Inspired by watching the film Blow-Up (1966), about a photographer who thinks he has witnessed a murder through his camera lens, I thought I would treat you to some blow-up photographs of the men in orange who work on our sea wall. This afternoon I was kind of like an annoying fly on the wall, out with my Canon on our terrace wall; I hoped the workmen wouldn’t see me while I clicked away.
In fact, I hoped they didn’t see me yesterday morning either, when, after my shower, I streaked down the stairs to our bedroom; Chris said that the sunlight would have reflected from the glass door back into their eyes, had they looked up from their machinery at that moment. I don’t mind if they saw me run down the stairs on any of the during-the-night occasions – sometimes one o’clock, two o’clock, three o’clock (rock)… well you get the picture. Our bedroom is so cold at night now that I scamper up and down in warm onesies, my favourite being the grey and white striped one that makes me look like a very long-bodied convict with short legs (the crotch nearly reaches my knees). My other onesie is a very normal, pink and grey, leopard-skin print so I don’t think the men in orange would have been too shocked to see me in either of my outfits during my insomnolent wanderings around the house on noisy sea wall repair nights.
Anyway, I don’t think they saw me with my camera today; I kept low and rested my Canon on the top of the balustrade on the terrace, and when I was downstairs I attempted to hide behind the wooden railings – hopefully, the bright paintwork was a distraction – they are very thin railings. I remembered how in Blow-Up David Hemmings tried to hide in the bushes so as not to make the couple he was shooting secretly in the park feel self-conscious – I thought that was particularly realistic – and I could see myself behaving similarly; of course, at that point in the film, the trendy photographer had no idea that someone else, also hiding in the bushes, was really shooting the man he had photographed.
Funnily enough, Chris and I both remembered the film as being rather good (he saw it years ago at the cinema whilst I saw it many years later on the television – he’s older than me); I say, “funnily enough”, because we didn’t find it that good upon second viewing all these years later. Groundbreaking films often become dated, and this was no exception; however, it made us think.
“What was the point of those mime artists playing tennis?” I asked Chris.
“I don’t know,” Chris answered (I think he just awoken), “let me think.”
“Do you think it meant that you can’t be sure what’s real, especially when it comes to photography?” I spurred him on.
“Possibly,” he yawned (Chris hasn’t been sleeping well through the noise of the sea wall repairs).
My photographs of the men in orange (as I like to call them) were quite good, especially when I cropped them (as David Hemmings did); but then I wondered if my blog readers might be bored with photographs of our sea wall workmen – interesting and hunky as the chaps are – even when the shots are blown-up. Not wishing to bore or disappoint, I decided to turn the best of the photographs into drawings and watercolour paintings. I’m a fast worker, or am I? Did I really paint those brilliant watercolours in one afternoon? Do those men in orange actually exist? Are you dreaming this? Am I dreaming this? Oh, I’m so modern!
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- New technology
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- Groundbreaking stuff
Here is some interesting material about the film for all you film buffs.
Blowup
| Blowup | |
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theatrical release poster
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| Directed by | Michelangelo Antonioni |
| Produced by |
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| Screenplay by |
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| Story by | Michelangelo Antonioni |
| Based on | “Las babas del diablo” by Julio Cortázar |
| Starring | |
| Music by | Herbie Hancock |
| Cinematography | Carlo Di Palma |
| Edited by | Frank Clarke |
| Production company |
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| Distributed by |
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| Release dates |
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| Running time | 110 minutes |
| Country |
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| Language | English |
| Budget | $1.8 million[1] |
| Box office | $20,000,000[1] |
Blowup, or Blow-Up, is a 1966 film directed by Michelangelo Antonioni about a fashion photographer, played by David Hemmings, who believes he has unwittingly captured a murder on film. It was Antonioni’s first entirely English-language film.[2]
The film also stars Vanessa Redgrave, Sarah Miles, John Castle, Jane Birkin, Tsai Chin and Gillian Hills as well as sixties modelVeruschka. The screenplay was by Antonioni and Tonino Guerra, with English dialogue by British playwright Edward Bond. The film was produced by Carlo Ponti, who had contracted Antonioni to make three English-language films for Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (the others were Zabriskie Point and The Passenger).
