No one can deny that Bergman's films are outstanding. If you were to pick one of his films that you like the most, or what do you think is the best for him? Hard! 1957's Wild Strawberries and 1966's Persona may be at odds with each other. If you had picked two, 1973's Cries and Whispers would have set the scene. Choose only one, maybe some people can't bear to give up "Shouting and Whispering"; choosing two parts is actually not the turn of "Shouting and Whispering", some people will be angry!
There is a set of movie encyclopedias that enshrine Bergman as supreme
There is an institution in the United States that has printed a set of film encyclopedias, four thick volumes, one of which is to review directors. A chronology of directors' works is detailed, and each director is studied on an average of three films each. "Average", not "uniform" or "certain". Many directors who are considered unpopular are not introduced; directors whose works are not good enough, although they have comments, do not analyze individual films.
The master director, Chris Marker, was assigned only one film to be studied (1963's "The Lovely Month of May" and 1962's "The Pier")," because most of his shots were not feature films? Peter Greenaway only had 1982's The Draughtsman's Contract, was he not senior enough? Tarkovsky (1969's Andrei Rublev and 1986's Sacrifice the Sacrifice) have too few works, and Robert Altman (1970's Army Field Hospital MASH and 1975's Nashville) have mixed artistic achievements, so only two films are favored and discussed? Aaron Renai's film career exceeded half a century, with a small number but not an idle first half of his life, so he secured three spots (Night and Fog in 1955, Hiroshima in Love Hiroshima in 1959, My Love in 1961, Last Year at Marienbad in Marienbad in 1961), but Morriere Muriel, or The Time of Return in 1963), but Morriere Muriel, or The Time of Return (1963) With 1977's Providence, it is a serious relic. Fellini's early and middle periods are not small, the quality is top-notch, and he is accommodated for four places (1953's "Vitelloni the Wanderer", 1954's "The Road The Road", 1960's "The Sweet Life", 1963's "Eight and a Half 81/2"), and still has the regret of failing to pass the 1969 "Fellini Satyricon". Antonioni is more "lucky", and five or six films, such as "Adventure", "Eclipse of the Sea"), "Amplifying Blow-Up" ("Spring Break"), and "Passer-by Professione: Reporter", have been particularly affirmed. Stanley Kubrick also had five places in 2001: A Space Odyssey. What about Angelopoulos? It's actually 0! Zero, even one has not been specially studied!
Such a trade-off list, perhaps some people are reluctantly convinced, some people want to be indignant. Guess what this movie encyclopedia did to Bergman? Bergman's masterpieces are not only "Wild Strawberries", "Masquerade" and "Shouts and Whispers"! The answer is that they did not dare to desecrate these three, but also very professionally and creatively collected "Smiles of a Summer Night" in 1955, "The Seventh Seal" in 1957, "The Silence" in 1963 and "Fanny and Alexander" in 1982, a total of seven! René, Fellini, godard all admired Bergman, Bergman has a few more places than other directors, deserved? ! !
The documentary is both familiar with Bergman and a real understanding of Swedish cinema and theatre
Swedish actress Jane Magnusson's documentary "Bergman: A Year in a Life" was filmed and edited, and I wonder if it was a bit difficult. Looking back at the master's life, his actor team and behind-the-scenes work partners, old and old, dead and dead, isn't it particularly difficult to ask questions in interviews? In fact, this is not the case, and looking at the English title of the film, it is mainly focused on 1957.
In 1957 in particular, in the same year Bergman had two film masterpieces (first The Seventh Seal and then Wild Strawberry). Just like Yang Dechang's 1991 "The Juvenile Murder Incident on Muling Street" is not only the best movie of the year, but also the most extraordinary film in ten years, many years later, it is still a film worth remembering in film history.
This documentary is not only familiar with Bergman, but also really understands Swedish cinema and theater, so that the audience knows that Bergman's 1957 creation was between, before, and after these two films, and also wrote and directed some grand stage plays! Why more than versatility? It's a fountain of talent, plus a lot of energy to scare people!
Yang Dechang, Fellini, Renai and Bergman exchanged voices
This documentary tells a lot of stories that some previous documentaries about Bergman have not told (or don't know), and you and I must not think that watching other documentaries is enough. This time, it's a new discovery, a new surprise. On the one hand, this documentary has a unique vision of "Wild Strawberries" and "The Seventh Seal" in front of and behind the scenes, on the other hand, it is a collection of quotations, so that Bergman and his films (or the differences and debates between "life" and "movies") are shuttled through, and the additional is to review many of Bergman's films for you and me.
