BY THE MID-1960s, Michelangelo Antonioni had established himself as one of the titans of international cinema. A loose trilogy —L’Avventura (1960), La Notte (1961) and L’Eclisse (1962) —had minted his style: languid, unapologetically intellectual examinations of modern discontent, disconnection and (triple-word score) ennui, shot in pellucid black and white, usually involving middle-class types wandering through modernist architecture in search of meaning. They were the epitome of ’60s arthouse: flicks that had cinematic beatniks knowingly namechecking Sartre and Camus while secretly pondering a new set of bongos.
But with Blow-Up, his first English-language film and only his second shot in colour, Antonioni shifted his, ahem, focus, at least a little. Here was what looked at least like a thriller, an audience-friendly murder-mystery. A high-rolling London photographer, albeit one suffering from the trademark Antonioni existential anxieties, snaps a few pictures of a couple in a wooded park. Developing them later, he becomes convinced that he has witnessed a murder, a suspicion that only grows when the woman in question turns up and agitatedly demands the negatives.