{votd} Michaelangelo Antonioni’s “Blow-Up” (1966)

I remember reading a review of Blow-Up in the very left-wing mid-Sixties magazine, Ramparts, edited by the madman Warren Hinkle, who was a good friend of my dad’s, although I didn’t know it at the time. The review was really strange, straining for meaning, overly verbose and enigmatic. I really couldn’t understand it, though I tried. I read it over and over. I was fifteen or sixteen. I knew the movie was a cultural watershed of some kind. It was playing somewhere in town. I went to see it. I can’t remember if I went alone or with a friend.

It was a mind-blowing experience. I still watch it every couple years. It never gets old. Nothing captures the Zeitgeist of the London of the Swinging Sixties like Blow-Up did.

And now it’s free on YouTube.

Do yourself a favor and make some time to watch it.