Ecstasy, also known as Vertigo, is a 1958 film directed by Hitchcock and is regarded as one of Hitchcock's best films.
I think this movie should be in the top five hitchcock's best films.
There should be a law, that is, Hitchcock's films, once they touch current affairs, social, and international themes, will show a lack of logic, but as long as they focus on the inner world of the characters, they can always achieve a state of forgetting things and forgetting, blending together, and blending spirit and flesh.
It can be seen that the strength of Hitchcock's films is his capture and elaboration of the souls of the characters, which makes his films different from those pure detective films, and the style of Christie and Holmes to solve the suspense from the external perspective.
So, does a film with a stark revelation like "Ecstasy" fit the "universal formula of reasoning" summarized by the author?
So, let's apply Hitchcock's film from the "universal formula of reasoning" to see if the two match.
<h1 class= "pgc-h-arrow-right" >, The Architectural Principles of Ecstasy: The Misalignment Between Antecedents and Consequences. </h1>
There are many speculative films, but they are always changing, and there is always an internal core structure.
To this end, the author has summarized a "universal formula for reasoning", and when applying the works of well-known writers in the field of reasoning, such as Christie and Keigo Higashino, the application rate has reached 100%.
Let's list this "universal formula for reasoning" as follows:
The first: the trouble-seeking type (unplanned). It refers to an unrelated small factor, which has nothing to do with the main case, but in the accidental time, for accidental reasons, it just happens to bump into the scope of the subject case, thus being taken as the precursor of the main case and inducing misunderstanding. For example, in Sherlock Holmes's first novel, "The Study of Blood Words", the hostess once instigated her son to beat the deceased because of her shameless behavior of hating the deceased, and was considered a natural murderer by the police.
The second type: the dowry type (someone planned). There are two types of this.
The first is the shirking type. The mechanism is as follows: 1. Prove that you are not at the scene and have no time to commit the crime. In Poirot's "Evil in the Sun" and "Massacre on the Nile", the perpetrators are trying to create a false appearance that they are not on the scene. 2. Move the time of the crime. For example, in Poirot's "Diamond of Blood", the murderer has already killed the old man, but through the manual rope, he controls the items in the house and screams with toys to achieve the illusion that the deceased is dead. The passage of time can effectively evade suspicion. 3. The purpose of pretending to be a victim is also to change the time of the crime and cause a change in the time of the crime. This is the most profound kind of blindfold. If you pretend to be a dead person, in fact, people are not dead. One of the best recognized works in Christie's novel, "No One Survives", writes about a person who was killed, who is actually the real perpetrator.
The second is the pass-through type. This type is relatively simple, that is, the murderer finds a substitute for the dead ghost to guide attention. In "The Study of Blood Letters", the perpetrator deliberately left a mysterious organization's "blood letter" symbol on the wall to achieve the purpose of diverting attention.
The main story of "Ecstasy" is that Scotty, a newly departed police officer, is invited by his classmate Gavin to spy on Gavin's god-like wife Marlen, and he involuntarily becomes involved in a trap. Compared with our formula, he typically belongs to the "first type: troublemaker" model in the universal formula. Of course, from The perspective of Gavin in the film, the framework of this film can also be applied to the "blame type", but in Hitchcock's films, there has never been a perspective to solve the case, so if we follow the film's perspective that has always been Scotty's perspective to face the oncoming confusing events, we will include it in the "trouble-seeking" model, which is obviously true.
A crucial node in the film is the "tower" with the function of "hiding the sky and crossing the sea".
At that time, Scotty accompanied Marlen to the tower, Marlen was going to commit suicide on the tower, Scotty desperately tried to stop behind his back, but Marlen insisted on going upstairs, and the movie key gave Scotty a special setting, that is, he suffered from heights phobia and lacked the ability to go upstairs, so that he could only watch Maren soar up and climb to the top of the tower.
In this way, the "top of the tower" has become a "black box" that the protagonist, that is, the audience cannot observe and directly attack, and such a black box is replacing the antecedents and consequences in the movie.