In "The Seventh Seal", the actor escapes to a high place in the tree, and the god of death saws the tree at the bottom! Death indicates that the other person's time of death has arrived. The actor asked if he could be pardoned because he was an actor. Of course not. Bergman put his own views on actors into the movie (lines), and Yang Dechang's boy Yang Yangyang in the film "One One" took the camera to shoot only the back of other people's heads (to show the aspects that others could not see) to express the director's voice, each with its own ingenuity and each interest.
In this documentary analysis of "The Seventh Seal", Bergman's design for the god of death is to paint his face with white powder like a clown and wear a huge black cloak. Death opened his cloak, impressively obscured his vision, obscured the entire picture, and instantly the picture was completely black (profile people's experience of death: nothing can be seen, extremely evocative!). This documentary is so analyzed, you and I are also frequently inspired, or think of the warmth and self-deprecation of the white-faced clown beloved in Fellini's films (comparing the coldness and fierceness of the clown-like grim god of death in Bergman's "Seventh Seal"), or remember that René films sometimes have no actors, or even no pictures, and "voices" can also perform alone to promote the plot.
Bergman made several beautiful actresses look ugly
This documentary shows you and me seeing Bergman let his beautiful actresses sometimes "play ugly." Harriet Andersson, the beauty of Through a Glass Darkly (1961), was featured in Fanny and Alexander, Ingrid Thulin, a beautiful intellectual from Wild Strawberries and Silence, in Winter Light (1963), and Liv Ullmann, an actress for Masquerade, in Winter Light (1963). In the Autumn Sonata, all the faces fall and the acting skills are sublimated. The documentary also captures large close-ups of the faces of the three actresses in the color film Shouts and Whispers, and Kari Sylwan, who plays the maid, to form a quartet.
Bergman is like Satan from life to movie
In order to make the actor who plays the male protagonist in "Winterlight" really frustrated, Bergman actually let the other family doctor lie to the actor, and exaggerated the disease out of nowhere. "Harm" this actor thus performed well! Bergman's lust with women has given successive wives a nightmare experience; in his later years he was jealous of the Swedish theater male rookie wizards. The documentary exalts Bergman's rare talents but does not create gods, honestly exposing Bergman's demonic aspects, just as Bergman used Jungian theory to explore the double self of man in "Masquerade". The director treats actors by any means, Murphy Bergman opens up the atmosphere, martin Scorsese shoots "Raging Bull" to make the actors quickly obese, and Russ von Trier's "Idiot" injection makes the male actor's penis erect for a long time. The documentary also shakes out Bergman's discord and resentment with his brother.
Western film critics in the past misread "Silence" and "Masquerade"
In my childhood, most Western film critics regarded "Silence" and "Masquerade" as the theme of female love, and this kind of "heterochromatic" film is of course a Taiwanese taboo under the control of the Chiang Dynasty. The female nurse (Bibi Andersson) is actually more "perverted" than the patient actress (Liv Ullmann), making "Masquerade" a plus and a bad evaluation. The intellectual girl (played by Ingrid Thulin) and the lascivious sister (played by Gunnel Lindblom) are separated from each other, but the lust is surging and the female love is also attached to the incest (near affection), which is simply crazy. How many years later could those critics have predicted that these two films will be masterpieces of film history? As for being interpreted as a lesbian love, it is also confusing: is it smuggling lesbianism in the conservative era? Or is it a negative evaluation of female love?
There is no shortage of outstanding juniors in the film industry to speak out, and it is not flowing from the seniors to the old people's music club
In "Bergman: The Year of My Life," Swedish prodigy Roy Andersson and Danish director Russ von Trier, who are based on Songs from the Second Floor and A Pigeon Sat on a Branch Reflecting on Existence, are invited to talk about Bergman. Greenaway to Renai, Fassbinder to Fellini, Zhang Xiaohong to Zhang Ailing, Honghong to Zhou Mengdi, Yang Suo to Yang Dechang, Lin Dayang or Li Tonghao to Li Ang, it is important to abandon only Bergman's peers to control the right to speak in history, not just the elderly people's music club!
In the past, "Wild Strawberries" was filmed side-shot, and now it is a treasure in film history
The most precious thing about this documentary is the side shooting during the filming of the "Wild Strawberries" movie, and you and I see the directors and actors behind the scenes. Before 1968, Fellini and René only had work photos (still photos), but Bergman had a moving image side shot! And, in 1957, there was! Moreover, it is colorful! Even superstars Audrey Hepburn and Elizabeth Taylor may not have the age of color side shooting! Side shots are true, and color may be the first-class coloring process of black and white images decades later (you should ask the poor man of the artist for advice and confirmation)! However, I've seen natural color stills from Audrey Hepburn from The Loudest Whisper and Elizabeth Taylor from Suddenly, Last Summer, but the film was shot in black and white, when black-and-white photography was art and color was fancy.
