Swinging London 1966 Blow-Up (1966)
A city that had been declared "swinging" eight months before the shoot
The phrase "Swinging London" entered international currency in Time magazine's April 15, 1966 cover story, "London: The Swinging City." Antonioni's Blow-Up began principal photography roughly four weeks later. The film is one of a small handful of pictures that shaped the cultural memory of the moment in real time — alongside Richard Lester's The Knack... and How to Get It (1965) and Help! (1965), Karel Reisz's Morgan: A Suitable Case for Treatment (1966), and the Beatles' A Hard Day's Night (1964).
The institutions Blow-Up walks the audience through
The film is structured by the institutions of mid-1960s London cultural life:
The fashion-photography studio. The Cheyne Walk and King's Road photography scene, organized around Bailey, Donovan, Duffy, John Cowan, and a constellation of younger photographers. Verushka, Jean Shrimpton, and Penelope Tree were the era's most-photographed models. Cowan's actual studio is the film's set; see Antonioni's London.
The antique shop. The Portobello / Chelsea / Charlton ecology of small antique and curio shops where the era's young professionals bought interesting visual things. The propeller scene is its purest expression.
The publisher's restaurant. The lunches at which photo-books were assembled and sold. Thomas's doss-house book is the kind of project Bailey, Donovan, and Don McCullin were producing through the 1960s.
The painter's flat. Bill and Patricia's apartment is the Chelsea / Notting Hill artist scene, and the canvases on the wall are by Ian Stephenson — a real abstract painter whose work was shown at the Marlborough Gallery in 1966.
The Ricky-Tick (and similar clubs). Marquee, Flamingo, Bag O'Nails, Crawdaddy, Ricky-Tick — the small London clubs where the British rhythm-and-blues scene became the British Invasion. See The Yardbirds Club Scene and The Yardbirds' Final Configuration.
The pot party. The Chelsea aristocratic-counterculture scene, organized around Christopher Gibbs, Robert Fraser, Marianne Faithfull, the Stones, and the Notting Hill set. The actual location of the film's pot-party scene is Gibbs's apartment.
"Antonioni did not film a generic Swinging London. He filmed a specific Swinging London — the photographer's London, with the painter's London next door and the rock club and the pot party visible from the window." — Senses of Cinema, Blow-Up review (2017)
What the moment actually was
Mid-1960s London was a brief economic and cultural anomaly. The city had begun to shake off postwar austerity; a generation of working- and middle-class young people were earning enough to participate in fashion, music, and art on an unprecedented scale; the Pill had been introduced (1961); the Wolfenden Report's recommendations on decriminalizing homosexual acts were in the process of becoming the Sexual Offences Act 1967; abortion was legalized in 1967. The cultural saturation lasted roughly from 1964 (the Beatles' breakthrough) through 1968 (the year the political weather turned, in London and everywhere).
Blow-Up sits almost exactly at the midpoint of this window. The April 1966 Time cover story ratified the moment internationally, and Antonioni's film, released in December 1966, became the most-discussed art-cinema document of it.
"Blow-Up captured Swinging London at the precise moment when Swinging London was both at its peak and visibly already exhausting itself. The film carries both readings." — Sight & Sound, Swinging London archive feature (2017)
Mod fashion and the Verushka cameo
The film's costuming is a precise document of mid-1960s mod and post-mod fashion. Jane's white-collared blouse with grey jacket; Patricia's pale dresses; Verushka's elaborate body-paint and feather assemblage in the title shoot; the five models' graphic black-and-white outfits; the Blonde and the Brunette's white tights and clear plastic. The clothes were sourced through real-world fashion houses including Ossie Clark, Mary Quant, and Foale and Tuffin. See The Verushka Cameo and Mod Fashion.
The film's verdict on the moment
Blow-Up is not a celebration. The film walks Thomas through every Swinging London institution and shows that none of them will receive his witness report. The studio is closed; the antique shop wants to move to Morocco; the publisher is in Paris; the painter's wife sees a Bill canvas where the body should be; the rock club throws a guitar neck the audience will brawl for and then leave on the sidewalk; the pot party absorbs the report into the haze.
"The film loves Swinging London the way a coroner loves a body. The affection is real. So is the verdict." — propellermag, Blow-Up is more relevant now than it was in 1966 (2018)