Cinema - Blow-Up by Michelangelo Antonioni - film poster on postcard c.1980s

• Postcard

   

• Picture / Image:  Blow-Up by Michelangelo Antonioni with Vanessa Redgrave, David Hemmings and Sarah Miles
• Publisher: none stated
• Postally used: no
• Stamp:  n/a
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• Notes / condition: 

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Text from the free encyclopedia WIKIPEDIA may appear below to give a little background information (internal links may not  work) :

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Blowup (sometimes stylized as Blow-up or Blow Up) is a 1966 mystery thriller film directed by Michelangelo Antonioni. It was Antonioni's first entirely English-language film, and follows a London fashion photographer, played by David Hemmings, who believes he has unwittingly captured a murder on film. The film also stars Vanessa Redgrave, Sarah Miles, John Castle, Jane Birkin, Tsai Chin, Peter Bowles, and Gillian Hills, as well as 1960s model Veruschka. The screenplay was by Antonioni and Tonino Guerra, with English dialogue by British playwright Edward Bond.^[3] The film was produced by Carlo Ponti.

The plot was inspired by Julio Cortázar's short story, "Las babas del diablo" or "The Devil's Drool" (1959),^[4] translated also as "Blow Up" in Blow-up and Other Stories, in turn based on a story told to Cortázar by photographer Sergio Larraín,^[5] and by the life of Swinging London photographer David Bailey.^[6] The film's diegetic music was scored by jazz pianist Herbie Hancock. In the main competition section of the Cannes Film Festival, Blowup won the Grand Prix du Festival International du Film, the festival's highest honour.

The American release of the counterculture-era^[7] film with its explicit sexual content (by contemporary standards) by a major Hollywood studio was in direct defiance of the Production Code. Its subsequent critical and box-office success influenced the abandonment of the code in 1968 in favour of the MPAA film rating system.^[8] In 2012, Blowup was ranked No. 144 in the Sight & Sound critics' poll of the world's greatest films.^[9]

The plot is a day in the life of a glamorous fashion photographer, Thomas (Hemmings), inspired by the life of an actual "Swinging London" photographer, David Bailey,^[10] and contemporaries such as Terence Donovan, David Montgomery and John Cowan.

After spending the night at a doss house, where he has taken pictures for a book of art photos, Thomas is late for a photo shoot with Veruschka at his studio, which in turn makes him late for a shoot with other models later in the morning. He grows bored and walks off, leaving the models and production staff in the lurch. As he leaves the studio, two teenaged girls who are aspiring models (Birkin and Hills) ask to speak with him, but the photographer drives off to look at an antique shop.

Wandering into Maryon Park, he takes photos of two lovers. The woman (Vanessa Redgrave) is furious at being photographed, pursues Thomas, demands his film, and ultimately tries to snatch his camera. He refuses and photographs her as she runs off.

Thomas then meets his agent Ron (Peter Bowles) for lunch, and notices a man following him and looking into his car. Back at his studio, the woman from the park arrives, asking desperately for the film. They have a conversation and flirt, but he deliberately hands her a different film roll. She, in turn, writes down a false telephone number and gives it to him.

He, curious, makes many enlargements of the black-and-white film of the two lovers. They reveal the woman worriedly looking at a third person lurking in the trees with a pistol. Thomas excitedly calls Ron, claiming his impromptu photo session may have saved a man's life. Thomas is disturbed by a knock on the door, and it is the two girls again, with whom he has a romp in his studio and falls asleep. Awakening, he finds they hope he will photograph them, but he realizes there may be more to the photographs in the park. He tells them to leave, saying, "Tomorrow! Tomorrow!"

Further examination of a blurred figure under a bush makes Thomas suspect the man in the park may have been murdered after all, during the time Thomas was arguing with the woman around the bend.

As evening falls, the photographer goes back to the park and finds the body of the man, but he has not brought his camera and is scared off by the sound of a twig breaking, as if being stepped on. Thomas returns to find his studio ransacked. All the negatives and prints are gone except for one very grainy blowup of what is possibly the body.

After driving into town, he sees the woman and follows her into a club where The Yardbirds, featuring both Jimmy Page and Jeff Beck on guitar and Keith Relf on vocals, are seen performing the song "Stroll On".

A buzz in Beck's amplifier angers him so much, he smashes his guitar on stage, then throws its neck into the crowd. A riot ensues. The photographer grabs the neck and runs out of the club before anyone can snatch it from him. Then, he has second thoughts about it, throws it on the pavement, and walks away. A passer-by picks up the neck and throws it back down, not realizing it is from Beck's guitar.^[11] Thomas never locates the elusive woman.

At a drug-drenched party in a house on the Thames near central London, the photographer finds Veruschka, who had told him that she was going to Paris; when confronted, she says she is in Paris. Thomas asks Ron to come to the park as a witness, but cannot convince him of what has happened because Ron is terrifically stoned. Instead, Thomas joins the party and wakes up in the house at sunrise. He returns to the park alone, only to find that the body is gone.

Befuddled, Thomas watches a mimed tennis match, is drawn into it, and picks up the imaginary ball and throws it back to the two players. While he watches the mime, the sound of the ball being played is heard and his image fades away, leaving only the grass as the film ends.

The opening mimes were filmed on the Plaza of The Economist Building in St. James's Street, London,^[12] a project by 'New Brutalists' Alison and Peter Smithson constructed between 1959–64. The scene in which men leave The Spike was shot on Consort Road, Peckham.^[13] The park scenes were at Maryon Park, Charlton, south-east London, and the park is little changed since the film.^[14] The street with maroon shopfronts is Stockwell Road^[13] and the shops belonged to motorcycle dealer Pride & Clarke. Outside shots of the photographer's studio were at 77 Pottery Lane, W11, and 39 Princes Place, W11. Photographer Jon Cowan leased his studio at 39 Princes Place to Antonioni for much of the interior and exterior filming, and Cowan's own photographic murals are featured in the film.^[15][16]

The scene in which the photographer sees the mysterious woman from his car and follows her was in Regent Street, London. He stops at Heddon Street^[17] where the album cover of David Bowie's Ziggy Stardust was later photographed.^[18] The exterior for the party scene towards the end of the film was shot outside 100 Cheyne Walk, in Chelsea. The interior, which is believed to be the same address, was shot in the apartment of London antiques dealer Christopher Gibbs.^[19] The restaurant on the corner where Hemmings stops is on Blacklands Terrace, Chelsea SW3, where there is still a restaurant but no longer the one used in the film. The scene in the reproduced Ricky-Tick club with the Yardbirds performing "Stroll On" – a modified version of "Train Kept A-Rollin'" – was filmed at Elstree Studios, from 12 to 14 October 1966.^[20]