"A Past Which Has Never Been a Present". Cinema and Photography in Blow-Up by Ruggero Eugeni

“A past which has never been a present”. Cinema and Photography in Blow-up by Michelangelo Antonioni By Ruggero Eugeni Department of Media and Communication, Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore, Milan, Italy Translated by Federica Mennella, Department of Romance Literature, American University, Washington DC, US

“A past which has never been a present” Cinema and Photography in Blow-up by Michelangelo Antonioni

1. Michelangelo Antonioni theorist of photography In this essay I will argue two main points. First, Michelangelo Antonioni’s Blow-up not only represents photographic actions and operations, but more radically depicts a theory of photography. This theory is not constructed through words, but mainly through the expressive resources of the audiovisual narrative, which does not make it less coherent or complete (Aumont 1996 and 2002). Secondly, this photographic theory implies a key role of the subject’s body in relation to reality and the images: Antonioni’s photographic theory is tied to phenomenology in a distinctly original relationship. 1 I will illustrate these two main concepts by analyzing the long central sequence in the film in which the protagonist develops and exposes his photos in his lab2.

It is worthwhile observing that our approach to the relationship of cinema and photography places our paper

in a position slightly astray from previous discussions on the two media. Papers on the same subject have in fact meant to give an account of the “ontological” differences (Wollen 1984; Metz 1985; Bettetini 1991). They also meant to analyze the ways in which the reciprocal representations of cinema and photography imply a meta-reflection of the film on its own mechanisms (Bellour 2002), or solicit and address a more ample theory of the image, as a mark of the real (Dubois 1992; Le Maître 2004). Instead, I am wondering if in some cases the expressive resources of cinema are serving a theory of photography, without presuming a return towards a theory of cinema. In other words, I would like to understand if some cinematographic authors have contributed to or may contribute to a theoretical debate on photography. 2 Let’s

remember the essential features of the plot. A professional photographer takes some pictures of a couple

in a deserted public garden. The woman’s insistence on having the film makes him suspicious. In his studio, the photographer develops, prints, enlarges and puts the pictures in succession, thus finding out that the romance was hiding a murder. The photographer goes back to the park in the night and finds the corpse of the man; in the meantime, someone enters his studio and steals the film and the prints. On the following morning, the photographer returns to the park, but the corpse has disappeared.

In the introduction to the screenplay, which Antonioni adapted from the short story “Las Babas del Diablo”, by Julio Cortázar3, he made a short but significant statement: “I was not so much interested in the events as in the technical aspects of photography. I discarded the plot and wrote a new one in which the equipment itself assumed a different weight and significance” (Huss 1971:5, Italics added by the author). We can infer from these few lines many fundamental clues. Indeed, the director’s interest is focused on the “technical aspects” of photography; it is here that we should look for the core of his theory. For example, his interest is expressed in the transformations that Julio Cortázar`s story undergoes in the movie. After comparing the novel and the movie4, we subsequently realize that the actions connected to the development and the enlargement of the photos, just hinted at by Cortázar, become central for Antonioni. The short story is constructed like a diptych (with a break between two parts that is marked by a white space on the page). The taking of only one picture in the first part is balanced in the second by its “coming to life” like a cinematographic image5. The film is instead built like a triptych, articulated in three phases: the taking of pictures, their development and enlargement and, finally, the double verification of the reality that they reveal. These are three moments in which the sequence of the pictures` development and the discovery of the murder occupy the central position6. In this sequence, we must look for those particular technical aspects of

3 Cortázar 4 The

1959

critical literature comparing the novel and film, which oscillates in determining how faithful Antonioni is

to Cortázar, has its reference point in the paper by Fernandez 1967. This literature is summarized and critically analyzed by Peavler 1979. 5 “[…]

In the final analysis an enlargement of 80 x 60 cm resembles a cinematographic screen” (Cortázar 1959)

(our translation) 6

The film title itself (it is well known that a blow-up indicates the enlargement of photographs) directs

attention towards this sequence. This centrality has been pointed out by numerous critical works: see in

photography which interested Antonioni and which represent the core of his theory on photography that we assume to be expressed in Blow- up.

