Whatever his personal politics, Antonioni was, at base, a weepy director with pretensions to seriousness. He got his start doing glossy romantic melodramas in the late 40's, and the only thing that really changed was that the films grew emptier and more attenuated as the years went on. L'Avventura and La Notte are essentially Ross Hunter mellers that run too long and somehow acquired subtitles.

As for Blow-Up, it is sometimes lovely to look at, has some great music by Herbie Hancock, and an incredibly appealing cast. It is also, with the exception of the sequence where David Hemmings discovers the dead body in the photos he took, empty dreary and absolutely numbing. Why bother to put The Yardbirds in your movie if all you're going to make them look dreary and unappealing? They were a great group, and for all his prima donna tendencies, Jeff Beck was, is a great guitarist. Why does the audience look so bummed out? (Hollywood square Otto Preminger made much better use of another great pop group, The Zombies, in his 1965 London-set film Bunny Lake is Missing). And don't get me started on the mimes . . .