Winter is coming, and watching movies at home is still the most enjoyable life.
Having written so many directors, I found that there is one director I love that I have not yet mentioned, and that is Alfred Hitchcock.
There are so many Creators and fans around the world who are influenced by Hitchcock, and most film academics will use Hitchcock as a model for research, and I am no exception.
Martin Scorsese once said metaphorically: "In fact, Hitchcock's films are generally theme parks like Marvel movies, but his contradictions and impact are amazing." ”
It is true that Hitchcock's films are very "routine", but his routine is based on the variability of the core of the story, but also on the charm of the characters, and more on the curiosity of the audience.
As a master of suspense films, you can say that he has only made the same kind of movies in his life, but each movie has different highlights, and each movie has scenes that people like to see.
At this time, when we began to really think about Hitchcock's creative value, we felt that he was so romantic and cute.
Isn't it?
He knows that audiences like to see handsome men and beautiful women, so most movies are a combination of gentlemen and blonde beauties;
He knows that the audience is full of curiosity, so he uses the shooting method of suspense films, layer by layer, and stands in the audience's thinking angle to uncover various mysteries;
He also knows that audiences have a strong sense of hope for a happy ending, so many films he perfectly presents a romantic comedy ending.
The author who can create from the perspective of the audience is definitely a big entertainer, he does not pretend to be deep, nor is he self-obsessed, and he knows how to make a movie to look good;
This is the value of Hitchcock, who told many future generations of directors that film should not overexpress itself, it is always an art of talking to humans.
Of course, this is just the chemical effect of genre films, Hitchcock is not Antonioni, in the context of Hollywood and European film context has produced different effects, we can look at the charm of film art in multiple dimensions;
Antonioni's Adventures
Movies can be Hitchcock or Antonioni, these film pioneers have created a variety of film forms for us, provided us with a variety of film materials, in the process of creation of future generations, we should take its essence, more forms into unexpected film experience.
Antonioni 'Eclipse'
This is the core of my refinement in Hitchcock's films, which seem to be tense and precise, but extremely relaxed and happy.
I would have liked to talk about Hitchcock's most unpopular "Confession", after watching a series of his films such as "North by Northwest", "Rear Window", "Beauty Plan", "Ecstasy" and so on, the appearance of "Confession" shattered my interpretation of him;
Confessions starred Montgomery
In short, this is a very unHichcock movie, if you are interested, you can look for it. And why I didn't write Confessions was because I suddenly stumbled upon a documentary by Ingrid Bergman and thought of her collaboration with Hitchcock on Doctor Edward.
Ingrid Bergman
In such a superstar who pursues love and freedom, the film is just a microcosm of her, people say "life is like a drama", Bergman has spanned half of the film history, cooperated with many legendary directors such as Bergman, Wilder, Rossellini, etc., experienced marriage changes and accusations, but still maintained the love of the film, which is very admirable to me;
Hitchcock filmed the set of "The Beauty Plan" and chatted with Ingrid Bergman and Gary Grant
Hitchcock once said, "Bergman is a man who loves movies more than he loves life." "It's an actress with mixed fantasies and reality, and in her I observe a kind of "awakening beauty."
So when I looked back at "Dr. Edward" with Hitchcock, I suddenly realized how close this role fits her own personality charm, and the true color is still the biggest weapon to create a role, whether it is an actor or a director, this is a process of self-exploration.
The reason why Bergman became Bergman, the reason why Gregory Pike became Gregory Parker, and the reason why Hitchcock became Hitchcock is that it is all a transcendent nature at work.
If you look at the introduction to Doctor Edward, there is an introductory sentence: "It was one of the first psychoanalytic films in the history of cinema."
The set of "Doctor Edward"
Since then, psychoanalysis has become an indelible mark on the film, and it is true that in Hitchcock's choreography, a Freudian "interpretation of dreams" has been introduced, allowing people to indulge in a fragmentary combination of patchwork;
Plus Hitchcock is good at capturing the audience's curiosity, so the suspense setting is laid out from scratch, and almost an hour and a half of the 2-hour movie is playing games with us;
You enter his suspenseful dream, you want to follow the character to find the exit, and at the exit, there is the biggest conspiracy hidden, then you find that Hitchcock's film is not just as mechanical as the interpretation of dreams.
A sane and calm female doctor, who has met strange psychopaths, but only fell in love with her new boss, it is not too much to describe the Constance played by Bergman at first sight, perhaps in ordinary movies, you will feel too false, without the accumulation and preparation of emotion, and it seems to be a little hasty to fall in love with the new Dr. Edward at first sight.
But Hitchcock's romance lies in the fact that even in a suspense film, the male and female protagonists can still talk about an extraordinary love, and the heroine is willing to take risks for love.
This is the strength of Hitchcock's narrative, the emotional motivation of the characters is carried out together with the suspense and decryption, and the audience will not only be deeply touched, but also put themselves into the situation, trying to see a happy ending.
The arrival of Dr. Edward makes Constance show a different side, and then Edward's abnormality allows Constance to discover his unknown secret, it turns out that he is not really Dr. Edward, and he himself does not know who he is?
At this point in the story, suspicious cases emerge, illnesses are highlighted, and in the character of Gregory Parker, three diseases hold us and Constance's hearts - paranoia + memory loss + guilt.
This is what Hitchcock wanted to represent as a character's illness, and he thought about how to get rid of them one by one.
At this time, he uses Constance's identity as an analyst to take us into a surrealist dream, and at the same time, the adventure of love never stops.
So there is a most classic line: a woman can be a good psychoanalyst before falling in love, and once in love, she becomes a patient.
This is a humorous and sarcastic sentence of the outsider Professor Alikson, but it is very suitable for reading the whole film;
Most people will interpret the psychoanalysis and dream analysis of the whole film as the focus, which is the rational side shown by Hitchcock;
He builds a reasonable expectation, a reasonable relationship, and a reasonable doubt, and then he needs to break these structures and pull back from them the essence of emotion—love can eliminate everything.
Constance is one of the most brilliant female characters in his films, although she knows that there are many doubts, she firmly believes that her lover is not a murderer, so she tries her best to help him retrieve his fading memories, and calmly uses the murderer's psychological barrier to break through the dangerous defense line and actively grasp the happiness of his love.
This is rare in the past male-dominated Hitchcock films, where Constance shows the ultimate two-sidedness of a woman, willing to give for love, and extremely intelligent;
She parses John's key points about Dalí's eye dreams and subdues the real murderer. On the contrary, John, played by Pike, has a sense of powerlessness and seems to have won love and freedom with his "beauty".
However, the character contradiction must be set up in this way to arouse the attention of the audience, and put on Hitchcock's usual suspense + black humor + the first use of dream analysis, still the audience's viewing resonance firmly in their own hands.
Sometimes we know the ending, but still want to see how he breaks the game, which is the film wealth that Hitchcock brought, so that later directors such as Chabrol and Scorsese often use it.
In fact, Hitchcock's film is a curve of rationality and sensibility flowing at the same time, I remember in "Rear Window" is also such a mood ups and downs, but the structure is very different, he grasped the human psychological state, and zoomed in into the image, later people can not actually copy him.
And it comes down to his essence, I think he, like many fans, expresses what I want to see in the movie? Instead of what the movie wants me to see, he often murders himself, splits into multiple superego forms of Hitchcock, and finally reduces it to an image spirit, that spirit, which we can call — tonight we are all Hitchcock.