Blowup stars: David Hemmings, Vanessa Redgrave, Sarah Miles, John Castle, Jane Birkin and Gillian Hills. The screenplay was written by Antonioni and Tonino Guerra, with the English dialogue being written by British playwright Edward Bond. The film was produced by Carlo Ponti, who had contracted Antonioni to make three English language films for MGM (the others were Zabriskie Point and The Passenger).

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Plot

The plot is a tale of about 24 hours in the life of Thomas (Hemmings), a professional fashion photographer, who begins the day after spending the night at a doss house where he has taken pictures for a book of art photos he hopes to publish. He is late for a photo shoot at his studio with a famous French fashion model, which in turn makes him late for another photo shoot with many other models later in the morning. He grows bored and walks off the shoot (also leaving the models and production staff in the lurch). Exiting the studio, two girls, aspiring teenaged models, ask to speak with him but Thomas drives off to look at an antiques shop which he might buy. He then wanders into nearby Maryon Park where he sees two lovers and takes photos of them. The woman (Redgrave) is nettled at being photographed and Thomas is startled when she somehow stalks him back to his studio, asking for the film. This makes him want the film even more, so he misleads her into taking another roll instead. He makes many blowups (enlargements) of the black and white photos. These blowups have very rough film grain but nonetheless seem to show a body lying in the grass and a killer lurking in the trees with a gun. Thomas is frightened by a knock on the door but it is only the two girls again, with whom he has a romp in his studio and falls asleep. Awakening, although they hope he will photograph them then and there, he tells the girls to leave, saying, "Tomorrow! Come back tomorrow!"

As evening falls Thomas goes back to the park and indeed finds a body but he has not brought his camera and is scared off by the sound of a twig breaking, as if being stepped on. At a drug-drenched party at a house on the Thames River near central London he finds both the French model (who tells him she is in Paris) and his publishing agent (Peter Bowles), the latter whom he wants to bring to the park as a witness. However, Thomas cannot put across in meaningful words what he has photographed. Waking up in the same, now stilled house at sunrise, he goes back to the park alone but the body is gone.

Befuddled, he watches a group of university students playing and watching a mimed tennis match, is drawn into it, picks up their unseen, make-believe ball and throws it back to the two players. While he watches the mimed match, the sound of a ball being played back and forth is soon heard. As the photographer watches this alone on the lawn he fades away, leaving only the green grass as the film ends.

Blow Up

Noted cameos

Sundry people who were widely known in 1966 are seen in the film, others would become famous later. The most widely noted cameo was made by the The Yardbirds, who perform "Stroll On" in the last third of the film. As Keith Relf sings, Jimmy Page and Jeff Beck play to either side, along with Chris Dreja. After his guitar amplifier fails, Beck bashes his guitar to bits, as The Who were known to do at the time. Antonioni had wanted the Who to perform in Blowup as he was fascinated by Pete Townshend's guitar-smashing routine. Steve Howe of the The In Crowd later recalled, "We went on the set and started preparing for that guitar-smashing scene in the club. They even went as far as making up a bunch of Gibson 175 replicas ... and then we got dropped for the Yardbirds, who were a bigger name. That's why you see Jeff Beck smashing my guitar rather than his!" Antonioni also considered using The Velvet Underground in the nightclub scene, but according to guitarist Sterling Morrison, "the expense of bringing the whole entourage to England proved too much for him."

Michael Palin of Monty Python can be seen very briefly in the sullen nightclub crowd[4] and future media personality Janet Street-Porter dances in stripey, Carnaby Street trousers.

A poster on the club's entry door bears a drawing of a tombstone with the epitaph, Here lies Bob Dylan Passed Away Royal Albert Hall 27 May 1966 R.I.P., harking to Dylan's controversial switch to electric instruments at this time. Beside the Dylan poster are posters bearing a caricature of Prime Minister Harold Wilson.

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Filming locations

The first scene (with the mimes acting) was filmed on the Plaza of The Economist Building in (Piccadilly, London, 1959–64, a project by 'New Brutalists' Alison and Peter Smithson). The following scene is shot on Consort Road, Peckham; the men are leaving The Spike. The park scenes were filmed at Maryon Park, Charlton, south-east London, and the park is little changed since the making of the film. The street with the many maroon-coloured shop fronts is Stockwell Road, and the shops belonged to motorcycle dealer Pride & Clark. The scene where Thomas sees the mysterious woman from his car, then proceeds to follow her, was shot in Regent Street, London. He stops at Heddon Street, where the cover shot of David Bowie's Ziggy Stardust LP was later photographed. The photographer's studio was filmed at 49 Princes Place, London W11, which in the decades since has been office and studio space for architectural firms.

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Reaction

The onscreen title, no hyphen.Andrew Sarris said the movie was "a mod masterpiece." In Playboy magazine, Arthur Knight wrote Blowup would be thought of "as important and germinal a film as Citizen Kane, Open City [sic] and Hiroshima, Mon Amour – perhaps even more so."

Blowup was controversial as the first British film to feature full frontal female nudity (although this is sometimes noted as having happened in the slightly later if....). MGM did not gain approval for the film under the MPAA Production Code in the United States. The code's collapse and thorough revision was foreshadowed when MGM released the film through a subsidiary distributor and Blowup was shown widely in North American cinemas.