Train Freak is a 1951 hitchcock film. The author's interest in this film is because of "1917" shot in 2019.
"1917" adopts the "one shot to the end" technique, and successfully makes a new exploration and deduction of the film space. It can be said that "1917" created the four-dimensional space of the film.
Because in a film, what can be presented is a three-dimensional world, one dimension refers to the parallel movement of people, two dimensions refers to up and down movement, and three dimensions refers to the movement of front and back. But "1917" provides a fourth-dimensional movement, that is, a film picture with a three-dimensional space, along the movement of the lens, to create a fourth dimension beyond the screen format itself, that is, "1917" uses a film picture to break through the limitations of the screen and create a three-dimensional space that is paved in the real world.
The filming scene of "1917"
We can completely reproduce the original appearance and geographical spacing of the battlefield in the movie according to the trajectory of the camera movement provided by "1917".
This is 1917's contribution to cinema and a transcendence of old cinema.
Because of the previous "one mirror to the end" technique, the fourth dimensional space created is an enclosed space. Going back in time, the space of "Birdman" filmed in 2015 is mainly concentrated in a circular environment in a theater, and at most the fourth dimensional space created by the film through the magic wrist. In 2002, russia filmed the movie "Russian Ark", which is completely "one shot to the end" method, which is also a huge Hermitage palace and a typical enclosed space.
Further on to find the source, you have to encounter Hitchcock's "One Shot to the End" technique of "Soul Reaper", the lens of this movie, all concentrated in a homestead, the space is even narrower.
Therefore, "1917" uses the "one-shot to the end" technique to make the fourth-dimensional space reproduce a past era, and it does not twist and turn, but goes all the way forward, showing the entire battlefield landscape. This is the groundbreaking contribution of 1917.
But this does not mean that Hitchcock's pioneering work in "Soul Reavers" is not forgotten. For this reason, the author followed Hitchcock's filming trajectory all the way, and pursued the proportion of the "one shot to the end" technique in Hitchcock's filming process. Interestingly, Hitchcock in the subsequent filming, is to go all the way to throw all the way, the proportion of the "one shot to the end" technique into a ladder down sharply reduced, "Under capricorn constellation" although there is no "one shot to the end" technique, but the entire film is through the long shot concatenated, and the later "Sea Horror" there are still a few long shots, and more concentrated in the murderer's memory paragraph, using the "truth" of the long shot to create a misleading audience.
In "Train Freak", Hitchcock has completely abandoned the showmanship of long shots, strictly in accordance with the principle of montage, handling the relationship between shots, and thus surpassing the previous "one shot to the end" technique brought about by the development of long shots to the extreme state of the lens length, cumbersome, poor character portrayal, insufficient picture gravity of the serious imbalance, and finally opened a new brilliant period for Hitchcock.
Since "Train Freak", Hitchcock has entered his golden age, and the films he has made since then can be remarkable.
From Hitchcock's historical revisit of the exploratory and crooked road of long shots, we can see the contradiction between the novelty and the drawbacks of the "one shot to the end" technique. In the future, the fascination of the fifth and sixth generations of Chinese films with long shots also once caused the film to fall into a trough and no one cared about it, and now in the use of chinese films, it is difficult to see the situation of long shot dominating the world. This kind of 'misdirection lamp' in Chinese movies has already been lit up high in Hitchcock's attempt to use the "one-shot to the end" technique.
Below, this article focuses on the in-depth analysis of why the murder themes in "Train Freaks" that profoundly affect today's film and television routines have endured for a long time.
<h1 class= "pgc-h-arrow-right" >, the logical novelty and embarrassment of "exchange murder" in "Train Freaks"</h1>
"Train Freak" is a typical "exchange murder" case, its characteristics are that the case will leave clues, the motive appears, and the exchange murder, that is, two people with murder needs, kill each other's target object, so that it effectively cuts the "motive chain" of murder, relieves the solver of the case from tracing the source of the case, and thus achieves the final exoneration.
