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I thought it was going to be a digipak with the promise of "a book," disappointed to see it's only a regular keepcase

FrauBlucher wrote:Beaver

A review that brings new meaning to the site!

The review mentions a book -- curious.

DeprongMori wrote:There have been questions about the proper aspect ratio for Blowup for some time, and indeed the Criterion LaserDisc was issued in 1.66:1.

I've been told that while the LD jacket said 1.66, it was actually 1.85. I watched the laserdisc years ago at the college library, but I don't recall one way or the other.

Again, chances are he has a check disc, not the final product.

Gary usually gets review copies and doesn't get the whole kit and caboodle.

jedgeco wrote:

FrauBlucher wrote:Beaver

A review that brings new meaning to the site!

That was the meaning it was founded on though.

Transfer looks superb, very filmic. The darker look is subtle but I like it, the original Warner DVD was slightly too muted but this more vivid transfer makes more sense given Antonioni's other color works of the time.

Weirdly, Blow-Up is listed on this Michelangelo Antonioni people page but not on this one.

Still making my way through the substantial special features on this set, but want to just chime in with how wonderful and lucid the conversation with Jane Birkin is. I don't know much about Jane Birkin outside of Kung-Fu Master and her Serge Gainsbourg collaborations, but found her to be incredible articulate and sensitive. Her thoughts on Antonioni seem to be in contrary to the brooding intellectual you might be convinced he is. And her stories about her marriage to John Barry and her missing what "swinging London" was in order to please her husband and raise her daughter are subdued and heartbreaking. It really gave me a new respect for her. Alternatively, the David Hemmings interviews are strange as it seems like he doesn't care much for Blow-Up and is bitter about his career path.

Admittedly I haven't put on the disc yet, but my Blu came the other day and I think this has to be one of the most beautiful design jobs Criterion have done in a while. The cover and digipak are very fitting and look great (the title in huge black or white lettering on each side!), and I really love the booklet design. My only complaint is that the weird, small, slanted version of the title that appears in red below Hemmings's face on the booklet cover is rather unnecessary/ugly. Just keeping it simple like the rest of the set would've been perfect.

This is without doubt one of my most treasured films so I'm really looking forward to seeing it in such great quality. I only wish I had had the sense to get rid my Warner disc a couple years back when it was going for pretty inflated prices from Amazon sellers...

so is the dvd set thicker in terms of the packaging or is the angle of the set in this pic making it look a lot bigger than it is? I know the blu ray is a bit slim

How did Hemmings photograph the grey haired man's corpse if he's standing there watching Redgrave chase after him in this scene?

If memory serves me, after the Youtube clip ends, Redgrave leaves in the direction the grey-haired man went, and Hemmings takes a picture or pictures of her leaving.

Mungo wrote:If memory serves me, after the Youtube clip ends, Redgrave leaves in the direction the grey-haired man went, and Hemmings takes a picture or pictures of her leaving.

Thank you. I'll watch it again tonight. I must've dozed off. #-o

feihong wrote:I think in terms of delivery and tone the Blowup commentary is comparable to a Schickel, but it has the edge for being the worst in terms of being more broadly disappointing. Brunette keeps refusing to offer any analysis of film, all the time insisting "what does it mean? it can mean anything you want it to mean. It doesn't have to mean anything" to just about every scene or isolated image he talks about within the film. But while he doesn't want to offer any analysis of the film he doesn't have any technical or production details to share either; nor does he have "behind the scenes" stories or anecdotes to spruce things up. He also occasionally has some unquestionably wrongheaded notions about what's happening in the film. He fervently insists that the first scene in the movie has no meaning. He demands we accept that no one has been able to identify the activity the actors are depicting in the sequence (he doesn't know it's a rag raid). At one point he insists the raid isn't a depiction of any concrete event at all.

Other than that, Brunette talks a lot about how he teaches the film in a course somewhere, and he leans quite a bit on how many times he's taught the movie. And he occasionally describes the action we're seeing on screen, though mostly this is limited to intermittent chuckles and comments like "he's a jerk"--referring to the David Hemmings character and whatever louche thing he's doing at that moment.

It's one of the more disappointing commentaries out there in light of the way other Antonioni films have had very well-made and illuminating commentaries. L'Avventura, L'Eclisse and Red Desert all have fine commentaries. Even the Jack Nicholson commentary on The Passenger is far more intellectually stimulating than the Blowup commentary. I remember feeling a kind of revulsion and disbelief as the realization dawned upon me just how bad this commentary was going to be. Obviously Warners didn't care what was going to be in this commentary, but given that so many people have discussed and dissected so tirelessly, it's kind of mind-boggling how little they cared what went on in the commentary.