The outstanding director of the predecessor played the male lead in the later Bergman film masterpiece "Wild Strawberry"
The male lead in Wild Strawberries is played by the 78-year-old Swedish actor Victor Sjöström (1879 – 1960). The actor was a first-class director, and his 1928 American film The Wind was a masterpiece of film history. The set of film encyclopedia books mentioned earlier in this article gave him two places in his few directorial works, one of which was "Wind"!
Bergman swedish is not "Bergman"
Narrated in English by a female voice, the documentary uses Swedish pronunciation whenever Bergman's last name is mentioned (close to pronunciations such as "white green mang" and "baili mang"). Ingrid Bergman, an actress who enjoyed international fame many years before Bergman, also had the same Swedish surname as Ingmar Bergman, and Hong Kong translated director Bergman as "Inma Bergman". Taiwanese film scholar Wang Pai-cheung talked to his Swedish classmates about "Bergman" at the film department of the University of Paris in France, and the other party did not know who he was talking about, because Swedish is not pronounced "Bergman"! The documentary lets us know the Swedish pronunciation of Bergman, and some American film and television program hosts have mispronounced "Berggate" or "Baigmen" in the film.
A well-known film critic in Taiwan, he has long served as a columnist for the 'Broken' Weekly newspaper and the 'World Film Monthly', is active in Taiwan's art and literature circles, and has also served as a member of the Golden Spike Award, the Golden Horse Award, the Golden Jury of the National Film Counseling Committee and the Film Selection Planner of international film festivals
Agnès Varda | ©️ MK2 FLMS
In 1994, to commemorate the events of the French Film Archive, I published a book called Varda by Agnès, and 25 years later, the same name was used in films I created with moving pictures and words that expressed the same theme: handing over the keys to my work. I handed over my own key, my thoughts, without any mannerisms, only the key.
The film is divided into two parts, with two centuries.
This part of the 20th century ranged from my first feature film in 1954, La pointe-courte, to the last one in 1996, "A Hundred and One Nights." In the meantime, I also made documentaries and feature films, both long and short.
The second part is in the 21st century, where small digital cameras have changed the way I make documentaries, from "The Gleaners & I" in 2000 to "Faces Places" with JR in 2017. But during that time, I worked mainly on installations, atypical triptychs, and studios, and I always insisted on making documentaries like The Beaches of Agnès.
In between these two parts, there is also a little review of my early life as a photographer.
During my lifetime, I've made a huge variety of films. I need to tell you what has guided me to continue this job for so many years.
There are three words that are important to me: Inspiration, Creation, and Sharing.
Inspiration is why you want to make a movie. The motivations, ideas, circumstances, and contingencies that inspire you to make a movie.
Creation is how you go about making a movie. What method do you use? What structure? Alone or not alone? With color or without color? Creation is a kind of work.
The third word is sharing. You don't make a movie to show yourself, you make a movie to show it to others. An empty movie is a movie creator's nightmare.
People are at the heart of my work. Real people. That's what I keep referring to people I photograph in the city and the countryside.
When you shoot something, a place, a landscape, a group of people, even if the subject matter is specific, what you shoot still points to your deepest plan.
I like to combine reality with its manifestations. But I also like to juxtapose moving and still pictures in video and photography.
French female director
Some aspects of Varda by Agnès are a retrospective. What is your point of view in this movie?
Agnès Varda (hereinafter referred to as "Varda"): It can be called a "master class", but I never felt like a master and never taught anyone else. I don't like the idea. It's not just about retelling those stories, it's more about the structure, the intent, and the sources of my material. But I don't want it to get too boring. So it's being with people in the theater, or in a courtyard, and I try to be myself and communicate with the so-called energy, intention, or feeling that I expect to share. That's what I call cine-writing, where all the choices are a mix of what you call "style." But style is a written word. So film writing is all about all the elements that I think we have to think about, choose, use to create a film.
Is it difficult to examine your own work and use it to make this film?
Varda: It's not difficult because I've been thinking deeply about what I've been doing. And when it's done, I don't think about "I could have done better" or "I could have done worse", but I tried to understand the creative process. It's not just from technical, what I want is to be spontaneous. The process is that you follow your instincts to find the right picture and the right words. I'm really trying to follow a cinematic instinct. I'm now an artist and I'm working on another exhibition, which I also vaguely expressed in the second part of the film, which has two parts: the 20th century and the 21st century. In the 20th century I was more of a filmmaker, in the 21st century I was an artist. I worked cross-cutting to create documentaries and art installations. I built a house and a shed out of real composite film. I've completed art installations that look at things in different ways, asking people to sit in chairs with headphones as a way to question the communication between creators and receivers. It's like reprocessing my past as a filmmaker.