2. The Photographer as Operator and Spectator The photographer develops the pictures, which were taken in the park, then enlarges and hangs them in a room in his studio. In doing so, he gradually discovers that a crime has been committed not directly in front of his eyes, but in front of his lens. If we apply the concepts introduced by Barthes 1980 to this film sequence, we can detect a fracture between the photographer as Operator and the same person as Spectator. Such a division creates particular connotations in the movie. The photographer as Operator was represented at the beginning of the film in a powerful, almost arrogant position; the photographic act appears as an imperious gesture of control over the visible, that appropriates the “real” and takes control of the “look”7. In the sequence we are analyzing, a checkmate is made on the Operator and his attitude. He missed the decisive event of the photographic scene (the murder) and his own hubris condemned him to blindness (“What did you see in that park?” Ron asks him in the scene preceding the final one. “Nothing” answers the photographer). To reveal such a failure of the Operator is the very character of the photographer himself. In the same moment that he transforms himself into the Spectator of his own photographs, he

particular Lotman 1973, Ropars – Wuilleumier 1985, Jameson 1992, Cuccu 1997, Canosa 1999, Bernardi 2002: 193-197, Casetti 2005: 248-256. For a synthesis of the interpretative hypothesis refer to Tinazzi 2002: 95-99. 7

For the first aspect, refer to the sequence of the photographic report - rape of Verushka, or to the fashion

shoot with the models-dolls. Brunette (1998: 109-126) has stressed the gender inequalities in these sequences. The predatory aspect is also underlined by the photographer’s intention to buy the antique shop close to the park, anticipated by the purchase of the propeller. As far as the second aspect is concerned, observe how in leaving the photographic set he orders his models twice to close their eyes and also the fact that all the shots are made from the photographer’s point of view.

recovers a new power of seeing. This implies, on the other hand, a new hubris, and therefore introduces a new checkmate. In conclusion, the photographer in Blow-up is an early Oedipus, an overconfident carrier of a knowledge model based on visibility, who is condemned to auto-blindness (Milner 1991: 67 – 83).8 Adopting the Barthesian conceptual pairing of Operator-Spectator allows us to understand the tragic division that the character undergoes. We could at this point express this division in terms of a clear opposition between two different and irreconcilable models of knowledge of the world. On the one hand, there is the presence and the physical intervention of the Operator on the world to organize and to reproduce it. On the other hand, there is the pure immaterial look of the Spectator. The photographic theory in Blow-up could therefore be described as based on the opposition between the material processes of the Operator and the pure look of the Spectator. This hypothesis, however, runs the risk of letting some decisive aspects slip away from us, as happened to the character of the photographer.

3. The photographer as Eductor The notion that in this sequence the photographer becomes a pure Spectator of his own work is incorrect. In fact, the photographer never stops to “operate” and make the image appear. Instead, he begins doing for the first time what so far he had left to his assistants: he develops the films and prints the pictures. From the beginning of the sequence Antonioni shows with documentary-like accuracy the details of the photographic developing and printing procedures: the self-confident gestures of the character, at the beginning indolent, then

Milner 1991 compares, however, Oedipus’ path to the path of a photographic negative that in the course of

its development sees its chiaroscuro values inverted: “Œdipe […], un personage surexpose’ ” (Milner 1991: 70)

nervous and quick; his expert and attentive handling of the apparatus and films; the symphony of background noises (as always very accurate in Antonioni). This symphony includes the lapping of liquids, the leafing through of papers, various wooden or metallic clicks, steps and silences. In short, all the very particular forms of interaction among machines, surfaces, substances, lights, sounds, and gestures that give birth to a photographic image.9 The photographer is therefore not only the Operator, or author of the photos, but he has become an intermediate figure between the latter and the Spectator. We could call him the Eductor,10 someone who delivers the image and presents it for public visibility: a sort of shepherd or better yet, midwife, of photography. Indicative of this concept is the frame in which the photographic image (which is, not by chance, relevant for the reconstruction of the crime that the photographer is perpetuating: it is the revealing detail of the armed hand sticking out of the bush) is raised from the bowl, observed, and again put into water, as if to emphasize the birth and baptism which signal its apparition in the social world. If the Operator is a gatherer of images, then the Eductor appears as a bricoleur, in the meaning attributed to it by Lévi-Strauss 1962, i.e. as someone who uses a patrimony of already picked objects, selects one, and reworks it in such a way as to create new connections and meanings, using his or her own hand, eye, and mind.11

Such an attention to background noises has an equivalent in the film transcription (Antonioni 1967: 46-57), in

which the operations are accurately described through the appropriate technical terms (dryer, frosted glass, development tank, internegative film and so on) 10

