If you want to know how music plays a role in movies, try putting on headphones in theaters.
Once, when watching the thriller "A Quiet Place", I couldn't stand the fear of being so frightened, so I plugged in noise-cancelling headphones and picked a cheerful pop song to cover the original sound of the film.
The effect of the intervention is immediate. The heroine hides in the bathtub to give birth, the murderous monster is approaching step by step, the speed of the timpani drum is getting faster and faster, the dissonance interval of the bass brass tube is advancing layer by layer, and the air in the theater solidifies into a high wall, and all the audience dare not breathe. Only I could breathe.
Stills from A Quiet Place
In my world, the ugly claws of monsters reach out to women, accompanied by Jay Chou's "Sunshine Otaku" - the power of horror has been reduced by more than half, and there is some joy. I almost burst out laughing.
Putting on headphones and isolating the soundtrack, the effect of a movie is immediately changed – people often use the term "movie soundtrack", as if the default image is the protagonist, and the music is just a side dish to embellish a large meal, which now seems otherwise.
In really good works, music is an inseparable part of the film, and like the script, the performance, and the photography, it is a language of the film narrative.
To understand this, let's leave the clichéd analytical perspective and enter a movie through music alone.
Polanski's "The Pianist" is a good choice.
This classic movie has been broadcast for exactly 20 years this year. Adapted from the real-life experiences of Polish pianist Spielmann during World War II, it is based on the Holocaust and tells the story of a fugitive who rubs shoulders with Auschwitz. Compared to Schindler's List, The Pianist is more restrained and, as director Polanski himself puts it, barely "visible to the director."
Some critics believe that "The Pianist" is one of the most accurate and objective war films in the world.
The film The Pianist is based on the autobiographical novel Dead City by Polish pianist Valladisrow Spielman
Perhaps in order to match the background of the time in which the story takes place and the professional attributes of the characters, the film uses a lot of classical music, the vast majority of which are Chopin's piano pieces.
Among the star-studded classical music masters, why didn't "The Pianist" choose Beethoven and Liszt, but chose Chopin?
With the heart of inquiry about this, if you look at the movie "The Pianist" again, you will find that under the restrained appearance of the film, there is a more extensive and turbulent ocean composed of notes.
Nocturne
The Pianist's call to music is deliberate, and it only rings out as the characters play.
For a long time, "The Pianist" had no soundtrack. After Spearman lost his job as a pianist, the music disappeared from the film, leaving only gunshots, shouts and groans. That's why people feel that the film has a harsh sense of documentary - when the music is stripped away, the world is only noisy, and there is no dream to speak of.
This kind of stage of silence shows the significance of music to the film expression. In a war-torn world, every opportunity for a Jewish pianist to play is extremely rare, and it has a deep meaning in the text of the movie, how to play and what to play.
The first piece of music that appears in the entire film is Chopin's Nocturne in C minor played by the pianist protagonist Spielmann on Polish radio.
Stills from "The Pianist"
Suddenly, gunfire fell, shattering the glass of the studio and interrupting the piano. The film begins with a minute and a half of abrupt nocturne to piercing sirens, screams and gunshots.
Strictly speaking, Chopin was not a classical composer in the narrow sense, he was a representative of Romantic music. Classicism advocates rationality, pays attention to grammar, and formality, while Romanticism is more free in style and more singing in melody.
A more intuitive way to tell is that classical music sounds more calm and elegant, demanding restraint, and romantic music sounds emotional and more "sentimental".
In romanticism, Chopin's "sentimentality" was particularly prominent, so that the music industry once despised this "romance", and felt that the unrestrained and exaggerated interpretation of Chopin's works by individual performers was a vulgar trend. Especially during the period just after Chopin's death, he was treated as a feminine salon poet and a superficial ward composer, not taken seriously.
On October 17, 1849, the composer Chopin died of illness
The reason why Chopin was once so misunderstood was in his score.
On the stave, there are not only notes that indicate pitch and rhythm, but also various symbols to indicate the mood, strength and speed of the play. It can be understood that the notes that look like small tadpoles make up the basic melody, and the rest of the symbols are the norms of the playing style.
In terms of musical norms, Chopin is somewhat casual. He often marked "Rubato" in certain passages, a word that meant that the player did not have to follow the prescribed beat, and could flexibly change the time value of the notes, flexibly changing the speed.
