The Nature of Cinematic Adaptation: Blow-Up (1966)
Metafiction is orchestrated by highlighting its own narrative and perpetually keeping the audience in accordance to its fictional structures. As it evokes the nature of being through the ontological branch of metaphysics, it underscores the fabrication of anything outside of actual reality. This is done through language, cinematography, point of view, camera usage, sound, and monstration. The film Blow-Up directed by Michelangelo Antonioni is an adaptation of Devil’s Dribble by the writer Julio Cortázar. The adaptation highlights the metafiction aspects of the short story and the film auteur’s intention. While both works follow a photographer and an unreliable narrator, Antonioni is able to capture the absurdity and moments of solipsism that the main character portrays. Lecture 3.2 defines metafiction as “narratives that are self-reflective or that reflect on the nature of the discourse by which their stories are told.” The most evident example of metafiction is a novelist writing a novel within a novel or in the case of Blow-Up, a photographer being observed within the director’s camera shot of the film and the audience observing the film. Since it encapsulates an audience and breaks the fourth wall, it furthers the augmentation of fiction. The camera is used in both the short story and the film. The use of intermediality, semiotics and narratology, subject interest, and cinematography all conspire into the creation of metafiction.
Intermediality focuses on the relationship between media, expression, and dependance on the interior and exterior. In Intermediality in Film: A Historiography of Methodologies, Ágnes Pethő asserts that “intermediality is seen, more often than not, as something that actively “does,” “performs” something, and not merely “is” (60). This pinpoints the performative action in the adaptation of Blow-Up as Antonioni emphasizes metafiction by demonstrating multiple angles in the enigmatic character, Thomas. Since he is seen lying to the models, bunburying by buying an airplane propeller, and mobilizing the situations around him for his gain. The “independent presence” as declared by Kenneth Johnson in The Point of View of the Wandering Camera is present as it follows Thomas through the most unamusing scenarios; driving, shooting the pigeons, shooting the antique shop, shooting the couple at the park, etc. These specific moments in the film underline the bleakness of Thomas’s life. He is hyper-aware of his surroundings and thus creates a false narrative to console him from the absurdity of everyday life. This was done to add more significance to his existence as he keeps avoiding the lackluster and predictability of reality. Thomas is performing for himself and the audience. This is prevalent when he visits Ron at the restaurant and shares his work with him; the photographs depict poverty, anguish, and decay of the human body through aging. Thomas says “I’ve got something fab for the end. In the park […] it’s very peaceful… very still. The rest of the book is pretty violent” (0:37:10). The elements of metafiction are in the spotlight when the characters acknowledge the world, they inhabit but are unbothered by it. Thomas utilizes tragedy as his main form of indulgence, it is the only thing that keeps him occupied. The park sequence takes the concept of love and privacy between an older gentleman and a woman and distorts it to fit Thomas’s perspective and hedonistic pursuit. Intermediality is an action that is used by the performance of Thomas to allude the observer into his truth without any intention to question its validity. Metafiction arises when the fabrication of his truth is unreliable.
Narratology was shaped by semiotics which is broken down into two elements: signifier + signified = sign. In What Novels Can Do That Films Can’t (and Vice Versa), Chatman defines semiotics as “the study of all meaning systems, not only natural language […] we read fascinating semiotic analyses of facial communication, body language, fashion, the circus, architecture, and gastronomy” (121). Semiotics was coined by linguist Ferdinand de Saussure, and he believed that there is no inherent link between the two. Saussure focused on language, writing systems, and communication as a whole. However, philosopher Charles Sanders Peirce suggests there are ways the signifier can be linked to the signified. Peirce focused on all sensory stimuli and offers 3 types of signs: an icon, an index, a symbol. “In the 3rd place it is necessary for a sign to be a sign that it should be regarded as a sign for it is only a sign to that mind which so considers and if it is not a sign to any mind it is not a sign at all. It must be known to the mind first in its material qualities but also in its pure demonstrative application. That mind must conceive it to be connected with its object so that it is possible to reason from the sign to the thing” (Pierce 142). The icon in the film adaptation is the subject interest of the camera. This camera acts as the hypoicon and the metaphor which is a sign that represents something else. As established earlier, the director’s wandering camera follows Thomas in and out of the shots. “For when we witness wandering camera, we witness cinematic narrative discourse at an initial, denunciatory level that reveals traces of authorial activity” (Johnson 49). It acts as an omnipotent force when following the car in the same movements of speed and pacing. The camera zooms out on Thomas as he takes picture in the antique shop outside which emphasizes loneliness. The only thing the audience can hear is the diegetic sound of the wind blowing and the camera clicking (0:24:44). Upon Thomas taking multiple images in different angles, Antonioni’s camera zooms out further on Thomas and he turns around to face the trees. This demonstrates an acknowledgement of another presence (nature and being).