In a way, this is a "final statement". Does this film tell you what you think about filmmaking?
Varda: I never wanted to say anything, I just wanted to watch people share. Never said it was information that needed to be accepted and understood, so I can't say if I was satisfied. Let's be clear, this film I showed in Berlin may not be too interesting, but I'm not going to take the conversation anymore. That's it, that's what I talked about. You show [this movie] and you don't need me to come over. I've spoken a lot, in many places, including Harvard, and TED Talks when I was in Los Angeles. I didn't want to go to the media or say too much about my work. Rather than talking, I felt like I'd rather spend two hours looking at a tree or a cat. After Berlin, the screening of this film will replace my speech.
You've mentioned "being a fringe star" and never going into the mainstream. How does this affect your perspective as a filmmaker?
Varda: I've made several films in one way. I've never made an action movie, and I've never made a sci-fi movie. Really, I never make a very complicated setup because I don't have big ambitions. I know they never believeD I would have the budget to do different things, so my mind is also more focused on what I know. So they are the spiritual adventures that I want to approach and share. When the Oscar judges wanted to pay tribute to filmmakers who had no desire for success and wealth, they chose me. I'm proud they can do that. Film work is not only a lack of money, but also a lack of ambition for money. I think I'm very happy and proud of that because they understand what I've been doing for over sixty years. I'm true to the ideal of sharing emotions and feelings, and more because I have so much empathy with other people, especially those I'm close to that who haven't really been mentioned.
I have my 65 years of work in my bag, what happens when I put the bag down? It's really a desire to find links and connect with different categories of people. I have never made a film about the bourgeoisie, about the rich and the aristocracy. My choice was to show people who are similar to each other, but at the same time can see special, interesting, rare and beautiful places between them. That's how I look at people. I don't resist my instincts. Maybe it was because of this that it was appreciated in Hollywood circles.
In addition to the Oscars, you also won the Honorary Palme d'Or, with the latest honor from Marrakech...
Varda: I think they're going to give me some kind of prize in Berlin. Now that I'm old, they want to give me something that's everywhere. So I had two closets fully loaded. I'm going to say thank you, which is taken for granted when someone gives you a gift, but I feel a little unfair. Like other women, other directors should have it. There are a lot of directing jobs, especially in France, and they're all outstanding, but I'm the oldest one, so I see this like a vase, the easiest to put on top of the pedestal. But I really respect the female directors who didn't win. So I think it's a bit like an excuse, like saying, "We respect women," but it's a bit too much for me. Some of the female directors are really good, and I hope they have more opportunities to come forward. For example, Céline Sciamma, Naomi Kawase, Ula Stöckl, Maren Ade, Pascale Ferran, Claire Denis, Emmanuelle Bercot, Noémie Lvovsky, Ruth Beckermann, Sally Potter, Jane Campion, and I can name more.
Does film have an obligation to do education?
Varda: I try to make sincere films, but I don't pretend that I can change the world. No, we can sometimes change people's psychology, or we can change people's worldviews or perceptions of other people. We have to know that it already makes sense to be an honest artist, but we don't know that we can do more.
Thank you for taking so much time out of your day.
Varda: Oh, you too, because that's the ending, my friend. After that I would do some art because shooting was too tiring. I don't want to work so hard anymore. It's too hard. I want to stay here a little longer, quietly, enjoyed, and spent the day even with calm memories. You didn't bother me. You did it with a very good and friendly spirit, but you see, we spent an hour talking about my profession and life is disappearing and every minute is passing.
I enjoyed it a lot. Even when I see tulips aging, I love it. The longer you wait, the more amazing it becomes. It's like the aging heart-shaped potatoes in The Gleaner and Me. I have some pleasure in this aging process. I love aging things, and people, and I also love wrinkles, hands, and I love it all. I was really interested in what was happening on my hands. It will be a lovely landscape. So I had a wonderful time growing old, and I like to see these things become more and more natural, slowly withering.
I have a work of art called PATTATOPIA. It is a triptych of a heart-shaped potato. I kept the potatoes and checked how they got older. These aged potatoes are really beautiful. So you need to have that feeling. Not suffering. It's like a potato.
