On Location: The London park from Michelangelo… | Little White Lies

On Location

On Loca­tion: The Lon­don park from Michelan­ge­lo Antonioni’s Blow-Up

02 Sep 2019

Words by Adam Scovell

Black and white image of a person walking away from the camera in a rural landscape with trees and a fence.
Black and white image of a person walking away from the camera in a rural landscape with trees and a fence.
Mary­on Park in Charl­ton lies at the beguil­ing cen­tre of the Ital­ian director’s psy­cho­log­i­cal mystery.

One of the first things I did when mov­ing to Lon­don was to go on a lone­ly tour of the loca­tions used in Michelan­ge­lo Antonioni’s 1966 film, Blow-Up. Such was the pow­er of its Lon­don images and loca­tions that it felt like a good start­ing point in learn­ing about the city. Though based on Julio Cortázar’s orig­i­nal short sto­ry which was set in Paris, Anto­nioni (along with scriptwriter Toni­no Guer­ra) turned the nar­ra­tive of half-glimpsed mur­ders and off-kil­ter urban atmos­pheres into a quin­tes­sen­tial Lon­don film, even if it was not his main aim.

It came as a sur­prise, then, to realise how much Anto­nioni cut up the cap­i­tal, cre­at­ing a ver­sion of it that feels more real and yet is fab­ri­cat­ed simultaneously.

Blow-Up fol­lows the exploits of Thomas (David Hem­mings), a high-lev­el Lon­don fash­ion pho­tog­ra­ph­er bored to death with the vac­u­ous nature of his own work and indus­try. On vis­it­ing a park in between work­ing, he pho­tographs a cou­ple seem­ing­ly in the mid­dle of a roman­tic dal­liance. The woman, Jane (Vanes­sa Red­grave), remon­strates with him after he’s cap­tured them on film and insists on hav­ing the reel but she sus­pi­cious­ly flees.

Soon, Thomas is fol­lowed and Jane finds his stu­dio, believ­ing false­ly that she gets the pho­tos back. Thomas devel­ops the reel but, notic­ing strange things in the bush­es, he begins his own detec­tive work; real­is­ing that he has in fact cap­tured evi­dence of a mur­der rather than an affair.

Though the direc­tor uses a star­tling array of loca­tions from all over the city, at the cen­tre of its mys­tery is the park where Thomas wan­ders and acci­den­tal­ly blun­ders onto a killing. The park is the first thing we see of the film. A pho­to­shoot bleeds through the names and words of the cred­its as they unfurl over the grass where Thomas him­self even­tu­al­ly mimes his way out of exis­tence. Anto­nioni famous­ly aug­ment­ed this whole envi­ron­ment, spray­ing it with var­i­ous colours to get the tex­ture right and tidy­ing up the park with a vigour most local coun­cils would be envi­ous of.

Viewed through Antonioni’s lens, the park is a curi­ous realm. The actions of a group of mimes fak­ing a game a ten­nis seems to become real, as if all of life was itself a game of false impres­sions; bod­ies appear and dis­ap­pear there; and the sound of the breeze rustling through the trees is seem­ing­ly caught on Thomas’ pho­tos, enter­ing his flat as he devel­ops large prints of the park’s land. It’s almost as if the stark rede­vel­op­ment” that Anto­nioni cap­tures of the area upend­ed its gov­ern­ing log­ic, allow­ing ghosts and fan­tasies to qui­et­ly arise.

In many ways, Blow-Up is a haunt­ing: of Thomas by what he missed and what he real­ly saw, of the slip­pery nature of real­i­ty and, in par­tic­u­lar, cen­tral Lon­don haunt­ed by south London.

Pastoral landscape with trees, grass, and a distant field.

The park plays into this in that, rather than using a more well known loca­tion near­er Thomas’ stu­dio sit­u­at­ed in Not­ting Hill, Anto­nioni opt­ed instead for the small but unusu­al Mary­on Park in Charl­ton. Thomas seems to have a shad­ow-life in south Lon­don. He spends the night in a dosshouse sit­u­at­ed in Peck­ham (with a Cam­ber­well sign on its door­way). He’s even seen dri­ving to the park first via Stock­well Road – with the once vivid red build­ings of the Pride and Clark motor­bike shop – and then via Wool­wich Road until final­ly turn­ing off and towards the park.

It’s cer­tain­ly a far cry from the lav­ish man­sions and restau­rants used from cen­tral Lon­don, play­ing into the idea that cen­tral is so caught up in its own image that it’s not real at all; a few square miles con­coct­ed by the naïve day­dreams of the rich.

Revis­it­ing Mary­on Park still con­jures pecu­liar feel­ings, not least in that there is a sense of ghost­ing the actions of the film’s pro­tag­o­nist; devel­op­ing and shar­ing his obses­sion with end­less revis­its. Unlike on his var­i­ous vis­its, how­ev­er, Charl­ton and Mary­on Park were buzzing with life when I returned there. I took a train from Lon­don Bridge to Charl­ton, aware that I was being met sole­ly by peo­ple wear­ing the same sort of red that lit­ters Antonioni’s film in high­ly coloured frag­ments on walls and cars. It was a match day at The Val­ley, Charl­ton FC’s sta­di­um. I wan­dered along the same road that Thomas drove along in his Rolls Royce, turn­ing off into Cleve­ly Close where the antiques shop from the film was.

Luck­i­ly, unlike the road, the park is lit­tle changed and prob­a­bly will always in some way remain as it was. I walked up to the high­er plain via the steps that Thomas skips and jumps up in idle plea­sure away from his stuffy fash­ion stu­dio. The main sequence of pho­tographs and mur­der take place on this plain. It’s now a lot scruffi­er with the major­i­ty of its fences removed and the grass grow­ing long. But the loca­tion is recog­nis­able. I crouched behind the tree that Thomas hides behind when pho­tograph­ing Jane and snapped my own Polaroid. There was no one in my shot, how­ev­er, liv­ing or dead.

Wire fence in forest at dusk

With the main area of the park dom­i­nat­ed by the ten­nis courts seen in the film, it felt only right to also snap a shot of it as well. Again it has changed very lit­tle, except for a nar­row hedge sep­a­rat­ing the court and the main lawn. I noticed a man set­ting up a ball machine so he could apt­ly prac­tice alone; anoth­er mimed game. A young, injured dove was unusu­al­ly in the exact cor­ner that I need­ed to pho­to­graph too. The scene only missed the trail of mimes watch­ing on to add to the full, orig­i­nal weirdness.

Of course, noth­ing was real­ly seen in the park, and yet that dichoto­my between objec­tiv­i­ty and sub­jec­tiv­i­ty is what lies at the heart of the nar­ra­tive. What did you see in that park?” asks Ron, Thomas’ man­ag­er, late into the film. Noth­ing,” Thomas reluc­tant­ly replies.

With thanks to Polaroid Orig­i­nals.

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