I wonder if it irked Antonioni, that no one can watch his mannered, carefully constructed 1966 film without thinking of this amateurish, accidental one made three years earlier?
Just as Stephen King directed us away from the cliched haunted house and made us start to suspect potential evil in benign things like Saint Bernard dogs, the scene of Antonioni’s “crime” is an ordinary public park. However, he (and we, the viewer) infuse it with a chilling, sinister, agoraphobic ambiance. The few Godot-like trees offer no protection from the creepy Something that seems to slowly invade and then hover over this otherwise pastoral setting with each passing, eerily quiet moment.
(Of course, Hitchcok did this too, with his serial killer uncles in Norman Rockwell settings and handsome, harmless Norman Bates. But labouring under the constraints of Hollywood studio demands, he was unable to make a Blowup, with its artsy ambiguity.)
Again: are we simply recalling another baffling murder in broad daylight in a grassy public spot, starring a brownhaired woman scrambling for safety, a murder also devoid of dramatic music, a pat solution and a happy ending?
Read More...If the jaded tabloid journalist, Marcello, in Federico Fellini’s La Dolce Vita ever found success, he would invariably lead the life of Thomas (David Hemmings) in Michelangelo Antonioni’s Blowup. In the hip culture of 1960s London, Thomas is a famous fashion photographer whose disillusionment is reflected in his expressionless, mannequin-like models. His technical directions have no meaning — they only serve as a means to fill the silence. He is constantly surrounded by people — celebrities, groupies, mod scene acquaintances — but is emotionally isolated. He weaves through drug parties and casual sex with the same pervasive mechanical detachment that he shows in his work. Perhaps, his only source of true intimacy comes from his brief meetings with an ex-girlfriend who has since married someone else, and can only offer abbreviated words and exchange enigmatic, knowing glances.