From the flashback shots of Maren's real Judy in later movies, we know what really happened on the top of the tower.
When Marlen climbs up alone to the top of the tower, the audience's line of sight represented by the camera, trailing the perspective of the protagonist Scotty, is also left in the position of the tower's half-waist. Then, next, Scotty sees the figure of a man in free fall from the top of the tower, and eventually, he accepts the fact that Gavin's wife, Marlen, committed suicide by jumping off the tower.
Thus, the fact that appeared before Scotty's eyes was that he saw Marlen climb the tower, and then a man fell from the tower, after which he learned from the police that the confirmation was that Marlen was dead.
It seems that this is a very smooth process, and there is no doubt about Marlen's death.
But as we have shown in the "trouble-seeking" formula, cause and effect seem to be very coherent, so that the unrelated antecedents become the "dependent arising" of the final result, but there is no causal interaction between the two.
The fundamental reason for this is that there is a "blindfold" in the middle, blocking the key logical connection point, resulting in a causal relationship chain of the process, in fact, after a shady black curtain, it is blocked from the key "transposition paragraph".
In Ecstasy, Marlen goes to the top of the tower and then falls from the top of the tower to a Marlen, and in this process, there is an important link that happens to be wrong, that is, The Marlen who goes upstairs is fake.
From what happens later in the film, Detective Scotty is misled by Gavin from the start. In the film, Gavin came to San Francisco from abroad to develop his own industry a year ago, so although Scotty and Gavin are classmates, he has not seen Gavin for many years, and he does not know the appearance of Gavin's real wife, so when Gavin is in the bar, when he shows his wife to Scotty, Scotty unthinkingly accepts the judgment that this woman is Gavin's wife Marlen, but in fact, this judgment is a false judgment from the beginning.
Gavin finds a woman whose real name is Judy to impersonate his wife, Marlen, thus misleading Scotty into thinking that Judy is Marlen. Thus, when Scotty was accompanying a woman he thought was Gavin's wife on the tower, the woman was actually Judy, not the real Marlen. Halfway up the tower, Scotty did not climb to the top of the tower because he was subject to his fear of heights, so that there was a blind spot in his testimony. Above the top of the tower, what really happens is that Gavin threw his real wife, Marlen, under the tower after killing him, and after the police verified that the deceased was indeed the real Marlen. In the process, Scotty only believes that the woman who went up the tower in the first half is Marlen, and the dead woman in the second half is confirmed by the police. There is a yin and yang judgment between the two, and the purpose of Scotty's murder in which Gavin pulls in is to let Scotty prove that Marlen did commit suicide.
This is a typical "stealing beams for pillars" type of modus operandi, the strange thing about the whole case is the trap set by Gavin, surprisingly from the beginning is to concoct a fake wife, let a woman named Judy pretend to be his wife, and the audience is subject to the camera, can only follow Scotty's line of sight, and does not see a God perspective, so the audience is also misled by the camera, so that the Beginning to see Marlen is Gavin's wife.
In this way, in the key node of "climbing the tower", which is related to the overall situation, the film makes a substitution of stealing beams and columns, replacing the unrelated cause and effect with the related events, so that Scotty, that is, the audience perspective he carries, gets such a misjudgment: Gavin's wife, Marlen, hurriedly went up the tower, and then jumped from the top of the tower to die.
Therefore, the most ingenious ingenuity of "Ecstasy" is that the cause and effect between the cause and effect of the non-factual relationship in the reasoning work become a causal relationship because of intentional obscuration, resulting in misjudgment. It can be seen from this that "Ecstasy" still has not escaped the circle and setting of the "Reasoning Universal Formula" template.
However, we must also see that the unreality in "Ecstasy" is also more prominent because of the tower climbing plot of "stealing beams and changing pillars" in the movie. First, we see detective Scotty accepting Gavin's wife, Marlen, without thinking, in an instant at a bar, and Scotty hasn't seen Marlen in Gavin's social settings. In fact, judging from the situation explained in the movie, Scotty can meet Gavin's wife in Gavin's company or family, but strangely, Gavin let Scotty meet Marlen in the bar. In this way, Scotty accepted Gavin's wife, that is, without the confirmation of social background, passively confirmed her identity, which also paved the way for him to fall into the trap later, in fact, as long as Scotty thinks more about why Gavin has no social relationship confirmation when testifying against his wife, he should be suspicious.
