Blow-Up (1966)

Depicting the time and place of Swinging London in the 1960s, this film is directed by Michelangelo Antonioni and it stars Peter Hemmings as the protagonist. He is a fashion photographer in a hopping city. He spends his day working with models with countless photo shoot after photo shoot. He is skilled at his job and as such he is temperamental and at times irritated by his fashionable but arduous occupation.

After one such string of photo shoots he goes off on an excursion to an antique shop and a park where two lovers have met. He sticks around and snaps pictures of them before he is chased off by the woman. The next day the attractive woman comes to him asking for the negatives and at first he refuses. After she has left he develops the negatives and blows them up only to find something very intriguing. He goes back to the park at night and finds something very perilous indeed. He returns to his flat and then he spots the woman at a club only to lose her during a concert.

Following the lively evening he returns once more to the park, this time to find something even more unusual. Despite all his efforts everything is still a complete mystery that he cannot hope to solve or understand. There seemed to be some superfluous scenes in this film but it was interesting to watch it unfold. The photographer has an intriguing lifestyle but he is not a very likable character. Following the blow up of the image everything begins to change and we begin to sympathize with him. When the film ends and the mystery is still unresolved, it forces him as well as the audience to simply accept it and move forward. This is an anti-mystery if there ever was one.

4.5/5 Stars