Cortazar_Vs._Antonioni

Cortazar Vs. Antonioni People often make swift judgments about surface appearances. Often they later find that their first impressions are incorrect. Such is the case when comparing Michelangelo Antonioni’s film Blow-Up to Julio Cortazar’s short story of the same name, on which the film is loosely based. While the two appear very different at first glance, many of the ideas and themes in Antonioni’s picture are the same as those in Cortazar’s tale. One such similarity is the way that both Antonioni and Cortazar play with perspective in their narratives in an attempt to trick and mislead the partaker. Cortazar and Antonioni use the opening of their works to skew a person’s observations. Cortazar uses the beginning of his short story to create a sense of confusion and disorder that sets the mood for what is to come. Instead of just starting the account of Roberto Michel from the beginning, Cortazar first wonders aloud how to relate what is going to unfold; according to him, “it will never be known how this [story] has to be told” (Cortazar 114). His puzzling switch between tenses, and his rambling from subject to subject, such as how he wishes that thomas, one, cortazar, woman, photographs, man, story, pictures, park, film, camera, two, out, between, antonioni, viewer, seeing, first, different, both, view, thomas’, something, scene, same, roberto, reader, point, people, older, makes, looking, car, boy, believes