Word: antonioni
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This small conscious realization on the photographer's part gives his life more value, and enables Antonioni to have him finally reject the behavior of his friends. The ending establishes this conclusively: in the park, returning from his unsuccessful attempt to find and photograph the corpse, he sees the white-faced youths standing around a tennis court, watching two of their group "play" tennis with an imaginary ball and imaginary rackets. The "ball" is knocked over the fence and the group looks toward the photographer to retrieve it. He hesitates momentarily, then picks up the the imaginary ball and throws...
When he throws the ball back, Antonioni again indicates the basic weakness in his photographer's character: he will too frequently succumb to the temptations of his life, probably never free himself from the pitfalls of a spiritually bankrupt society. The last shot, however, confirms his ultimate rejection of total involvement with the elements symbolized by the illusory tennis game. The ending makes a concise visual statement of the nature of the stasis the photographer has attained...
Continually fascinating when chronicling the unpredictable behavior of its photographer-hero, Blow-Up tends to wax ponderous and heavy-handed when characterizing his social environment. Antonioni sketches his mod London in black-and-white values, as entirely worthless. He depicts the young people at the rock-and-roll club and the pot party as incapable of individual emotional reaction, responding only in groups to escapist stimuli and the newest hip symbols (the electric guitar handle). This damning of a culture en masse is suspect; in setting his hero against a background of complete sterility, Antonioni has taken the easy...
...narrow-mindedness of Antonioni's conception would be more tolerable were it not for his continual use of sledgehammer symbolism. The visual venom with which he passes judgment on the vapid fashion models, the glassy-eyed crowd watching the Yardbirds, and the tennis players, frequently reaches laughable proportions (two people playing tennis without a ball equals two people living in a world of illusion, get it?). This defect in Blow-Up, mostly the fault of the screenplay, greatly reduces the total effect of the film. Blow-Up, when all is said and done, is a small film dealing with large...
...case, Blow-Up is really fun to watch. The color is vivid and striking, Antonioni having fully indulged his penchant for painting the grass greener, the streets blacker, and everything else off-white or firehouse red. The pretty, self-conscious photography works to dazzling effect, particularly in some exterior long takes of the photographer driving through London in his Rolls...