BLOWUP
FEBRUARY 2011
SYNOPSIS:
Blowup is a 1966 British-Italian film directed by Michelangelo
Antonioni, his first English-language film. It tells of a photographer's
accidental involvement with a murder, inspired by Julio Cortázar's
1959 short story, Las babas del diablo or The Devil's
Drool,
and by the life of Swinging London photographer David Bailey.
The film was scored by jazz pianist Herbie Hancock, although
the music is source music, as Hancock noted: "It's only
there when someone turns on the radio or puts on a record." Nominated
for several awards at the Cannes Film Festival, Blowup won the
Grand Prix.
Critical Comments
Time magazine called the film a "far-out, uptight and vibrantly
exciting picture" that represented a "screeching change
of creative direction" for Antonioni; the magazine predicted
it would "undoubtedly be by far the most popular movie Antonioni
has ever made".
Andrew Sarris said the movie was "a mod masterpiece".
In Playboy Magazine, Arthur Knight wrote that Blowup would be "as
important and seminal a film as Citizen Kane, Open
City and Hiroshima,
Mon Amour – perhaps even more so".
Bosley Crowther of The New
York Times called it 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". Crowther had reservations,
describing the "usual Antonioni passages of seemingly endless
wanderings" as "redundant and long"; nevertheless,
he called Blowup a "stunning picture- beautifully
built up with glowing images and color compositions that get
us into the feelings of our man and into the characteristics
of the mod world in which he dwells". Even film director
Ingmar Bergman, who generally disliked Antonioni, acknowledged
its significance: "He's
done two masterpieces, you don't have to bother with the rest.
One is Blowup, which I've seen many times, and the other
is La Notte, also a wonderful film, although that's
mostly because of the young Jeanne Moreau."
Blowup was controversial as the first
British film to feature full frontal female nudity. MGM did not
gain approval for the film under the MPAA Production Code in
the United States. The code's collapse and revision was foreshadowed
when MGM released the film through a subsidiary distributor and Blowup was
shown widely in North American cinemas.
[edit] Noted cameos
Sundry people known in 1966 are in the film; others became famous
later. The most widely noted cameo was by The Yardbirds, who
perform "Stroll On" in the last third. Antonioni
first asked Eric Burdon to play that scene but he turned it
down. As Keith Relf sings, Jimmy Page and Jeff Beck play to
either side, along with Chris Dreja. After his guitar amplifier
fails, Beck bashes his guitar to bits, as The Who did at the
time. Antonioni had wanted the Who in Blowup as he was fascinated
by Pete Townshend's guitar-smashing routine.[3] Steve Howe
of The In Crowd recalled, "We went on the set and started
preparing for that guitar-smashing scene in the club. They
even went as far as making up a bunch of Gibson 175 replicas
... and then we got dropped for The Yardbirds, who were a bigger
name. That's why you see Jeff Beck smashing my guitar rather
than his!"[4] Antonioni also considered using The Velvet
Underground in the nightclub scene, but according to guitarist
Sterling Morrison, "the expense of bringing the whole
entourage to England proved too much for him."[5]
Michael Palin of Monty Python can be seen briefly in the sullen
nightclub crowd[6] and Janet Street-Porter dances in stripy Carnaby
Street trousers.
A poster on the club's door bears a drawing of a tombstone with
the epitaph, Here lies Bob Dylan Passed Away Royal Albert
Hall 27 May 1966 R.I.P., harking to Dylan's switch to electric instruments
at this time. Beside the Dylan are posters bearing a caricature
of Prime Minister Harold Wilson.
Source : Wikipedia
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