Michelangelo Antonioni's 5th film, after L'avventura (1960), La notte (1961), L'eclisse (1962) and Il deserto rosso (1964), and before Zabriskie Point (1970), Professione: Reporter (1975), and Identificazione di una donna (1982).
He was born in 1912, and died July 30, 2007, same day as Ingmar Bergman.
His first non-Italian production.
Won the Palme d'Or in Cannes.
Context
Mod (subculture), Swinging Sixties (Swinging London).
Themes
"In the case of Blow-Up, the mystery [i.e. whether a murder took place] is relevant to the film, but the solution of it is not. Indeed, the absence of a solution is part of the point: life’s uncertainty...the true suspense resides not in the mystery of the photographic blow-ups, but in the instability of Thomas himself."
In an interview at the time of the film's release, Antonioni stated that the film "is not about man's relationship with man, it is about man's relationship with reality"
Sexual content
Its explicit sexual content was in direct defiance of Hollywood's Production Code. Its subsequent critical and box-office success influenced the abandonment of the code in 1968 in favour of the MPAA film rating system. See Swinging London, etc.
Influences
JFK's assassination - Zapruder film
Post
The conversation
Framcis Ford Coppola, 1974.
Blow out
Brian De Palma, 1982.