"Michelangelo Antonioni's Blow-Up opened in America two months before I became a film critic, and colored my first years on the job with its lingering influence. … Over three days recently, I revisited Blow-Up in a shot-by-shot analysis. Freed from the hype and fashion, it emerges as a great film, if not the one we thought we were seeing at the time. … Whether there was a murder isn't the point. The film is about a character mired in ennui and distaste, who is roused by his photographs into something approaching passion. As Thomas moves between his darkroom and the blowups, we recognize the bliss of an artist lost in what behaviorists call the Process; he is not thinking now about money, ambition or his own nasty personality defects, but is lost in his craft. His mind, hands and imagination work in rhythmic sync. He is happy. Later, all his gains are taken back.... Blow-Up audaciously involves us in a plot that promises the solution to a mystery, and leaves us lacking even its players."
Quote Details
Added by wikiquote-import-bot
Unverified quote
0 likes
Original Language: English
Available Languages (1)
Sources
Roger Ebert in a review of Blow-Up (1966)
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Michelangelo_Antonioni
Revision History
No revisions have been submitted for this quote.
Categories
Michelangelo Antonioni
Michelangelo Antonioni (29 September 1912 – 30 July 2007) was an Italian modernist film director whose films are widely considered among the most influential in film aesthetics.
39 quotes on TrueQuotesView all quotes by Michelangelo Antonioni →
Related Quotes
"When I am shooting a film I never think of how I want to shoot something; I simply shoot it. My technique, which diff…"
"I began taking liberties a long time ago; now it is standard practice for most directors to ignore the rules."
"You mustn't ask me to explain everything I do. I can't. That's that. How can I say why at a certain moment I needed t…"
"The greatest danger for those working in the cinema is the extraordinary possibility it offers for lying."
"My work is like digging, it's archaeological research among the arid materials of our times. That's how I understand …"
"Hollywood is like being nowhere and talking to nobody about nothing."
"The photographer in Blow-Up, who is not a philosopher, wants to see things closer up. But it so happens that, by enla…"
"I am not a theoretician of the cinema. If you ask me what directing is, the first answer that comes into my head is: …"
"The moment always comes when, having collected one's ideas, certain images, an intuition of a certain kind of develop…"
"A director is a man, therefore he has ideas; he is also an artist, therefore he has imagination. Whether they are goo…"