Blow-Up is a 1966 film directed by Michelangelo Antonioni about a fashion photographer, played by David Hemmings, who believes he may have witnessed a murder and unwittingly taken photographs of the killing. It was Antonioni’s first entirely English-language film. The plot was inspired by Julio Cortázar’s short story, “Las babas del diablo” or (The Devil’s Drool), translated also as “Blow Up” in Blow-up and Other Stories, and by the life of Swinging London photographer David Bailey. The film was scored by jazz pianist Herbie Hancock.
The Film won the Academy Award for Best Director and Screenplay. It was distributed in North America by MGM shell company Premier Pictures. Writing about Antonioni for Time in 2007, the film writer Richard Corliss states that the film grossed “$20 million (about $120 million today) on a $1.8 million budget and helped liberate Hollywood from its puritanical prurience”