"Train Freaks" is set according to this motive. Guy, the tennis player in the film, accidentally encounters a geek on the train, who is actually a psychopath because his claims are completely contrary to people's rational cognition. In fact, in order to be innovative, movies often need these murderers with original insights, and under the general normal situation, such murderers cannot appear, so the only way for the creators is to take out the life-saving straw of the mentally ill, so that the bizarre murder plan is classified into the strange thinking of the patient with incredible mental illness.
"Train Freak" is a murderous maniac created according to this logic. Hitchcock's interest in murder determines that he must find a case of ingenuity, and his great distress between films is to find the next murder that can be used, this mentality, in fact, Hitchcock knows it, and he will make his satire in his film, which is also Hitchcock's irony and self-confession of this mentality of the self that we talk about in the second point below.
Bruno's murderous plan proposed by bruno, the freak in Train Freak, is that he helps Guy kill his bedmate wife, while Gay helps him kill his father, who controls himself and deprives himself of his freedom at every turn (this is the theme of father-killing that the West talks about, with a traditional psychological foundation, Chinese a cultural tradition that lacks understanding).
Gay is a celebrity, he has a lot of trouble with his wife, the newspapers are full of his emotional entanglements, he urgently needs to divorce his current wife, and he marries the daughter of a newly acquainted parliamentarian, this kind of public gossip, naturally makes the freak find the use of his "exchange killing" logic. It is easy to deduce that Guy had a motive to kill his wife, because only in this way can he get rid of his current wife and find a new branch.
This logic is precisely what Guy thought after his current wife refused to divorce. It can be seen that he has no sin in action, but in his thoughts, he has the desire to sin.
And what the freak did next was to murder Guy's wife without Guy's approval. At this point, the film is actually not rigorous in logic, and can only be explained by the fact that the geek has a mental illness. The geek's spirit is not normal, but he is not leaking in the execution of the plan. He was able to find Guy's wife, and followed her to amusement city, successfully strangling Guy's wife.
In this way, in the "exchange murder" case, the freak wishfully completed the murder of his side, and because he did not reach an agreement with Guy, he was shaving his head and picking a hot head, so he took out his task to complete, to constantly urge, urge, and pressure Guy to complete his performance.
In this way, Guy becomes entirely a party to the passive "exchange of murders.". His weaknesses are that he himself has a motive for murder (getting rid of his wife who refuses to divorce) and a thought of murder (the film shows that he has fantasies of killing his wife), but he has not done so, which is an interesting question. Because the desires of modern social people are constrained by social rules, the evil thoughts in his heart will be incorporated into the regulations and frameworks of social norms through self-discipline. So Guy is completely unable to agree with the freak's "exchange murder" contract, and he wants to prove his innocence, which forms a new motivation for behavior based on "exchange murder" created in the film - to escape the trap. This is the freak's framing of Guy, who wants to put Guy's cigarette case back in the playground to complete the evidence of Guy's murder at the scene.
In this way, the real plot motivation of the movie is actually not the interpretation of the "exchange murder" plan, but finally reduced to the dispute of "evidence frame-up", which can also be seen that the logic of the film is not in place, there are some deviations, which is also the reason why the suspense in Hitchcock's movie will always have a sense of dislocation, this is because Hitchcock can not present the logic of the murder in every way, and can only set a general surface direction around a creativity. This inevitably leads to the fact that the logic in his films does not necessarily fit the psychology of real criminals. After all, he is shooting movies, and when Hitchcock conceived the murder, he himself was a timid and fearful person in real life, and he only transformed his inner fear into an image rendering in the movie.
In fact, it can be seen that the chase scene in the last part of "Train Freak" is difficult to justify logically. The freak's logical motive of wanting to put Guy's cigarette case on the spot, and Guy must immediately complete the tennis match to stop the freak's framing plot, is simply not valid. Because the murder scene is in a crowded playground, even if the geek puts the cigarette box on the scene, it is difficult to get the identification of the police, because the police cannot stay at the murder scene all day. Therefore, the final tense and fierce last-minute rescue chase is just a virtual explosion created out of the tension and suspense of Hitchcock's film, but it is difficult to become an inevitable fragment in the logical deduction of the film.
