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Color is an important part of the visual language of film, and artist Johannes Eaton said, "Color shows us the spirit and living soul of the world." ”
The 1970 film "Little Market Without Seasons" was the first color film shot by director Akira Kurosawa, and Kurosawa's film shooting entered the color era.
After 1970, Kurosawa made a total of seven color films: "Little Market Without Season", "Ussuri River Hunter", "Shadow Samurai", "Chaos", "Dream", "August Rhapsody" and "Sunset".
Kurosawa, who has painting skills, played the role of color in the picture vividly in the later film shooting, and the strong use of color, cold and warm color matching brought a visual feast to the audience.
The lyricism of color makes the viewer fluctuate emotionally
In movies, "using picture colors to render the atmosphere is a more commonly used means in film and television works, and specific atmospheres also need to be matched with appropriate colors to be effective." ”
The different attributes of color make people have different psychological feelings and affect the emotional expression of the film. Warm colors are heavy, warm and romantic, cool colors are light, calm and calm.
In Kurosawa's films, dazzling colors can create a sense of dreaminess, color contrast is painful and depressing in most cases, and red is a signal of danger and horror.
In the movie "Little Market Without Seasons", Xiaoliu, who suffers from intellectual disability, has colorful pictures about trams plastered on the walls of his home.
At the beginning and end of the film, these pictures are shot in slow motion, and the colors of the paintings are mainly red, yellow, and blue, and the slow pan lens brings a sense of dreaminess and intoxication.
The sincere paintings show Little Six's love for the tram, but with a disability, he is destined to not be able to truly fulfill his dream.
These paintings are illusory, beautiful symbols, colorful colors bring a strong sense of dream, and the dream of driving a tram can never be realized. The director uses color to show the optimistic state in the difficult situation, positive and firm belief.
For Katsuko, who lives at his aunt's house, the use of directorial color is ironic. Young Katsuko keeps tying colorful paper flowers every day, youth is lost in the repetitive labor of machinery, and it is not Katsuko who is in youth who has bright colors, but those paper flowers that do not have life.
The young Katsuko, at the age of flowers, has not yet begun her life, but she lies powerlessly in those colorful but false paper flowers, Katsuko, like these paper flowers, lacks soul.
The contrast between the red paper flowers and the pale Katsuko shocks the viewer, and Katsuko's indifference is both ignorance of life and her inability to resist the life in which she lives.
In the 1975 film Delsu Uraza , the director uses color to express a sense of sacredness and awe. When Kurosawa depicts the tiger attacking Jersu at night, he divides the picture into three levels.
The first layer is a red flame-like figure, the second layer is a brownish-yellow tiger walking with black horizontal stripes, and the third layer is a forest covered with white frost under a dark night.
The director placed red, brownish, white, and black in the same picture, so that the pictures reflected each other in the depth direction of the same space, expressing the old Jersu's fear of the forest and tigers. The director portrays the tiger with color, creating a sense of sacredness.
In "Shadow Samurai", Katase decides to attack the Tokugawa and Ieyasu families, and when he gathers his army to the shore of Lake Suwa, the director depicts the beautiful and ethereal feeling in color.
The movie screen is divided in two diagonally, with gray-blue as the main color, the upper left, the gray-blue sky, white waves crashing against the coast of Lake Suwa, and on the beach at the bottom right, the Takeda family soldiers are wearing dark armor, and the soldiers and horses march in an S-shaped formation.
When the team figure reached half of the lower right picture, a rainbow appeared in the sky, instantly adding brilliance to the gloomy, depressing picture.
The rainbow in the sky is a symbol of hope, and to catch the rainbow is to seize hope, and everyone is dissuading Katsase from sending troops, but Katsuse's single-mindedness eventually led to the tragic demise of the Takeda family, which is deplorable.
In the Yin Yang Tunnel story of "Dream", the director uses color to create fear. In the film, a man dressed as a soldier walks towards a tunnel entrance, and the color of the picture begins to change, and the color change brings a low and depressing feeling.
The black tunnel mouth is getting bigger and bigger, as if to swallow people inside. The man who walked to the entrance of the tunnel heard the barking of military dogs coming from the tunnel, and the military dog with a grenade ran from the tunnel to the place where the man stood.
