Top Ten Movies of the 1960s

#7

Blowup

1966
Directed by: Michelangelo Antonioni
Cinematography by: Carlo Di Palma
Music By: Herbie Hancock
Starring: David Hemmings, Vanessa Redgrave, and The Yardbirds

If you're a mod, then this movie is for you. Set in Swinging London during the 1960s, the movie follows a hip photographer Thomas (David Hemmings) throughout what would appear to be a normal day in his life. The opening scene shows him beginning his day: he spent all night taking photographs in a factory with English workhouse conditions for a book of art photos he's working on. From there he heads to his workshop and starts his day job: photographing German supermodel Veruschka! Later on in the film he goes to a Yardbirds concert. Jeff Beck even smashes up his guitar on stage. That's the 1960s era London we all love. That's the mod life.

Despite this seemingly thrilling life though, David is not satisfied. We see this in the next seen where he chastises a group of five models for being too boring to put on celluloid. He ventures into a park to lighten up his day with some landscapes and sees a couple making out in the grass. The girl (Vanessa Redgrave) gets in his face and wants the photos so badly that you know something is wrong. At this point in the movie, it goes from being good to brilliant. Things get a little crazy and while examining his blow ups (enlarged prints of the photos), David convinces himself that he has witnessed a murder in the park. Now whether he has or he hasn't is something that is to be decided by the viewer. The director, Antonioni, gives you hints suggesting it is reality and then gives you another suggesting the whole thing was imagined. The brilliance of the double entendre title is obvious too. Blowup. Is he blowing things up, making something out of nothing?

The movie is all about how our mind can play tricks on us and the nature of reality. Can we really trust ourselves, if not what can we believe. How can we really know anything for sure. Is there a real outside world which we can sense or is everything just a product of our over-imaginative minds? Sorry to bring in Cartesian dualism, but that's one of the reasons that I love this film so much, so I think that the Descartes reference is perfectly acceptable. cogito ergo sum: I think, I am. It's impossible for us to really distinguish between what may be happening in some 'material' world and what we percieve is happening through the constraints of our own senses. Our senses are unreliable anyway. That's what I mean! It really gets under your skin and makes you think about it long after its over. The closing scene is one of my favourites of any movie and drives this point home:

So the mimes are miming a game of tennis, and doing a good job of it too. Back and forth, back and forth. David is watching intently, so much so that his head moves with each volley. When he is asked to get the ball he even joins in on their game and then throws it back. Then the coolest part: during a long close-up of just his face, the sound of a real tennis match grows until you can hear it clearly. It really messes with your mind. Is there really a match going on? It's a close-up, perhaps Antonioni is just trying to show that, for David, it is a real tennis match. It is his reality. How can it be fake if that's what he's experiencing? That's brilliant, that's a great way to end a movie. no wonder it won the Palme D'or at the Cannes Film Festival!

For being a great metaphysical/epistemological thriller, in my opinion Blowup is the seventh greatest film of the 1960s.