"Exchange murder" seems to be a hidden motive for murder, but in fact, this method of murder also involves more aspects, losing the concealment of the motive of murder, which is actually a very stupid method. But it certainly provides a way of thinking that makes this bizarre motive for murder flicker in police films from time to time.
For example, in the ninth episode of the first part of the domestic TV series "Six Groups of Serious Cases", the story of such a contract "exchange murder" is told, which is roughly deliberately outlined, and the author summarizes it in minimalist language:
A woman was killed, and her husband was suspected, but the time involved in the investigation of her suspicions, he went out to meet friends, and there was no time to commit crimes. Later, it was found that the friend's wife had also been killed. Therefore, it was finally found out that it was two people who exchanged to kill their wives, but the friend's wife was raped and killed, which served as a breakthrough, the friend confessed that he had been following the instructions of his friend since he was a child, and his wife had an affair, and the friend in the city killed his wife because his wife wanted to accuse him of corruption.
This plot seems to be very clever, but it is not real, the friend's wife was killed in the field, how can this side not know? Isn't there a case solved over there?
It also reflects that the "exchange of killings" is too wide-ranging, and there are too many flaws exposed, which is not the best idea for a murder.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" > ii, "Train Freak" mocks the strange interest of humans in murder</h1>
Hitchcock in "Train Freak" is like showing the strange idea of "exchanging murders", but this idea is too unexpected, can only characterize the freak as a mental patient, and normal people will generally control the killing intentions that pop out of their heads, because people are social creatures after all, and know how to suppress the animalistic way of thinking in their minds.
Therefore, Hitchcock is also well aware that he is happy to create all kinds of murder wonders, but the murder desire in his mind is created with the help of an illusory screen to create a seemingly real entity.
It can be said that the killing idea in "Train Freak" comes from Guy, and the executioner of the killing is the freak on the train. These two people were originally in reality, most of them guys, and there were only fantasies of murder, but Hitchcock let Guy's fantasies come true in the film through his films.
So Hitchcock was a professional concoctor who cashed in on the silver screen for criminal evil intentions.
Hitchcock knew this mentality.
It can be said that the film is precisely to present the illusions that people cannot realize in their hearts with the help of the screen.
This is also why people call movies "movie cheaters".
Hitchcock knew the goal of unleashing and pandering to this motivation, so he satirized the universality of this psychology in "Train Freaks".
We see that in the film, Hitchcock's daughter plays Barbara, another outspoken little daughter of the mp, which is a character with a rather comedic flavor, and in the film, she assumes nothing more than a gag and a helper role, but, interestingly, she fights with the police who are watching Guy, and she is most interested in a sensational murder story told by the police.
It seems that such a sunny little girl is full of irresistible interest in murder, reflecting the depths of people's hearts, and they all have an inexplicable hidden curiosity and wait-and-see psychology about killing.
However, when she really encounters murder, she will be like a great enemy and be seriously injured.
In the film, we see that when the geeks are at a party together and demonstrate the specific operation of neck-choking to an old lady participating in the party, the eyes of the geeks are staring at Barbara standing behind the old lady. Because Barbara and Guy's wife have the same hairstyle and wear similar glasses, especially the faces of the two people are similar, the geek hallucinates and uses Barbara as his target of murder, and even treats the demonstration as a real killer. Barbara was on the side to enjoy the murder demonstration and satisfy her curiosity, when she realized that the stranger was using her as the object of the imaginary killing, she immediately changed her look, burst into tears, and lost her soul, so that she could inquire about a murder story like a dragon, but when she really became a target in the murder, she would suddenly lose her face and lose her soul.
It can be seen that people's interest in murder reflects more of an inner latent desire, but in real life, it is only fearful to avoid, and psychologically it is also scorned.
This is reminiscent of Hitchcock's Soul Reaper. The university professor in the film teaches his students a fascist philosophy that can kill the lower classes, but when his students do it, he retracts his theory and angrily accuses his students of violating human morality. This revelation of man's dark thoughts can be seen as an eternal theme that Hitchcock has been tirelessly exploring.
