Peter Viney's Blog

Blow Up

1967 (officially 1966)

Directed by Michelangelo Antonioni
Produced by Carlo Ponti
Screenplay by Michelangelo Antonioni & Tonino Guerra
English dialogue by Edward Bond
From a short story by Julio Cortazar
Cinematography by Carlo di Palma
Music by Herbie Hancock

CAST

Vanessa Redgrave – Jane
Sarah Miles – Patricia
David Hemmings – Thomas
John Castle – Bill
Jane Birkin – The Blonde
Gillian Hills- The Brunette
Peter Bowles – Ron
Veruschka – Veruschka
Julian Chagrin – tennis mime
Claude Chagrin – tennis mime

With The Yardbirds: Jeff Beck, Jimmy Page, Keith Relf, Jim McCarty, Chris Dreja

The Italian poster for Blow-up

The 60s retrospective series …

Recent reviews have stuck to Swinging Sixties London and this is the big one. The definitive one. Probably the best one. It ignored the Hollywood production code and is held to be the first mainstream feature film with female pubic hair on view (blink and you’ll miss it). The critical acclaim (US Critics Best Film, Cannes Best Film)  is held to have led to the abandoning of the Production Code in 1968 and replacing it with the rating system..

I get annoyed with these pre-Christmas release dates to secure a place in the awards competitions for the year before. Blow-up was released on 18 December 1966 in the USA, but premiered in London 16th March 1967. Most of Europe was May 1967.  Effectively, it’s a1967 film, though forever after it’s trumpeted as “Best Film of 1966.”

David Hemmings was in line behind Sean Connery and Terence Stamp (both declined) and got the part only two weeks before shooting. He said the script he was given had only fourteen pages and had the title A Girl, a Photographer and a Beautiful April Morning.

Antonioni thought that at 23 I was too young and too blonde. I told him I could darken my hair and looked older on film.
David Hemmings, TV Interview  ‘City Lights.’

The greatest insult was that Hemmings was billed third behind Vanessa Redgrave and Sarah Miles. I’d describe Sarah Miles’ role as ‘minor supporting.’  I did the plot outline below without finding her two brief chats worthy of mention (nice fishnet frock though). The film is totally focussed on David Hemmings, and I don’t think we see any scenes where he is not present.

The other oddity is names. I never heard his name (Thomas) throughout, nor did I hear Vanessa Redgrave’s name (Jane) nor Sarah Miles’ (Patricia). There is a scene where after some intimacy, the photographer asks the woman from the park what her name is and she writes it on a piece of paper without saying it. We were talking about if afterwards and we just called him ‘David’ – as his part was loosely based on David Bailey as well as it being his name. I notice that Wikipedia sticks to ‘The photographer.’

The English dialogue is by playwright Edward Bond (best known for 1964’s Saved), and Bond had a joint Oscar nomination for Best screenplay. However, the beauty of the film is that it tells the story mainly through the visuals. There are long, key sequences without any dialogue.

THE PLOT

It’s an extremely good story. Period. It also follows a classical unity, taking place over 24 hours, from one morning to the next.

Excuse the asides in brackets below …

Here, the relationship is between an individual and reality–those things that are around him. There are no love stories in this film, even though we see relations between men and women. The experience of the protagonist is not a sentimental nor an amorous one but rather, one regarding his relationship with the world, with the things he finds in front of him. He is a photographer. One day, he photographs two people in a park, an element of reality that appears real. And it is. But reality has a quality of freedom about it that is hard to explain. This film, perhaps, is like Zen; the moment you explain it, you betray it. I mean, a film you can explain in words, is not a real film.
Michelangelo Antonioni

Outside the doss house, The photographer disguised as a down-and-out

We start out with … sorry, I can’t call the photographer ‘Thomas’ as I guarantee I never heard it … so … it starts with David Hemmings walking out of a doss house dressed as a street person. He has his camera concealed in a bundle of rags. He’s been in there capturing photos of the dossers for an art book photo collection. He gets back to his studio for a photo session in his day job, fashion photography. He’s got to be pretty good at the job as he drives an open top Rolls-Royce.

