Directed by Michelangelo Antonioni • 1966 • United Kingdom Starring Vanessa Redgrave, David Hemmings, Sarah Miles
In 1966, Michelangelo Antonioni transplanted his existentialist ennui to the streets of swinging London for this international sensation, the Italian filmmaker’s first English-language feature. A countercultural masterpiece about the act of seeing and the art of image making, BLOW-UP takes the form of a psychological mystery, starring David Hemmings as a fashion photographer who unknowingly captures a death on film after following two lovers in a park. Antonioni’s meticulous aesthetic control and intoxicating color palette breathe life into every frame, and the jazzy sounds of Herbie Hancock, a beautifully evasive performance by Vanessa Redgrave, and a cameo by the Yardbirds make the film a transporting time capsule from a bygone era. BLOW-UP is a seductive immersion into creative passion, and a brilliant film by one of cinema’s greatest artists.
Up Next in Photographer's Gaze
-
Eyes of Laura Mars
Directed by Irvin Kershner • 1978 • United States
Starring Faye Dunaway, Tommy Lee Jones, Brad DourifA Hollywood take on the Italian giallo genre, this stylishly suspenseful thriller stars Faye Dunaway as Laura Mars, a controversial high-fashion photographer whose sensational, erotic-violent po...
-
Peeping Tom
Directed by Michael Powell • 1960 • United Kingdom
Starring Carl Boehm, Moira Shearer, Anna MasseyHaving brought British cinema into exalted realms of fantasy and imagination, Michael Powell took a dark detour into obsession, voyeurism, and violence with this groundbreaking metacinematic invest...
-
The Story of O
Directed by Just Jaeckin • 1975 • France, West Germany Starring Corinne Cléry, Udo Kier, Alain Noury
Before there was FIFTY SHADES OF GREY, there was THE STORY OF O, the infamous adaptation of the controversial erotic...
