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Michelangelo Antonioni’s Blow-Up—which opens today in a new restoration at New York’s Film Forum—is a film about images, photographs especially (a film whose obsession with film grain makes a hi-def digital restoration seem almost perverse). But if ever a film has been reduced to a single image in the public mind it is Antonioni’s mod masterpiece, whose shot of David Hemmings straddling super-model Veruschka at the climactic moment of an orgasmic photo shoot has become the movie’s money shot, endlessly parodied since. Veruschka (a.k.a. Countess Vera von Lehndorff-Steinort) appears for only five minutes at the beginning of the film but she, more than top-billed star Vanessa Redgrave, became the face, or rather the body, of Blow-Up.The shot was used for both the French grande (painted by Georges Kerfyser) and the Japanese poster, above, as well as for a wonderful series of green,...

The Conversation is a new feature at Sound on Sight bringing together Drew Morton and Landon Palmer in a passionate debate about cinema new and old. For their third piece, they will discuss Michelangelo Antonioni’s Blow Up.

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Landon’s Take:

The cultural impact of Michelangelo Antonioni’s Blow Up would be very difficult to overemphasize. Upon release, Andrew Sarris referred to the film as “a mod masterpiece” and ‘Playboy’ critic Arthur Knight went so far as comparing the film to Hiroshima mon amour, Rome Open City, and Citizen Kane in its potential influence on filmmaking. The film was also a massive hit worldwide and the tenth highest grossing film in the United States in 1966 – a memento of a brief window in time in which an art film by an Italian auteur could also do boffo box office. And, having been denied a seal by the Production Code Administration, Blow Up...

The 1967 Cannes Grand Prix winner Blowup was prestigious director Michelangelo Antonioni’s first foray into English, thanks to a deal struck with MGM by producer Carlo Ponti, who contracted the director to do three of them: this one, Zabriskie Point, and The Passenger. While this is clearly the best of that trio (though The Passenger has some merit), in the great Antonioni’s career it feels like a tangential experiment more than a fully realized piece of art.

Based on the short story “Las babas del diablo” by Julio Cortázar, Blowup stars David Hemmings as Thomas, a London photographer who spends his days straddling models while he snaps their pictures, doing various drugs, and moving from woman to woman, enjoying the swinging lifestyle commonly practiced during the era. While walking through a London park, he snaps photos of a couple in an embrace, infuriating the woman (Vanessa Redgrave), who arrives...

In conjunction with La Furia Umana, Notebook is very happy to present Ted Fendt's original English translation of Luc Moullet's "Rockefeller's Melancholy," on Michelangelo Antonioni. Moullet's original French version can be found at La Furia Umana. Our special thanks to Mr. Moullet, La Furia Umana and Ted Fendt for making this possible.

Above: "John D. Rockefeller" (1917) by John Singer Sargent.

Drifting is the fundamental subject of Antonioni’s films. They are about beings who don’t know where they are going, who constantly contradict themselves, and are guided by their momentary impulses. We don’t understand what they feel or why they act as they do.

Psychological cinema could be defined in this way: it is psychological when you don’t understand the motivation of emotions and behaviors. If you understand, it means it’s easy, immediately, at a very superficial level... The filmmaker must therefore let it be...

A few years into the latest 3D phase (and, make no mistake, it is only a phase), I still grate my teeth at the disproportionate number of children's movies offered at such a premium price. It doesn't make me any happier when the 3D effects in question are added in the post-production phase as is the case with Hoodwinked Too! Hood vs. Evil, which wouldn't even be worth the price of a 2D matinee or a Redbox rental. Any children's movie that unironically overdoes the postmodern allusions to such a degree that, within the space of one breath, "Say hello to my lil' friend" is instantaneously followed-up with "Hasta la vista, baby" should not only be avoided in the the theater but also in the DVD market. Quite simply, there is no excuse for any movie that believes the money should just roll in as a result of the kind...

Blowup (1966) Direction: Michelangelo Antonioni Cast: David Hemmings, Vanessa Redgrave, Sarah Miles, John Castle, Veruschka, Jane Birkin, Gillian Hills, Peter Bowles Screenplay: Michelangelo Antonioni, Tonino Guerra, Edward Bond Oscar Movies David Hemmings, Veruschka, Blowup By Dan Schneider of Cosmoetica: Made in Great Britain in 1966, the flat-out great Blowup was Michelangelo Antonioni's first English-language effort. "Inspired" by Argentinean writer Julio Cortazar's short story Las babas del diablo, Blowup was nominated for two Academy Awards: Best Direction and Best Original Screenplay (Antonioni, Tonino Guerra, and Edward Bond), in addition to winning the Palme d'Or at Cannes and the National Society of Film Critics' Best Film Award. Having first seen the two Hollywood films most influenced by Blowup, Francis Ford Coppola's The Conversation (1974) and Brian De Palma's Blowout (1981), I did not know quite what to expect since the former is an excellent film — arguably, Coppola's best — and the latter is...