The Rolls-Royce

(If you’re going to film someone driving around, an open top car is a major bonus, and as the orders for Rollers is so long (and might bust the budget), they bought it secondhand from … Jimmy Savile. It was white and they resprayed it. He uses a walkie-talkie in the car … how cool for the era! No one arrests him for using a mobile device at the wheel. )

The classic image of the film

The session is with super model Veruschka (played by herself). These shots are the basis for the posters and publicity shots. She is incredibly tall and thin, and her knees are not attractive. Basically, he’s making love to her with a camera.

(Antonioni wandered Kings Road looking for inspiration, and found the sideless dress at Granny Takes A Trip boutique)

He goes onto another shoot with an array of models, dressed in late 1966 high fashion.

Iconic 60s stuff

The juxtaposition of the doss house photography with the fashion photography points out that both are a means of earning money for him. The pictures of naked painfully thin elderly dossers queuing for a shower (de-louse?) will go in an art book and be as lucrative as the beautiful girls. Or they may both appear in one of the new Sunday colour supplements … advert and photo-article.

As he leaves the studio, two teenage wannabe models accost him. The blonde was played by Jane Birkin, very soon to be world famous by recording Je t’aime … mois non plus with Serge Gainsbourg.  The brunette is Gillian Hills, who didn’t become world-famous.

(We had a long aside on tights, which Karen says weren’t available in Bournemouth until early 1967, so the coloured tights were high fashion in mid 66 when it was filmed. I will bow to expertise).

The girls, Gillian Hill and Jane Birkin. We will see (much) more of them later …

The photographers is bored with pretty girls. He drives off to look at an antique shop which he’s thinking of buying. We see two men with white poodles. Later he tells someone it’s an up and coming area because  ‘Already there are queers and poodles in the streets.’ He decides to buy a wooden aeroplane propellor, as one does. £8.

The photographer wanders into a park, camera in hand. He sees a courting couple in the distance and starts taking photos of them.

(I worked with a bloke at the museum who used to do the same in the sand dunes at Studland until he got deservedly beaten up!)

The woman (Vanessa Redgrave) runs over to him, demands the film, and she tries to snatch the camera. He refuses, takes more shots and runs off.

The photographer has lunch with his agent, Ron (Peter Bowles). He sees a man trying to open the boot of his car and runs out, but he’s too late, The woman arrives at his studio to demand the film.

She removes her top as an incentive and they flirt.

He nips into the dark room and gives her a different roll of film, and she writes down a fake phone number for him.

Would you believe it? She’s given him the wrong number.

His curiosity is awoken. He starts making ever greater enlargements of the photos … this is one of the long and compelling sequences with no dialogue. First he realizes she is staring over her lover’s shoulder at the bushes.

One day they’ll have Photoshop and all this will be obsolete …

He makes a further enlargement and sees the outline of a man with a pistol in the bushes. He phones Ron and says he’s saved someone’s life by interrupting the snogging session.

The wannabe models arrive, and they get into a threesome with much giggling and pulling off of tights. He gets rid of them, saying ‘Tomorrow! Tomorrow!’

There were three in the bed and the little one said, ‘Roll over’ …

(This was the famed ‘flash of pubic hair’ sequence. It is online on IMDB and someone went to a lot of trouble finding the exact frame and yes, it is explicit, but in the interest of propriety, I’ve selected one a few frames later!)

The photographer decides to explore further, and gets a half frame camera to photograph the enlargement, and sees what appears to be a body on the ground under a bush … this was from the shots he took after the woman had demanded the film.

Nobody seemed to want to point out the basic flaw in the central plot device, which is that you won’t find much more in a huge photographic print than you can see by looking at the 35 mm negative with a decent magnifying glass in the first place, but hey, why would film makers know anything about celluloid?
Max Décharné, King’s Road, 2005

Well, the larger frame camera can’t add information that isn’t already there, but we have willing suspension of disbelief, and  most viewer go with this:

What follows is one of the most beautiful and intense secquences in film. It describes inanimate objects and a technical process, but it is as beguiling as watching Garbo being alone or Bogart strolling across a room … Working in the darkroom, Thomas brings his negatives to life and begins to see not just a series of frames in time but the possibility of a story. He makes enlargements of detail. He pins the pictures on the wall, in order like a storyboard. And he comes to believe that the man with Redgrave may have been murdered. In the park, Thomas didn’t notice this happen, but his camera may have taken it and kept the information for his discovery.
How To Watch A Movie, David Thomson 2015

(I had wondered about the 35 mm Nikon he uses until then … as I thought studio photography would have been half-frame or full-frame. Apparently the film Blow-up  was a breakthrough for 35 mm Nikons as pro cameras).

