Blow-Up - Definition and Overview

Blow-Up DVD cover

Blowup is a 1966 British-Italian art film directed by Michelangelo Antonioni, his first to feature an English language screenplay and also the first British film to feature full frontal female nudity. David Hemmings stars. Vanessa Redgrave is also featured. The Yardbirds perform in one scene near the film's end.

The story concerns a photographer named Thomas (Hemmings) who may or may not have inadvertently preserved evidence of a murder, which may or may not involve a mysterious woman (Redgrave) who visits the photographer in his studio.

As is typical with Antonioni films, the story does not include a great deal of action, mystery, or explosive dialogue. Antonioni's visual and verbal emphasis is on the environment surrounding the principal character and how it affects him or fails to do so.

The plot, such as it is, is loosely based on Las babas del diablo, a short story by the Argentinian writer Julio Cortázar.

The film inspired two later films –

• The Conversation, a 1974 film by Francis Ford Coppola
• Blow Out, a 1981 film by Brian DePalma

External links

• Blowup (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0060176/) at the Internet Movie Database