Here's something new that I've never done on this blog before: reviewing a film that isn't part of the Criterion Collection's standard lineup of DVDs and Blu-rays. Late last year, when I took my habit of posting reviews here out of an autumnal hibernation, I decided to expand my range a bit by including movies that didn't have a proper CC spine number, including the Eclipse Series, titles only available on Hulu Plus, or some other direct connection to the Criterion pedigree. Obviously, that had to include laserdiscs, and I have to say that this particular film played a significant role in that decision. Michelangelo Antonioni's Blowup is one of those landmark titles that compels my attention when I consider my task of pursuing a cinematic self-study course of the great films of any given year. The film carries a reputation of such aesthetic heft and cultural prominence that passing it up simply because Criterion has yet to re-secure the distribution rights that they once held back in the laserdisc era seemed like more than merely a regrettable oversight or a sad concession to the boundaries I'd established when I started this project back in 2009. Of course, the same could be said for so many other excellent titles that Criterion once held the rights to, going all the way back to the beginning of the brand. Films like Citizen Kane, King Kong, Casablanca and on and on and on... But what's done is done, so I just pick it up from where I'm at.
Last week, I sat down on a couple different occasions to compose a conventional written review of Blowup, but I had a hard time getting my thoughts out in a way that felt satisfying. There are a lot of bits in the film that I wanted to respond to, but for a variety of reasons (mostly having to do with circumstances in my personal life that distract me from focusing my mental energies on blogging) the essay I feel like the movie deserves just wasn't coming together. So in order to clear this one off my queue and allow me to move on, I took the podcast route, a format that allows me to more spontaneously voice my ideas in conversational dialogue. A few nights ago, I tossed out a random invitation to discuss Blowup on Skype with whoever felt like talking about it with me. I was happy to accept the request from Arik Devens, author of the Cinema Gadfly blog and a fellow Criterion fan whose online presence I've enjoyed getting to know over the past few months. This was his debut as a podcaster, even though he already has his own show in the works. He certainly found an auspicious film to break into this racket, and I think he presented his case quite well. Arik's blog is definitely one to check out, if you like what I'm doing here. I'm eager to see where he goes from here, and I expect we'll collaborate again. But for now, here's our conversation on Michelangelo Antonioni's Blowup, recorded earlier this afternoon.:
And here is a cool short documentary from 2011 that visits the most memorable locations where Blowup was shot in the summer of 1966, showing what those areas looked like 45 years later.
Finally, errata: Toward the end of our recording, I made a reference to Sarah Miles being the daughter of "the great English actor" John Miles. Except I had the name bungled - there's no noteworthy actor by that name, just a singer who had modest success back in the mid-1970s. The actor I was thinking of was is John Mills, who starred as Pip in the David Lean adaptation of Great Expectations and quite a few other British films in a career that spanned eight decades. Yes, eight - that's not a typo! Anyway, he's no relation to Sarah Mills. I just wanted to get out in front of that boo-boo since I have no interest in going back to edit it out of the audio track!
Next: King of Hearts