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DVD Blow-Up
This 1966 masterpiece by Michelangelo Antonioni (The Passenger) is set in the heady atmosphere of Swinging London, and stars David Hemmings as an unsmiling fashion photographer hooked on ephemeral meaning attached to anything: art, sex, work, relationships, drugs, events. When a real mystery falls into his lap, he probes the evidence for some reliable truth, but finds it hard to reckon with. Vanessa Redgrave plays an enigmatic woman whose desperation to cover something up only seems like one more phenomenon in Hemmings's disinterested purview. This is one of the key films of the decade, and still an unsettling and lasting experience. --Tom Keogh
There is at least one big misconception about BLOW-UP: it's not a film 'about' swinging 60s London, as it is usually characterized. It's not a critique or condemnation of that 'scene'. Antonioni--although his roots are in documentary--tends to use locations for their visual impact and whatever moods they may invoke and not, at least in his films of the 60s, to make political statements. He chooses the fashion scene of London because of its preoccupation with surface (literal surface, appearance) and with a primary-color palette. Thomas the photographer, (David Hemmings) seems to function as an 'artist' in this scene--recording the surface effect of what he sees--but he is very clearly not engaged with it artistically. It's something he does by rote, offhandedly and very importantly, without PASSION (as a number of famous scenes show. Ironically, these brief scenes of sexual titillation were exploited to sell the film as 'erotic', the very opposite of their intention within the context of the film).
The director had much of Thomas's neighborhood in the film repainted to intensify the bright, primary color scheme. A scheme in which red seems to dominate, but not symbolically. Red (as well as blue) just identifies Thomas's milieu. When the photographer goes into the park, he enters a world of green. Beautiful, almost intoxicating green (a real feature of the DVD transfer, by the way, is the brilliance of the color in this film). Green connects obviously to nature, even in a park landscaped by city planners. But, again, it's not really symbolic (Antonioni does not tend to use symbolism in any conventional sense, if at all, until perhaps the end of this film). Rather, green establishes this alternate environment where Thomas will make a significant discovery.
Earlier in the film, we meet Thomas's neighbor, a painter named Bill (John Castle) who introduces the notion of looking at a work of art and seeing something in it after it's complete (he demonstrates this in his own painting). When Thomas develops his photos of Redgrave and her presumed lover in the park, he begins to notice other details that are far more interesting. This leads to an investigation that sort of encapsulates, or stands in for the long wandering segments of Antonioni's previous films: a gradual uncovering of some kind of knowledge or truth. What does Thomas discover? Perhaps that there's something under the surface of life that we don't want to think about, rushing around in our driven lives; perhaps it's mortality, or just something that SEEMS to be serious and important. When he pursues the investigation by going to see the actual body, the film takes on an almost sinister aspect. There is something primitive and slightly disturbing about the nearly silent scene of Thomas finding the body, accompanied only by the soft rustling of wind through the trees. He's shaken by it. But importantly, the whole experience has awakened a passion in him, not so much as an artist but as a human being. When the body has disappeared on his second visit, Thomas seems deeply disillusioned. Was any of this real? Does it matter if it was or not? But for a brief moment this jaded young man cared about something that did appear to be serious and important. The encounter with the mimes at film's end actually does seem symbolic, and it's a fairly obvious move on this director's part. Here's where it all gets so subjective. It's deliberately up for grabs: what, if anything , do the mimes stand for? Why does Thomas join their game and then disappear? To some, it's a surrender to the illusory nature of being, so complete that he no longer needs to even exist himself.
The DVD issue of BLOW-UP looks extremely good. The sheer visual beauty of the colors and images really gets its due. There is a critical commentary that leaves more questions than it answers and is among the least useful recorded for a challenging film of this kind.
Beautiful and Dated
"Blow-Up" is a perfect example of a serious work that belongs exclusively to the time in which it was created. The setup is wonderful -- a murder that seems to be, seems not to be, and probably actually is, on film. And the idea of bringing the detached photographer -- who distances himself from life by staying on his side of the viewfinder -- into real engagement with other people, is also pretty swell. But in the end it's all in service of a very dated 60s nihilism that makes the film seem to turn yellow and curl at the edges in spite of a splendid performance by David Hemmings and some exquisite photography. When the film is over it seems naive, and the supposedly daring view of nothingness it puts forth seems as shallow and trendy as a bad period hairdo or garishly outdated clothes.