"Rubato" is the space that Chopin gave to the performers to play, and it is also a subject thrown to them.
Obviously, in some periods, people have not been able to solve it well: they have sometimes lengthened and accelerated at will, and the already emotional melody has become more and more sensational, like "adding sugar to honey".
This kind of performance makes Chopin's music, especially his nocturne, linked to "gorgeous" and "kitsch", and people are fascinated by the beautiful melody, ignoring Chopin's aura in harmony, music, and piano sounds, and ignoring the more profound and moving points of Chopin's music.
Stills from "The Pianist"
Speaking of the nocturne in C minor that appears in the film, it was composed in 1835 when Chopin was about to leave Poland. At the beginning of the 19th century, Russia annexed 9/10 of Poland' territory, and the Tsar became the king of the "Kingdom of Poland", culturally "Russifying".
After the rise of the Polish national liberation movement in 1830, Chopin was forced to travel to a foreign country, and before leaving, he wrote his worries and confusion into this soft nocturne.
The accompaniment of the bass area is regular and calm, setting off the calm atmosphere background, while the main melodic phrase in the high pitch area is full of tension in the shadows.
Stills from "The Pianist"
It couldn't be more appropriate to use it for the opening of a war movie. Whether it is the music itself or the context in which it was created, Nocturne in C minor heralds a life of crisis beneath the calm.
Then there was a "boom", and the nocturne was interrupted by artillery fire- the pianist opened with Nazi Germany blitzkrieg taking Poland, and the war came.
Narrative song
In a sense, Spielman, the protagonist of the movie "The Pianist", is like Chopin in World War II.
They were all Polish, good at the art of piano, and had experienced the war in their homeland.
In times of war, musicians are useless. Chopin in the early 19th century experienced this deep powerlessness, and he hated himself for "doing nothing with his bare hands, not even being able to kill an enemy, but playing groans, pain and despair on the piano".
A hundred years later, Spearman had the same pain.
Under the Nazi classification system of Jews, a well-known pianist was less valuable than a blacksmith and carpenter. Spielman's hands, which were supposed to be used to strike black and white keyboards, were arranged to weigh irons, only because he sat on the piano bench for many years, was too thin to do the same heavy work as others.
Stills from "The Pianist"
He can play the piano, but what's the use? Spielman could not protect his family, could not save his companions, and did not have the courage and ability to join the resistance. He had to hide, to live, to survive until the day of the end of the war, and nothing else could be done.
The untimely birth of an artist forms the emotional underpinning of Chopin's music.
Some people misunderstand Chopin's grief as "for giving new words to force sorrow", but this is not the case. This sorrow comes from his concern for his homeland, and he loves Poland deeply, always carrying a handful of Polish soil on his side. But he himself was suffering from tuberculosis, pale and weak, and could do nothing in the face of the great atrocities.
The composer could only use the piano as a battle drum, and wrote his worries about the situation and a majestic heart of resistance into the score.
Stills from "The Pianist"
Schumann, a contemporary composer, understood the anger and said, "If a powerful dictator knew how much of a threat to him was contained in Chopin's creations, the pristine melodies of the Mazurka dances, he would have banned them." ”
"Chopin's work is an artillery piece hidden in a bush of flowers." He was metaphorical.
Later, Chopin's cannon assembled with musical notes really became a weapon.
In the film, Spielman bumps into a German officer in the ruins of the Jewish Quarter. Knowing he was a pianist, the officer asked him to play a song on a worn-out piano, then spared him and provided him with food, winter clothes and a place to hide. This rescue beyond the position of war has become the brilliance of the whole film.
Stills from "The Pianist"
At the crucial moment, Spearman played Chopin's First Narrative In G minor.
It is a war song, the most rugged and intense of all Chopin's works.
The First Narrative In G minor is based on a narrative poem about the struggle of lithuanians against the Germanic order in the 14th century. While composing the song, Chopin heard the news of the failure of the Warsaw Uprising and was grieved. So he used a set of arpeggios that went up from the bass zone up to three octaves as a lead, invoking the more tense additional chords and chords in the auditory effect, and the fast and dense small notes swung down the keys like a storm.
Any prejudice against Chopin's music will be washed away by this "Narrative Song No. 1 in G minor".
