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Blowup

Director: Michelangelo Antonioni, U.K, 1966, 111 Minutes

One of the most acclaimed films of the 1960s, Blowup is famous for its portrayal of Swinging London - with its fashion models, painters, and groupies - and for its central mystery which has kept film audiences guessing for nearly forty years.

The plot is one Hitchcock would've been proud of: Thomas, a bored fashion photographer, wanders into a park and snaps the people he sees. One woman seems almost panicked by being photographed. She insists on having the roll of film but Thomas refuses. Back at his studio developing the pictures, he sees what looks like a gun pointing from a bush in one and a body on the ground in another. He returns to the park to look for the body, but to no avail. Has it been removed? Was it ever really there?

Blowup is packed full of highlights: David Hemmings' just-right performance, the photo sessions with vacuous models, the visit to the antique shop, the threesome in the photo studio, Vanessa Redgrave taking her shirt off, the Yardbirds' performance of 'Stroll On', the marijuana party, Herbie Hancock's score, and the mimes pretending to play tennis. Most impressive of all is the scene where Thomas develops the photos he took in the park. Brilliantly conceived and edited, it is one of cinema's finest pieces of purely visual storytelling.