Word: blowed
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...Antonioni, the discovery of the murder represents the intrusion of reality on the photographer's world. The blow-ups suddenly bring him face-to-face with potential involvement in the affairs of other people. He does not, actually, become involved: his nature rules out the possibility of calling the police, he cannot locate the girl, and his interest in the affair begins to diminish when he discovers that the girl has stolen the blow-ups--the only evidence of the crime. Still, for a moment, the detached photographer realizes his involvement sufficiently to consider the alternatives: calling the police...
Unfortunately, Blow-Up is just ambiguous enough that one's interpretation of it depends largely on how one interprets the tennis game; when the photographer returns the illusory tennis ball he is not giving up hope and joining the revellers. The tennis game ending, like the five minute montage that ends Eclipse, is less a new scene than a visual synopsis of the events preceding it, most specifically the murder. The slow camera-panning back and forth following the imaginary ball refers to the panning back and forth along the blow-ups; the photographer is again faced with a situation...
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...
...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 themes...
...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...