Blow-Up

Blow-Up (1966)

Runtime: 111 minutes

Directed by: Michelangelo Antonioni

Starring: David Hemmings, Vanessa Redgrave, Sarah Miles, John Castle

From: MGM

Since Wednesday, I rewatched Annie Hall (which I still enjoy) and saw the ESPN 30 for 30 documentary on the XFL, which I also enjoyed. Last night I saw this famed movie on TCM; a lot of people still rate it highly today... and I don't understand why. It is totally European, in all the worst pretentious ways. De Palma's unofficial remake Blow Out is MUCH better, in my opinion. The explanation for my controversial opinion is below:

I realize that right now I am doing something that occasionally happens: I unveil a controversial opinion about a film. In this case, if it wasn't for some quality Herbie Hancock (or as he was identified in the credits, “Herbert Hancock”) tunes and an appearance from The Yardbirds, I would rate this even lower than I have it currently.. .when you despise the main character and are flummoxed by the “mod scene” of 1960's London... in the future I'll see more of Michelangelo Antonioni's work, and hopefully it's not arch arty nonsense or a shaggy dog story or trying way too hard to be “hip” like this was. I am obviously missing something when it comes to this motion picture; I'd rather not watch this Eurodouche movie again to try and figure it out for myself... and I am probably better off not ever figuring it out anyway. 2 stars is honestly as high as I can go here.

Personally, I preferred it when De Palma did a very similar thing for Blow Out; I found that story of how Jack Terry accidentally records the sound and witnesses a car crash/murder to be much more engrossing than some rich D-bag pompous A-hole photographer capturing what he thinks is a murder in the background of one photo. Terry's descent into madness and paranoid was even better than what we see happen to Thomas here and the ambiguous endings that both had... again, no contest in my mind. At least Blow Out didn't create a world where mimes are plentiful & they actually made a lot of noise as they ride around in an old military vehicle... and at least Blow Out had an actual plot rather than a bunch of meandering grandiloquent nonsense with the murder subplot being a small piece of the puzzle.

The biggest thing I got out of this (besides how I surprisingly enjoyed Blow Out a lot more; having a lead that you can feel sympathy for definitely helps) was how much of a dish Vanessa Redgrave was during the mid 60's; the movies I have seen her in during my movie-watching life were more modern. I knew that she was a lovely woman and a talented actress but I was entranced when I first saw her in this movie; I also hoped that her character Jane would find better men to hang out with.

While this has a few small memorable moments, overall I will presume that if I would have been an adult in the 60's and I saw this and then I witnessed how this was one of the reasons why the Hays Code was eradicated from Hollywood and from the ashes rose the MPAA to rate movies in the United States... I would have been more impressed then rather than now. Then again, maybe I would have thought back then too that this represented the bad stereotypes that certain people have about old European films and maybe I would have thought of this as a gigantic waste of time.