Constantly barking at him, the dark red light hit the military dog's body, which looked strange and terrifying. The man retreats and walks towards the tunnel, and the picture hints at the strangeness and unusualness of the tunnel through color, creating a dark and eerie sense of horror for the viewer.
In Mt. Fuji, where the sixth story breaks out, when shooting Mt. Fuji, which erupts into flames, the camera appears dark red, and red brings ominous omen.
In the picture, Mt. Fuji, covered with snow about to erupt, occupies the main position, and in the background is a bright yellow flame that erupts, and cracks gradually appear in the mountain of Mt. Fuji, from which hot red magma is about to burst out.
After the nuclear power plant leaked, toxic gases marked with red, yellow, and purple filled the place, and eventually the big red gas enveloped the only remaining humans.
The red color in the film brings an extremely strong visual impact, and the sense of fear and despair is pervasive, and the red color symbolizes death.
Portray characters and participate in character modeling
Color participation in character modeling refers to "color has a natural ability to carry meaning and emotions, it is hidden in the appearance of the character, can better express the psychology or state of the character, so that the communication of the character is not too 'utilitarian'." ”
The use of color to participate in the clothing modeling of the characters, on the one hand, can mark the characters through color, and express the character characteristics of the characters with color attributes.
On the other hand, through color, it participates in the character modeling of the character, showing the uniqueness and typicality of the character.
In "Little Market Without Season", the director marks characters in two colors, red and yellow. The film portrays two surprising and surprising red-and-yellow wife-swapping families. In the movie, everything in the yellow turban man's home is yellow decoration, his wife also wears a yellow blouse, and the red turban man's home is mainly dressed in red, and his wife wears a red skirt.
"Little Market Without Season" is a group portrait film, in which there are many characters, and the two groups of families use bright red and yellow as the main family colors to mark the characters, and participate in the character modeling to make the characters stand out and be easy to distinguish.
Red and yellow are warm colors, and the brilliance of red and the vivid and harmonious intertwining of yellow highlight the bright colors that clearly suggest the four of them, their original family combination.
In the movie "Chaos", the director used colors to show the personalities of Xiuhu's three sons, and participated in the character modeling of Mad Ami with colors that matched the image of the clown.
In the film, Hidetora's three sons and their troops are clearly divided into colors, Taro is yellow, Jiro is red, and Saburo is blue.
The three colors also clearly reflect the character characteristics of the three children, and the eldest son is hesitant and easy to waver; The second son is bold, has momentum, and acts recklessly; The third son is objective, calm and calm.
The correspondence between the color of clothing and the character of the character clearly highlights the character characteristics on the one hand, and the color is used as a mark on the other hand to facilitate the viewer's distinction. The harmonious combination of the three main colors of red, yellow and blue presents a beautiful visual effect.
In the film, the mad Ami next to Xiuhu appears as a clown-like character, and he mainly amuses Xiuhu with his performances and accompanies Xiuhu. In the face of various things around Xiuhu, he will directly express his comments on the incident from a child's point of view.
Mad Ami's costume in the movie is also very suitable for his character setting, Mad Ami first appeared in the hunting ground with a red head rope tied on his head, wearing big red pants, and the top was a thick stripe of red, blue, yellow and white.
The color of Madami's clothes cleverly corresponds to the color of the clothes of Hidehu and his three sons that day.
After that, the colors of Madami's clothing are mostly green, red, gold, and white as the base color for various stitching, and accompanied by stripes, flowers and other color patterns. The exaggerated and colorful color collage attracts attention while showing the straightforward personality of Mad Ami.
An artistic display that brings poetic beauty
The director with excellent drawing skills perfectly blends the picture and color in multiple shots, and he is very good at using color.
In these film pictures, people and objects only occupy a small part of the picture, and most of the scenery is left blank, triggering people's endless associations, and simplicity and subtlety create a poetic beauty for the viewer and bring the aesthetic experience of painting beauty.
In the movie "Shadow Samurai", when the director shoots pictures that express the emotions of the characters, the characters in the film picture only occupy a small share, and the picture mainly uses color to immerse the viewer's emotions, creating an aesthetic and soothing poetic beauty.
In the film, the Takeda army besieged a city for more than 20 days, but because Shingen was attacked, the large army chose to withdraw. At the time of evacuation, the picture is divided into three layers, the farthest upper third is a golden sunset, bright but not dazzling.
