Plot Summary (Blow-Up) Blow-Up (1966)
Two London mornings open the film
A jeep of Rag Week students in white face-paint cavorts through London at dawn to a Herbie Hancock theme, shouting demands for charity money.b1 In a parallel beat, a row of haggard men files out from beneath a railway arch — the Consort Road doss-house in southeast London — and one of them peels off, climbs into a parked Rolls Royce, and resets his demeanor in the front seat. He is Thomas (David Hemmings), a fashion photographer whose disguise has been overnight investigative cover. He hands the mimes some bills out the window, calls his answering service from the car radio under the call sign Blue 439, and drives across town.b2 b3
The studio morning establishes Thomas's tools
Thomas drops the doss-house rolls at the developing bench in his Cheyne Walk studio and steps onto the white seamless paper to shoot Verushka (as herself). The shoot is staged as orgasmic performance: Thomas straddles the model, calls "yes, yes, yes!" until he climbs off and walks away.b4 b5 He runs a five-model shoot in graphic black-and-white outfits, ends it by ordering the women to close their eyes, and walks out leaving them standing.b7 Two teenage girls (Jane Birkin and Gillian Hills) push their way in asking to model; Thomas brushes them off — "I haven't even got a couple of minutes to have my appendix out."b10
Bill articulates the film's central principle
Thomas crosses to the next-door flat where his neighbor Bill (John Castle) is painting. Bill shows him a canvas: "They don't mean anything when I do them. Just a mess. Afterwards I find something to hang on to. Like that... like that leg. Then it sorts itself out and adds up. It's like finding a clue in a detective story."b8 Bill's wife/partner Patricia (Sarah Miles) lingers in the doorway — the Thomas-Patricia-Bill triangle is established as a low-temperature constant of the world.b9
Maryon Park: the inciting incident
Thomas drives across town to an antique shop his agent has scouted. An old shopkeeper turns him away with "no landscapes." Thomas wanders out the back into Maryon Park, photographing pigeons and trees with his Nikon, then spots a couple on the path — a much older grey-haired man and a younger woman (Vanessa Redgrave) walking hand in hand. He crouches behind a wire fence and shoots them with the long lens.b13 b14 The woman, Jane, runs him down at the gate and demands the film. Thomas refuses: "Some people are bullfighters. Some people are politicians. I'm a photographer." Jane delivers the line that names the film: "We haven't met. You've never seen me."b15
The propeller and the doss-house book
Thomas returns to the antique shop, meets the young owner who wants to sell up and move to Morocco, and buys a huge wooden propeller for eight pounds — "It's beautiful."b16 b17 At a restaurant, he lays out his violent doss-house book with his publisher Ron (Peter Bowles) and pencils the park photo in as the book's peaceful coda: "Very peaceful, very still. The rest of the book'll be pretty violent, so I think it's best to end it like that."b19
Jane finds the studio
Thomas returns to find Jane already waiting in the studio — she has tracked him down somehow. He stalls, pours her a drink, runs her through a model audition, takes a phone call from his "wife" ("She isn't my wife, really. We just have some kids. No. No kids. Not even kids"), puts on a Herbie Hancock record, and half-seduces her.b20 b22 He then ducks into the developing room, swaps a different roll for the park roll, and hands her the dummy. The propeller is delivered mid-scene, lugged through the studio by two deliverymen.b23 b24
The enlargement marathon and the body in the grass
After Jane leaves, Thomas develops the actual park roll, makes contact sheets, and pins enlargements around the studio walls in narrative sequence. He reads Jane's eye-line back across the prints toward the foliage, pulls progressively tighter crops, and a face and a hand with a gun resolve out of the leaves.b25 b26 b27 He calls Ron: "Those photographs in the park — fantastic. Somebody was trying to kill somebody else. I saved his life."b29 The two teenagers from earlier ring the bell, push their way in, and a chase through the dressing area becomes a three-way roll on a roll of unspooled purplish-blue backdrop paper.b30 b31 Alone again, Thomas pulls the grass section below the bushes to a final almost-abstract enlargement. A pale shape on the ground resolves into a body.b32 See The Maryon Park Photographs and The Darkroom Sequence.
The body in the park, the body gone
Thomas drifts down to Bill and Patricia's flat and finds them in the middle of sex; Patricia, looking past Bill, locks eyes with Thomas and signals him to stay.b33 That night he walks alone to Maryon Park, finds the corpse under a tree exactly where the print said, hears a twig snap, and leaves empty-handed.b34 Back at the studio he finds it ransacked — the negatives gone, all enlargements gone, except the one final grainy abstract blow-up of the body. Patricia drifts in. Thomas shows her the print: "That's the body." Patricia, after a pause: "Looks like one of Bill's paintings."b35
The Yardbirds, Ron, and the morning return
Thomas calls Ron's office and is told he is at a club. On the way he glimpses Jane in a crowd and loses her.b37 At the Ricky-Tick club, the Yardbirds play "Stroll On"; Jeff Beck smashes his guitar and throws the broken neck into the audience. Thomas grabs it, fights his way out of the club, and drops the splintered neck on the sidewalk a few yards from the door — outside the consensual frame of the concert it is just a piece of wood.b38 b39 See The Yardbirds Club Scene. He tracks Ron down at a pot party at Christopher Gibbs's apartment. "Someone's been killed... Listen. Those pictures I took in the park." Ron, dreamily: "I thought you were supposed to be in Paris." Thomas: "I am in Paris."b40 The room absorbs him; the report is refused.
At dawn Thomas drives back to Maryon Park. The grass under the tree is empty.b41
The mime tennis match
The Rag Week jeep pulls up at the park. The mimes pour out in tennis whites and set up an imaginary court — no rackets, no ball. The volley begins. The imagined ball clears the wire fence and lands in the grass at Thomas's feet.b42 b43 The mimes wait. Thomas hesitates, walks to the empty grass, mimes picking up the ball, and throws it back. The soundtrack supplies the thock of racket on ball as the mimes resume their volley.b44 See The Mime Tennis Match.
The camera pulls back. Thomas, in the open grass, becomes small, then very small, and in the last beat the figure is gone — the grass is empty.b45