Production History (Blow-Up) Blow-Up (1966)
The MGM-Ponti deal made the film possible
Carlo Ponti — Sophia Loren's husband and one of Italy's most powerful producers — held a three-picture English-language deal with MGM at mid-decade. Antonioni was assigned the first picture. The deal carried real money and real autonomy: a budget reportedly around $1.8 million, final cut, and freedom to shoot in London with mostly British personnel. (wikipedia)
Antonioni had read Julio Cortázar's "Las babas del diablo" (1959) some years earlier and proposed an adaptation. The story, set in Paris, is about an amateur photographer who interrupts a woman seducing a teenage boy on the Île Saint-Louis. The plot is sketched, but several of the film's central ideas — the photograph as evidence, the enlargement, the question of whether the photographer has saved the boy or merely made his own life unbearable — are already present. See Cortázar's Las babas del diablo.
The London six months
Antonioni moved to London with Tonino Guerra (his longtime co-writer) in late 1965 and spent roughly six months scouting and writing. He visited the studios of David Bailey, Terence Donovan, and Brian Duffy — the so-called "Black Trinity" of London fashion photographers — and absorbed the Cheyne Walk and King's Road photography scene. Edward Bond was brought in for the English dialogue, with the screenplay credited to Antonioni, Guerra, and Bond. (filmsite)
"I knew the photographer's life from watching it. I did not invent Thomas. I found him in three or four men's flats over six months in London." — Michelangelo Antonioni, The New York Times (1966 interview, archive 2007)
Casting around Hemmings
Antonioni's first choice for Thomas was Terence Stamp, who was attached to the project for several months. Stamp later wrote that Antonioni replaced him with the unknown David Hemmings shortly before the shoot. The director had reportedly been watching Hemmings in Dateline Diamonds (1965) and a small stage production. See David Hemmings.
Vanessa Redgrave was already booked for the year — Morgan: A Suitable Case for Treatment opened in March 1966 and won her Best Actress at Cannes — and Antonioni offered her Jane on the strength of Morgan. Sarah Miles came from Joseph Losey's The Servant (1963) and The Servant's screenwriter Harold Pinter recommended her. John Castle, Jane Birkin, and Gillian Hills were largely unknown when cast. Verushka, the era's most photographed model, agreed to play herself for one day's filming. The Yardbirds — at the brief moment Jeff Beck and Jimmy Page were both in the lineup — were booked for the Ricky-Tick scene through their manager Simon Napier-Bell. (wikipedia)
Locations: Maryon Park, Cheyne Walk, Stockwell Road, Foscari Road
The park sequences were shot in Maryon Park, Charlton, southeast London — a small Victorian park with a distinctive grassy bowl and a wire-mesh fence at one end. Antonioni and Di Palma had the grass painted greener for the long-lens couple sequence, and had several houses repainted on Foscari Road to set off the climactic mime tennis scene. The doss-house in the opening was filmed beneath the railway arch over Consort Road in Peckham. The Cheyne Walk studio is the actual studio belonging to photographer John Cowan at 39 Princes Place, Holland Park (Cowan was an associate of Donovan and Bailey). The Ricky-Tick club scene was filmed at a replica built at Elstree Studios. The pot party was filmed at the Cheyne Walk apartment of art dealer Christopher Gibbs. (movie-locations)
See Antonioni's London for the location-by-location reading.
The shoot, April–August 1966
Principal photography ran roughly seventeen weeks from April through August 1966. Di Palma worked mostly with available light. Antonioni reportedly shot many scenes in long takes with multiple cameras and assembled the cut from coverage rather than from continuity-style shooting. Hemmings later said the director gave very little instruction, preferring to wait until actors stopped doing things he didn't want.
The famous Verushka shoot was filmed in a single day; the multi-model shoot, in two. The enlargement marathon was filmed across roughly a week in the Cheyne Walk studio with a custom-built dark room. The mime tennis sequence was the last thing shot. (filmsite)
The MPAA and the Code
Blow-Up was released in the US through Premier Productions, an MGM subsidiary set up specifically because the film could not pass the Production Code. The frontal nudity in the orgy scene was a code-line breach; MGM declined to put its own name on the picture. Premier released it in December 1966. The film became one of the highest-grossing art films in MGM's history and was a direct trigger for the dismantling of the Code and the introduction of the MPAA ratings system in 1968. (wikipedia)
"Blow-Up did not just violate the Code. It demonstrated that the Code was already dead and the studios just hadn't noticed." — Variety, archive (1968 ratings-system retrospective, paraphrased)
Reception, awards, afterlife
The film won the Palme d'Or at Cannes 1967 and was nominated for two Academy Awards (Director, Original Screenplay). Its commercial performance — over $20 million on a $1.8 million budget — made it the most profitable art film of the decade. It was reissued by Janus Films in the 1990s and 2000s and was selected for the Criterion Collection on Blu-ray and 4K UHD; see Physical Media Releases (Blow-Up).