"Once the history of war was hard to redeem, except for Paris is not spring." Long shots of the Seine, the ripples of the water that are sloping across the river. Dark floating unforgettable love, park cold pond crane shadow. The world's cold eyes bury the soul of the king", in the evaluation of the film "Flowers Fall warblers cry spring", a netizen wrote the above oil poem. This almost extinct Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film, because the plot involves the love of "Strange Shu" and "Little Lolita", is also a French film, so it is praised by many senior fans as the predecessor of "This Killer Is Not Too Cold". But when we carefully appreciate this film, we will find that the connotation of human nature interpreted in this film is more full of "chill" than "This Killer Is Not Too Cold".
The film's protagonist, Pierre (played by Hardy. Kruger) is a wartime Air Force pilot who crashed in an accident while on a mission, but he was lucky enough to save his life. Although he survived the war, Pierre suffered a severe mental injury and suffered from amnesia and vertigo (similar to fear of heights and hydrophobia). Physical ailments are easy to heal, but mental injuries are not so easy to heal, especially after Pierre returned to normal social life from the battlefield with mental sequelae, in addition to overcoming his inner self-fear and guilt in war, he also had to learn to deal with normal society, which made Pierre's state increasingly depressed, and his girlfriend Madeleine (by Nicole. Kursay) sees all this in his eyes, but he can't help it.
If a person loses his memory, if he forgets the life experience and the laws of survival in this world, then his behavior will seem a little strange relative to the world around him. And Pierre in the film is like this, although he is still an adult on the surface, but because he suffers from amnesia, his heart has been restored to childhood. This is Pierre's biggest dilemma in the film, he uses the innocence of a child to control the appearance of an adult, wandering in the adult world. This is also the ultimate reason for the tragic ending of Pierre, Pierre's ideological innocence and directness, not accepted by the adults around him, but the innocence of Pierre, so that the people around him regard him as an outlier.
One day Pierre meets a 12-year-old little girl at the station, Sibel (played by patricia, a famous French child star at the time. Played by Gates), two fallen people meet in the dark. Siebel was abandoned by his parents, grandmother and other family members, and was eventually sent to an orphanage by his father. Siebel's situation is very similar to Pierre's, if Pierre is actively frustrated in the spiritual world, then Siebel is passively frustrated in the real world. They were all abandoned by their former selves, and it was Pierre who abandoned him the disgust and hatred of what he had done, so in his spiritual world, he voluntarily abandoned his once sinful and ugly self. His frustration was a kind of spiritual "survival with a broken arm." Siebel is the "broken arm" that his parents and other relatives abandoned in real life for life.
So when Pierre meets Sibel, the two of them have "the same fallen people at the end of the world, why should they have known each other when they met." " sigh. The two of them define the feelings between them as love, and the 12-year-old Siebel sometimes presents himself as a fiancée, in fact, the love between them is more like an excuse for self-deception, or the emotional illusion specially created between them in order to be able to send two people together in the loneliness and loneliness of the crowd. Although Pierre and Siebel both have jealousy of each other because of "love", although Pierre and Siebel are looking forward to it, the Sunday that belongs to them. But after a closer look at the film, fans will find that their happiness together is not because of love, but because they have found a confidant in the crowd between them.
Contrary to the childlike thoughts that pierre hides under the surface of an adult, Siebel's sense of self,d'tinge ripens rapidly as a result of a life of misery. Because her relatives abandoned her mercilessly, Siebel lost confidence in her current life, and she even lost her sense of self. Through Siebel's self-description, the director throws a proposition about self-consciousness to the audience, when the individual is abandoned by the group, does he still have a self? Does she still have to be self-aware? Does she still have to have her own name?
As Siebel famously says at the end of the film, "When my loved one is gone, I am nameless and nameless." "Yes, when all the people in the film are questioning Pierre and Sibel, how can they ever consider the feelings between Pierre and Sibel from the perspective of Pierre and Sibel. Pierre and Siebel are defined as poor people in this world, the world has a compassionate perspective on their feelings, although Pierre's girlfriend Madeleine loves him deeply, but Madeleine's deep love is a selfish, out of her own appeal of emotions, and as Pierre is more like a foil for Madeleine's life, Pierre has no way to participate in Madeleine's life, because they do not have a consistent level of intellectual maturity, so Pierre has never been able to echo Madeleine's emotions.
Madeleine was eager to draw Pierre's inner world back into the adult world again through her own efforts, and in a medical sense, it might be possible to succeed. But as far as the emotional care of the moment is concerned, it is clear that spending the weekend with Siebel is more in line with Pierre's current emotional needs. But Pierre and Siebel's date soon attracted the attention of those around them, who projected questioning glances at the suspicious father and daughter who often swam along the river, and they soon discovered that Pierre and Siebel were not a real father and daughter at all, and their relationship was more like a couple.
Pierre and Siebel's relationship is obviously not tolerated by the world, as a line in the film says: "Their happiness is not what you think they are happy, you think they are not normal." In fact, the relationship between Pierre and Sibel is pure emotional sustenance, the simplicity of Pierre's inner emotions, childlike, makes him more eager to have a good friend like Sibel, and Sibel is the maturity of the inner illusion, making her more eager to have a friend like Pierre, the tragic reality of the two people's lives, let them come together, snuggle with each other, warm each other, and heal each other. And in the eyes of the world? Their relationships, feelings, and behaviors are ugly and impure, and with this realization, they are cast into strange eyes and malice.
Because of pierre and Siebel's life situation, there are very few friends who come into contact with them, and naturally few people can understand their true spiritual situation. This also includes Pierre's girlfriend Madeleine, although Madeleine is deeply in love with Pierre, but her feelings for Pierre are like a doting mother, and her love makes Pierre feel more inferior and unsuitable. So while many people try to care about Pierre, they can't find a suitable path. In the end, Madeleine may be out of worry or jealousy, so she chooses to ask for help from her former friend, and this friend of hers, without Madeleine's knowledge, chooses to call the police.
Indeed, in real life, when people see a strange spider and Little Lolita who are not related by blood, when this strange spider has behaved strangely, and when he still holds a "murder weapon" in his hand, people naturally do not return too beautiful fantasies about this scene. So in the end, pierre was not killed by the police's pistol, but by the rumor of "asking for his life". The so-called rumors are people's reckless, irresponsible remarks and speculations that people make without examination, without confirmation, just by relying on their subjective assumptions about a scene, a person, and a thing. Behind this kind of speech, there is often a hidden evil side of human nature.
Pierre's life, and the emotions of Pierre and Siebel, were stifled in this gossip. In fact, this is only the second damage caused to them by gossip, and before this injury, it is gossip that has forced their mental state step by step back in this repressive corner. They no longer have the joy and dignity of survival in the values of the world, and they only play a role in the normal human world to set off the compassionate emotions that still exist in this world. But when they do find a spiritual breakthrough, when they try to return to the happy state of normal life, they are finally abandoned by this world that pitied them. Because of their happy way, many people think it is not normal.
It is worth mentioning that what is different from the "cold" of human nature shown in this film is the beauty of the light and shadow of this film. Although the film's graphics are made up of black and white, the cameraman shows the audience the wonders of light and shadow on the screen through the ripples stirred up by the stones thrown into the water, the light refracted through the crystals, and the scenery reflected through the glass windows.
This 57-year-old film, with its beauty of light and shadow and the "coldness" of human nature, won the 1962 Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film. This "unpopular" classic is still worth recommending more than half a century later.