SOURCE: Bittini, Patrizia. “Film is Stranger than Fiction: From Cortázar's ‘Las Babas Del Diablo’ to Antonioni's Blow-Up.” RLA: Romance Languages Annual (1995): 199-203.

In the following essay, Bittini compares “Las babas del Diablo,” which was published in English as “Blow-Up,” to the film adaptation of the story.

In the opening credits of Blow-Up, the Italian director Michelangelo Antonioni acknowledges that his film is based on “Las babas del diablo,” a short story by the Argentinian Julio Cortázar. In my paper, I will compare aspects of both the story and the film, focusing on Blow-Up's postmodern agenda. The several changes that Antonioni makes in the transition from Cortázar's short story to his film play a fundamental role. The changes that I will discuss are the transformation of the protagonist's profession, the shift of the story's setting from Paris to London, and finally the shift in the...