The most appropriate term would be Elicitor, which unfortunately does not exist in Latin. The verb elicĕre

means “to let out”, “to evocate a spirit or a ghost”, or “to find out, and trace through an investigation”. 11

Blow-up seems to fulfill Benjamin’s prophecy (1931), which sees the photographer as the “successor of the

auguries and of the haruspexes”; in a metropolis where “each place […] is the scene of a crime [and] each passer-by is a criminal, [the photographer] with his images functions to reveal guilt and to indicate who is

4. The photographer as body The opposition between the Operator and the Spectator needs to be reformulated; the Spectator comes to a revelation that tragically separates him from the Operator through the work of the Eductor. It might seem, however, that some aspects of that opposition are now transferred to the Eductor-Spectator pair. The Eductor would be entitled to the direction of the technical and material aspects of the operation (the “photographic equipment”), while the Spectator would be entitled to just the pure gaze. This idea, however, needs to be discarded. A deeper analysis shows, in fact, that the Spectator cannot in any possible way be reduced to a disembodied look. There are at least three fundamental reasons why we can affirm that the Spectator carries a situated and embodied look. In the first place, the Eductor and Spectator often work synergistically, using particular devices such as the white pencil that allows highlighting in some areas of the photos, and above all, the magnifying lens. Secondly, the Spectator’s look is always accompanied by an action. The subject moves closer and further from the photos, he touches the pictures to follow the path of the gaze, he gives rhythm with his fingers; such actions are not superfluous, but are in fact the core of the interpretative operation. Finally, the path created by the gaze of the Spectator are determined by the concrete physical structure of the space, where the photographs to be looked at are hanged. The studio represents a perspective box,12 and the pictures and blow-ups are displayed in a sequence on

guilty”. We could add at this point that augury and haruspex are here meant in the sense that Barthes (1970) gives to them: responsible for a hermeneutic gesture based on a work of cropping and enlargement of the fragment. This is in fact a gesture of bricolage. 12

The prevalence of straight lines in the spatial organization of the studio was pointed out by the woman the

photographer met in the park while she was visiting him in his studio.

its walls to underline both its linearity and its angularity. For example, the blow-up of the woman looking out of the frame is provided to create a corner in the room with the image of the fence and the hand with the gun, to produce a sort of relationship between the two images, starting from their perpendicular setting in the lab space.13

5. The photographer as subject of the return The hypothesis formulated at the end of paragraph 4 (the opposition between the Operator and Spectator in terms of operational processes versus pure gaze) has turned out to be groundless for two reasons. From one point of view, the Eductor slips in between the pair; alternatively, the Spectator’s look is embodied and situated in the expository space of the pictures. How can we, at this point, formulate the relationship between the Operator and Spectator that is expressed in Blow-up? The sequence we are analyzing is rich with suggestions; to grasp them we must shift from the énoncé [enunciated] to the enunciation [enunciation], and analyze the forms of the mise-en-discours present in the sequence. An initial clue comes from a pair of frames in the first part of the sequence, when the photographer has exposed the first two pictures of the park in his lab. The second picture of the couple in the clearing, hanging from one of the studio beams and therefore suspended in the space, is shot from behind. The photographer looks from across the room at the image and his shadow, initially outlined on the lower left, advances to the center until it covers the couple’s image, fluctuates unsure, and then shifts to the right. The

Some plastic directing choices underline and praise the physical presence of the pictures in the space and the

somatic relationship that the photographer entertains with them, such as the comparison of the sofa to the pictures seen from the point of view of the plastic occupation of the photogram; the black partition on the white wall that plastically rhymes with the border of the black and white images; the compression of the photographer in the interstice between the photos, etc.

