| Plot Synopsis |
by Karl Williams |
Italian director Michelangelo Antonioni's first English-language production was also his only box office hit, widely considered one of the seminal films of the 1960s. Thomas (David Hemmings) is a nihilistic, wealthy fashion photographer in mod "Swinging London." Filled with ennui, bored with his "fab" but oddly-lifeless existence of casual sex and drug use, Thomas comes alive when he wanders through a park, stops to take pictures of a couple embracing, and upon developing the images, believes that he has photographed a murder. Pursued by Jane (Vanessa Redgrave), the woman who is in the photos, Thomas pretends to give her the pictures, but in reality, he passes off a different roll of film to her. Thomas returns to the park and discovers that there is, indeed, a dead body lying in the shrubbery: the gray-haired man who was embracing Jane. Has she murdered him, or does Thomas' photo reveal a man with a gun hiding nearby? Antonioni's thriller is a puzzling, existential, adroitly-assembled masterpiece. |
| Similar Works |
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Blow Out
(1981, Brian De Palma)
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L'Avventura
(1960, Michelangelo Antonioni)
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Performance
(1970, Donald Cammell, Nicolas Roeg)
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Red Desert
(1964, Michelangelo Antonioni)
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The Man Who Left His Will on Film
(1970, Nagisa Oshima)
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Irreversible
(2002, Gaspar NoƩ)
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The Swap
(1969, John C. Broderick, John Shade)
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The Conversation
(1974, Francis Ford Coppola)
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Don't Look Now
(1973, Nicolas Roeg)
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Eyes Wide Shut
(1999, Stanley Kubrick)
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| Other Related Works |
| Has been re-edited into: |
Up and Out
(1998, Christian Marclay)
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| Is related to: |
November
(2003, Greg Harrison)
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