The plot was inspired by Julio Cortázar‘s short story, “Las babas del diablo” or “The Devil’s Drool” (1959),[3] translated also as “Blow Up” in Blow-up and Other Stories, and by the life of Swinging London photographer David Bailey.[4] The film was scored by jazz pianist Herbie Hancock. The music is diegetic, as Hancock noted: “It’s only there when someone turns on the radio or puts on a record.”[5] Nominated for several awards at the Cannes Film Festival, Blowup won the Grand Prix.
The American release of the counterculture-era[6] film with its explicit sexual content (by contemporary standards) by a major Hollywood studio was in direct defiance of the Production Code. Its subsequent outstanding critical and box office success proved to be one of the final events that led to the final abandonment of the code in 1968 in favour of the MPAA film rating system.[7]
Plot[edit]
The plot is a day in the life of a glamorous fashion photographer, Thomas (Hemmings), inspired by the life of an actual “Swinging London” photographer, David Bailey.[8] After spending the night at a doss house where he has taken pictures for a book of art photos, Thomas is late for a photo shoot with Veruschka at his studio, which in turn makes him late for a shoot with other models later in the morning. He grows bored and walks off, leaving the models and production staff in the lurch. As he leaves the studio, two teenage girls who are aspiring models (Birkin and Hills) ask to speak with him, but the photographer drives off to look at an antiques shop. Wandering into Maryon Park, he takes photos of two lovers. The woman (Redgrave) is furious at being photographed. The photographer then meets his agent for lunch, and notices a man following him and looking into his car. Back at his studio, Redgrave arrives asking for the film, but he deliberately hands her a different roll. She in turn writes down a false telephone number to give to him. His many enlargements of the black and white film are grainy but seem to show a body in the grass and a killer lurking in the trees with a gun. He is disturbed by a knock on the door, but it is the two girls again, with whom he has a romp in his studio and falls asleep. Awakening, he finds they hope he will photograph them but he tells them to leave, saying, “Tomorrow! Tomorrow!”
As evening falls, the photographer goes back to the park and finds a body, but he has not brought his camera and is scared off by a twig breaking, as if being stepped on. The photographer returns to his studio to find that all the negatives and prints are gone except for one very grainy blowup showing the body. After driving into town, he sees Redgrave and follows her into a club whereThe Yardbirds, featuring both Jimmy Page and Jeff Beck on guitar and Keith Relf on vocals, are seen performing the song “Stroll On.” A buzz in Beck’s amplifier angers him so much he smashes his guitar on stage, then throws its neck into the crowd, who make a grab for it as a souvenir. The photographer gets the neck and runs out of the club before anyone can snatch it from him. Then he has second thoughts about it, throws it on the sidewalk and walks away. A passer-by picks up the neck and throws it back down, not realizing it’s from Jeff Beck‘s guitar.[9]
At a drug-drenched party in a house on the Thames near central London, the photographer finds both Veruschka, who had told him that she was going to Paris – when confronted, she says she is in Paris – and his agent (Peter Bowles), whom he wants to bring to the park as a witness. However, the photographer cannot put across what he has photographed. Waking up in the house at sunrise, he goes back to the park alone and finds that the body is gone.
Befuddled, he watches a mimed tennis match, is drawn into it, picks up the imaginary ball and throws it back to the two players. While he watches the mime, the sound of the ball being played is heard. As the photographer watches this mimed match alone on the lawn, his image fades away, leaving only the grass as the film ends.
If the Orangemen knew they’d been captured by Hemmings
They’d leap off the wall like a throng of wild lemmings!!
With music by Herbie Hancock, well I never! Ask your Jim about The Blockheads.
You must be a genius Roberto! How did you know that? I didn’t even notice any music!