The following and images are excerpted from the book The Grand Budapest Hotel: The Collection of Wes Anderson's Works, published with the permission of the publishing house.
Excerpt from Xiao Shuyan
The Grand Budapest Hotel: The Collection of Works by Wes Anderson, edited by Matt Zoller Setz, translated by Zou Aiyang, Houlang 丨 Kyushu Publishing House, May 2021
Dress is human: the art of cinematic costumes
Written by Christopher Levotty
On the screen, a person's clothing can make us know a lot. Costumes serve multiple aesthetic dimensions of the film: characters, narrative progression, chronological accuracy, visual spectacle. How a film is remembered in the public consciousness is also closely related to clothing. The most stunning costumes may gradually become symbols of the film itself in memory: Scarlett's velvet curtain hem dress in Gone with the Wind, the white coat, black top hat and hood of the gangster gang in Clockwork Orange (the costume was designed by Milena Canionello), Indiana Jones's leather jacket, soft felt hat and leather whip. They are like the costumes in The Grand Budapest Hotel, which can be both objects of careful observation and fascination, or they can be just the right presence in the context of the film: you don't have to pay special attention to the details of the costumes, but if you choose to pay attention, the details may reveal more profound meaning.
Stills from the movie Moonrise Kingdom.
Stills from the movie "Rocket in a Bottle".
Stills from the movie "Genius".
Stills from the movie "Life in the Water".
Anderson often puts on uniforms for the characters he creates. Sometimes uniforms mean specific classes, such as "Lawn Ranger" in Bottled Rocket and crew member of the Bellafant in Life in the Water. Sometimes, a uniform is a form of self-creation that represents the character's perception of themselves or the world's perception of them. Costumes are the character's armor, their subtext, or more critically, a visual ruse. When the armor is torn or abandoned, the audience will immediately notice. We can read the characters inside by studying their outward appearance, because what they wear is human.
Stills of Agatha (Silsa Ronan) dressed in the uniform of mendel's bakery in the movie "The Grand Budapest Hotel".
Silsa Ronan, photographer Robert Yoman visible in the background.
At first glance, Agatha is just a typical pastry shop girl in a sweet pistachio green dress, a pink stranded knit sweater and thick wool socks. But as the story unfolds, she receives a porcelain pendant from the Cross Key Alliance, symbolizing her becoming one of the film's most important characters. We have learned that this badge is usually only worn by protocol officers who join that well-known alliance. But because of Agatha's resourcefulness, Gustav thought she deserved the honor. Zero is still immersed in mourning after becoming an elderly man, and he wears this pendant to soothe the thought of his deceased love.
Cross Key Alliance pendant.
Gustav wears a concierge uniform.
Gustav was dressed in prison uniform.
Mrs. D was dressed in a Klimt-style coat, flanked by Gustav in uniform.
As Gustav degenerated from a symbol of extravagant tradition to a despised prisoner, he took off his custom suit and replaced it with a striped prison uniform—sleeves too short, trousers dangling at the ankles, and a pair of heavy wooden shoes on his feet. He seems to accept this little indecency with a relatively optimistic attitude, and does not even say a word about the greater insult that ensues; but we may wonder how Madame D, always dressed in a Klimt-style velvet robe, would feel if she had not yet died at this time to see her always well-dressed lover so depressed. The old woman's costume symbolizes the pinnacle of hotel culture: a glorious era of parties and champagne, four-poster beds and foie gras.
William Dafoe plays the killer J.G. Joplin.
Dafoe wears a black leather coat.
Joplin's knee-length leather trench coat has a solid, hard silhouette that is practical and stylish. The costume is based on a German leather coat from World War II, essentially a motorcycle communicator coat designed to keep the wearer warm and dry. Although the black-clad Joplin looks like a parody of the typical villain, the audience can't laugh because of the horror myth. His vampire Nosferatu-like fangs and skull-shaped knuckle sleeves, and under the cover of a coat gun (where the map should have been placed) hid a gun, a bottle of wine, and a crushed ice pick. However, even these most sinister violent outfits do not overly diminish the comedic characters themselves.
Jude Lowe wears a Norfolk suit.
Tom Wilkinson wears a Norfolk suit.
Sharp-eyed viewers may have recognized the semi-intersecting design of the back of the three brothers' coats in the director's fifth feature film, Across Darjeeling (a nod to the classic Norfolk suit). The elderly and young writers in The Grand Budapest Hotel are dressed in full Norfolk suits. From the Victorian era to the 1920s, the Norfolk suit was widely considered a sportswear. On screen—especially in an environment outside the countryside—there is a man in a Norfolk suit, indicating that he is a gentleman who has traveled richly, a wanderer far from his homeland, a man similar to our writers, and that the precious time spent with Zero has changed his life.