Thomas’s boredom after shooting the antique shop led him to follow the park trail and craft up the infamous story of an affair and later a murder. The camera is connected with a sign to the mind from the film auteurs perspective, it signifies metafiction and existence on a fundamental level. Thomas’s perspective is rooted in solipsism as he is only able to recognize his truth throughout the film. For example, when Thomas confesses to witnessing the corpse (1:29:57). Patricia asks, “who was he?” “Someone.” “How did it happen?” “I don’t know, I didn’t see.” This depicts Thomas as unreliable and selfish. The film is also ironic because if anyone knew what really happened, it would have been Thomas. The man with the camera. This demonstrates that the film carries the same essence as the short story Devil’s Dribble by Julio Cortázar. Where the protagonist Michel is described to be ingenious. “Michel is guilty of making literature, of indulgence in fabricated realities. Nothing pleases him more than to imagine exceptions to the rule, individuals outside the species, not-always-repugnant monsters (Cortázar 124).” As Cortázar asserts that Michel lives within his head, he has no real sense of reality. This fabrication of the “truth” indicates an awareness of constructed “reality.” Therefore, the nature of sincerity is questioned by default regardless of it being the only perspective the audience can go off on. The photographs he captured in the park led him to believe a teenage boy was being harassed by an older woman. The semiotics of the camera are prevalent with the photographs in the film adaptation. While Patricia observes the zoomed in photograph print, Thomas states, “That’s the body.” “Looks like one of Bill’s paintings.” This is an application that connects its object with the sign of another thing. Additionally, it stresses the absurdity of everyday life as one thing is connected to another and there is no stability present in the narrative (life=death, Bill’s painting=symbol, and the camera=consciousness of being).
The film carries the essence of a hazy aesthetic that is prevalent in the short story; where time is not relevant. Thomas is moving around going from place to place without an actual plan. It is also worth noting that Thomas is so detached from real life that instead of calling the police he tells Ron he has to “get a shot of it (the corpse)” which further drives his need to find a sense of meaning. Cortázar begins the short story by alluding that truth is arbitrary, thus point of view is irrelevant as Devil’s Dribble goes back and forth between narration. “It’ll never be known how this has to be told, in first person or in the second, using the third person plural or continuality inventing modes that will serve for nothing” (Cortázar 114). The voyeurism in the film and novel are reminiscent of its predecessors that share similar observational themes such as Psycho (1960) and Peeping Tom (1960). Most specifically, with respects of the iconic camera, Rear Window (1954). The film has a lack of clarity on anything relating to the character’s background, the space, and the time he inhabits. Antonioni is rejecting coherence as the narrator is drawing the audience into his reality. Thomas is hyperaware of existence by establishing a relationship with someone else’s truth most evident in the ending sequence. Throughout the whole film, he has only been focused on his truth, his perspective, and himself. However, by choosing to engage in the imaginary tennis game with the mime group, he is participating in someone else’s truth (1:48:34). That is the only moment in the film where he relinquishes solipsism. To concur, ambiguity is the most captivating part both media share. This creates the reflection of a mirror facing another mirror as he opens the gateway to multiple truths. The ending sequences presents Thomas in an open field where his eye movements follow the imaginary tennis game. Again, this draws a parallel to the earlier scene where he is photographing the antique store. The only diegetic sound is the wind and the ball hitting the tennis racket. This sound is similar to the snapping of the camera. The director’s camera zooms out at a high distant angle with Thomas standing in the center of a grass field (1:50:45). The symbolism in the cinematography where he is turning around and grabbing his camera personifies his need to escape from the void of nothingness. Since he is only able to function by assigning purpose to his life, the camera acts as his consciousness, the director’s consciousness, and is further extended to the audience which intensifies the nature of metafiction.
Conclusively, Blow-Up relies on the self-consciousness of metafiction that highlights the orchestration of fictional structures towards the audience. By evoking the nature of being through the ontological branch of metaphysics, it accentuates the fabrication of everything exterior to reality. This is accomplished by the use of language, cinematography, point of view, camera usage, sound, and monstration. Antonioni’s adaptation highlights the metafictional aspects of Cortázar’s short story and the film auteur’s intention. Antonioni is able to capture the absurdity and moments of solipsism that the main character displays. Since metafiction encapsulates an audience and breaks the fourth wall, it furthers the augmentation of fiction. The camera is used in both the short story and the film as the primary icon. The synthesis of intermediality, semiotics and narratology, subject interest, and cinematography all machinate into the formation of metafiction.
Works Cited:
Cortázar, Julio. Blow-Up: And Other Stories. Zaltbommel, Netherlands, Van Haren Publishing, 2014.
Blow-Up. Directed by Michelangelo Antonioni, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Premier Productions, Carlo Ponti Productions Bridge Films, performances by David Hemmings, Vanessa Redgrave, Jane Birkin, and Sarah Miles, 1966.
Johnson, Kenneth. Lecture 3.2 Metafiction. ENG 4114, Film Adaptations of Literature, 2022. Florida International University. Canvas.
Chatman, Seymour. “What Novels Can Do That Films Can’t (and Vice Versa).” Critical Inquiry, vol. 7, no. 1, University of Chicago Press, Oct. 1980, pp. 121–40.
Ágnes Pethő. “Intermediality in Film: A Historiography of Methodologies.” Acta Universitatis Sapientiae: Film and Media Studies, no. 02 pp. 39–72.
Johnson, Kenneth. “The Point of View of the Wandering Camera.” Cinema Journal, vol. 32, no. 2, JSTOR, 1993, p. 49.
Peirce, Charles Sanders. “On the Nature of Signs.” Peirce on Signs: Writings on Semiotic by Charles Sanders Peirce, edited by James Hoopes, University of North Carolina Press, 1991, pp. 141–43. JSTOR.
