1966 - BLOW UP, pretensious but a masterpiece

The director Michelangelo Antonioni shoots his second color film in English on London locations.  The film's plot of a photographer attempting to solve a murder through a series of pictures he has taken and blown up has been ripped off by many movies.  However this film still retains it's freshness through Antonioni's impressive technique.

Antonioni was a director who specialized in studies of urban alienation.  He was always a director who could easily slide into overblown pretentious art film stuff and Blow Up certainly has it's moments of that stuff.  Frankly I could have done without the the scenes with the mimes but overall this is a very engrossing film.

A lot of critics spent a lot of time trying to figure out if the murder mystery actually occurred or was a product of the photographer's imagination, but it seems fairly obvious that the murder did happen after all he does find a body.  Certainly the scenes of the photographer putting the pieces together are extremely well done.

An impressive film. Written by Michelangelo Antonioni and Tonino Guerra,  the running time is 119 minutes.