One will hear in this piano that Chopin was not only a sick man, an artist without the power of a chicken, but also a patriot, a hero.
Like Chopin, Spielman put his thoughts into the music.
Some critics dislike Spielman, believing that as the protagonist of an anti-war film and television work, he is just a cowardly fugitive from beginning to end, lacking the spirit of resistance, which is too mediocre. Others interpret Clipman's performance for German officers as saying that in war, art is a bridge of communication that transcends the distinction between enemy and enemy.
Stills from "The Pianist"
This is all a misunderstanding, because not understanding music produces a misunderstanding.
Spielman played a piece of music with the strongest national feelings. At this moment, he chose to fight in the way he was good at, and with the courage of the last song of his life, he used the piano tone to express the anger of being a Pole and a Jew.
Express
In reality, however, the pianist, the historical prototype of the pianist's play, when he bumped into a German officer, played not "Narrative No. 1 in G minor", but Chopin's "Nocturne in C minor", a piece he performed on Polish radio on the day of the fall of Warsaw.
The real Spearman wrote in his autobiography that he hadn't played the piano for two and a half years. The fingers were stiff, there was a thick layer of dirty mud on them, and the nails had not been cut for a long time. The piano, in the broken building, was blowing and sunburning, and the keys were particularly laborious to press. Serenade in C minor is simple, gentle and not very difficult to master, a level that this extremely hungry and nervous pianist can control.
Stills from "The Pianist"
His choice may be interpreted as a psychological repair of a traumatic experience.
After years of upheaval and displacement, survival, perhaps, the real Spielman subconsciously wants to continue the interrupted song. I hope that these years of suffering are a dream, if the nocturne of that year is not forced to interrupt, can the calm days come back?
The film's replacement of Nocturne in C minor with Narrative Song No. 1 in G minor was the decision of the film's director Polanski.
Roman Polanski
This is somewhat unusual.
You know, the director Polanski once said that he hopes to restore the real and objective history through "The Pianist", and he is almost restrained in the film, but in such an important fact, he has introduced personal artistic choices to the film.
Director Polanski is a Holocaust survivor himself. At the age of five, his father cut the barbed wire with pliers, allowing him to escape from the Ghetto and escape the fate of being transported to Auschwitz — just like the pianist Spielmann.
Stills from "The Pianist"
In 1993, Spielberg wanted to give him Schindler's List, but Polanski refused. He felt that Schindler's List was too dramatic, and that there were no saviors like Schindler in the Nazi persecution he had personally experienced. The reason why he survived was only the randomness of fate.
Nine years after refusing to direct Schindler's List, Polanski wrote The Pianist.
The director doesn't seem to want to exaggerate hatred or convey some kind of heroism in the Holocaust genre, and he shoots with extreme restraint, as if there is no emotion. Some people say that even if the scandal of sexually abusing young girls is not exposed, "The Pianist" is enough to prove that Polanski is a madman and a monster. A witness to Nazi persecution told this history so calmly that it was "almost cold."
Stills from "The Pianist"
In fact, Polanski is better qualified than anyone to stand on the moral high ground and make a film condemning Nazi crimes.
His mother died in the gas chambers of Auschwitz, and his father was tortured into disembodied, a disaster that left his family broken up.
Is he really as calm as the narrative and the language of the shots suggest, without any strong self-expression?
Perhaps Polanski just hid what he wanted to say in the changed piano piece.
Narrative Song No. 1 in G minor.
Twenty years later, to this day, when people think of "The Pianist", the first and most impressive fragment that people think of is still these 5 minutes. A ragged Spielmann played the piano in the cold moonlight, and Germans in military uniforms sat and listened quietly.
Stills from "The Pianist"
No lines, no performances, the camera is almost frozen.
In these 5 minutes, Narrative Song No. 1 in G minor is the absolute protagonist, and music is the only language.
The "vulgar" composer Chopin, the "cowardly" film and television character Spielmann, the "cold" director Polanski, three Polish artists put their own inexplicable, deeper intentions in it.
The octave chromatic scale plays in reverse, and the worn-out piano makes the sound of a mountain roaring tsunami.
The song ends.
The pictures in the text are partly from Visual China and partly from the Internet
Author | Yao Yuan, senior reporter of the South Wind Window
Edit | He Yan
New Media Editor | Monet
Typography | Eight pounds