Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #928 in DVD
• Released on: 2004-02-17
• Rating: Unrated
• Aspect ratio: 1.85:1
• Formats: Dubbed, Subtitled, Widescreen, NTSC
• Original language: English, French
• Subtitled in: English, Spanish, French
• Dubbed in: French
• Dimensions: .20 pounds
• Running time: 111 minutes

From Amazon.co.uk
It may not stand up as an art-house film (the opening and closing shots of a mime playing tennis belong in the Pretentious Metaphor Hall of Fame), but this head scratcher is an absorbing travelogue of swinging London circa 1967, courtesy of auteur tourist Michelangelo Antonioni. Blow Up is also a meticulous, paranoid murder mystery that has left its fingerprints on dozens of later films, from Coppola's The Conversation to the recent cult item The Usual Suspects. The efforts of a fashion photographer (David Hemmings) to analyse a photo snapped off-the-cuff in a public park, which may have recorded a crime in progress, resonated at the time with conspiracy theories surrounding the Kennedy assassination. From here it looks like an anticipation of up-to-the-minute anxieties about the filtering of perception through metastasising media. The movie marked the film debut of Vanessa Redgrave, and in the justly celebrated purple-paper scene, expat chanteuse-to-be Jane Birkin. --David Chute

Amazon.com Essential Video
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

Review
A masterpiece of 1960s art-house cinema, Michelangelo Antonioni's Blow-Up is a dizzying exploration of images, appearances, and existence amid the mod glamour of Swinging '60s London. Antonioni took his signature influence of existentialist philosophy, seen in such earlier films as L'avventura (1960), La notte (1961), The Eclipse (1962), and Red Desert (1964), and pushed it to full-scale reflexivity: instead of just questioning existence, he questioned the nature of reality itself. Just as Thomas blows up his photographs until they are pure abstraction, Antonioni uses deliberately odd framing, expressionistic use of color, and an extremely long telephoto lens, which crushes depth from the image, to make the film look both striking and opaque. Thomas himself is adrift in this world: absorbed in the surfaces of things yet unable to perceive intrinsic beauty, he finds it increasingly difficult to distinguish objective reality from the simulacra of advertising and fashion photography. By the end of the film, he is no longer certain if distinctions among image, illusion, and reality even exist. The film's brilliantly dense philosophical underpinnings aside, its Rear Window-esque plot makes it a compelling piece of work. Moreover, it features some of the most memorable sequences in cinema: the pantomime tennis match at the end of the film, the naughty m�nage � trois on purple paper, and the almost farcically erotic photo shoot at the beginning of the film between model Veruschka and Thomas with his oversized camera lens. Blow Up proved extremely influential on younger generations of filmmakers; and it was later echoed by both Francis Ford Coppola in The Conversation (1974) and Brian De Palma in Blow Out (1981). ~ Jonathan Crow, All Movie Guide

Customer Reviews

Movies as litmus tests
Another film that brings out the moral venality in Amazon "reviewers". I particularly love the one who was "forced" to watch it in a friend's film class & found it a "waist" of time. Let's see...the waist is where things ingested pass through on their way to the digestion process. But I doubt he was being that profound.

Then there are the ones who find the film dated, London too empty & the main character a horrible nasty. Well folks, it's true there are no friendly wizards, cute goblins or funny ogres in this one, so it may taste like harsh medicine to some. But Blow-Up was a real slice of the 1960s, take it or leave it. Not just the "life-style" (clothes, decor & behavior) which is perfectly rendered (& is probably what dates the film the most) but the sheer fragmentation of time & space, of event & response. This was Antonioni's particular area of expertise: space & emptiness filled with random human collisions supposedly suffused with "meaning".

Well, we certainly have adopted different attitudes today, haven't we? Everything with its socio-political subtext. The big problem, I think, with a movie like Blow-Up is that it doesn't easily let you pick which Side to Be On. It's very European in that way (Old Europe, to use current parlance).

Hey folks, when you look at a De Chirico (you should, you know), do you find the streets too empty, the perspectives too stark & arbitrary?

Blow-Up main audio is sadly very poor quality
The film may look good - but you've got to be able to hear it to enjoy it.

The main audio only comes from the center speaker (the only DVD I own that does this) and is incredibly low in volume. Even when you crank your amp up to near maximum to hear it, you'll find that sole center signal sounds suspiciously like it's meant to be part of at least a 2.1 soundtrack. It completely lacks bass and the music has no presence.

I've seen Blow-Up on the big screen in recent years, I know it can sound as good as it looks. Someone at Warners has made a big blunder in mastering this DVD. In its present format it's not worth buying or owning.

Unusual story enhanced by brilliant cinematography
"Blow Up" was a sensation when it was released in 1966. Critics and moviegoers hotly debated its enigmatic story. Three and a half decades later, its meaning is no clearer. I have seen it several times, and I remain clueless. The movie has fallen into relative obscurity, and, so, the few people I've met who have seen it have been unable to offer any satisfactory insights. If you are looking for pop entertainment, you certainly want to avoid this one because the plot is so puzzling.

Why, you may ask, do I rank it so highly? It's because it is one of the most visually stunning movies I have ever seen. Every single shot is composed with the utmost care. The framing is amazing. The colors are beautiful. The sound, too, is meticulously constructed. Although the sound technology back then was primitive compared to today's, the movie manages to make background noises very much a part of the whole.

The story revolves around a bored but brilliant London photographer, played by David Hemmings. He is a genius at his craft, but his life is an empty place. One day he wanders into a lovely park, where he spies two lovers. He follows them and photographs them. The girl [Vanessa Redgrave] sees him and demands he give her the film. He refuses. When he develops the photos, he sees a blurred image, which, when blown up, looks like it might be a body. He also blows up an images that looks like a hand holding a gun. He has accidentally photographed a murder. Or has he? The girl finds his studio. She seduces him. He pretends to give her the negatives, but later finds his studio has been vandalized. By the girl? By an accomplice? And for what reason? Who will believe him? Or is there anything to believe? It's left to the viewer to supply the answers.

The lively and unusual music tracks are by jazz great Herbie Hancock. The movie was directed by Michelangelo Antonioni, an Italian. To the best of my knowledge, his only other English language film is "Zabriskie Point" [1970]. His Italian films include "La Notte" [1960], "The Eclipse" [1962] and "Red Desert" [1964]. Brian De Palma's 1981 movie, "Blow Out" was inspired by "Blowup".

Highly recommended to those who believe movies can be an art form.