Magnificent stage: scenes and art design
Written by 丨 Steven Boone
With meticulous design, combined with colourful colours and ornate décor, Wes Anderson's films are often described as a dollhouse or a beautiful kingdom of candy. Such a reputation may give the impression that Anderson's work is mostly limited by sets and worked on a full set of elaborate installations. In fact, the writer-director sought stylization [toy-like art design with both form and function, L.B. Albert. B. Abbott's "cable, tape, rubber band" school of special effects] and realism (psychologically based performances, shooting using pre-existing locations). This balance brings a unique tension to his films. In The Grand Budapest Hotel, this binary game is also used to describe Europe in the years of industrialization, expansion, war, and genocide: the elegant and cultured cities of Vienna, Paris, London, and Berlin are gradually falling into the shadow of the systematic atrocities of the world war.
What makes these two opposing forces merge rather than collide with each other is the photographer Robert Yoman who envelops them with a soft, bright light from cold to warm. Adam Stockhausen's art design draws heavily from Edmund Goulding's The Grand Hotel, as well as other 1930s and 1940s classics such as Ernst Liu's Troubles in Paradise and The Shop on the Corner, Rouben Mamoulian's The Princess, Alfred Hitchcock's Missing Lady and Thirty-Nine Steps. Yoman, on the other hand, rarely adopted the directional, well-shadowed lighting style of these films. Dominating Anderson's world is color, not black and white. In terms of color alone, the full-color early 20th century in Anderson's films also has a nostalgic color, but this nostalgia is closer to the memories of people who actually lived in that era, rather than the nostalgia that produces romantic imaginations of world wars through black-and-white films alone. Soft and bright lights, also commonly used when hitting glamour lighting, flow out of lampshades or are reflected through cream-colored walls. It was Romantic realism, brought to the screen by two of Wes Anderson's two main sources of influence, François Truffaut and Louis Mahler, through footage by New Wave photographers Henri Decaë and Raoul Coutard. Light induces us to see the environment as an extension of the character, and also has its own eccentric personality.
The 1932 exterior of the Grand Budapest Hotel (which was actually a department store) was a pastel Art Nouveau whimsical world, a style that was deeply ingrained by Mr. Gustav, chief concierge and lady's companion, but was obsolete long before he entered the business as a concierge boy. In the 1930s, modernism blossomed without Gustav's attention. The grand hotel we see still maintains the appearance of his youth, the toy box he has long borrowed to gain a sense of superiority. This space sets the stage for his urbanism, sophistication, cynicism and lofty ideals. All the exteriors of the hotel are miniatures made by Simon Weisse in a 1:18 scale, so it seems logical.
The booty room of Lutz Castle. The script describes it as a "dark, wooden hall full of specimens of skulls (lions, tigers, buffalo, antelopes, etc.)."
The second act of the film's madness begins in an ornate mansion called "Lutz Castle" [exterior from Castle Hainewalde in Saxony, Germany, and interior from Schloss Waldenburg], which resembles the evil twins of the Grand Budapest Hotel. The hotel's warm colours and luxurious comforts exude the luxury of being at home, while this gloomy castle decorated in hardwood is a condescending statement of wealth. Its halls are so complex that it is not an exaggeration to say that it was the residence of Dr. Frankenstein or the Nazi headquarters in the Universal Pictures horror film (Heinewald Castle was indeed requisitioned by the Nazis in 1933). The trophy room is the cold core of the building, where the will of Gustav's elderly lover, Madame Desgolf-Taxis, is read. The room was surrounded not so much with discarded specimens of prey heads, horns, and torsos. In addition, the room was filled with "relatives" sitting shoulder to shoulder, and although dressed in funeral clothes, their eyes invariably fell greedily on the executor Kovac (who looked like an owl professor who taught funeral parlor science), as if waiting for the lottery number to be revealed. The dark green and gold embellishments on the walls also do little to ease the overall feeling of being trapped in a tomb. Just a glance at Madame D's son, Dmitry—a tight black robe like a crow, with a harsh mustache and grotesque hairstyle—we know where the atmosphere of the room comes from.
From flickering candles to large brown wooden decorative surfaces, at least warmer hues can still find a place in Lutz Castle. And when Gustav, who was imprisoned for murder, arrives at Checkpoint 19, we don't see any more warm-colored luck. The gritty side of Gustav's soul began to unfold in this crumbling blue-gray iron box. He is no longer just the flashy playboy, but a survivor who doesn't accept defeat – and only God knows where this disposition came from. Max Ofels may point out that the appearance of high society represented by the Grand Budapest Hotel is underpinned by unspeakable suffering and violence in society. Gustav is no stranger to these dark sides, and there are plenty of devastating pictorial cues in the film. Gustav was able to deal with all kinds of foul language and atrocities in many European hotels, and he also tirelessly maintained the humility of his time at the Grand Budapest Hotel while in prison. Was his civility innate? Was his roughness learned? There's a comedic highlight in the film where he invites his fellow inmates to a box of Mendel's pastry house snacks, a luxury that can be compared to truffles and caviar. Dressed in camp-like grey prison uniforms, prisoners huddled together in a frame of blunt stone walls gaze in awe at a sweet pyramid-shaped pastry as if looking up at the embodiment of the Grand Budapest Hotel. Here, art design plays a role in sublimating characters and social commentary.