following shot is a reverse angle that shows the photographer in front of the image; his shadow, on the left side of the picture, is exhibited again. In the first shot the Spectator’s shadow appears over the photographic image until it occupies the center and erases the visible presence of the original subjects (the image of the couple becomes invisible for a moment). The complex theoretical significance of this passage cannot go unnoticed. Above all, the Spectator appears in it as a body engaged in a physical relationship with the photographic print. In fact, the shadow testifies to this somatic relationship of placement and movement. The same shadow also reveals another aspect in accordance with the previous point: through his own shadow the Spectator adheres to the surface of the image, and through a sort of osmosis he penetrates it (in the sense of the “esthetic junction” studied by Landowski 2004: 105 – 137), until he himself takes on some of the qualities of the photographic image. The use of color is revealing and, in fact, the photographer character is present here under the form of a pearlish-gray shadow, perfectly inscribed in the black and white system of the photography. This photography is, moreover, a direct descendant of skiagraphia, or ancient shadow painting (Stoichita 1997). The story that this sequence tells begins to look like one about a passage and a return; through the physical relationship with the images in the studio space, the Spectator accessed the original scene of the clearing, in which he took part as Operator. The two returns to the park that will occur later in the film are set and anticipated by the return that the photographer operates through the vision of the images. An additional clue confirms this interpretation. Several times the pictures that the photographer looks at and exposes are shot with a system of panoramic shots (between different images or in the same photographic image) and zoom, which reproduce or simulate through subjective shots the sensory-motor relationship of photographer-character (who

then does not appear in the shot anymore) and the photographic images. The character of the photographer disappears, in these cases, from the scene and is incorporated into the camera’s view. This passage finds its fulfillment in the revealing micro-sequence that allows the photographer and the spectator to understand what “truly” happened in the park (a faceless killer, hidden behind a bush, shot the partner of the mysterious woman, with her complicity). The action is reconstructed through the display of the pictures, in a sequence that (again) simulates the physical movements of the photographer. At the end of the sequence, he appears lying by the side of the last picture introduced, as if he had physically made the journey through the pictures that the Spectator has operated through his gaze. Furthermore, noises which were already present in the sequence of the shots in the park, such as the sound of tree foliage rustling in the wind, creep in to the anonymous background of the studio noises.14 The use of sound is crucial here: the translation of the sensory–motor relationship between the photographer-character and the pictures exposed in the studio is itself translated into the mise-en-scène of the photographer’s return to the park, no longer as Operator, but in his new role as Spectator. What does this return of the Spectator on the Operator’s path signify? To understand it, we must address a third clue that comes from the sequence. If we compare the pictures that the Eductor develops and exposes (and that allow and lead the return of the Spectator to the place where the Operator had acted) with the pictures that were taken in the sequence in the park, we realize that not all of the photographic images actually correspond to those taken by the Operator. Some of the photographs are, in fact, ghost images, evoked by the Eductor, without actually being shot by the Operator. We are referring to two series of pictures in particular. The first is represented by the pictures of the fence, from which the 14

We incidentally note the emergence of a double meaning in the film’s title. The Blow-up as photographic

enlargement leaves room for the blowing-up, as in the blowing of the wind among the leaves of the trees which enunciates the coming of the tempest.

gun slightly protrudes. The frontal position of these photos does not correspond with the position of the photographer at the moment he took them, but possibly with that of the woman. The second series consists of the photographic sequence in which we see the woman run away from the man, bring her hand to her mouth, throw herself at the photographer to ask him for the film, and leave the man by himself (exposed to the killer’s shot). These pictures not only present a shooting angle incompatible with the photographer’s position, but represent a micro–episode that could not have been shot by him because in that very moment he was already leaving the scene.15 The Spectator goes back to the crime scene thanks to the photographic apparatus placed by the Eductor; he subsequently appears to reunite with the Operator, but this reunion does not actually happen. Returning to the park metaphorically, thanks to the technical device of photography, does not mean finding oneself again in the place from which one had been thrown out, but rather to experience the impossibility of returning to where one had been and to repossess the ways and positions of the original presence.

6. A past that has never been a present We can at this point summarize what emerged from the analysis of the central sequence of Blow-up about the technical aspects of photography. The discourse developed by the film articulates the photographic act in three phases; each of them implies the presence of a subject and of an embodied and situated relationship between the subject and a scene

This missed coincidence has already been observed (but not analyzed in a precise way and with interpretative

results different from mine) by Ropars – Wuilleumier 1985 and by Cuccu 1997. It is a further innovation by Antonioni compared to Cortázar. “From my chair […] I was staring at the pictures over there, from three meters away; and so it occurred to me that I had placed myself directly in front of the objective lens” (Cortázar 1959).