Blow-Up (1966) - Michelangelo Antonioni
Blow-Up is another one of Antonioni's ambigious and ambitious films. Not many directors can carve out a lasting career on films with no substantial plots, but Antonioni has done it with style. Blow-Up has an intersting premise that never finds a solid conclusion, which is it's real appeal. The film's meandering style is at times interesting, and other times tedious. Antonioni is famous for having changed normal film grammar with L'Avventura (1960), but in Blow-Up the style wears a little thin by the end. Swinging London is nicely photographed, the colors and fashion are bold, and David Hemmings is perfect as the disenchanted photographer. Antonioni's creative use of a possible murder plot, and his examination of reality are well concieved. The only real problem in the film is the ending moment that Antonioni dubbed "his moment." It just doesn't work and comes off as a little silly.
At three brief hours, La Dolce Vita, a piece of cynical, engrossing social commentary, stands as Federico Fellini's timeless masterpiece. A rich, detailed panorama of Rome's modern decadence and sophisticated immorality, the film is episodic in structure but held tightly in focus by the wandering protagonist through whom we witness the sordid action. Marcello Rubini (extraordinarily played by Marcello Mastroianni) is a tabloid reporter trapped in a shallow high-society existence. A man of paradoxical emotional juxtapositions (cool but tortured, sexy but impotent), he dreams about writing something important but remains seduced by the money and prestige that accompany his shallow position. He romanticizes finding true love but acts unfazed upon finding that his girlfriend has taken... More Info about this DVD Actor(s): Marcello Mastroianni - Anita Ekberg Director(s): Federico Fellini DVD Release Date: Released the 21 September 2004 Usually ships in 24 hours
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Bleak and mysterious, Francis Ford Coppola's taut masterpiece about responsibility, privacy, alienation, and paranoia is part Hitchcockian thriller, part grim character study. Hackman plays Harry Caul, a guarded wreck of a human being whose profession as the world's greatest surveillance expert has detached him from everyday reality. Though a topnotch voyeur, amorally earning his living by bugging other people's conversations and selling the tapes to clients, Caul keeps his own life fiercely private. He has no friends, just associates in the wiretapping business, all of whom he distrusts; his love life consists of apathetic sex with what could be any woman; his apartment contains three locks but few possessions. His indifference to life extends to his attitude about his job: though he's a... More Info about this DVD Actor(s): Gene Hackman - John Cazale Director(s): Francis Ford Coppola DVD Release Date: Released the 12 December 2000 Usually ships in 24 hours
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The movie that heralded the French New Wave movement, this lean and exciting 1959 film directed by Jean-Luc Godard (A Woman Is a Woman, Weekend) broke new ground not only in its unorthodox use of editing and hand-held photography, but in its unflinching and nonjudgmental portrayal of amoral youth. Jean-Paul Belmondo and Jean Seberg play two young lovers on the run from the law after Belmondo kills a cop and steals a car. Soon they are on an odyssey through the streets of Paris searching for some money he is owed so that he and his American girlfriend can escape to Italy. As a chase picture it features some startling photography on the streets of Paris, but as a romance it defies expectations, existing as part tragedy and part Bonnie and Clyde crime movie. The result... More Info about this DVD Actor(s): Jean-Paul Belmondo - Jean Seberg Director(s): Jean-Luc Godard DVD Release Date: Released the 06 November 2001 Usually ships in 24 hours
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Luchino Visconti's adaptation of the Thomas Mann novel is the very definition of sumptuous: the costumes and sets, the special geography of Venice, and the breathtaking cinematography combine to form a heady experience. At the center of this gorgeousness is Aschenbach (Dirk Bogarde in a meticulous performance), a controlled intellectual who unexpectedly finds himself obsessed by the vision of a 14-year-old boy while on a convalescent vacation in 1911. Visconti has turned Aschenbach into a composer, which accounts for the lush excerpts from Mahler on the soundtrack (Bogarde is meant to look like Mahler, too). Even if it tends to hit the nail on the head a little too forcefully, and even if Visconti can test one's patience with lingering looks at crowds at the beach and hotel dining rooms,... More Info about this DVD Actor(s): Dirk Bogarde Director(s): Luchino Visconti DVD Release Date: Released the 17 February 2004 Usually ships in 24 hours
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Continuing the "alienation trilogy" that began with L'Avventura and ended with L'Eclisse, Michelangelo Antonioni's La Notte is a visually arresting, emotionally numbing exercise in chronic ennui. The film's anesthetizing effect is entirely intentional; Antonioni's central couple (Marcello Mastroianni as a self-absorbed novelist, Jeanne Moreau as his bored and wealthy wife) wallow in their own emotional desolation, constantly drifting--and in Moreau's case, literally drifting--from one disaffected scene to the next. Antonioni's pained study of modern detachment is richly supported by his visuals, often placing his isolated characters in a harsh landscape of empty glamor and even emptier emotions. Driving the point home is Monica Vitti as Marcello's would-be... More Info about this DVD Actor(s): Marcello Mastroianni - Jeanne Moreau Director(s): Michelangelo Antonioni DVD Release Date: Released the 08 May 2001 Special Order
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