of things (as discussed in chapter Two). InRear Windowthe photographer
takes a sure path towards knowledge, while inBlow-upthe more the
photographer looks the less certain he becomes. Has he accidentally
photographed a murder? Can he prove it? Are his photographs evidence?^24
For all its analytical, existential aspirations,Blow-updoes not get far past
the obvious warning that while photographs are forceful as evidence,
they need to be read carefully and corroborated by testimony. But
perhaps the real insight Antonioni offers is not to be found in the film
as such. What is striking is thatBlow-upseems so different in photographs.
The fashion shoots, so modish and seductive in the film’s publicity
stills, are deliberately awkward and cruel in the film. The photographer
(played by David Hemmings and loosely based on David Bailey and
others) looks focused and purposeful in stills, but is really a listless man
veering between entropy and excitement with his lifestyle. The film’s
celebrated estrangement of the world it depicts is only achieved through
its drawn-out pacing and extended silences. In stills the film resembles
the ‘groovy, swinging sixties’ that Antonioni was attempting to unmask.
In some ways this was subversive. The publicity forBlow-up(posters,
press photos, magazine features) could not help but mislead, suggesting
that the film was more accessible and familiar to a mass audience than it
really was. Appropriately,Blow-upwas Antonioni’s only film to meet with
critical and commercial success.
So often when cinema approaches photography it does so indirectly,
as a means to something else. We might see this as evasive, that while
cinema is attracted to it, it cannot properly account either for photography
or for its own attraction. There is a blind spot here. Even so, cinema’s
tendency to look awry at photography may tell us a great deal about the
nature of the relationship between the two, but it requires that we too
approach the matter indirectly.
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