Plot: A fashion photographer unknowingly captures a death on film after following two lovers in a park.

Blow-Up (sometimes styled as Blowup or Blow Up) is a 1966 psychological mystery[3] film directed by Michelangelo Antonioni, co-written by Antonioni and Tonino Guerra and produced by Carlo Ponti. It is Antonioni's first entirely English-language film and stars David Hemmings, Vanessa Redgrave and Sarah Miles. Also featured was 1960s model Veruschka. The plot was inspired by Argentine writer Julio Cortázar's 1959 short story "Las babas del diablo".

The story is set within the contemporary mod subculture of Swinging London,[5] and follows a fashion photographer (Hemmings) who believes he has unwittingly captured a murder on film. The screenplay was by Antonioni and Tonino Guerra, with English dialogue by British playwright Edward Bond.[6] The cinematographer was Carlo di Palma. The film's non-diegetic music was scored by American jazz pianist Herbie Hancock, and the English rock group The Yardbirds are seen performing "Stroll On".

In the main competition section of the 1967 Cannes Film Festival, Blow-Up won the Palme d'Or, the festival's highest honour. The American release of the counterculture-era[7] film with its explicit sexual content defied Hollywood's Production Code, and its subsequent critical and commercial success influenced the abandonment of the code in 1968 in favour of the MPAA film rating system.

Blow-Up would influence subsequent films, including Francis Ford Coppola's The Conversation (1974) and Brian De Palma's Blow Out (1981).[9] In 2012, Blow-Up was ranked No. 144 in the Sight & Sound critics' poll of the world's greatest films.

Among the homeless men whose photos were taken by the David Hemmings character is Julio Cortázar, who wrote the original short story on which "Blow-Up (1966)" is based.

The film contains a rare performance of The Yardbirds during the period when Jimmy Page and Jeff Beck were both in the band. Jeff Beck would leave a few months later.

During film, David Hemmings was annoyed to see that Michelangelo Antonioni was shaking his head back and forth in the gesture that he had interpreted as negative during his audition process. However, he soon realized that the gesture was simply a tic and had no negative meaning at all. "Once the mystery was solved," he said, "I was prepared to love him; and I never told him about the week of hell he'd put me through as a result of his affliction."

Sir Sean Connery turned down the lead role, because, "I couldn't understand what Antonioni was talking about."

As a way of bypassing the Production Code (i.e. censors), "MGM" created "Premiere Productions". This was a dummy company which had no agreement or affiliation with the Production Code and, therefore, did not have to adhere to its standards. "MGM" did not have to cut the full frontal nudity or other sexually explicit scenes and maintained all rights to the film. When the film opened to rave reviews and excellent box office, this defeat was considered the final blow for the Production Code's credibility and was replaced with a ratings system less than two years later. Because the film did not open with a studio logo, the version shown on Turner Classic Movies has a Warner Bros. logo at the start, it being the current owner of the film.

According to Don McCullin in his autobiography "Unreasonable Behaviour", director Michelangelo Antonioni was unhappy with the color of the grass in Maryon Park. He had it sprayed green so he could re-shoot the scene.

Reportedly the first British feature film to show full frontal female nudity.

Michelangelo Antonioni offered little in the way of insight into his intentions with the film, and was always clear that meaning wasn't meant to be spelled out. "By developing with enlargers...things emerge that we probably don't see with the naked eye....The photographer in Blow-Up, who is not a philosopher, wants to see things closer up. But it so happens that, by enlarging too far, the object itself decomposes and disappears. Hence there's a moment in which we grasp reality, but then the moment passes. This was in part the meaning of Blow-Up."

Michelangelo Antonioni's original choice for the rock band was The Velvet Underground but there were problems over their work permits at the time. The In Crowd (who later became Tomorrow) were then offered the cameo but dropped out at the last minute, and the replica Gibson ES-175 guitar destroyed by Jeff Beck - probably in emulation of The Who's Pete Townshend - was owned by The In Crowd guitarist Steve Howe.