Gavin's motivation in the film is to have Scotty as a witness to see Marlen commit suicide, and for Scotty, he takes on the role of a witness. But what Scotty should have thought was that he should also find a witness to prove that the Marlen he saw was Gavin's real wife. But Scotty did not do this, as a policeman, this kind of negligence should not be, even if it is common sense, the eccentric behavior of a young wife of an old classmate should look for clues and find the crux of the problem from the relationship between the old classmate and his wife, not just at the mercy of Gavin, only to see that Gavin's wife is subject to the family's suicidal tradition. In this way, the policeman and detective Scotty in the film is not only afraid of heights, but also has a professional dereliction of duty with lack of reasoning ability and sensitive judgment.
Looking at the filming of the "stealing beams for columns" made by the tower in the movie, the problem is that the top of the tower is an enclosed space, when someone on the tower jumps down and commits suicide, even if Scotty does not immediately follow the top of the tower to understand the truth, but the people of the monastery around the tower should also come to watch, so that the surrounding area of the tower will not get out of control, and the Gavin and the false lady on the top of the tower are difficult to escape the success of the "tower", so the "stealing beam and changing columns" completed on the tower in the film is facing a huge murderer who is difficult to escape. The film here is also a false shot, without saying a word, directly jumping into the scene where the police announce the result, avoiding the crucial question of how the people on the tower escaped.
It can be seen that the surprise created by placing it on a closed "step up the tower" in the movie is difficult to withstand the test of reality.
<h1 class= "pgc-h-arrow-right" > ii. The imaginary nature of Ecstasy: What you see is not necessarily true. </h1>
Scotty, who debuted, tracked down his self-righteous gavin wife, Marlen, and got a series of illusions, and the scenes of Marlen's strange behaviors were presented in the camera, but later we learned that these behaviors were deliberately "faked" by Maren according to the instructions of Gavin, the black hand behind the scenes.
One of the puzzles set up by Gavin is to make Scotty get the impression that his wife Marlen family has a suicide gene in history, so Judy hired by Gavin deliberately enters and exits the cemetery, portraits, old houses and other areas related to the Maren family according to his script, sending out an illusion, that is, Marlen is deeply trapped in the family's ominous rumors, contaminated with the shadow of death in the family.
Then, in front of Scotty, Marlen jumped into the sea to commit suicide, giving Scotty a chance to save people, thus allowing Marlen to directly enter Scotty's life, so that Marlen once again brilliantly portrayed her in a state of mental disorder sleepwalking, step by step to make Scotty believe that she was terminally ill, thus leading Scotty to the end of that crucial "suicide by climbing the tower". After such a deliberate arrangement, Scotty fell into a mystery set up by Gavin and played by Judy.
In this way, The Film's Judy pretending to be Marlen creates a magical situation in front of the camera, she goes in and out of the place where the ghosts of those ancestors haunt, as if everything about her is controlled and controlled by the ancient curse, and when she enters that place, she has lost her memory, and can only control her consciousness with a surreal force.
The ultimate effect of her interpretation is that she is controlled by the family ghost curse that she has always believed in in human culture, and step by step towards the fate of death.
However, the scene in which Judy's spirit is out of control is an authentic illusion, however, this illusion can achieve falsehood, which is the easiest result brought by video art.
Chinese film circles, there was once a popular saying called: the camera does not lie. In fact, this sentence is precisely the biggest misreading and untruthfulness of the movie.
The greatest function of cinema is to create an illusion, and the greatest achievement of the camera is to present a kind of lying refinement and culmination.
The more lying the camera, the greater the movie that is created.