The middle third is the silhouette of a soldier marching in an orderly manner holding a flag in the distance, a constantly moving black silhouette that forms a dynamic beauty in the light of the setting sun, and the nearest lower third is a soldier wearing dark armor and sitting on the ground with a green flag planted in it, discussing the reason for the evacuation.
The siege failed, the morale of the soldiers was demoralized, and the setting sun was even more sad, suggesting that the Takeda family was about to die.
In the film, when Shin Xuan, played by Xin Lian, leads the large army to withdraw from a distance, the picture is again divided into three layers, the upper third is dark red clouds, the middle is gray-blue clouds and sky, and the bottom is black and gray land and gradually revealing troops.
The color tone of the picture is mainly cold colors, and the silent troops moving forward and the fading sunset bring a sense of desolation. When the injured Shinhyun rushed back to his residence in a palanquin, the military doctor helped check his condition, and the brown palanquin landed on the yellow ground.
In the background is a dark black mountain range with residual snow, in the gray-blue sky, white mist is wafting, and a retainer in red armor and a military doctor in pale yellow clothes are kneeling on the right side of the picture.
Under the sunlight, the faintly covered snow-capped mountains, the simple picture composition, the gray-blue main color exudes a faint sadness.
In the film, when the director was shooting the shot of the jar containing Shingen's body sinking to the bottom of Lake Suwa, the gray-blue sky and the sea surface in the picture each occupied half of the picture, forming a scene of the sea and sky, and the black boat containing the jar appeared in the middle of the picture, the white mist in the sky fluttered, and the wind blew ripples on the sea.
The large-scale white space and gray-blue tones create a sense of loneliness and desolation in the picture, and show the insignificance and fragility of human beings in the face of nature.
In the movie, the head of the Tokugawa family wants to find out if Shingen is dead and decides to attack the Takeda army in the castle by the Suruga River.
The picture is divided into two parts by undulating mounds, on which stands a row of Tokugawa soldiers with white flags and dark armor, holding muskets, and bullets glowing bright yellow when fired. Behind the Tokugawa soldiers is a rose-red and blue-purple sky, and the bottom of the screen is dominated by dark black, and you can see the soldiers who occasionally run by.
The cool color of blue and purple in the movie screen is the main color, which shows the cruelty of war, and the bright yellow highlights show the fierceness of war.
When Katsase leads the Takeda Army against the Tokugawa Army, the scene captures Katase walking back and forth on the castle wall due to anxiety and the Takeda Army stationed and standing, with the sky alternating between rose and blue-purple and white fog floating in the air.
The film does not directly show the confrontation between the two armies, but shows the shooting battle through the rapid alternation of colors, and uses Katase to express the tension and unpredictability of the war. The director indirectly shows the war scene with color, and a large amount of white space attracts people's imagination.
In the final story of "Dream", Watermill Village, the director depicts a small village with beautiful paintings in bright colors. The whole story is made of bright and brilliant colors, and the small village with green as the main color is blooming with various flowers.
In the clip of the funeral, the old man dressed in blue and wearing a yellow straw hat returns to the house and puts on a bright orange coat, holds a bell, picks rose-red flowers, and joins the send-off procession to the rhythm of song and dance.
The villagers in the procession were also dressed in brightly colored costumes, and they sang and danced in an orderly manner to joyful music. In the village, death is not a cry of sorrow, but a happy return to nature.
As an art-of-the-art film director, Kurosawa uses a dynamic background in the frame and a depth of field lens that glues the chain of action, so that the viewer can get a strong sense of realism in seeing the world with his eyes, and the sense of substitution of the picture is enhanced.
The chain of action of the characters in the film is better displayed through the depth of field lens, making the film narrative more fluid. Using surrealist elements with independent ideographic functions, it enriches the film picture by revealing the inner world of the characters and deepens the thinking about survival issues in the film.
The bold use of surrealist elements gives the audience a unique aesthetic feeling. Iconic music with national characteristics, lyrical music with more three-dimensional and full characters, and dramatic music that is opposed and contrasting with the picture are all infected by strong sounds.
The color language of extreme beauty brings the artistic effect of poetic narrative. The narrative language presented in Kurosawa's films is the result of the director's personal bold attempt, continuous exploration and accumulation, showing the director's unique style.