In "The Train Freak", Hitchcock also uses black humor to show the geek in the party hall, introducing the killing experience of two strange old women to two strange old women.
In this scene, the freak first asks a gentleman in the identity of a judge about the murder and concludes that the murder case is not easy to solve.
Originally, he was talking about a terrible topic, but unexpectedly, he received a warm response from two well-dressed old women on the side.
Instead of using the details of the murder discussed by the freak as a pestle, the two old women came together and discussed with the freak several methods of killing.
The geek saw such a cooperative audience, and naturally the inspiration was gushing, gushing with the two old women to show their profound knowledge of murder.
In fact, at this time, the image of the geek is the embodiment of Hitchcock's own image, because Hitchcock constantly creates all kinds of murder spectacles in the movie, and without exception, the audience is like the two stupid old women in the film who can't wait to get together and discuss the specific details of the murder.
Hitchcock often shows his trademark fat body and jawless comic-style face as a passerby in movies, but at the same time, we don't realize that Hitchcock sometimes directly tucks his own thoughts and thoughts into the characters in his films, forming his own characteristic ideological irony that matches the image self-deprecation.
Inspired by the geek, these two noble ladies said two paths to killing, one old woman said to kill with a pistol, and the other old woman was more blue than blue to say the choice of killing with poison, it seems that these two old women are killing experts, but in great contrast with their snake and scorpion hearts, their faces are hung with sunny descriptions, but the strangers with previous killing records have a serious face, a serious face, a serious, serious, Isn't it strange to push the black humor that Hitchcock wants to express beyond belief to the pinnacle of untold humor?
With the curiosity of the two old women about killing people, the freak felt that it was not practical to operate it, sorry for the super interest of these two imaginative old women, so he made his request very gentlemanly: "Don't you mind if I borrow your neck for a while?" ”
This sentence, in the words of Hitchcock, is a voice to the audience: "You don't mind if I borrow your eyes for a while, do you?" - Let you see a murder surprise I brought you, right? ”
Therefore, in "Train Freak", Hitchcock satirizes the audience's dark psychology of the desire for murder, and satirizes himself to satisfy the audience's "love" of murder.
In the film, the freak has a self-statement: "Murder exists in my consciousness, but it is not my murder." ”
This sentence can just look at hitchcock's concocted thriller creation psychology, in Hitchcock's consciousness, there is the idea of murder, but the murder he created in the film belongs to the characters in the movie, not his murder.
This is the release and display process of the film on the creator's inner psychology, and at the same time, it is also the process of satisfying and pandering to the audience's psychology, and one of the key words is "murder". The two levels of production murder and consumer murder will be mastered on the interface of the movie. Hitchcock used this to unveil the most interesting black curtain on his filmmaking center, and this dark curtain will still hang over the film and television works that still have a lot of murder themes after him.
<h1 class= "pgc-h-arrow-right" > three, "Train Freak" reverses the slow-paced drawbacks of Hitchcock's keen long shots in the previous three films by switching quickly</h1>
Compared with the extreme style of using long-shot technology and developing to "one shot to the end" in "Raiders of the Soul", the biggest feature of "Train Freak" is that it adopts a fast, fast, and short cutting method on the lens, which accelerates the rhythm of the film from the appearance, and the deeper advantage is to join the director's intervention in the camera, directly extract the editing knife out of the picture that the director wants to give the audience attention, so that the intention expressed by the film can more directly intervene in the acceptance of the film.
In contrast, the long shot is only a laissez-faire of the audience's viewing focus, and it is even more inaction on the character's heart. This flaw is also evident in 1917. The biggest flaw of "2017" is that it has to allow "one shot to the end" to take the film to a state of almost "doing nothing" to portray the characters.
In "Train Freak", it can be seen that the rapid cut of the camera is a return to the irresistible and important control of montage over the film. Compared with long-shot technology, the advantages of montage are very obvious, at least in "Train Freak", we can see that the editing of the film is reborn with light and simple functions.
