Blow Up is a 1966 British-Italian film by Michelangelo Antonioni that tells the story about a London photographer who believes that he accidentally captured a murder on his film. The story in itself covers a day in the life of Thomas- the photographer whose lateness in taking some scheduled photos of different people leads him to having an adventurous but hectic day. The significant event that day is how he accidentally captured a murder scene as he photographed two lovers at a park which brings about Mise en scene to create plot and themes.
Antonioni makes extensive use of Mise-en-scene is his film. The aspect is the expression used to describe some design aspects of a film or theatre in which there is a “visual theme” or some visuals or shots that tell a story. The story telling comes off in an artistic way, although it also employs plenty of cinematography, and unique direction. In this case, Mise-en-scene is used as the vessel that carries the theme of murder.
Antonioni makes use of typical colors suitable for Mise-en-scene. He uses black and white as the color palettes which dominate the visual coherence across the edits from shot to shot. He then combines all the elements in front of the camera that would make up the shot.
The principal locations utilized in the film are the in London. The park scenes which are of great interest to the current analysis were shot at Maryon Park, Charlton in South East London. Other locations utilized are the Economist building in St. James’s Street, London and other streets in the city.
The director sees the photographer as an important piece in helping to bring out Mise-en-scene in the aspect of the murder captured. Antonioni tried to make the photographer obscure while elevating the shots that had been captured. In addition, Antonioni takes the weight off the supporting characters in the film and places more emphasis on what the photographer captured in that one day. Although the movements of the photographer are also critical and who he interacted with, it is totality of all the aspect that appears before the camera (props, composition, setting, actors, lighting, costumes and sets) that completes the picture. The complete picture entails how the director wants to centre the story on the captured murder and how each party in the film is almost party to that incident.
Antonioni reversed the usual conventions of foregrounding human figures against some selected backgrounds. In this case, he asserted that the background or the character’s environment ought to be foregrounded with the characters making up only part of the Mise-en-scene. In this case, he makes sure that the background and the environment in which the photographer captured the murder scene is clear and that it overshadows the two lovers at the park. However, he makes sure to capture the action between the two lovers which looks like flirting, playing or struggling. He takes a lot of photos which upon blowing up he discovers that he photographed a murder.
Upon the discovery that he could have photographed a murder, Thomas examines the photos carefully by using closer shots and blowups until the audience can see some arrangements of shadow and light as well as blurs and dots that may show whether Redgrave was involved in her lover thereby confirming what Thomas photographed. Indeed, the pictures later show albeit in almost abstract blowups that the woman (Redgrave) was looking towards some bush where a gunman can be seen. In one photo, the figure of a gunman can be seen at a bush near the two lovers. It is safe to conclude that Redgrave’s pursuance of the photos was to hide evidence of any evidence that could incriminate her of the murder at the park.
Antonioni has had scenes captured in which the architecture becomes his point of reference. The themes of sexuality are largely reducible to the exploration of space that the characters inhabited. The themes come down to the places and the shots that the photographer captured and it is these spaces that explain the predicaments of the characters- something that the characters cannot explain in words. The classic case here is the photographing of two lovers at a park. The woman got furious at being photographed and this is evidence that she could
Antonioni makes use of highly effective directing strategies in several scenes. In the scene where Thomas the photographer finds lovers in a park, Antonioni directs it in such s way that the photographer is unsure whether he witnessed a murder. Redgrave (the lover at the park) is made to demand for the photos from the photographer because of several reasons that all seem to converge and offer evidence of the murder. She wanted to hide evidence of an adulterous affair, her grey-haired lover dropped dead after which she fled the scene in panic. The events that transpire in the directing of these scenes are such that the photographer had to be directed as he went about this scene at the park yet there had to be coordination with the emphasis being on the lovers being photographed unaware.
Another instance of classic directing is the uncanny scene where the photographer sees Redgrave standing outside a club and as she turns and makes some steps she simply disappears into thin air. After running the sequence a frame at a time, it was hard for film analysts to discover the directing or cinematographic approach used to make her disappear. It was assumed that Redgrave could have stepped into a doorway but her legs did not sell her into that option.
There is some stark meaning about the murder from the scene at the end of the film. The photographer finds some students who looked like “white-faced clowns” at the park where he had photographed the lovers and the murder. Thomas then sees the students play with an imaginary tennis-ball. He pretends to see the ball and there are sounds of tennis on the soundtrack. As the photographer wanders away across the grass he disappears just like the corpse. The scene marks the central figure in Antonioni’s film as a spirit reminiscent of the spirit figures in several of Shakespeare’s works whereby many actors “melted into thin air”. In all the film holds the promise of solving a mystery of the murder but as it ends, it leaves the audience with more mystery following the disappearance of the protagonist.
Blow-up is a classic 1966 film by Antonioni is a classic case of a film premised on Mise-en-scene where the emphasis of themes and the plot of a story emanates from shots or the contents of photos. A day in the life of a London photographer named Thomas is filled with unique occurrences. He captures photos of some lovers at a park only later to realize that he may have photographed a murder as several related issues such as a gunman, a dead body, can be seen from the photos. In addition, one of one of the people captured in the photos- Redgrave pursues the photos as if they bore evidence that could incriminate her. He eventually vanishes into thin air and the audience is left to recollect the conclusion of issues left unfinished by examining shots and photos taken by Thomas, the photographer in what should be ideal ending of a Mise en scene.
Works Cited
Blow-up. Dir. Michelangelo Antonioni. 1966.
