Blowup Could Never Be Staged as a Theatrical Play.’ What Are the Elements That Make Blowup so Filmic?

Introduction

Photographs freeze a point in time representing the reality of the moment in order to preserve the memory for all time. Despite the technological advances with the precision and accuracy of the camera, the meanings and reality derived from photographs is still up to individual interpretations.   With a de-emphasis on the dramatic conventional narrative, Michelangelo Antonioni’s Blow-Up opens up an enormous range of meanings interpreted solely by the audiences’ knowledge and understanding.   Set in swinging London in the mid-sixties, the protagonist, played by David Hemmings, becomes morbidly obsessed with a series of blow-ups in which he believes he has photographed a murder.   “While enlargement of an image makes the identification of a part of it easier, it also increases the distortion the image suffers” (Bondanella, 2001, 223).   Thus an enlargement simultaneously assists and impairs our perception of the object captured on film.   “As we move closer and closer to a particular detail, more and more of its connotative context is lost” (Bondanella, 2001, 223).   Hemmings’ character continuously searches for the reality represented inside the blow-ups but the enigmatic nature of the film prevents the audience from reaching a conclusive ending.   The absence of a film plot with its ambiguous connotations is one of the main factors that Blow-Up could never be staged as a theatrical play.   A film which exposes the schism between appearance and reality, Antonioni brands the film with his personal vision, style and thematic obsession in conjunction to the auteur theory.   In addition, the camera movement, framing, editing, time, space and sound that Antonioni employs all play a vital role in creating the themes and meanings evident in Blow-Up.   The techniques the director utilized to construct meanings and events does not only enable the viewer to fathom the reality the protagonist struggles to find but additionally the reality the director himself is trying to... [continues]

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