QCinema 2017: Michelangelo Antonioni's Blow-Up
(Note: The recently-concluded QCinema International Film Festival (Oct. 19-28) had a new section called Digitally-Remastered, which featured, among others, "Blow-Up" (1967, UK/Italy), Antonioni's cult classic and first English-language film. That was a rare chance that I didn't let pass. It's in this regard that I have re-posted this piece, which I wrote back in 2003.)
With Michelangelo Antonioni's emergence as a filmmaker, a new face was given to Italian cinema. It was not the oppressed and hard-luck face one sees in Vittorio de Sica's films ("The Bicycle Thieves" and "Umberto D."). Nor was it the superficially flamboyant and jolly face one notices in Federico Fellini's works ("La Strada" and "La Dolce Vita").
Rather, the kind of face one encounters in Antonioni's films bears the stamp of contemporary urban life - blank, weary, estranged, lost. In essence, Antonioni can be considered as the cinematic alter ego of the German novelist and short story writer Franz Kafka ('"Metamorphosis" and "The Trial") in that both are unflinchingly consistent in their concerns and preoccupations: the metaphysical anguish and anxiety of contemporary existence. Whereas Kafka's method of discourse borders on the surreal and the absurd, Antonioni's takes the form of symbolism and allegory.
It's no coincidence that his films are always peopled with characters who occupy a prominent place in society: the privileged young adults in "L'Avventura", the successful novelist and his wife in "La Notte", the industrialist's wife in "Red Desert" - their material abundance masks an emotional void. The vacuity is made all the more palpable by the intense clash between appearance and substance, between what they have and what they are.
Antonioni's "Blow-Up", the top winner in the 1967 Cannes International Film Festival, furthers his filmic thesis. This time, the urban malaise is onerously felt by a young, accomplished and bratty photographer (David Hemmings). The superficial glossiness and the emotional pretensions of the fashion world and pop culture through which he navigates have already taken their toll on him, so much so that he remains "nameless" throughout the film (in the same way that readers know the protagonist in Kafka's '"The Castle" only by the initial "K."), a mark of individual dissolution and alienation. As he tells us, London (the main setting of the film) has got nothing to do with him anymore and in his job, he's always in the company of pretty ladies, but that's just it - impersonal and distant;he's simply "fed up with those bloody bitches".
Until that chance encounter with an anonymous caressing couple at a solemn park, whom, without second thoughts, he takes pictures of. As he develops the pictures into larger sizes (hence, the title), something "unpleasant" is beginning to take shape out of the seemingly ordinary shots: a case of infidelity and murder - which may explain the lovely woman's (Vanessa Redgrave) agitation and persistence in having the roll of film for herself. This "eerie" discovery has shaken the photographer out of his humdrum and mechanized existence to investigate further the "crime" - for nothing.
In the hands of the novelist Kafka, such a storyline may be used to prompt the readers into utilizing their imagination for them to have a grasp of the gruelingly bizarre odyssey into which the writer plunges his atomized protagonist in his search for what is true and real - if there's really such a thing.
The filmmaker Antonioni has a different take, though. As apt to his camera medium, he makes use of a film's "look" - the mood, texture, atmosphere - to convey certain concepts and appearances that permit of myriad interpretations.
In "L'Avventura", we have the barren island and the silences. In "La Notte", the transparent glass windows and the silences. In "Red Desert", the fog and, still, the silences. "Blow-Up", it's significant to say, has one special affinity with the last-mentioned film: the evocative use of colors to tell or hint at something.
In both films, Antonioni had Carlo di Palma as the director of photography;and I should say that Di Palma certainly had an intuitive grasp of what was in the filmmaker's complex and brooding mind.
But whereas in "Red Desert", the sharp and strong colors were glaringly used to indicate the intensity with which modern industrial decay and pollution can bring a young wife to a downward spiral into madness, in "Blow-Up" the color schemes were intriguingly quiet and subtle that, to the uninitiated, they might end up as "mere" garnishes and decorations, as just "being there".
We may want to figure out the metaphysical/hermeneutical value of the following: the models' outfits, the photography studio, the row of houses, the antique shop, the photographer's friend's painting, Redgrave's black-striped long-sleeved shirt and black tie, the corpse in the park. We may also want to try peeling off the layers of meaning that may lie beneath these instances: the menage-a-trois on the floor, the photographer's whimsical purchase of an antique propeller, his having found himself in the middle of a disastrous band concert, his chance initial tour of the ghostly park. Maybe that's why the film became a cult favorite - one realizes that there's a pleasure in seeing the film again and deciphering the hidden meanings;the film turns out to be a challenging puzzle!
That's what Antonioni's masterpiece is all about: tranquility and subtlety. About three-fourths of the film is narrated in puzzling silence (the final sequence itself is a seven-minute pantomimic silence, which may have influenced Tsai Ming-liang in his final shot of the crying woman in "Vive L'Amour";in fact, the latter has certain semblances of "Blow-Up". By such a silence, Antonioni wanted the viewers themselves to sense the existential melange eating their souls. As it were, the pervasive danger of contemporary living is individual disintegration and dissolution, brought about by no less than one's immediate culture and milieu.
And as far as the "nameless" photographer is concerned, if the image captured on the photo doesn't exactly reproduce the material world and our experiences, as its function is supposed to be, then what is still there for us to discover and know what is real and true? Could it be that the life we live is nothing but an illusion, hence our morbid feelings of anxiety and despair?