Judy in "Ecstasy" used her lies to create a forged personal life and spiritual hallucinations, successfully completing the biggest confusion and misdirection in the movie, making Scotty deeply confused, unable to extricate herself, and even suffering from depression. In fact, what is highlighted is the mental harm caused by counterfeiting, and it is also the convenience of the playful viewer who is easy to achieve the illusion of the movie.
It can be said that the reversals in the film are largely due to the illusions created by the camera. In the strange atmosphere created in the film, the ghostly ghosts in "Ecstasy" do give people a trance that is difficult to distinguish between true and false, because as an audience, we have always been accustomed to the strange shadows of the wind and clouds on the screen, and we are not shocked. Including the large-scale magic system in the film is to accept as a responsibility, therefore, we can only adopt a skeptical attitude towards the strange magic shadows created by "Ecstasy", because we really don't know what kind of model is adopted in the film, whether to support the supernatural choice or faithfully adhere to the materialistic world, but Hitchcock did not let the film embark on the path of magical interpretation such as "The Lord of the Rings", but adhered to the objective certainty of human survival reality, then, The only thing that can be overturned is the illusory situation created in the film, so that the grand mystery created by the film that spends half the length of the film turns out to be nothing more than a deduction of the camera lying.
This setting of Ecstasy is far-reaching. According to the author's impression, a literary work that is relatively similar to "Ecstasy" should be the novel "Tomb of black stone" written by a British female writer who is popular with the novel "The Ferryman".
The novel shows a group of young people, encountered a magical killing, all the way, one by one by the mysterious monsters killed, but the fact is finally revealed, is the novel's colorful magic narrative, it is precisely the novel's murderous black hand made up lies, but the novel renders the realism of this mysterious situation with a careful brushstroke, misleading the audience.
This kind of narrative that makes the novel narrative only bear the lie confession of a real murderer, and lets the novel's God perspective degenerate into a subjective description of the character, so that the narrative of the novel becomes untrustworthy, just like the lying elements of the characters in Ecstasy, all reflect the narrative blind spots caused by the use of this unilateral perspective that has not been verified by many parties, which constitutes a common feature of modern avant-garde works of art.
In this sense, Ecstasy's virtual statement of narrative is ahead of its time. It can be seen that the reason why "Ecstasy" occupies such an important position in Hitchcock's films is that the director explores the inseparable relationship between the virtual and the real in the film, and makes this proposition always occupy a weighty and innovative option in subsequent contemporary literary and artistic works.
If you want to make a breakthrough in your own work of art, this genre is a very "fast and reachable" option.
<h1 class= "pgc-h-arrow-right" > three, the love dilemma of Ecstasy: is it the soul or the appearance that loves? </h1>
In contemporary films, the thinking about who is the master of human spirit and flesh produced by one person playing two roles has always been the focus of attention of new-trend movies.
From the perspective of Chinese films, we see that the reflection on humanity and identity created by the two characters played by Zhou Xun in "Suzhou Creek" is a compelling gimmick of this film.
The two women played by Zhao Wei in "Green Tea" directed by the sixth generation director Zhang Yuan also reflect the Chinese director's exploration of the inner secrets of two characters with the same appearance.
In fact, we can find that the two women who are "treasured" by the Chinese director share a shell setting, and have made a very intriguing advance rehearsal in "Ecstasy".
In the film, Riscotti witnesses what he thinks is Marlen's woman jumping off a building and committing suicide, and because of his fear of heights, he fails to follow her straight to the top of the tower to prevent a disaster from happening and falls into self-blame, and even leads to extreme confusion and pain in his heart, depression and incomprehensibility.
At this time, he happened to meet a woman who was very similar to Marlen, but her clothes, hairstyle and makeup were quite different from those of Marlen in the past, but he still involuntarily began to track down this woman.
Before the suicide of the woman named Marlen, Scotty had been caught in an inevitable confusion because of the friction with her ear, and now he saw a woman who looked very imaginative with Marlen appear in front of his eyes again, and he could not wait to get close to this mysterious woman for the dual reason of inquiring into the truth and satisfying his inner desires.
