Part of Music City Mondays
Michelangelo Antonioni blew through London’s Swinging ‘60s with this stylish study of paranoid intrigue concerning a fashion photographer who may or may not have discovered a murder after photographing two lovers in a park. David Hemmings plays the jaded photographer enlivened by the mystery in his photos, Vanessa Redgrave is the elusive woman pictured in them, and the enigma of what the camera sees is yours to solve. A young Herbie Hancock contributed the bulk of the score, with assistance from some of the era’s key collaborators — Freddie Hubbard, Ron Carter and Jack DeJohnette among them — evoking the ambience of swinging London with grooves that create effective bluesy moods on the slow pieces, and funky ones on the up-tempo tracks. The Yardbirds also make a rare on-screen appearance.
“Whether there was a murder isn’t the point. The film is about a character mired in ennui and distaste, who is roused by his photographs into something approaching passion.” —Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times “Antonioni creates a film that questions the politics of its protagonist and, at the same time, challenges the way we watch movies. In many ways, this is the best film ever made about movies, because Antonioni recognizes the fragile nature of celluloid and the need to preserve great images.” —Ed Gonzalez, Slant Magazine “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 syn-thetic stimulations that natural feelings are overwhelmed. It is vintage Antonioni fortified with a Hitchcock twist, and it is beautifully photographed in color…. Beautifully built up with glowing images and color compositions that get us into the feelings of our man and into the characteristic of the mod world in which he dwells.” —Bosley Crowther, New York Times (Dec 19, 1966)
