Blow-Up

    Blow-Up
    1966

    Synopsis

    A successful mod photographer in London whose world is bounded by fashion, pop music, marijuana, and easy sex, feels his life is boring and despairing. But in the course of a single day he unknowingly captures a death on film.

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    Cast

    • David HemmingsThomas
    • Vanessa RedgraveJane
    • Sarah MilesPatricia
    • John CastleBill
    • Veruschka von LehndorffVeruschka
    • Jane BirkinThe Blonde
    • Gillian HillsThe Brunette
    • Peter BowlesRon
    • Julian ChagrinMime
    • Claude ChagrinMime

    Recommendations

    • 100

      Chicago Sun-Times

      Whether there was a murder isn't the point. The film is about a character mired in ennui and distaste, who is roused by his photographs into something approaching passion.
    • 100

      Slant Magazine

      Blowup daringly suggests that an image without politics isn’t an image at all.
    • 100

      Slant Magazine

      Blow-Up is moving and influential for the chasms it understands to exist between people, and for its perception of art as unable to bridge those divides.
    • 100

      Empire

      An absolute must.
    • 90

      The New York Times

      This is a fascinating picture, which has something real to say about the matter of personal involvement and emotional commitment in a jazzed-up, media-hooked-in world so cluttered with synthetic stimulations that natural feelings are overwhelmed.
    • 83

      The A.V. Club

      Blow-Up defies analysis by design, given that it's about an artist who makes messes and cleans them up only in part, leaving behind the splatter that interests him. Antonioni follows a similar methodology, making strict interpretations of Blow-Up pretty pointless, and certainly less enjoyable than soaking up the mod decadence and ennui.
    • 80

      Village Voice

      A prize ‘60s artifact, Michelangelo Antonioni’s what-is-truth? meditation on Swinging London is a movie to appreciate—if not ponder.
    • 75

      Chicago Reader

      This is so ravishing to look at (the colors all seem newly minted) and pleasurable to follow (the enigmas are usually more teasing than worrying) that you're likely to excuse the metaphysical pretensions—which become prevalent only at the very end—and go with the 60s flow, just as the original audiences did.

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