I think it will maybe take me a couple more viewings to absorb the actual content of the movie, but god DAMN is this movie ever gorgeous.

I think I liked Eyes of Laura Mars better. This had about 12 good minutes – the actual blow up scenes and the tennis stuff at the end. Oh, maybe the original photo-taking scene.

And the appearance of two queers with poodles. And the line spoken re. two queers with poodles.

What a great movie. I liked it, but now that a few days have passed I like it even more. Many original scenes…

My favorite lines were:

Jane: “My private life’s already in a mess. It would be a disaster if…”

Thomas: “So what? Nothing like a little disaster for sorting things out.”

I’d rented this film years ago. After all that, my only conclusion was, Well, was there a murder?

It still left unanswered questions and I don’t think I’ll bother watching it again, unless I happened to be at someone’s house and they want to pop it into the VCR/DVD player.

Antonioni certainly has a style about him. Blow-Up, or Blowup, is rather atypical for him because it’s in English but it still has his trademark silence, beauty, and weirdness. I’ve always admired his ability to tell a story with moving pictures and almost no dialogue or music. I think it makes people uncomfortable today to sit through a film in which the characters rarely speak and there are no musical cues to trigger emotions. Antonioni’s characters often do bizarre things that seem to have nothing to do with anything making it hard to understand their emotions and motivations. The plot, such as it often is, is obfuscated by throw-away scenes and non sequiturs. Caring for or identifying with the characters seems to be of little importance to Antonioni, except in the abstract. And you can forget about tying up loose ends.

Blow-Up is not my favorite Antonioni. That place is reserved for L’Avventura. But I liked it and would recommend it to anyone looking for something different.

… unless you like watching completely unsympathetic characters doing arrogant (and sometimes evil) things. Screenplay/movie notes