Blow-Up: Take a Picture, It'll Last Longer

SteynonLine ^ | July 18, 2026 | Rick McGinnis

[Twotone]

Like all those musicians who say they formed bands because they bought the first Velvet Underground record, there were at least two generations of photographers who chose their profession because they saw Blow-Up, Michelangelo Antonioni's 1966 so-called "murder mystery" starring David Hemmings as Thomas, an arrogant and successful photographer in what was about to be called "Swinging London".

Deputized to stand in for all those photographers is the American Robert Whitman, who recalled in a 2018 interview that "in those days people were very conservative; you couldn't look like this and get a job. I never wanted to wear a coat and tie, and I never wanted to work from nine to five. I didn't know what I was doing. I was just wandering around, living on the beach. I just wanted to be free and have freedom."

"I then saw this lifestyle of the photographer – all the beautiful women – and I said to myself that I want to be a photographer. So, the crazy thing is, I got into photography not because I had a love of photography but because I had a love of the lifestyle that photography could bring me."

Antonioni arrived in London after making the films that established his reputation as a major figure in European art cinema – masterpieces of alienation (or what critic Andrew Sarris dubbed "Antoniennui") like L'Avventura, La Notte, L'Eclisse and Red Desert. As Ali Catterall and Simon Wells recount it in their chapter on Blow-Up in Your Face Here: British Cult Movies Since the Sixties, the director was apparently there to visit Monica Vitti, his star and muse from those preceding films, while she was making Modesty Blaise with Joseph Losey.

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TOPICS: History; TV/Movies
KEYWORDS: movies

[E. Pluribus Unum]

Brian DePalma made a 1981 knock-off of Blow Up called Blow Out with John Travolta and Nancy Allen. Watched it again a couple of months ago. Pretty standard ‘80s fare.

[dfwgator]

The Yardbirds with Jeff Beck and Jimmy Page from “Blow-Up”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jSJGEn4FDys

[Stosh]

They did alright once they could afford better amps . . .

[BradyLS]

The article does a good job of summarizing my experience when I saw ‘Blow Up’ just one time. All the scenes have no resolution or are mildly off-putting. The beginning and end are both puzzling and, to me, pointless. None of it looked like anyone was having any fun. Episodes of the Diana Rigg era of The Avengers were infinitely more entertaining and occasionally tapped into that Swinging London scene the movie covered.

[frank ballenger]

Excuse was if they had better guitar players than Jimmy Page, Jeff Beck and Eric Clapton they might have gotten somewhere in music. Like John Mayall having to accept working with Eric Clapton, Peter Green, Mick Taylor, Harvey Mandel, and later Walter Trout, and Buddy Whittington.

The great 2003 —70th Birthday— John Mayall (Eric Clapton and other greats)...
Have You Heard About My Baby?, Part one.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qOpxFe2_gns&list=RDqOpxFe2_gns&start_radio=1

Part Two.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J5tiSxA0ri0&list=RDJ5tiSxA0ri0&start_radio=1

[Albion Wilde]

Another trenchant McGinnis review. I saw Blow Up in the theater when it came out, and I was too. young and naive to process it fully, so this review filled in a lot of blanks. At the time I was bored by the film’s deliberate indifference to shocking behavior (i.e. “hipness”). It’s astounding that, seeing the trailer linked at the site, I remembered nothing whatsoever of the decadent scenes of Swinging London that would precede, or help to lead, the Haight Ashbury—>Studio 54 period in America by a couple of years.

What I do remember to this day (a mere 60 years later) is the scene in the park, the photographs of it blown up and blown up again to reveal a mysterious event, the forward tilt of this experiment with technology; but then the film’s entire visual swirl of abandon and self-destruction ultimately fizzled into a precursor to Seinfeld—a show about nothing, only not funny. If louche hipness was to be the future of the arts society, it left me cold.

Loved the detail in the review and looked up many of his references and links.

[sphinx]

Thanks. I’ve not seen the movie but you’ve nudged me into adding it to my watchlist.

Is it a critique of nihilism and selfishness, or a celebration of it? The former might feel prophetic today. The latter would be very dated dreck, a movie about self-destructive, deadender people made by people who thought it was hip and cutting edge.

Like so much of the arts and entertainment culture today.