The scene where Redgrave takes off her shirt

Charlotte,

I also liked much of what MC66 said, but your point makes it clear that MC's explanation does not explain everything. I have posted on this film, which remains a source of great fascination to me, over the previous years of my posting here, but I see on this visit that it remains a subject of great debate.

Since my previous visit to this film's boards I have seen the four great Antonioni films of the early sixties that preceded this, his first foray into an English language film. Those four are the ones he did with his muse Monica Vitti. On the face of it I would not try to oversell the connection of Blowup to them, as those four have a certain unifying approach, using an increasingly direct examination of existential alienation that is at least somewhat more subtle in Blowup. And less obvious. (and not the least done without Monica, but I digress.) But it would be a mistake to ignore the context of Antonioni's own work, I think.

I love all four of those films, but perhaps L'Eclisse, also my favorite of them, is most helpful in providing context for Blowup. Please excuse what will here amount to a rather shorthand take on what that film meant and stood for. But L'Eclisse was a major film for that period, quite influential, and within that period and since has been compared to films by Ingmar Bergman, another giant of the time, and both of whom can generally be seen as making films with an overtly Existentialist perspective. But there were differences.

Particularly in L'Eclisse we see existential alienation viewed as virtually an inevitable result of the way man lives in post industrial society. While Antonioni I think is hardly politically radical, let alone Marxist, he did have an awareness of the notions Marxists posited to explain their own take on the nature of alienation. And we can see that in L'Eclisse, the later Red Desert, and in Blowup as well. And by that I mean what in general terms is an alienation based on an economic analysis, by which is meant, if one combines that analysis with a more Existentialist one, that our search for meaning is greatly hindered, even outright thwarted, by the nature of man's relation to the world in economic and social terms.

In Blowup this thwarting arises in Thomas's life in a rather I think obvious way. Thomas has a talent, and we see when he goes over the book project and the pictures he took that he genuinely enjoys and is excited by his work. But at least so far that work is not paying his rather large bills, and may not even were he to be "successful" with it. (I here mean how likely is it that such an endeavor would if he so chose allow him to leave behind the fashion photography world.) Instead he must literally move directly from having spent all night in the flop house, working on his project, to his day job. Which on some level, concededly, he seems to enjoy, up to a point, since he's good at it. But is that enough? I think clearly not, and as the day moves from his organizational efforts, talking on the CB to his secretary, to the nitty gritty of first the Verushcka set and then with Peggy Moffit, Jill Kennington and the other uncredited models, his increasing alienation is obvious.

He searches for some essence in his directions first to Veruschka, with his directions and encouragement, finally getting satisfactory results, he thinks. But how does that session end? With both suddenly turning away, not only from each other but without satisfaction at completing their work. The analogy to an unsatisfactory sexual encounter cannot be missed. Then Thomas is immediately onto the even more alienating and eventually fruitless scene with the multiple models. Nothing seems to work, and they seem as bored and alienated as he is. (Of course this gives rise to frustration and angry behavior, but I fail to see this as primarily or even significantly about an expression of sexism.)

This sequence of events, echoed and reinforced later, sets up the fundamental source of Thomas's alienation. As fashion photographer, fashion itself rather obviously being to a large extent about illusion and even decption, he feels he must take his talent and use it not in a way that he thinks is expressive of his art, but in order to meet the demands of commercialism and economics.

Eventually he ends up in the park. Here at first he seems free of the commercial demands of his fashion photography job. He is re-energized. Freed from alienation. He even soon thinks he can use these pictures in his book, as he later tells Ron. The events and pictures in the park seem to connect him to his search for meaning, and here I can't miss also thinking may make his book more successful. Is this the beginning of some way out of his dilemma?

Blowup is also of course very much about the distinction and relation between perception and reality, another subject very much a concern to Existentialism, and evident in Antonioni's earlier work, perhaps most overtly in L'Avventura. Given this distinction, what does Thomas soon "find out" about the "true" nature of what he was photographing? He thinks there is beauty in his pictures of Jane in the field, the frisson between her and the man, all in the Arcadian version of Nature that is the English park. But of course he soon finds out, not concidentally through the technological process of the blowup, that what he thought was there in fact turns out to be something different.

And of course not just different, but ugly. And while the backstory of Jane and the apparent murder victim is not dealt with in great detail,we get enough of it to know there was some motive for his death, and in the nature of things it was economic in some large measure.

It turns out that Thomas has found something very much other than freedom and expression of his art, something that he thought would nicely go into his book project, in the park. Finding only more alienation, not coincidentally the more and more he uses his own talent to blowup his prints, he simultaneously confronts the shortcomings of perception and his own art's loose connection to truth and meaning.

Before the blowup scenes, he of course encounters Jane in his studios. I have not forgotten that is the OP's subject here! And of course it is not merely the fact that Thomas took some pictures in a park - Jane's own involvement in the unfolding scene and story in effect makes her the personafication of the distance between perception and reality. And also simultaneously showing the true distance between some authentic human connection, and the demands the contemporary world places on her and him.

All this is present in their encounter. His reason for not wanting to give her the film is partly because he thinks they are good pictures. He also sees an economic value in them. And of course she sees "economic" value (in a general sense) in getting them back.

The fashion world also intrudes in their encounter. On top of everything else, Thomas reverts to his fashion photographer role - why Jane would make a great model! This angle in turn affects, or rather infects, what might otherwise be a genuine human connection between them. Is there any real attraction between them, or is it too much colored by the games and inauthenticity required, certainly of Jane, in this encounter? Still, not understanding what really has brought Jane to him, what she really is up to, Thomas seems to have some naive hope of a real connection with her, even if he uses the incentive of perhaps doing modeling work.

Still, we should not rule out what a visceral reading of this scene also tells us, which is on a surface level, the two look good together, and make a plausible possible couple. Vanessa Redgrave is stunningly beautiful in this scene, of course. That is real enough, is it not? Yet we all, as htis thread and others on this film make abundantly clear, know that is hardly all that is involved. Why is that the case?

I suggest the reason this being Antonioni is clear enough. The social economy within which we live, modern society, has thwarted the search for meaning, and even distorts awareness, truth and the possibility of authentic human connection.

All these themes are also reflected throughout the film. This post is long enough so I will not go through the other scenes and characters here. But I think if one accepts the goal Antonioni had in doing this film, it must be understood as a brilliant and effective enterprise in that regard.

Just when Thomas seems free and in his art, he in fact is set down a path of lies, murder, confusion, and evil. He has now entered a world of not only doubting his search for meaning, but also of his own ability to understand what he thinks he understands. The film ends with confirmation of this confusion (I am referring to the mimes), which to some extent the realization of which presents at least the hope for a better undrestanding of the true relation we have to perception and society.

I think that's what it is about.

I would say the actresses were portrayed more or less exactly what their real ages were. I didn't get any sense they were 15. I'd also guess they more or less expected that there would be some kind of quid pro quo with this photographer.