Blow-up (1966)

Blow Up was the first English language film of director Michelangelo Antonioni . It was immensely successful at box-office in that period. It was chosen as the  best film of 1967 by the National Society of Film Critics.

The main character of the film is a glamourous fashion photographer (David Hemmings) .   It looks at the day of a life of the main protagonist.  He roams around London taking photographs.  He is very much cruel  to models and women in his life.  One day,wandering at a park, he takes picture of a couple.  Later he discovers that he may have photographed a murder while taking the pics.

Blow up is not a thriller though some people might want to put it  in that category. Finding meaning in Blow up is difficult because nothing much really happens there . Still it raises many questions.  It may be a film which shows how skewed our perception of reality can be.  We see through the photographer's eyes.  Did that murder really happen or not?  The photographs started out as really nice pictures of the scene in the park.   But when he blew them up more, they revealed less. So we are not certain if he really noticed murder there or it is his perception. Photographer also tries to tell his friends about his discovery but he understands  that he is unable to communicate with anyone.  He suffers from isolation .  Nobody understands his experience and he is left alone. 

 One of the main aspect of the film is-camera takes on an active narrative role at certain key points. We notice, the camera becomes the story-teller in part of the blow-ups sequence. The camera also narrates at the end.  This is a great work by Michelangelo Antonioni .  Like many great works of art, the meaning of the film lies in the symbols and metaphors.