---
title: "Blow-Up (1966) review"
description: "Watching Blow-Up is like watching an idiot try to solve a crime. It's The Big Lebowski, but not funny."
url: https://www.joekarlsson.com/reviews/blow-up/
---

![A still from Blow-Up (1966)](https://www.joekarlsson.com/images/reviews/blow-up/backdrop.webp)

# Blow-Up (1966)

Oct 25, 2026 | 2 min read | Rated 3.5 out of 5 | Dir. Michelangelo Antonioni

Watching Blow-Up is like watching an idiot try to solve a crime. It’s The Big Lebowski, but not funny.

For the first hour I wasn’t sure who the idiot was: the photographer or the director. I’d never seen a Michelangelo Antonioni film, and this one is distracted and unfocused, wandering away from its own plot every ten minutes. It turns out that’s extremely intentional. He did the same thing in L’Avventura, which loses a woman and then stops looking for her.

David Hemmings plays Thomas, a London fashion photographer who snaps a couple in a park, blows up the prints, and finds what looks like a body in the grass. Then he can’t stay interested in the murder.

Thomas is horrible. He barks at his models, rolls around his studio with two more who want a shoot, buys a giant propeller on a whim, and goes to a party to get a friend to come see the body and just gets stoned. Every step along the way, he’s filling the void. Vanessa Redgrave takes her top off to get the film back, and he still hands her the wrong roll. The photos are hotter to him than she is.

They’re the one thing he can’t put down. He stares deeper and deeper into the grain, and the closer he gets, the less there is. His heart ultimately finds nothing. This is The Conversation for pictures instead of sound, with a way less gratifying conclusion. Gene Hackman at least gets a twist.

At the end, mimes play tennis without a ball. Thomas picks up the ball that isn’t there and throws it back. I spent two hours doing the same thing with this movie, and I’m glad I played along.

Stray thoughts:

-   The Yardbirds playing “Stroll On” in Blow-Up was so fun, with Jeff Beck and Jimmy Page on the same stage.

Also on [Letterboxd](https://letterboxd.com/joekarlsson/film/blow-up/)

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Karlsson

I write about my homelab, AI tools, databases, and the weird stuff I build on the side.

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