An icon film from 1966, it is the modern model of the visual story, in which the magical charge is intertwined with the dramatic thrill of the „murder” type. Launching a „mods” vibe, with a dynamic that inspired later films, including Francis Ford Coppola’s The Conversation (1974) and Brian De Palma’s Blow Out (1981). In 2012, Blowup was ranked 144th in the Sight & Sound critics’ poll of the world’s best films.

In the main section of the Cannes Film Festival, Blow-up won the Palme d’Or, the festival’s highest award, and had such a big impact that it changed the „Hollywood Production Code”, which initially censored the film because of some scenes with „explicit sexual content”, censorship correlated with the American pudibondery of those years. In 1968, the MPAA rating code was adopted.

The film’s plot was inspired by Julio Cortázar’s short story „Las babas del diablo” (1959), with a screenplay by Antonioni and Tonino Guerra, with refined English dialogue by British playwright Edward Bond.

The direction belongs to the renowned Michelangelo Antonioni, the actors David Hemmings, Vanessa Redgrave and Sarah Miles are in the cast. Alongside them, a famous fashion model in the 60s, Veruschka, plays.

“In the case of Blow-up, the (murder) mystery is relevant to the film, but the solution is not. Indeed, the absence of a solution is part of the point: the uncertainty of life… the real suspense lies not in the mystery of the photographic explosions, but in the instability of Thomas himself… „a mystery without a solution is central to the theme of disorientation ( Gordan Gow, film historian).

Antonioni stated about the theme of the film: „that the film is not about the relationship between man and man, it is about the relationship between man and reality”.

Film critic Andrew Sarris said the film was „a mod masterpiece”. In Playboy magazine, film critic Arthur Knight wrote that Blowup would be „a film as important and seminal as ‘Citizen Kane,’ ‘Open City,’ and ‘Hiroshima, Mon Amour’—perhaps even more so.” Time magazine called the film a „distant, tense and vibrantly exciting picture” that represented a „striking change in creative direction” for Antonioni; magazine predicted that it would be „by far the most popular film Antonioni has ever made”.

The few photos that illustrate the few words about the film, words that try to remember and celebrate this film of the youth of visual arts lovers describe some important moments from the film: the photographer Thomas in action, his walk in the park where after photographing a couple of in love, they discover in the background a silhouette of a man hiding in the foliage, with a gun: murder is written between the lines and the memory of that phase projects the photographer into a psychedelic zone.

(Info Sources: Wikipedia)

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