Blow-Up

Jack Nicholson once speculated that the counterculture of the 1960s and 1970s may not have been as film-savvy as we were led to believe. Perhaps, he pondered, people really liked "Blow-Up" because it had a beaver shot.

He may not have been far wrong. Writer-director Michelangelo Antonioni used sweeping vistas and brooding actors to create a compelling vision of members of the bourgeois grappling with the emptiness of life in "L'Aventurra". Many of his other films, however, have shown the limitations of stories about bored rich people: they aren't particularly insightful or interesting.

"Blow-Up" features a young photographer, Thomas (David Hemmings), who spends much of his time conducting fashion shoots with beautiful women. Antonioni has no qualms about reminding us of this; in one scene, Thomas straddles a woman and shouts in excitement, even exclaiming "Make it come!" The insinuation is embarrassingly obvious.

And the shameless titillation doesn't end there. At one point, Jane (Vanessa Redgrave) takes her shirt off for Thomas. She reveals her bare top to him, but covers her chest when the camera shows her front. This covering up, presumably for censorship reasons, goes on for several minutes. Over time it becomes faintly ridiculous.

What about the plot? Thomas photographs Jane kissing a man without her permission. After he develops the photos, he realizes that someone was shot in the background as the pictures were being taken. He goes and finds the body, but it is gone by morning. That is the beginning, middle and end of the story.

In fairness, the plot is never the point with Antonioni. He merely uses it as a jumping-off point to engage in some interesting exercises. For instance: James attends a rock show and comes away with the neck of one of the guitars. The crowd inside mobs him for it, but outside the neck becomes worthless. Also, the beginning and end of the film feature a band of marauding mimes (you read that right) who raise interesting questions of perception and reality. These are interesting little interludes, but they never come close to cohering into any broader theme or statement. The very idea of coherence seems banal to Antonioni.

Like Godard, Antonioni seemed to be playing games for his own amusement in his films. There is a certain degree of contempt for the audience in such films, and it deserves to be reciprocated.