Michelangelo Antonioni’s English-language debut, set in swinging Sixties London, was worshipped by New Hollywood directors, and it’s easy to see why. Blow-Up nails a dramatic use of urban space that American filmmakers spent the next decade chasing. That a generation of semiotically obsessed cinephiles fixated on this film is entirely logical. After all, for better or worse, Antonioni’s got his master stylist hat on here, even if it sometimes obscures his vision.

Blow-Up is a story about a photographer: Thomas (David Hemmings) is competent, successful, and pursued by models. He’s also sleazy and casually cruel. He’s chasing diversions: women, a plane propeller, a broken guitar – anything to offset the dull compromise between his personal and commercial work, the latter of which he resents.

There’s a sense that his cynicism feeds his detachment from reality. Antonioni nudges us to see his work like...