BLOW-UP

18.30 = CAFÉ OPENS

19.30 = “BLOW-UP”

“BLOW-UP,” directed by Michelangelo Antonioni, 1966, 111 minutes

Blow-Up is a film about a particular moment in the “Swinging London’s” history – 1966, the peak year when one could walk into a small club and witnessing that incendiary performance by the Yardbirds. 

The first of three films Michelangelo Antonioni made outside Italy under a contract with producer Carlo Ponti at MGM, BLOW-UP was the most successful of his career, both commercially and critically. It won the Palme d’Or at Cannes in 1967, and many critics saw it as a refreshing change in pace and style for a director whose preceding work they had considered artistically important but “difficult.” Robin Wood wrote in 1968 that “its freshness and vivacity make one look forward to his future work with an eagerness one would scarcely have anticipated in the days of La notte and L’eclisse.”