SOURCE: “Sexual Noise,” in Sight and Sound, Vol 2, No. 1, May, 1992, pp. 32–4.

In the following essay, Wagstaff argues that in Blow-Up Antonioni confronts the theme of ethical perception and the process involved in separating the “signal,” which ought to be paid attention to, from the noise, which distracts from it.

From 1960 onwards, Antonioni’s films analysed characters whose world had been put in crisis by some event: the disappearance of a lover, the death of a friend, the end of a love affair, a nervous breakdown—these were the starting points of the tetralogy of The Adventure (L’avventura, 1959–60), The Night (La notte, 1960), The Eclipse (L’eclisse, 1962) and The Red Desert (Il deserto rosso, 1964) respectively. Antonioni used for his analysis sex. Men and women didn’t just make love in his films; love-making was a sign, related to notions of alienation and commitment; it was treated for its meaning...