Thank you for this breakdown. I just got this BD today and am currently watching the film and lamenting that they didn't port the commentary no matter how low-quality in content it was. I'm of the philosophy that any commentary is better than none (though, Richard Schickel has chipped that maxim). I wanted to form my own opinion in other words. But, your meticulous breakdown has freed me from all disappointment.

Now back to the film and back to my disappointment that Criterion has drifted away from commentaries in general over the past 10 years.

Some random, unrelated ramblings:

1) Most people seem to call the photographer Thomas, even though he's never called this or given any name in the film itself. Thomas comes from the screenplay and interviews given at the time. I never referred to the character by that name, though, just because I feel like it's odd to do so when the "evidence" of such isn't even in the movie. As official and important as the screenplay may be, it's still almost meaningless compared to the film itself... Am I being crazy here? Or does anybody else feel like even if the director says to an interviewer what a character's name is it still doesn't "change" the content of the film just because they say so. I guess this ties into the intentional fallacy sort of, doesn't it? As you can see, I have very strong feelings about all of this

2) The scene where the photographer (who is definitely not named Thomas) returns to the park at night is so great. Very simple, but it's dripping with atmosphere... something about the way the darkness of the night looks, it's really striking and a bit eerie. For some reason A's three English-language films have barely any night scenes - Zabriskie Point has none, as it starts around morning and ends just before dusk the same day, and The Passenger... I think there's maybe one brief scene when they check into this hotel in Spain. A shot or two, like half a minute or less probably - and then the film, like ZP, ends right as the sun is setting and before dark. Blow-Up has more, but interestingly it seems like all the night scenes are confined to the second half of the film, everything up til the house party near the end. I wonder how much of this is deliberate; surely it must be? I feel like the four Italian films before Blow-Up also have not that many night scenes, especially Red Desert and L'avventura.

I'd guess that, especially once MA switched to color, he was going for a certain vividness and a certain look which might be more conducive to bright sunlight than shadow and darkness. Or, beyond that, his films are generally not full of shadows; it's hard to imagine Antonioni filming a real noir. He seemed to require a kind of brightness to the image, because obviously this allows more detail, more visual complexity; again, it's hard to imagine him shooting, say, a room bathed in B&W chiaroscuro, all stark Venetian blind shadows and bright white light - in terms of color, that kind of high-contrast look (even if in color and not B&W) is basically two-dimensional. It's the opposite of the detailed, wide views that MA favors - images which encourage a kind of democracy of the gaze, which contain multiple points of interest instead of the equivalent of a megaphone shouting at you to look at the man in the black suit in the shadowy room, or whatever.

3) So apparently Blow-Up was edited by Frank Clarke, but he didn't want to be credited, and wasn't, because the experience was so unpleasant for him - MA constantly instructing him what to do and interfering (for lack of a better word) with the editing process, instead of the typical process Clarke was accustomed to from editing anonymous big-budget films, where he'd be left to his own devices and only allow the director to make changes once at least a decent rough cut was created.

Anybody know any details about Clarke or his experience working on the film? It's hardly a secret that he did, but I somehow didn't remember this until now. I can't remember - who does the opening credits have as editor? I'm guessing Antonioni himself? This all makes sense considering he'd have an editing credit for all of his subsequent features. ZP and Passenger both found MA working with Franco Arcalli (though only Arcalli is credited on ZP), Oberwald had MA again partnering with another editor, and by Identification of a Woman he was the sole editor. Not surprising he would play such a hands-on and key role in the editing process, it's essential in shaping so much of what makes the rhythms and structure of his images so unique.

4)...And then I wonder if MA was similar when it came to cinematography - if he was a Kubrick or Roeg kind of director, whose control over every aspect of camera and lighting naturally allows the DP little autonomy or creative freedom. I've always thought ZP in particular is MA's most visually stunning film - so I'm curious if anybody sufficiently familiar with DP Alfio Contini's general style throughout his career could say whether ZP bears his artistic mark, or if it's something of an outlier and thus suggests MA was probably very hands-on in crafting the look of that film. It's really beautiful, and it's kind of different visually from anything else MA directed - obviously a lot of similarities are there, but it's got its own aesthetic and I don't think it could only be put down to the use of 'Scope.

