in the end, the story has direct meaning and still makes perfectly clear sense- a true rarity. "Blow-Up's" value as a literary adaptation is only one virtue the film possesses, but this virtue includes several positive aspects. "Blow-Up" centers around a photographer named Robert, who, while walkng through the park one afternoon, photographs two lovers from a distance. The woman furiously demands that Robert hand over the negatives. Instead, he returns to hs studio to develop them. After studyng the photographs carefully, Robert discovers that the woman, working with a third firgure situated behind the hedge, is murdering the young man. As he studies the photos, Robert is watching an actual murder take place, but he is powerless to stop it, because it is only taking place in the photographs. Here, the line separating reality and imagination has become completely blurred. As events unfold, the photographer comes to realize that the entire sequence may have only taken place in his head. The recurring theme of both the short story and the film is that people ultimately construct their own reality. Cortazar helped establsh this theme from the beginning by writing his story alternately in first person and in third person, sometimes in singular, sometimes in plural, the implication being that the narrator himself isn't even certain whether or not any of this actually took place. In his film adaptation, Antonioni took what was represented as a few short scenes in the short story, and integrated his own material, bringing the film to a reasonable running time. The impressive part of this is that the integrated material, while completely fabricated by the filmmaker, still manages to make itself relevant by being in compliance with the story's main theme. The mime troupe is the most interesting of these additions. They appear in the beginning, their only apparent purpose to create havoc in the city. Though in the end, it is the mime troupe who make the film's theme most apparent. While playing a mock game of tennis, the mimes knock the "ball" out of the court. Robert goes to retrieve it for them. He bends over, picks up an imaginary ball, and throws it back on the court. The camera stays on Robert as he watches them play, and slowly, we begin to hear the sound of a tennis ball being bounced back and forth. Once again, Robert has immersed himself in the reality of his imagination, so to speak. Antonioni, an absolute master of sound control, pulls this effect off as no other director could have. The short story's theme of imagination and reality could so easily have been lost on film, since film is by its nature a third person limited storytelling medium. Antonioni's uses of sound, as in all of his movies, is truly astounding, and he uses this medium very effectively to enter Robert's personal reality. This is perhaps the greatest genius of the film adaptation.
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72 of 87 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
The Significance of the Visible, January 10, 2005
More than any other film that comes to mind, "Blow Up" illustrates the adage distinguishing the novelist from the filmmaker: the former's concern is to make the significant visible whereas the latter's passion is to bring significance to the visible. Little does it matter that the film's protagonist fails in that quest. Antonioni manages to make the search itself so absorbing that the "whodunnit" motif of the narrative is incidental to the journey itself. "Pictures don't lie" is another old bromide being put to the test by this film's unique thematizing of the photographic process itself, and Antonioni's accomplishment is to preserve the spirit if not the letter of the statement. We leave the film believing in the power of the photographed image even if both its meaning and content remain inconclusive.
Watching the film in the theater was a spellbinding and unforgettable experience. Anyone who has seen the director's out-of-control if not disastrous "Zabriskie Point" and subsequently decided to pass up "Blow Up" should definitely reconsider. Just a couple of caveats: the film does, in fact, transfer quite poorly to a small video monitor, bringing excessive attention to dated features of the pop cultural landscape of the late '60's London scene. Moreover, because video cameras are now the everyman's commodity, while cropping, editing, and enlargening images are common practice in modern-day consumer culture, some of the undeniable excitement experienced by David Hemmings with each of his successive blow-ups is bound to seem much more mundane. And perhaps by now we fancy we know more about photography than either Antonioni or Hemmings, especially after the failure of even instant replay to be definitive about whether a touchdown was scored.
Nevertheless, if you have a large screen, some patience and a memory of the promise and challenges of an earlier technology, "Blow Up" still is capable of working at several important levels--as existential philosophy, as postmodern text, as compelling narrative (Hemmings is wonderful), and as a respite from many current overly loud, fractically edited blockbusters that, despite the sound and fury, signify nothing whatsoever.
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18 of 20 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Reviewed By Alan Gerrard, February 5, 1998
By A Customer
To watch Blow-Up, you are confronted by two aspects. One is that the film can be taken purely as a straight forward mystery thriller; or secondly, you can approach the film as a snapshot that pours in every garish '60's cliche possible. The plot is minimal, and revolves around a wealthy young photographer (based loosely on David Bailey) who accidently photographs a murder. But no one believes him, even though he has blown up the image of a person hiding in the bushes of an inner city park, clutching a gun that is pointed at a man. The man is clearly the murder victim, that has been lured into the park by a young woman (Vanessa Redgrave), who herself disappears after trying to retreive the film from the photograher (David Hemmings). After this the film is bombarded by all the images that make this film so british. The pop stars (played by the Yardbirds) the colourfully trendy people, and a group of mime artists - which seem to accentuate Hemmings' own isolation. I particularly enjoyed the tennis scene with the mime artists and Hemmings, where Hemmings picks up the imaginary ball and throws it to them. And there the film ends, almost surrealistically, but if you liked the 60's and all that it embodied, this film is for you. It is as essential as the Mini and the E-Type Jaguar, a wild ride of beautifully filmed scenes that is pure arthouse. Sit back and enjoy. END
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