261 - Blow-Up, 1966, Italy. Dir. Michelangelo Antonioni.

Monday, September 18, 2017

261 - Blow-Up, 1966, Italy.  Dir. Michelangelo Antonioni.

SPOILERS

This blog will look at the intrigue section of the film and what may have happened.

Do not read it if you do not want to spoil the film.

Michelangelo Antonioni's film Blow-Up is his most famous film and the one that created the greatest sensation worldwide.

His 1960 film l'Avventura put him on the international cinema map, but Blow-Up made him a household name.

Blow-Up is many things and can be viewed in multiple ways.  It is one day in the life of a swinging fashion photographer in 1960s London.

One of the things that happens during the day is that the photographer, Thomas, played by David Hemmings, while photographing a couple in the park, later believes he has captured on film a potential murder, and later still believes he has captured an actual murder.

He enlarges his pictures, or blows them up, in order to study them, which gives the film its title.

Various theories have been put forth as to what he photographed in the park.  Here is mine.

I believe Jane, played by Vanessa Redgrave, plotted to murder her lover, played by Ronan O'Casey. We first catch a glimpse of Jane and her lover not in the upper section of the park where the photographs are taken but down in the open field next to the tennis court, where Thomas himself will disappear at the end of the film.  At the moment, Thomas is photographing birds, perhaps pigeons, while standing not far from Jane and her lover, with his back to them.  We tilt and pan up and to the left, just passing by their torsos.  She is leading him.

Later, Thomas sees Jane pulling on her lover, guiding him up a path to the upper lever, which is what will lead Thomas to go around and up the steps, where he skips carefree joy, in order to shoot them. Jane is always leading her lover, as if guiding him to a predetermined spot.  When they appear to be holding hands and leaning back together, she is actually pulling him, trying to get him into position.

When Thomas goes back and looks at the blown-up photographs, this is even more apparent.

As they move into the center of the upper field, she looks around.  She does not appear worried or concerned--as is implied later in the photographs--but she is casing the area, as if to see if they are in position and as if to ensure that no one is watching.  When she sees Thomas with his camera, then she appears worried and begins to chase him.

For the rest of the film, Jane's driving relationship with Thomas is to get the film back.  It could be that she does not want the scandal, either for her lover or herself or both.  Or it could be that she merely wants privacy, as she asserts.  However, I believe she wants to eliminate evidence.  She not only grabs the camera but also goes as far as biting his hand.  She does not merely want those pictures.  She really wants them.

When Jane finally relents--for the moment--and runs away from Thomas, she approaches the lover's supine body at the tree, which is not where she left him, and only stops for a brief moment to glance at him before running away.

This is not a woman in love.  At least not with him.

Nor is it a woman in any way shocked, startled, or even surprised to see a dead body, let alone the body of the man with whom she was just canoodling.

She does not kneel over the body to see if he is alive or in distress.  She does not even bend down a little bit.  She merely stops, sees him, and gets herself out of there as quickly as possible.

When she mysteriously appears at Thomas's apartment, he asks her, "How did you find me?" and she changes the subject.  She does not want to answer.  The only logical answer is that she has been following him ever since.

She goes upstairs and is willing to do whatever it takes to get that film, from playing along with his efforts to make her a model, to chitchatting about trivial matters, to smoking and listening to music, to trying to run away with it, and when that does not work, to removing her top and trying seduce him.  Once she gets what she thinks is the film, she does remain for a moment to kiss him, but her heart is not in that.  She is merely completing the transaction.  She gives him a fake name and number.  She hopes never to see him again.

Later his place is ransacked and all the film and prints are taken--except for the two they missed.  It is evident that she and her accomplice had the film developed and discovered that Thomas tricked her. Thus, her accomplice or someone they hired went back and burglarized Thomas in order to retrieve it.

Jane might have gone in with her new, real lover to kill her husband, or she may have seduced the lover we see at the park for the purpose of murdering him.  But she was not surprised by the killing. She was responsible for it.

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Michelangelo Antonioni launched his career by making someone disappear.  In l'Avventura, the presumed main character Anna, played by Lea Massari, suddenly goes missing while on a yacht trip on the Mediterranean.  It was rare, and still is, for a director to have his protagonist leave a film so soon.

In Blow-Up three characters disappear.  The body of the lover remains lying at the park when Thomas returns that evening, but it is gone by the next morning.  Thomas famously disappears at the end of the film, while standing on the same spot where he had photographed the birds earlier, just a few yards from Jane and her lover.  And Jane magically disappears while in front of the Ricky-Tick club. Watch that moment a few times and see if you can figure it out.  It was most likely done in post.  Antonioni ingenuously has people walk past her in just the right way to obscure what happens to her, and she seems to transform into the woman in the gray skirt who was standing to the left just a few seconds before.

Antonioni said he made his other films with his gut but this one with his head.  He says he was more detached with Blow-Up and reflected more on what he was doing.

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Thomas's purchase of the large propeller from the antique shop may appear at first to be a prop for his photography business, but he states rather that he just likes it.  (Note that he has porcelain busts in his studio that resemble the ones for sale at the antique shop, suggesting that these purchases are a hobby of commitment for him.)

When the delivery man delivers the propeller, he asks, "What's it for?"

Thomas answers, "Nothing.  It was beautiful."

And we suspect that Antonioni might, playfully, give us the same answer about some of his own choices.