But regardless of who played a bigger role in it, the photography of ZP is especially striking for its use of telephoto lenses, very long lenses throughout quite consistently. Now MA had certainly employed telephoto lenses before, with Red Desert making notable use of them (a big contrast after the wide-angle, deep focus compositions of L'avventura or L'eclisse). But ZP takes it to a new extreme, and also brings in that cinema verite look, e.g. mainly just in the opening sequence. What's really interesting about that opening is how perfectly it melds neo-realism/docu-drama/fly-on-the-wall kind of gritty handheld camerawork, with nonetheless a supremely elegant sense of color, framing, movement, cutting... it's almost like the point where MA's neo-realist roots finally meet his stylized, intentionally fantastical or even surreal flights of fancy (note the jarring match-cut when Mark lights his cigarette, a masterful bit of cinematic punctuation - there's nothing amateurish or plain about the deceptively "gritty" handheld camerawork going on here.

It's really something that doesn't get discussed enough, just the ways that ZP explores the language of film and so joyously tries out new methods, new ways of seeing and structuring. Really, though, it's ultimately a matter of money. ZP got bankrolled with a hefty (for MA) budget, and I think this probably explains the all-out technical creativity and mastery on display. Just imagine if his other films were given a comparable, or even bigger, amount of money... it'd be amazing. Interesting how those kinds of one-off big-budget studio pictures from an otherwise marginalized/art-house filmmaker tend to turn out - perhaps bloated or somewhat vacuous in character or dialogue, but compensated by the triumphant artistry of the form. Abel Ferrara's Body Snatchers is another great example of this kind of film. I see why they're so rare (I mean, I guess Heaven's Gate sort of falls into this category as well, doesn't it?), but it's great when the planets do align to create one.

Well according to rumors, if Antonioni had a larger budget Blow-up might have turned out differently. Even after seeing this and Passenger, which I both liked, I still don't very much care for him. I guess you can look to Russian films around 1950-70 for some larger budgeted foreign cinema, or to Kurosawa and Kubrick if you consider the budgets they received or if you think they are art house (considering you named Ferrara as art house should imply you will)

Mungo wrote:If memory serves me, after the Youtube clip ends, Redgrave leaves in the direction the grey-haired man went, and Hemmings takes a picture or pictures of her leaving.

Yes. He goes back up into the park when she runs off

Spoiler

and you can see the corpse in the frame.

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I remember declaring I HATED this movie when I first watched it sometime in the late 00's. It became one of those rewatches years down the line sometime in the 2010's where it became a completely different thing to me. I was hooked. I got it because there wasn't necessarily anything to "get". You simply just go with it.

That being said what really brought me in was just how busy it all is. Not just the people, actions and scenery in almost every frame but Hemmings' character always on the move. Many movies do a lousy job at actually showing us a character is constantly moving from setting to setting. The best example I can use personally is The Wolverine. Yes, that movie. We know by watching that movie Logan is going all around Japan but to me it felt like he never left the same two or three places. Why did it come out this way? It's because it was TOO focused on trying to show his journey that it ended up being presented to us in such a choppy way we stop really seeing where he's actually going and most importantly how FAR he is actually moving.

With Blow-Up we feel every step Hemmings is taking and he indeed is all over the goddamn place because we're as in the dark as he is as to what the hell is going on with anything. It's not a reductive comment to say Blow-Up takes a lax approach in its storytelling in fact, it presumably takes more work to figure out that sort of presentation to where some may dimiss it as "lazy", "disconnective" or "awful" just like I did when I first watched it and indeed it's an easy mistake to make. But I love that about this film. We're right behind Hemmings EACH STEP of the way and it turns into sort of a fun ride. I will have to use this term: the "hang out" movie. If not the first this is very much a prototype.

I feel this is why I warmed up and eventually learned to love The Isolation Trilogy or whatever you wanna call it. Antonioni had such an amazing way of showing characters moving place to place. What once seemed boring nowadays is incredibly beautiful and interesting to watch.

And a small thing I want to add because I love it so much. This film contains one of my favorite split diopter shots ever. The shot where Redgrave is sitting on the couch in the background with one of Hemmings's cameras in the foreground. I wish I could find a screen of it.

black&huge wrote:I got it because there wasn't necessarily anything to "get". You simply just go with it.

Could you elaborate on this?