The atrium of the Karstadt in Görlitz, Germany, was reborn in the hands of art director Adam Stockhausen and became the atrium of the Grand Budapest Hotel.
This is one of Anderson's most brutal films. The film's historically significant choice of scenes casts an unsettling backdrop behind each atrocity. The only exception was the completely whimsical climactic shootout scene, where the camera slid sideways between shooters on the top floor of the hotel. But in addition, most of the violent and killing scenes in the film are soaked with a dark background. The mahogany decorations of the trophy room and the eerie atmosphere of the walls envelop Dmitry's lackey Joplin like a cloak. He follows the Scene of the Kovac Executive through the dimly lit museum, emulating the SCENE in Hitchcock's Breaking the Iron Curtain when the KGB pursues Paul Newman. For Anderson, the world is gradually swallowed up in darkness by violence, loss, and even extreme emotional contempt, which is also manifested in the change of the film's scenes, sometimes even in a single shot. When Zero, who had already passed away, recalled his beloved Agatha, who had died young, the lights in the dining room of the Grand Budapest Hotel dimmed as a strong side light swept across his face.
It was Anderson's passion for anamorphic photography inspired by Truffaut's early work (coupled with Yoman's talent), and it combined some of the visual components of scenes in the very different films of Youth, Genius, Life in the Water, Crossing Darjeeling, and The Grand Budapest Hotel. He only used anamorphic lenses in the 1960s scenes of the Grand Budapest Hotel, technically coinciding with the widescreen era that belonged to James Bond. The widescreen format is also appropriate than the illusion of equality between classes during the communist regime. Of course, as always, Anderson's main purpose in using this form was to reinforce the solemn and nostalgic recollection that surrounds the character as he narrates his experiences (the slight distortion of the anamorphic lens and the oil-like softness of the defocused area add a touch of mystery to the scene). Although the Grand Budapest Hotel is a relic of decay, and the tedium of utilitarianism buries the palatial gilding of the old days, the distorted optical effect still allows us to see the place through Mustafa's heavy-hearted perspective. We can almost see ghosts traveling around.
Vending machine area in the lobby of the Grand Budapest Hotel in the 1968 clip. The signs "Failure" and "Unauthorized Consequences at Your Own Risk" show a regression in the quality of customer service during this period.
However, the lowest point of Anderson's emotions is not darkness (which he describes as an inevitable fact in life), but a world that has lost its color and diversity — all that remains is rigid, ugly choices. Black and white. We soon saw the events in the train cars, the tone of the picture was black and white, and we naturally thought of the atrocities of the army, and soon we learned that this overture played Gustav's death, which was not presented in the picture. The black-and-white tone of this passage is consistent with the black-and-white meaning of Chaplin's The Great Dictator, Frank Borzage's Deadly Storm, and Spielberg's Schindler's List. It both opened a horrific history and ended Gustav's fantasies about civilization.
The final set of shots of "The Grand Budapest Hotel" takes us out of the story step by step through the narrative outlet constructed by different characters' narration, Mustafa first summarizes Gustav's story, and the writer also summarizes mustafa's memories, both of which show a marvelous grace (Zero's original words about Gustav' comments): Mustafa first solved the puzzle - why he was interested in the decline of this temple? A pleasure-free hotel still has a deep attachment? Subsequently, the elevator door slowly closed in front of him like the curtain of the final curtain. The writer went on to confess that he had never seen Mustafa again, nor had he returned to the Hotel. This sentence begins with a young writer, and when we say the first half of the sentence we see him writing in the hotel lobby of the 1960s; when we say the second half, it shows an elderly man, still writing, but already in his home in the 1980s. The picture then cuts to a young girl who looks like she's full of books, and she sits on a bench near the now-deceased writer's monument reading the story throughout. This string of touching and resonant and identity shots is not highlighted by close-ups, but by panoramic shots of characters, who are incomparably small against the background of the scene, trapped in their respective moments in time, but touch each other through printed words.
I suspect that what gives this montage a special impact is a brief shot in front of it. That was the last time Gustav appeared. He and other hotel employees stood beneath what many would call kitsch's giant landscape in the dining room, posing for a photo. The whole picture is top-heavy due to the overemphasis on the upper part, allowing the audience to only have a quick glance at Gustav. Pay extra attention to Anderson's "careless" approach. Here he uses the set to give voice to his beloved character—the personable, proud, flawed, comical and pompous man who also has a mind as great as the size of the painting in the painting. Anderson wanted to say, look, this is a life that fascist bastards have erased in an instant. Although he belongs to all sentient beings, he is unique.
Original author 丨 Christopher Levotty/Steven Boone
Editor 丨 Shen Chan
Introduction part proofreading 丨 Li Shihui
Source: Beijing News