Blow-Up

In 1966, Michelangelo Antonioni transplanted his existentialist ennui to the streets of swinging London for this international sensation, the Italian filmmaker’s first English-language feature. A countercultural masterpiece about the act of seeing and the art of image making, Blow-Up takes the form of a psychological mystery, starring David Hemmings as a fashion photographer who unknowingly captures a death on film after following two lovers in a park. Antonioni’s meticulous aesthetic control and intoxicating color palette breathe life into every frame, and the jazzy sounds of Herbie Hancock, a beautifully evasive performance by Vanessa Redgrave, and a cameo by the Yardbirds make the film a transporting time capsule from a bygone era. Blow-Up is a seductive immersion into creative passion, and a brilliant film by one of cinema’s greatest artists.

Film Info

  • United Kingdom
  • 1966
  • 111 minutes
  • Color
  • 1.85:1
  • English
  • Spine #865

Special Features

  • New, restored 4K digital transfer, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack on the Blu-ray
  • New pieces about director Michelangelo Antonioni’s artistic approach, featuring photography curators Walter Moser and Philippe Garner and art historian David Alan Mellor
  • Blow Up of “Blow Up,” a 2016 documentary on the making of the film
  • Conversation from 2016 between Garner and actor Vanessa Redgrave
  • Archival interviews with Antonioni and actors David Hemmings and Jane Birkin
  • Trailers
  • English subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing
  • PLUS: A book featuring an essay by film scholar David Forgacs, an updated 1966 account of the film’s shooting by Stig Björkman, the questionnaires the director distributed to photographers and painters while developing the film, and the 1959 Julio Cortázar short story on which the film is loosely based

    New cover by Rodrigo Corral

Purchase Options

Special Features

  • New, restored 4K digital transfer, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack on the Blu-ray
  • New pieces about director Michelangelo Antonioni’s artistic approach, featuring photography curators Walter Moser and Philippe Garner and art historian David Alan Mellor
  • Blow Up of “Blow Up,” a 2016 documentary on the making of the film
  • Conversation from 2016 between Garner and actor Vanessa Redgrave
  • Archival interviews with Antonioni and actors David Hemmings and Jane Birkin
  • Trailers
  • English subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing
  • PLUS: A book featuring an essay by film scholar David Forgacs, an updated 1966 account of the film’s shooting by Stig Björkman, the questionnaires the director distributed to photographers and painters while developing the film, and the 1959 Julio Cortázar short story on which the film is loosely based

    New cover by Rodrigo Corral
Blow-Up
Cast
Vanessa Redgrave
Jane
David Hemmings
Thomas
Sarah Miles
Patricia
John Castle
Bill
Jane Birkin
The blonde
Gillian Hills
The brunette
Peter Bowles
Ron
Veruschka von Lehndorff
Veruschka
Julian Chagrin
Mime
Claude Chagrin
Mime
The Yardbirds
Themselves
Credits
Director
Michelangelo Antonioni
Producer
Carlo Ponti
Executive producer
Pierre Rouve
Screenplay
Michelangelo Antonioni
Screenplay
Tonino Guerra
Story
Michelangelo Antonioni
English Dialogue
Edward Bond
Inspired by “Blow-Up,” by
Julio Cortázar
Director of photography
Carlo di Palma
Art director
Assheton Gorton
Editor
Frank Clarke
Production manager
Donald Toms
Sound recordist
Robin Gregory
Costumes
Jocelyn Rickards
Music
Herbert Hancock

Current

David Hemmings Traces His Path to Blow-Up
David Hemmings Traces His Path to Blow-Up
Like his famously enigmatic landscapes, the performances that anchor Michelangelo Antonioni’s films are integral to his vision of existentialist ennui. Among the most iconic is David Hemmings’s turn in the Italian master’s first English-languag…
Blow-Up: In the Details
Blow-Up: In the Details

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Hlynur Pálmason’s Top 10
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Pablo Larraín’s Top 10
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The award-winning writer-director throws the spotlight on a group of films that serve as inspiration for his work but whose power he finds impossible to replicate.

Doug Nichol’s Top 10
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Seventy Years of Cannes: Blow-Up in 1967
Seventy Years of Cannes: Blow-Up in 1967
Continuing my trip through Cannes history, today I’m focusing on one of the most celebrated works of Italian master Michelangelo Antonioni, who became an international sensation partly thanks to the booing and heckling he endured at the Cannes prem…

By Neil McGlone