The photographer goes back to the park and finds the dead body of the man. He hasn’t brought his camera. He hears a noise in the bushes, and hurries back to find his studio has been ransacked and all the enlargements have gone, though there is one very grainy picture of the body from the ultra-enlarged picture. It’s under a unit. It doesn’t occur to him in any of this to inform the police.

Outside the club

He drives into the centre, and sees the woman going into a club. He follows. The Yardbirds are playing. A woman is dancing. The audience look comatose and mournful (which I found very funny … and true in those days). A noise from the amp angers Jeff Beck, and he smashes up his guitar and throws it into the crowd. The photographer catches the guitar neck and fights his way out with the prize. He throws it in the street. A man picks it up, looks at it, and throws it back down. The woman has gone.

(The tall dancer was Janet Street-Porter. Michael Palin was among the watchers in the club).

The photographer drives to Ron’s house where a drug-fuelled party is taking place. Veruschka is there. The photographer asks Ron to come to the park with him, but Ron is too stoned. The photographer stays at the party.

(The stoned party goers were not acting. Keiran Fogerty was a background artiste:)

Kieran Fogerty: I was flung into this bedroom in Cheyne Walk, hair parted, purple shirt with paisley motifs, black knitted Jaeger tie, square ended black jacket. Plonked on the front of this bed with about another nine people on it and Antonioni tossed a couple of kilo bags of grass on the bed, and said “Right, get on with it.”
Quoted in Days In The Life by Jonathan Green.

The photographer goes back to the park at first light. The body has gone.

Anyone for tennis?

A group of students drive by, and set up a mimed tennis match. A mimed ball goes over the fence. He mimes returning it. He walks away, and we hear tennis balls being batted across the net.

It’s brilliant. One of the films in these 60s retrospectives that gets better every time you re-watch it, as I have several times over the years.

THE YARDBIRDS & THE IN CROWD

Jeff Beck and Keith Relf turn up the volume to eleven

The famous bit. Jimmy Page and Jeff Beck playing together.

Antonioni knew about Pete Townsend’s guitar smashing stage show and wanted The Who for the club scene. Simon Napier-Bell managed The Yardbirds and blagged The Who’s manager, Kit Lambert, telling him to demand £5000 (you could book The Who for a college gig for £400 then) and approval of the final cut. Napier-Bell knew no director would accept that. He then contacted Antonioni and lied that Townsend had learned guitar-smashing from Jeff Beck and suggested The Yardbirds. Antonioni knew he was bullshitting but found it amusing that he was. Antonioni had approached Eric Burdon, who had declined, and then had wanted The Velvet Underground who were too expensive to transport to the UK, in spite of usefully being an MGM act (the film was MGM).

On David Hemmings’ advice, it was decided to use The In Crowd (until Napier-Bell intervened).

Spanish single 1990s. Re-issued by Rough Trade 2018

The In Crowd, on the verge of changing their name to Tomorrow, recorded two songs Am I Glad To See You? and Blow Up, for the film, but they weren’t used. They weren’t released as a 45 in the UK either, but they were later in Spain.

