“Blow-Up”, Original Japanese DVD Promotional Poster 2004, B2 Size (51 × 73 cm) L281
Sale price$500.00
This is an original Japanese B2 promotional poster printed in 2004 for the Japanese DVD release of Michelangelo Antonioni’s Blow-Up (欲望 / Yokubō). Starring David Hemmings, Vanessa Redgrave, Sarah Miles, Jane Birkin, and Veruschka, the film remains one of the defining works of 1960s European cinema and an essential visual document of Swinging London.
This official home-video campaign poster reinterprets the film’s celebrated imagery through a strikingly minimal, modern Japanese design, combining a saturated teal field with one of the most recognisable images from Antonioni’s masterpiece.
Film background
Originally released in 1966, Blow-Up follows Thomas, a successful but emotionally detached London fashion photographer who believes that he may have inadvertently photographed evidence of a murder in a public park.
As Thomas repeatedly enlarges—or “blows up”—sections of the photograph, apparent clues begin to emerge from the grain. Yet the closer he looks, the less certain the truth becomes. The film develops into a provocative meditation on photography, voyeurism, perception, alienation, and the instability of objective reality.
Directed by Michelangelo Antonioni and produced by Carlo Ponti, the film was photographed by Carlo Di Palma and features an influential jazz score by Herbie Hancock. Its depiction of fashion studios, music clubs, models, and bohemian London made it one of cinema’s most enduring portraits of the city during the cultural upheaval of the 1960s.
Blow-Up received the Palme d’Or at the 1967 Cannes Film Festival and became Antonioni’s greatest international commercial success. Its release without approval from the restrictive American Production Code also helped demonstrate the declining authority of the old censorship system shortly before its replacement by the modern ratings structure.
Poster design
This Japanese B2 adopts a clean, highly graphic composition that departs from the crowded typography often associated with conventional home-video advertising.
The central image shows Thomas, played by David Hemmings, straddling the model Veruschka while photographing her during the film’s famous studio sequence. Their bodies are isolated against an uninterrupted teal ground, transforming the provocative photographic session into an almost abstract arrangement of movement, colour, and form.
The image encapsulates several of the film’s central concerns: the photographer’s dominance over his subject, the theatricality of fashion imagery, and the ambiguous boundary between observation and participation.
Along the left edge, the director’s name appears vertically in pale pink serif typography:
“MICHELANGELO ANTONIONI”
At upper right, the Japanese title is rendered in large, expressive white calligraphy:
「欲望」
The word Yokubō translates as “Desire,” the title under which the film has long been known in Japan.
Beneath it, the English title “BLOW-UP” appears in heavy black sans-serif lettering. The contrast between the gestural Japanese calligraphy and the severe modern English typography reflects the film’s tension between sensual experience and analytical scrutiny.
The compact billing block at the bottom retains the principal production credits, including Carlo Ponti, Michelangelo Antonioni, David Hemmings, Vanessa Redgrave, Sarah Miles, Carlo Di Palma, Tonino Guerra, and Herbie Hancock.
Cultural significance
Blow-Up became a foundational influence upon later films concerned with recorded evidence and uncertain interpretation. Its premise—an apparently detached observer discovering possible proof of a crime through an image or recording—can be traced through works including Francis Ford Coppola’s The Conversation and Brian De Palma’s Blow Out.
The film also remains one of the most important cinematic representations of 1960s fashion photography and youth culture, capturing a moment when photographers, models, designers, and musicians became central figures within London’s new cultural hierarchy.
Condition
Excellent. Please review the photograph—it shows the exact poster for sale.
This poster is an official original Japanese B2 produced for the 2004 DVD campaign. It is not a reproduction or an unauthorised reprint.
