Blow-Up 1966

Just watched this landmark of arthouse cinema for the first time. I'm deeply moved.

I've seen director Michelangelo Antonioni's "Il Grido" before and it had the same effect but this was a different, more open experience. I'm also a fan of De Palma's thematic sequel "Blow Out", so this fills in many dots but retains my love of that film in finding they are only related in minor plot details (though Blow Up is a much better film).

I already watched a great film essay detailing the narrative interpretation of the entire film as a juxtaposition of Modernism & Postmodernism, so I will link it here and then give my own interpretation: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jlzzfR23s4I

I agree that this film is a Coming-of-Age story; a "Kunstheroman" where an artist matures into his art. Its biographical in that sense as the character reaches Antonioni's worldview through an Antonioni scenario.

Our protagonist is a self-serving cad who doesn't really respect himself, others or his craft, only using it for sex, money and notoriety. But he wants to become a real artist. He photographs so much pain from his subjects and gets off on it rather than feels it himself. In his journey, the gravity of reality lands on him hard and gives him the sense of victimhood that he has given or dismissed in others. He learns that he is a part of an infinite network of things and identities & that his infinitesimal view on things is only personal to him and can never be properly interpreted by anyone else.

Thats what I gathered from the visual language which I think is clear enough. The film is enigmatic, subtle and very lyrical, so very open to interpretation. But the clues and metaphors throughout point to this spiritual outcome. Essentially, this is what De Palma's Blow Out is about, only told in a lurid, purposely lowbrow way. Blow Out is a feature-length re-interpretation/critique of Blow Up for the masses. That makes me love it less but also respect De Palma's ability to do such a thing with more originality and taste than a Tarantino or the more lazy stylists using postmodernism to get off the hook creatively. De Palma was a great stylist and technician who re-interpreted great text. He didn't add anything besides visuals or maybe more commercial plot points. They are not true postmodernists. They are remodernists who use postmodernists in a much less valiant but equally necessary way that the postmodernists use modernists. Its a cycle of creation. Blow Up is special because it is modern and postmodern, not owing gratitude to anything but itself cinematically.

Blow Up isn't a deconstruction of cinema as much as it is a deconstruction of a generation, a culture, a species. I guess all films attempt this but hardly to such a degree or to such an effect, with a clarity and sincerity no less. Antonioni's directing is so elegantly detailed. He explores the form leisurely and none of it seems gratuitous or distracting, thanks to expert pacing and tonality. One amazing game Antonioni plays is with relationships. Things that seem connected are not. Things that seem unrelated are not. Things disappear and reappear or don't. And it all has a rhyme or reason. I suppose this is a kind of simulation of structuralism. But he is also wrapped up in the story for the audience's sake, letting it gradually come into focus once enough seemingly innocuous pieces have stacked up. Its a solid enough plot but its profound in its restraint and rich character. The structure and dialogue are abstract realism. We are never sure if we are to take this film as a dream or something literal and thats the magic.

This was a haunting film and I want to keep it mysterious by not unpacking it too much. I will enjoy this on many future occasions.

The Diabolical Dr. Z 1966

I'm having a hard time getting through the later 70s Franco, so I decided to reestablish my faith and revisit the movie that made me his fan, The Diabolical Dr. Z. I'm pleasantly surprised that its better than I remembered and there's a convincing argument that its his finest film in total. My memory of DDZ was a very murky, visual, classy old-school horror film in the Hammer film vein. Now, I sense the wildly disparate influences of The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, Coffin Joe movies, James Bond movies, Godard and Orson Welles. Franco worked so well under the financed but heavily censored Spanish film industry. That previous life under rule of Generalissimo Franco informs all of his creative work and the uncompromising, unrepressed, anti-collectivist attitude towards his own life. But under these constraints, his genius was more combustible, angry, subtle, very, very professional and not yet bitter, disillusioned or demoralized. Given just a little more leeway, like filmmakers in the States, Jess Franco could've become a massive director in the mainstream realm.

Diabolical Dr Z is that superior kind of horror film that is appealing in broad ways but owns an authentic strangeness and audacity. The plot centers not on Dr. Z but his daughter and how she has inherited his madness and a violent sexual repression from him. Cold, cerebral and beyond sexual relationships, "Irma Zimmerman" does love a male scientist who is in love with a jazz club burlesque dancer, who is in touch with her sexuality and femininity. Irma uses her dad's mad science to turn the stripper into a kind of sexy somnambulist killer to aid her in murdering the enemies of her late father. This is the most plot any Franco film has and, given its comic book logic, all of it makes sense and is played seriously. No other Franco film that I've seen has so much attention to character, plotting, pacing and a satisfying ending, which is still ambiguous in Franco fashion.

Maybe because Franco was still finding his lane, he injects so many different ideas, experiments and references. With a built-in wide audience, he pays more respect to the tastes and expectations of the average viewer. And with so many rules on content, Franco is way more clever and understated in his handling of violence, sex, social commentary and satire.

Besides being endlessly watchable, its important in understanding the context of later Franco films. The Other Side of The Mirror would resurrect the themes of frigid females and their oppressive fathers. The manipulation games, power struggles and use of guilt between women in the feminist movement would be visited often in his lesbian/vampire/women in prison films. And Dr. Z may represent Franco's ego best as an unpopular mad genius who is attacked and exiled by his contemporaries to live a life of solitary, vengeful experimentation of the minds, hearts and sex organs of those who wrongfully judged him.

* Having new seen Franco's earlier The Awful Dr. Orloff, I can re-contextualize Diabolical Dr. Z as essentially a gender-swapping remake. DDZ is still a much better film but not the the originator of its plot. (But TADO wouldn't exist without Eyes Without A Face sooo...) Franco was one of the earliest post-modernists in film, combining plot elements into Frankenstein creatures. DDZ is a hybrid of Orloff and his already established franchise of feminist films.