The Rough Trade website adds:

Hemmings had recently been cast in a film by Italian director Michelangelo Antonioni, Blow Up, and was being outfitted for the role at a King’s Road boutique called Dandie Fashions, which, as it happened, was part-owned by The In Crowd’s manager, Anthony Rufus Isaacs. The film was set against the backdrop of then-Swingin’ London, and the director was looking for an ‘of the moment’ band to perform in a night club scene …. Knowing a good opportunity when he saw one, Isaacs suggested that The In Crowd would be ideal for the role, and Hemmings’ endorsement no doubt also helped the cause. Antonioni called the group for a breakfast meeting at the Savoy Hotel and, over eggs, bacon and toast, they came to an informal agreement. Keith West immediately got to work composing two songs to be used in the movie, Am I Glad To See You and Blow Up. The group cut the tracks at a session produced by Tony Howard of the Bryan Morrison Agency, and a few weeks later reported to the set for filming. Antonioni’s head was still full of visions of The Who, so the scene required Howe to smash his guitar Pete Townshend-style, a concept he was not altogether comfortable with, even though the instrument in question was only a flimsy balsa wood replica fashioned by the prop department. Whether it was Howe’s discomfort with the destruction or the fact that, as West later recalled, “we larked around too much”, the group was ultimately dismissed and the much better known Yardbirds brought in to replace them

Steve Howe (In Crowd, Tomorrow, Yes and Asia) said:

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!
Steve Howe

SOUNDTRACK

There was still this obsession among directors (an older generation) with jazz as the sound of the sixties. It wasn’t.

At least here they shifted from John Dankworth to a far more modern sound from Herbie Hancock. The Main Title: Blow Up is soul jazz / funk which Mr Dankworth would not have done. Verushka also sits on soul Hammond organ and guitar. Jimmy Smith is credited on Hammond organ, but other sources say is was Paul Griffin (famed for Dylan sessions). It sounds like classic Jimmy Smith to me especially on The Thief. Anyway, Jack DeJohnette on drums, Ron Carter on bass, Herbie Hancock on piano and melodica, Jim Hall on guitar, Freddie Hubbard and Joe Newman on trumpets, Phil Woods and Joe Henderson on saxes. London sessions added Ian Carr on trumpet, Pete McGurk on bass and Chris Karan on drums.

I was playing it while writing this review, and much of it stands up as an album in its own right.

Of course no one discussing the film ever remembers it as Herbie Hancock- they only ever recall The Yardbirds. I bought the soundtrack last year secondhand for £3. The shop owner is a friend and I said, ‘That’s cheap seeing as The Yardbirds are on it,’ (Stroll On) … he was shocked.  He said if he’d known that he’d have put £10 to £15 on it … but he only saw Herbie Hancock at a quick glance.

Actually, it’s a Turner Classic Movies reissue, not an original MGM copy, which is valued at £80 in mint condition in Rare Record Guide 2020. However, unlike the original LP, they added both sides of the In Crowd 45 Am I Glad To See You? and Blow Up though the group credited is Tomorrow. It also has a great inner sleeve with the Verushka picture.

You can see why it looks like a Herbie Hancock album. The TCM reissue.

VANESSA REDGRAVE

Morgan – A Suitable Case For Treatment (1966)

THE 60s REVISITED REVIEWS …

A Taste of Honey (1961)
Sparrows Can’t Sing (1963)
Tom Jones (1963)
The Fast Lady (1963)
Cat Ballou (1965)
The Ipcress File (1965)
Darling (1965)
The Knack (1965)
Doctor Zhivago (1965)
Morgan – A Suitable Case For Treatment (1966)
Alfie (1966)
Harper (aka The Moving Target) 1966
The Chase (1966)
The Trap (1966)
Georgy Girl (1966)
Fahrenheit 451 (1966)
Modesty Blaise (1966)
The Family Way (1967)
Privilege (1967)
Blow-up (1967)
Accident (1967)
Bonnie and Clyde (1967)
I’ll Never Forget What’s ‘Is Name (1967)
How I Won The War (1967)
Far From The Madding Crowd (1967)
Poor Cow (1967)
Here We Go Round The Mulberry Bush (1968)
The Magus (1968)
If …. (1968)
The Devil Rides Out (aka The Devil’s Bride) (1968)
Work Is A Four Letter Word (1968)
The Party (1968)
Petulia (1968)
Barbarella (1968)
The Thomas Crown Affair (1968)
Bullitt (1968)
Deadfall (1968)
The Swimmer (1968)
Theorem (Teorema) (1968)
The Magic Christian (1969)
The Rise and Rise of Michael Rimmer (1970)
Performance (1970)