Blowup Critical Essay | Critical Essay by John Schliesser

Critical Essay by John Schliesser

SOURCE: “Antonioni’s Heideggerian Swerve,” in Literature and Film Quarterly, Vol. 26, No. 4, October, 1998, pp. 278–87.

In the following essay, Schliesser argues that Blow-Up represents a cinematic dramatization of Heidegger’s writing on ways of seeing.

In 1995 Michaelangelo Antonioni was presented with an academy award for his “lifetime achievement” as a filmmaker. In a parallel universe, such recognition would seem cruelly ironic. In our own, however, it is simply, depressingly suggestive of how Hollywood has typically treated its most gifted artists (for lack of financial backing, Antonioni has not made a film since 1981). I will not dwell on the film industry’s fickle relationship with Antonioni: it is, like the struggles of so many other visionary directors, an old and familiar story. What I would like to address, however, is the current revival of interest in Antonioni’s films after two decades of virtual neglect (the presentation of the Lifetime...
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