Antonioni's Blow-Up (1966): The Masterpiece which Inspired a Masterpiece

Re-posted by N.S.

Blow-Up is a movie about a decadent photographer and man-about-town in London (David Hemmings), who takes what he thinks were some innocuous shots of a statuesque stunner (six-foot-tall Vanessa Redgrave, when she really was stunning!) in a public park, but who in his dark room comes to realize that he has witnessed a crime.

Blow-Up inspired the re-make The Conversation, written, directed, and produced by Francis Ford Coppola, in which Gene Hackman plays the world's greatest private intelligence man, Harry Caul, a conscience-plagued Catholic. In The Conversation, released in 1974, Caul hears what he thinks was an innocuous conversation between a philandering couple (the late Cindy Williams and Frederic Forrest), but which on a series of replays reveals itself to be ever more ominous.

At the time of its release, Coppola claimed that it was was inspired by the coming-to-Jesus-moment of Watergate burglar James McCord, who did indeed resemble Hackman. However, when the picture was released, Hackman himself said in a TV interview that Coppola had made it during the early 1970s, prior to The Godfather (1972). Whom to believe? Hackman, of course. Coppola is one of Hollywood's greatest raconteurs, but he's also one of its greatest b.s. artists!

Hackman reprised his role as Harry Caul (though under a different name) in An Enemy of the State (1998), in which he steals the show from Will Smith, who was completely out of his depth, as a well-connected labor lawyer.





The WEJB/NSU Theater, 1902-1981:

Georges Méliès’ A Trip to the Moon (1902);

The Great Train Robbery (1903);

C.B. DeMille’s The Squaw Man (1914);

D.W. Griffith’s The Birth of a Nation (1915);

D.W. Griffith’s Intolerance: Love’s Struggle Through the Ages (1916);

Harry Carey and John “Jack” Ford’s Straight Shooting (1917), the First Feature-Length, “Cheyenne Harry” Western;

Charlie Chaplin’s Shoulder Arms (1918);

The Outlaw and His Wife (1918), Starring and Directed by Victor Sjöström (Seastrom);

Starring “Jack”: See the 1920 Silent Picture Classic of Robert Louis Stevenson’s Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde;

Robert Wiene’s The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1920);

Buster Keaton’s One Week (1920);

D. W. Griffith’s Way Down East (1920);

F.W. Murnau’s Nosferatu (1921);

The Kid (1921), Charlie Chaplin’s First Feature as Director;

Fritz Lang and Thea von Harbou’s First Pictures Featuring the Evil Genius, Dr. Mabuse: Dr. Mabuse, der Spieler, Teil I (Dr. Mabuse, the Player, Part I); and

Dr. Mabuse, Teil II: Inferno (Dr. Mabuse, Inferno, Part II, both 1922, released one month apart) with English subtitles;

James Cruze’s The Covered Wagon (1923);

John Ford’s The Iron Horse (1924);

Charlie, in The Gold Rush (1925);

Lon Chaney, in The Phantom of the Opera (1925);

King Vidor, Laurence Stallings, and Harry Behn’s The Big Parade (1925), Starring Gilbert and Adore!

Buster Keaton’s The General (1926);

John Ford’s 1926 Western, 3 Bad Men;

When a Man Loves (1927), Starring “Jack” and Dolores Costello;

Josef von Sternberg and Ben Hecht’s Underworld (1927), the First American Gangster Picture;

Alfred Hitchcock’s The Lodger (1927);

“Wild Bill” Wellman’s Restored, Classic Silent Picture, Wings (1927), One of the First Two Best Picture Oscar Winners;

F.W. Murnau’s Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans (1927, One of the First Two Best Picture Oscar Winners);

Fritz Lang and Thea von Harbou’s Dystopian Science Fiction Epic, Metropolis (1927), the Greatest S/F Picture Ever, Plus Its Soundtrack Suite;

Frank Borzage and Austin Strong’s Seventh Heaven (1927);

Samson Raphaelson, Alfred A. Cohn, Jack Jarmuth and Alan Crosland’s The Jazz Singer (1927), the First-Ever Talkie, Starring Al Jolson, by Warner Brothers;

King Vidor's The Crowd 1928;

St. Louis Blues (talkie, short, 1929);

Fritz Lang & Thea von Harbou’s First Talkie: M: Eine Stadt sucht einen Mörder (1931) (M: A City Searches for a Murderer);

Paul Robeson in Eugene O’Neill’s The Emperor Jones (talkie, 1933);

The Man Who Knew too Much (1934): The Original Version of the Early Hitchcock Classic;

John Ford’s Judge Priest (1934), Starring Will Rogers, with Hattie McDaniel;

Kate Hepburn in the Super Chief’s Quality Street (1937);

Cary Grant and Roz Russell in Ben Hecht, Charles MacArthur, and Howard Hawks’ His Girl Friday (1940);

Zero’s Since You Went Away (1944);

William Dieterle’s A Portrait of Jennie (1948);

Jules Dassin, Albert Malz, and Malvin Wald’s The Naked City (1948), Plus Music;

Lee Marvin as Sergeant Ryker (1968); and

Paul Newman, in Fort Apache, the Bronx (1981).