Sounds fantastic, but why not?
With Michelangelo Antonioni's emergence as a filmmaker, a new face was given to Italian cinema. It was not the oppressed and hard-luck face one sees in Vittorio de Sica's films ("The Bicycle Thieves" and "Umberto D."). Nor was it the superficially flamboyant and jolly face one notices in Federico Fellini's works ("La Strada" and "La Dolce Vita").
Rather, the kind of face one encounters in Antonioni's films bears the stamp of contemporary urban life - blank, weary, estranged, lost. In essence, Antonioni can be considered as the cinematic alter ego of the German novelist and short story writer Franz Kafka ('"Metamorphosis" and "The Trial") in that both are unflinchingly consistent in their concerns and preoccupations: the metaphysical anguish and anxiety of contemporary existence. Whereas Kafka's method of discourse borders on the surreal and the absurd, Antonioni's takes the form of symbolism and allegory.
It's no coincidence that his films are always peopled with characters who occupy a prominent place in society: the privileged young adults in "L'Avventura", the successful novelist and his wife in "La Notte", the industrialist's wife in "Red Desert" - their material abundance masks an emotional void. The vacuity is made all the more palpable by the intense clash between appearance and substance, between what they have and what they are.
Antonioni's "Blow-Up", the top winner in the 1967 Cannes International Film Festival, furthers his filmic thesis. This time, the urban malaise is onerously felt by a young, accomplished and bratty photographer (David Hemmings). The superficial glossiness and the emotional pretensions of the fashion world and pop culture through which he navigates have already taken their toll on him, so much so that he remains "nameless" throughout the film (in the same way that readers know the protagonist in Kafka's '"The Castle" only by the initial "K."), a mark of individual dissolution and alienation. As he tells us, London (the main setting of the film) has got nothing to do with him anymore and in his job, he's always in the company of pretty ladies, but that's just it - impersonal and distant;he's simply "fed up with those bloody bitches".
Until that chance encounter with an anonymous caressing couple at a solemn park, whom, without second thoughts, he takes pictures of. As he develops the pictures into larger sizes (hence, the title), something "unpleasant" is beginning to take shape out of the seemingly ordinary shots: a case of infidelity and murder - which may explain the lovely woman's (Vanessa Redgrave) agitation and persistence in having the roll of film for herself. This "eerie" discovery has shaken the photographer out of his humdrum and mechanized existence to investigate further the "crime" - for nothing.
In the hands of the novelist Kafka, such a storyline may be used to prompt the readers into utilizing their imagination for them to have a grasp of the gruelingly bizarre odyssey into which the writer plunges his atomized protagonist in his search for what is true and real - if there's really such a thing.
The filmmaker Antonioni has a different take, though. As apt to his camera medium, he makes use of a film's "look" - the mood, texture, atmosphere - to convey certain concepts and appearances that permit of myriad interpretations.
In "L'Avventura", we have the barren island and the silences. In "La Notte", the transparent glass windows and the silences. In "Red Desert", the fog and, still, the silences. "Blow-Up", it's significant to say, has one special affinity with the last-mentioned film: the evocative use of colors to tell or hint at something.
In both films, Antonioni had Carlo di Palma as the director of photography;and I should say that Di Palma certainly had an intuitive grasp of what was in the filmmaker's complex and brooding mind.
But whereas in "Red Desert", the sharp and strong colors were glaringly used to indicate the intensity with which modern industrial decay and pollution can bring a young wife to a downward spiral into madness, in "Blow-Up" the color schemes were intriguingly quiet and subtle that, to the uninitiated, they might end up as "mere" garnishes and decorations, as just "being there".
We may want to figure out the metaphysical/hermeneutical value of the following: the models' outfits, the photography studio, the row of houses, the antique shop, the photographer's friend's painting, Redgrave's black-striped long-sleeved shirt and black tie, the corpse in the park. We may also want to try peeling off the layers of meaning that may lie beneath these instances: the menage-a-trois on the floor, the photographer's whimsical purchase of an antique propeller, his having found himself in the middle of a disastrous band concert, his chance initial tour of the ghostly park. Maybe that's why the film became a cult favorite - one realizes that there's a pleasure in seeing the film again and deciphering the hidden meanings;the film turns out to be a challenging puzzle!
That's what Antonioni's masterpiece is all about: tranquility and subtlety. About three-fourths of the film is narrated in puzzling silence (the final sequence itself is a seven-minute pantomimic silence, which may have influenced Tsai Ming-liang in his final shot of the crying woman in "Vive L'Amour";in fact, the latter has certain semblances of "Blow-Up". By such a silence, Antonioni wanted the viewers themselves to sense the existential melange eating their souls. As it were, the pervasive danger of contemporary living is individual disintegration and dissolution, brought about by no less than one's immediate culture and milieu.
And as far as the "nameless" photographer is concerned, if the image captured on the photo doesn't exactly reproduce the material world and our experiences, as its function is supposed to be, then what is still there for us to discover and know what is real and true? Could it be that the life we live is nothing but an illusion, hence our morbid feelings of anxiety and despair?
Sounds fantastic, but why not?
(A photographer is lost among the many in his search for what is real and true in Michelangelo Antonioni's "Blow-Up")
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