(composed of space, time and objects). Through the snapshots the Operator transcribes his own situated relationship with a scene in the film. The Eductor develops the films, prints the pictures and exposes them; as a result he brings the images to light, makes them available to the social gaze, and fixes them to a medium. He therefore performs a second scene, i.e. the exhibition system of the pictures.16 The Spectator in the end benefits from the device prepared by the Eductor, he carries out a sensory-motor experience of the photographic exhibition scene and, at the same time, he accesses the original scene on which the Operator reported. The critical point is that the return of the Spectator to his own footsteps, through the concrete path prepared by the Eductor, is revealed to be impossible: indeed, the Operatorâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s path has been rearranged, and the scene has become uncanny, because irretrievably other than the original one.17 The results we have reached allow us to verify the two key points from which we started. First, it is possible to confirm and to articulate the idea according to which Blow-up develops a coherent and organic discourse on the photographic act, the processes it implies, the 16

Maybe things are, however, a bit more complex. It needs to be considered in particular that the Eductor

assumes a role as Operator in re-photographing the corpse which protrudes from the bush. This recalls a sequence of the film La Macchina Ammazzacattivi by Roberto Rossellini (Italy, 1948), in which a photographer receives the power to kill some characters from his own country, re-photographing some pictures of them, which are hanging on the wall. The subjects die then in the same pose that they had assumed in the photograph (Bellour 2002: 117 â&#x20AC;&#x201C; 121). 17

The mention of the categories of the uncanny (unheimliche) of Freud (1919) possesses in this case a double

significance. In a more immediate approach, it is clear that from the analysis of the park scene something has emerged which was supposed to have remained hidden and that, on the contrary, has risen to the surface: the corpse, the death, etc. On the other hand there is another element, deeply rooted in the original scene, which has been removed and (literally) thrown out and now returns. It returns only to find that the scene has been irremediably changed and is now uninhabitable, according to the previous parameters: the character of the photographer himself. The narrative mechanism places, therefore, the Operator-Spectator in the situation of the complex or original conviction, which once removed, comes back in the form of anxiety. This is, we believe, the root of the particular form of discontent that innervates the experience of the Spectator.

objects it produces, the subjects it involves, and the experiences that it generates. It is a discourse developed entirely by cinematographic means; that is, through a plot and through many particular configurations of the moving image accompanied by sound. More precisely, we can state that, thanks to the particular choices of the cinematographic mise-en-discours, the story of the photographer-protagonist becomes an exemplum of greater significance. It involves the photographic act in general, and in particular the problem of the boundaries between fine art photography and documentary photography, and the problem of the space of fruition intended as a device that determines the nature and the course of the medium (Krauss 1990: 28-49).18 In such a way, Blow-up participates directly in that process of reinvention of the photographic medium that took place at the beginning of the 60s, with the double characterization of photography as art medium and as theoretical object (Krauss 1999). Secondly, the key role of the body within the photographic experience is confirmed and articulated as well. Blow–up treats photography as the interaction of image, medium and body of the receiver, that is, as the concrete anthropological insight of objects and of the devices of social manifestation (Belting 2001). The experience of the photographic vision is read from here as the production of an event through which the Spectator comes to understand “ce que nous voyons, ce qui nous regarde” (Didi-Huberman 1992 and 2002). The phenomenological root of such a position is evident; not coincidentally has the film been compared to the reflections of Heidegger (Jameson 1992) and Sartre (Casetti 2005). We

Regarding the role of the expositive space in Blow-up, it must be observed that the alternative form of

exhibition of the pictures in the pages of the book the photographer is preparing (as opposed to the classical one on the walls) fails. In fact, the book with captions that he is assembling and that should be concluded with the pictures he took in the park, is not concluded at all in the film’s plot (since the pictures and their negatives are stolen from his studio).

better understand Antonioni`s influences and his originality, however, if we compare them to the reflections of Merleau–Ponty. In Antonioni’s film, the photographic device experiences the unbridgeable distance between direct experience of the world and experience mediated a posteriori by the photographic image. Therefore photography becomes, in Antonioni`s hands, a metaphor for the functioning of perception according to Merleau– Ponty 1945; in particular photography is a metaphor for the distance that constitutively separates the pure unreflected perception from the reflection which is constructed on it. “Hence reflection does not itself grasp its full significance unless it refers to the unreflective fund of experience which it presupposes, upon which it draws, and which constitutes for it a kind of original past, a past which has never been a present”.19

Merleau – Ponty 1945, translated into English by Colin Smith. London and New York: Routledge, 1962 :

242.

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