From at least three aspects, we can see that Hitchcock has brought a strong subject's will to the film by abandoning the long-shot technology:
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" >1, interaction between scene pressures. </h1>
Long-shot techniques can only be limited to one scene, which greatly limits the film's multiple narratives.
"1917" uses a war to let the camera travel through the battlefield, opening up a new application space for long-shot technology, but no matter how it moves and jumps in various parts of the battlefield sand table, it cannot create a hidden interaction between different geographical locations.
For example, in 1917, it is impossible to show the confrontational interaction between the warring parties in different locations.
In "Train Freak", Hitchcock can flexibly let the camera jump freely in the two time and space of the two sides of the interaction, through two spaces that are geographically separated, through the editing knife, let them have an interactive relationship.
This is the interactive scene between the thrilling tennis court and the playground in "Train Freak", which makes the two spaces have a kind of inner relationship like a shooting star, a technique that can only be highlighted with the help of montage wrists.
In "Train Freak", on the one hand, Guy is playing on the court, and he needs to finish the game quickly, and rushing to the playground to stop the geek from planting his booty, on the other hand, the geek murderer rushing to the playground to plot his plan to arrange the stolen goods. The film gives the otherwise loose and crumbling game a tension on the string, and the reason is because of the pressure of the freak's conspiracy, which urges the urgency of the game on the tennis court. This is a typical interactive relationship that opens up space.
Is there an interactive relationship that opens up time? Yes, that is, Nolan's "Inception", the past years and the real time have interacted with each other. Nolan's other film, Interstellar, is also an interactive film that travels through space. This is the ultimate use of montage technology to produce interactive effects.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" >2, interaction between characters looking at each other. </h1>
Montage technology can lift the interactive relationship between the characters from the complicated situation, giving the audience a profound revelation, just like what we often say on the Internet " to draw the point" .
For example, in "Train Freak", we see that when the freak shows his neck-pinching technique in the living room, the eyes are focused on Barbara, and the film lens directly achieves focus between the eyes of the two characters through montage, so that the complicated relationship between the living room and the thief first focuses on the interaction between the two people who care about the finger, so that the camera cuts into the confrontation of the related characters and reveals the core event truth in a large scene.
If you use long lens technology, it is difficult to show such an antagonistic relationship, before Hitchcock in the long lens and "one shot to the end" technique, the method used is to let the two characters stand side by side, side facing the camera, so that their relationship, can only be viewed by the camera side, it is difficult to produce this kind of face-to-face and strong eye contact.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" >3, interaction between psychic clashes. </h1>
The film seems to be just a skin-like peep, which, logically speaking, is at a clear distance from the revelation of the mind. But a good movie can just gain insight into the soul of the character, which is to show the interaction of the character through the technique of montage, from which the secret of the soul is insight into the contrast between the positive and the negative.
In "Train Freak", whether it is between Guy and his girlfriend to deal with the imminent suspense of planting stolen goods, or in the cat and mouse game between the freak and Gay, Hitchcock bid farewell to the long story under the long lens, but focused on the dense expression echo between the characters, through the character's subtle micro-expression interaction, to show the character's spiritual secrets, and the audience also invested in the attention of the character because of the timely push to the character's inner open platform. This is also the reason why the interactive attention of the characters in "Train Freak" allows us to constantly explore the deep inner secrets.
As such, Train Freaks provides a model for capturing the inner secrets of a character. But it must also be pointed out that "Train Freak" is more like Hitchcock's film, showing the direction and flow of characters in desire, rather than interested in showing the deduction of the wind and the shadow, so the direction of the case in the movie, like most of the drawbacks in Hitchcock's films, will have a flawed sense of unreality, which does not seem worthy of scrutiny.
But Hitchcock created a sense of narrative rationality and existence, and he himself did not want his film to become a realistic record of a murder, he was more interested in transforming the murder fantasy in his mind into the reality in the film. And he did not forget to jump out of the air and make a moderate satire of his imagination at the right time, which in turn formed the unique black humor in his films.
When the audience plunged into Hitchcock's film, Hitchcock also suppressed the audience a little, and the audience was still happy, which is the charm of Hitchcock's flow of his wisdom beyond the film lens.