Blow Up

An Italian art house movie set in the London of the swinging 60s is an intriguing prospect. The premise is simple - a fashion photographer who obsessively snaps everything around him spots a small detail in a photo that he has secretly taken of two lovers in a public park and enlarges the picture over and over, revealing what could be a dead body and evidence of a murder if you squint hard enough. Surrounding this story are numerous baffling and obtuse scenes of him haranguing the various fashion models he is taking photos of into ever more uncomfortable poses or participating in voyeuristic sexualised horseplay with said dolly birds.

One sequence sees him visiting a nightclub where the Yardbirds (yes, the actual band) are playing to a stoney faced crowd until Jeff Beck (yes, the actual Jeff Beck) gets annoyed with a faulty amplifier and smashes his guitar up, provoking a near riot. There are also several bizarrely inexplicable scenes of mimes who wander into the film and out again, with no explanation.

On the plus side, the cinematography is impeccable with shots being framed like photographs and the detail of the photographic enlargement process shown as a long continuous sequence. The score by Herbie Hancock (credited here as 'Herbert Hancock') is similarly good, being 60s avant garde jazz.

However, the central mystery is never really resolved and I imagine that the only reason that most people went to see this back in the day was for a fleeting glimpse of a woman's pubes - apparently the first time in British mainstream cinema. Lawks a mercy!