Paris, January 31, 2019
The New Parisian, writer, editor, traveler, and Paris correspondent for The Hollywood Reporter
Liao Fan and Zhao Tao in Jia Zhangke's new film "Children of jianghu". ｜©️COHEN MEDIA GROUP
Back at the turn of the century, in China's northern industrial city of Datong, QiaoQiao and Bin Bin are a couple in the underworld who hold great power. They're not talking about Bonnie and Clyde — too disciplined, too much like doing business — but a little bit of an old-school Hollywood gangster style. In the first part of "Children of jianghu", Bin Bin is in charge of the local dance hall and casino, and he and Qiaoqiao are haunted, full of charm and authority.
Bin Bin (Liao Fan) is always smoking a cigarette, with deep eyes and an expressionless handsome face that occasionally reveals a hint of pleasure or surprise. Qiao Qiao (Zhao Tao) comes from a more decent background, and her charm further amplifies the charm of her lover. They are the brightest stars of a bunch of cheaters,, rough guys, and ambitious people who worship them with jealousy and fear. No one is cooler than either of them.
A lot of money was traded, and guns were eventually fired, but Jia Zhangke's fascinating new work "Children of the Jianghu" is not a real crime film. The romantic atmosphere of the outlaws that lingered around Bin Bin and Qiaoqiao soon dissipated, replaced by a clearer, colder atmosphere of reality. Jia Zhangke is an important figure in The Sixth Generation of Chinese filmmakers and one of the most creative and dedicated directors of the 21st century. He has long been concerned about the impact of enormous social and economic forces on personal private experiences. His films, whether fictional or non-fictional, document changes in cities, landscapes, and lifestyles that affect families, partners, and groups of friends.
From one point of view — from the basic level of the plot — the scale of "Children of the Jianghu" does not seem to be grand. It's the story of two people whose love is shattered under the pressure of bad luck and betrayal, but they can't give up on each other. Bin Bin is attacked by members of a rival gang and happens to save his life. Instead of denouncing him, she accepted five years in prison, and after her release she went to look for Bin Bin, who had left her hometown in Shanxi. Earlier, he had told her about "loyalty, righteousness," a traditional underworld norm, but it seemed that only she was trying to comply with it.
On her way to find him — in 2006 — she took a ferry down the river through an area about to be flooded by the Construction of the Three Gorges Dam. She then boarded a train bound west and befriended a man who was heading to Xinjiang. Even without a detailed understanding of China's geography or modern history, viewers can feel the dislocation and dynamics of rapid change, as well as the vastness and density of this land.
There's always something new. By the time the film returns to today's big time, the city has almost completely changed its face. But Jia Zhangke's perspective is neither nostalgic nor optimistic. His films don't imagine an immutable past in order to make people mourn or yearn for it. (Since 2000, his major non-documentary or semi-documentary works include Platform, Ren Yao, The Good Man of the Three Gorges, The World, Destined for Heaven, Twenty-Four Cities, and The Old Man of Mountains and Rivers.) Neither do they depict a happy future ahead. His world is always in motion, and he refuses to rush through it—his camera movements are very elegant, and the scenes are sometimes painfully slow—which can be understood as a protest, a reminder of the moral imperative to keep people concerned.
One of Jia Zhangke's continuing concerns is Zhao Tao, who has appeared in almost all of his works since the 2000 film Platform. (They got married in 2012.) She is both weak and tenacious, practical and detached, and in all his films she is both an ordinary woman and an almost mythical figure, and her refusal to disappear contains heroism. From movie to film, she has played a variety of roles, shuttling between abandoned construction sites and high-rise buildings, nightlife and factory floors, love and crime, and her unique personality is her shield and weapon.
Qiao Qiao's wit in "Children of the Jianghu" is both sentimental and inspiring. She was a survivor, and perhaps because of that, she suffered more than she should have suffered. But the film as a whole is full of too many surprises and surprises, so it is not gloomy. Jia Zhangke has always had a cunning sense of comedy and a penchant for big scenes. He lingered at drunken parties, admired the solemn absurdity of the ballroom dancers performing at funerals, and reveled in the passion of a clumsy love song. The climax of qiaoqiao's relationship with Bin Bin may be that they dance together to the "Village People" song "YMCA" – a popular culture cliché that Jia Zhangke laughs at while accepting it wholeheartedly.
The strangest moment in Children of the Jianghu is the appearance of the flying saucer, which has no special consequences, which is even more shocking. Pillars of light flicker in the night sky, and life goes on under the night sky. This may be a reminder of the vastness of the universe, symbolizing the unimaginable mystery, or it may be the director's prank. This isn't the first time that possible extraterrestrial life has appeared in Jia's films, but his films are otherwise distinct from science fiction films. There may be only one exception: the truest human emotion in his mind is alienation.
| Translation: Jin Qijiao
Lead film critic at The New York Times