Blow-Up Quotes

Thomas I'm fed up with those bloody bitches. I wish I had tons of money. Then I'd be free.

Ron Free to do what?

Thomas Why are you selling?

Shop-owner I'd like to try something different — get off some somewhere. I'm fed up with antiques.

Thomas Get off where?

Shop-owner To Nepal.

Thomas Nepal is all antiques.

Shop-owner Is it? Perhaps I better try … Morocco.

Taglines Antonioni's camera never flinches. At love without meaning. At murder without guilt. At the dazzle and madness of youth today.

Taglines Sometimes reality is the strangest fantasy of all.

Blonde woman Couldn't you give us just a couple of minutes?

Thomas Couple of minutes? I haven't even got a couple of minutes to have my appendix out.

Jane My private life's already a mess. It would be a disaster if…

Thomas So what? Nothing like a little disaster for sorting things out.

Quotes about Blowup * ], in New York Observer (7 June 2006)

Quotes about Blowup I revisited Blow-Up in a shot-by-shot analysis. Freed from the hype and fashion, it emerges as a great film, if not the one we thought we were seeing at the time. This was at the 1998 Virginia Festival of American Film in Charlottesville, which had "Cool" as its theme. The festival began with the emergence of the Beat Generation and advanced through ] to Blow-Up — after which the virus of Cool leaped from its nurturing subculture into millions of willing new hosts, and has colored our society ever since, right down to and manifestly including ].

Thomas What's so important about my bloody pictures?

Thomas You'll get your pictures. I promise. I always keep my word.

Quotes about Blowup ]'s Blow-Up opened in America two months before I became a film critic, and colored my first years on the job with its lingering influence. It was the opening salvo of the emerging "film generation," … the highest-grossing art film to date, was picked as the best film of 1967 by the National Society of Film Critics, and got Oscar nominations for screenplay and direction. Today, you rarely hear it mentioned. Young audiences aren't interested any more in a movie about a "trendy" London photographer who may or may not have witnessed a murder, who lives a life of cynicism and ennui, and who ends up in a park at dawn, watching college kids play tennis with an imaginary ball. The twentysomethings who bought tickets for Blow-Up are now focused on ironic, self-referential slasher movies.

Jane Why should I speak to her?

Thomas Sorry love, the bird I'm with won't talk to you. … She isn't my wife, really. We just have some kids. … No, no kids, not even kids. Sometimes, though, it feels as if we had kids. … She isn't beautiful, she's... easy to live with. … No, she isn't. … That's why I don't live with her. … But even with beautiful girls, you look at them and that's that.

Clown Give me your money. Do it.

Thomas What's your name? Oh, forget it — what's the use of a name? What do you they call you in bed?

Brunette woman I only go to bed to sleep.

Thomas You ever do any modeling? Fashion stuff, I mean. You've got it.

Thomas Don't let's spoil everything, we've only just met.

Jane No, we haven't met — you've never seen me.

Quotes about Blowup * ], as quoted in Michelangelo Antonioni : The Complete Films (2004) edited by Seymour Chatman and Paul Duncan, p. 113

Quotes about Blowup The natural world is arrayed against the artificial scene; conscience is deployed against convention. If you've never seen Blow-Up, see it now, if only to see what part of the world was like 40 years ago.

Thomas ] at a London party] I thought you were supposed to be in Paris.

Verushka I am in Paris.

Quotes about Blowup This is a fascinating picture, which has something real to say about the matter of personal involvement and emotional commitment in a jazzed-up, media-hooked-in world so cluttered with synthetic stimulations that natural feelings are overwhelmed.

Quotes about Blowup The photographer in Blow-Up, who is not a philosopher, wants to see things closer up. But it so happens that, by enlarging too far, the object itself decomposes and disappears. Hence there's a moment in which we grasp reality, but then the moment passes. This was in part the meaning of Blow-Up.

Ron What did you see in that park?

Thomas Nothing.

Jane What are you doing? Stop it! Stop it! Give me those pictures. You can't photograph people like that.

Thomas Who says I can't? I'm only doing my job. Some people are bullfighters, some people are politicians. I'm a photographer.

Jane This is a public place — everyone has the right to be left in peace.

Thomas It's not my fault if there's no peace. You know, most girls would pay me to photograph them.

Jane I'll pay you.

Thomas I overcharge. There are other things I want on the reel.

Quotes about Blowup * ] in a review of Blow-Up (8 November 1998)