Blow Up
This is one of the best films by famous Italian directors Michelangelo Antonioni. The idea of the plot is based on the story of an Argentinian writer Julio Cortasar but to say that it is just a strange detective story is to simplify it. First of all if it is a detective story it has no solution. The second is that the accent of the story is not the mystery but the character of the main hero who is a photographer (like the hero of Cortasar). The watcher just learns about his work, his surroundings and this weird world enchants him. As the director himself confesses, London seemed to him an ideal setting for this film. Indeed all the characters are rather reversed, no great passions but an enchanted world of marijuana where all the movements are very slow. And this world of dream does not much differ from the usual world of the hero and all the other characters. And the mysterious murder revealed by the hero remains a mystery. It's just a usual episode in the life of the hero and he realises this. Some episodes are really wonderful and the whole style reminds me of the others films by Antonioni. The ending is especially perfect: a group of people are playing tennis with a non-existant ball. Our hero watches their play, and when the ball is thrown too far aside they ask him to pick it up and throw back to them. So he does. And what is especially wonderful is that all this excellent scene passes without a single word. This is, as it seems to me, is a hallmark style of Italian cinematography: they like actions much more than words. Actions always explain themselves but words don't. And this film can be considered one of the marvellous masterpieces of world's cinema.
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