Blowup

Michelangelo Antonioni was born in Italy in 1912, graduated from the University of Bologna, studied cinema in Rome, and started out in films as a critic and screenwriter. When he made his first feature films in the 1950s, he broke away from the neo-realism then in vogue in Italy. Rather, in a rigorously disciplined style, he explored the interior states of the isolated men and women in such films as La Notte (1960), L'Eclipse (1961), and The Red Desert (1964).

Although Antonioni's films are usually about the prosperous classes, his only social criticism is oblique. 'Avventura (1959), his sixth film, established his fame internationally as an original artist. His English-language films are Blow-Up (1966), set in mod London, and Zabriskie Point (1970), an apocalyptic vision of contemporary American youth and its politics. His last notable film is The Passenger (1975).

020