But the girl categorically denies that she is Marlen, and claims that her name is Judy, and it is she, who conspires with Marlen's real husband, Gavin, to create a puzzle and kill the real Marlen, and after completing her collusion work, she restores her original identity, which is an ordinary woman who shows herself as Judy.
But the problem is that in the process of contacting Scotty in the name of Marlen, although she only made a scene according to the role identity provided in Gavin's script, in the process of acting, she had to substitute her own emotions as an actor, so when she played Marlen, the emotions she exuded were her Judy's.
This is also the film that Hitchcock used to explore the role of a character who entered the emotional deception "fake the truth and fake", and she probably involuntarily used real emotions.
This is also a kind of professional sweeping and impact that an actor faces when he fakes a play and really does it.
When Judy played Marlen, she was very close to Scotty, and on the surface, the script of the conspiracy required her to use her true feelings, but the germination of this true feeling, although the sign hanging was Marlen, and the actual payer was Judy's.
That's where Judy's real weakness lies.
When Scotty presses judy to restore her original identity, intending to find the dreamlike emotions of the past from her body, she is actually faced with a paradox of human nature, that is, does Catitis love Marlen's name, or does it Judy under this name?
And the question, whether behind Marlen's name or under Judy's real name, is the same shell, so is love the inner soul or the outer body?
"Ecstasy" proposes such a dilemma of human love, which indeed has a very complex and diverse thinking in Western movies.
In Ecstasy, when Scotty keeps pursuing Judy's true identity, intending to transform Judy into The Marlen he once fell in love with, it also means that his attempt to transcend the body itself and enter his beloved soul has failed completely.
The most wonderful stroke of "Ecstasy" is that Scotty let Judy trim into the old setting of Marlen's hair, appearance, and clothing in the past, and when all this is done, a former Marlen appears in front of him without fail, such a shell, obviously Scotty has been obsessed with in the past, but obviously, the inner essence of this shell is not the original Marlen's, not the Marlen's that he felt when he first accepted it, but Judy's, so that although Judy uses her body, Everything about Marlen, who was once Scotty's intoxication, is restored, but the soul has mutated, and the shell no longer contains the woman Scotty used to be obsessed with, so Scotty is doomed to suffer the severe snip of reality.
"Ecstasy" arranges here for Judy to make herself infinitely close to the Marlen she played in the past, and even wears the necklace that Marlen used to hang on her chest in the past, and it is precisely this decoration, although on the surface to pull Marlen and Judy into a person from the surface, but it means that the two people are separated from each other, because the cruel truth has been clearly presented in front of Scotty, Judy is Marlen's actor, and she is destined not to be innocent in this mystery case. It also means that whether or not Judy has ever responded to Scotty's emotional turbulence through Marlen's shell, the closer Judy is to Marlen now, the more the gulf between them is unfathomable.
In this way, Scotty clearly saw that the closer Judy got to Marlen, the more it meant that it was physically close, and the more the distance between the souls was inseparable.
Therefore, the final scene in the movie ends abruptly after Judy also falls off the top of the tower, and Scotty's proximity to Judy's soul is ultimately completely consistent in appearance, but in terms of soul, it is eternally separated.
Hitchcock profoundly reveals human feelings through the different images of a woman's sub-decoration, is it aimed at spirit or flesh?
This kind of thinking is not just a matter of interest to Hitchcock. In the 1998 American filming of "Red Face Disaster Water" (also translated as "Absolute Favorite Prostitute"), the heroine fell in love with a man, but her status was humble, in order to get the response of the love of the beloved man, she chose to become a prostitute, with her own body to open the way, to approach the man she loved. What a dangerous road it was, and the only way she could get close to her love, a woman who sacrificed her body for love, just wanted to dedicate her beloved soul to the one she loved. This film is exploring the question of who is the master of the ups and downs of spirit and flesh.
The excellent quality of "Ecstasy" lies in the model provided by the film, which will continue to be carried forward in future films, becoming an important back window and option for people to explore human nature and emotions. Although the film lacked response and failed at the box office when it was released at the time, it became more and more prominent in its maverick quality in the future, leaving a classic luster for people to learn from and enlighten in the history of cinema.