Never before Blow-Up has Michelangelo Antonioni, the cinema’s bravest spelunker of the soul, come up from the depths with such a marvelous story and such gorgeous pictures of the cavernous emptiness inside modern man.

Having launched a conventionally piquant little mystery story, Anonioni characteristically abandons it, and the picture slips into fantasy and closes with a pretentiously symbolic tennis match, played without rackets or ball.

I always liked to think that even the worst film by Antonioni would be better than the best by almost any other director. Now I know that this is so, because I've just seen his worst film, and I was right: Blow-up is still an absolute must.

Italian New Wave director Michelangelo Antonioni was helping alter the European cinematic landscape with his bold features. One of Antonioni’s classics is the great “Blow-Up,” which is from 1966 and is one of my all-time favorite movies.