Blow-Up

Blow-Up (1966) is Michelangelo Antonioni's landmark thriller — watch it online on iFILM. David Hemmings plays Thomas, a fashion photographer at the top of Swinging London's food chain: money, fame, women, and a deep, restless boredom. One afternoon in a quiet park he photographs a couple from a distance without thinking much of it.

Back in the darkroom, enlarging the frames inch by inch, he starts to see things in the grain. A figure in the shadows. A shape that shouldn't be there. Possibly a body. Vanessa Redgrave appears as the woman from the park, desperate to get the negatives back — and then she vanishes. Antonioni never resolves the mystery. He lets it dissolve, along with Thomas's grip on what he witnessed. Jane Birkin appears in an early role; Jimmy Page and Jeff Beck play a cameo in a club scene.

Shot on location in London, the film won the Palme d'Or at Cannes in 1967 and earned Antonioni an Oscar nomination for direction. Based on a short story by Julio Cortázar, it remains one of cinema's most precise explorations of perception, evidence, and how little a photograph can prove. Stream Blow-Up (1966) online on iFILM.