Blow-Up in The Screening Room at Parade House: Fri 15th Nov – FESCH.TV

Blow-Up in The Screening Room at Parade House: Fri 15th Nov & FESCH.TV:

To coincide with our Swinging 60s Cocktail Night on Sat 16th Nov, Parade House is proud to present the Ultimate Swinging 60s movie: Blow-Up. No other movie of the period portrays the style and mood of Swinging London with such gorgeous accuracy, warts and all. Vanessa Redgrave got top billing for her attention-grabbing performance but this is really David Hemmings‘ movie. It’s a career-defining role as the arrogant, free-wheeling fashion photographer – David Bailey in all but name – yearning to create real art not just snaps of dollybirds and dresses. Seeking inspiration one day in a suburban London park he starts taking pictures of what appear to be two lovers at play. He’s startled to find that the woman from the photographs – Redgrave of course – is desperate to get hold of the negatives. When he develops them he begins to think that there is more going on here than he had realised, a cold-blooded murder in fact. By the end of the movie, though, he finds he can no longer tell the difference between what is real and what is entirely imaginary. Actually, the murder plot is little more than window dressing: what director Antonioni was after was a highly stylised portrait of a moment in time and style as London dragged itself out of bleak post-war gloom. There’s lots to enjoy, including Hemmings‘ romp with Jane Birkin and Gillian Hills on his studio floor, cameos from several of the era’s supermodels, a climactic performance from Jimmy Page and Jeff Beck’s Yardbirds, and of course that spell-binding final tennis match between two mime artists as the boundaries between reality and fantasy are finally lost altogether…