This year's Venice Film Festival has had a magical moment for everyone. The film "Joker", based on DC's classic villain Joker, won the Golden Lion Award, which is the first time that a film based on the IP of a superhero comic has won the highest award at three major European film festivals. At that moment, the whole social media exploded, some applauded, some were shocked, and inevitably there were many doubts.
Due to the proximity of the North American awards season, the Venice Film Festival in recent years has been tacitly regarded as the starting board of the Oscars, and Okio films usually choose to promote the Venice Film Festival. In the current situation, it is no suspense that "Joker" will compete for next year's Oscar, and even the film has a great chance of winning awards such as Best Actor or even Best Picture.
Throughout the history of popular cinema, the Joker has been frequently used as a classic screen image, and in addition to the Joker Joker in the DC Batman series, there are many successful and interesting Joker images. We may wish to take the opportunity of "Joker" to win the Venice Golden Lion Award to review the impressive clown images in the movie.
Joker
Joker, starring Jacqueline Phoenix, is based on DC's classic villain "Joker", which is a solo film created entirely through an original screenplay and is not closely related to the Batman universe.
From the release of the first trailer to the high acclaim at the Venice Film Festival, the movie "Joker" has given us too much room for reverie and expectation, and Joaquin Phoenix has even been pinned on by fans to win next year's Oscars.
With such a sensational momentum, the Phoenix version of the Joker will inevitably be compared with Heath Ledger's version of the Joker. But it is obvious that this time", "Joker" will show more space to show the complex mental process of the Joker from an ordinary child to a fearsome sociopath, and reconstruct the character of the Joker from the perspective of life history. Whether Phoenix's interpretation can make this film a classic still needs to wait for time to verify.
Batman: The Dark Knight
The film "The Dark Knight" is the second part of the "Batman" trilogy directed by Christopher Nolan, and although Nolan has been widely recognized for his works such as "Follow", "Memory Fragments" and "Insomnia", the work that really made Nolan one of Hollywood's first-line commercial directors is undoubtedly "The Dark Knight".
The film caused a sensational response after its release, achieved amazing box office results, and is recognized as the pinnacle of superhero cinema history, and the first superhero film to reach a $1 billion box office record.
The success of the film "The Dark Knight" in terms of word of mouth and box office is inseparable from Nolan's directing skills, and it is also closely related to the villain "Joker" successfully portrayed by the film.
In the minds of fans, the Joker in The Dark Knight is undoubtedly the most charismatic villain of the new century, even comparable to Professor Hannibal in The Silence of the Lambs, and the actor who played the Joker, Heath Ledger, won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor the following year. Sadly, before the dark knight was officially released, Heath Ledger was found dead in his apartment at the age of 29.
There are many articles analyzing the Dark Knight Joker figure, a character that cannot be summed up in a few words. Although the film does not detail the history of the Joker, the small, fragmented character is impressive.
He is a wise and sad anarchist, and his antisocial personality makes him unconstrained by moral senses. But he's not a fan of violence, he just knows how violence can save Gotham City's collapsing order. This is a figure who has an inner expectation of justice, and good and evil are interpreted in him in a three-dimensional way.
Batman
With the help of the second feature film, The Great Mage of Hades, young Tim Burton, who was just emerging in Hollywood, was given the opportunity to direct Batman.
In the 1980s, Batman was already the top comic book IP that swept the United States, but Tim Burton had little experience in shooting mainstream commercial films. There were very few superhero movies that could be borrowed from that era, so the filmization of Batman faced many pressures. But this version of "Batman" was finally released in 1989, and it won the recognition of the audience and a large box office.
The Joker in Tim Burton's version of Batman is the first Joker in Batman movies and Batman spin-offs to truly gain audience popularity, and its popularity to date is second only to heath Ledger's Joker in The Dark Knight.
Playing the Joker is Jack Nicholson, a legendary actor in American cinema, who applied his role experience from The Shining to the Joker, making the Joker look both dark and neurotic, a character with a gothic style and horror logic.
"The Return of the Joker"
In addition to "Joker" starring Jacqueline Phoenix, this year's blockbuster movie about "Joker" "Joker Returns 2" is being screened in North America. In 2017, the new version of "The Return of the Joker" set a new box office record for horror films with more than $300 million in North America and $700 million in the world, once again setting off a boom in stephen King's novel adaptations.
The Original Joker Returns is one of horror guru Stephen King's most famous classic best-selling novels, and the earliest film and television adaptation of the book was a two-episode television miniseries broadcast in 1990. However, due to the limited form of television broadcast and the scale of publicity, the show did not cause a wide range of repercussions at first, and over time, it has become a classic in the minds of genre film fans.
1990 Edition of Joker Returns
Compared with the rough tv production in 1990, the new version created by Warner in 2017 with a budget of $35 million is undoubtedly a relatively delicate work that is more in line with the aesthetics of contemporary young audiences.
The film "The Return of the Joker" tells the story of a group of small-town teenagers who are involved in a horrific adventure under the opportunity of a missing child case and eventually solve the secrets of the town.
The work's new horror box office record is not without signs: it fits the elements of popular nostalgic horror films and the structure of teen group portraits, such as "Stranger Things" is a typical case of the global popularity in this model. Bill Skarsgaard, who plays the Joker in the film, has an innate gloomy temperament, which also adds a lot to the completion of this role.
Chainsaw Horror
As the most representative Asian filmmaker in Hollywood at present, Wen Ziren's path of directing can be described as steady and steady, from the early years of specializing in the creation of horror genre films, to the gradual transition to Hollywood mainstream commercial films in recent years, he has almost never had the experience of losing his hand.
The film "Chainsaw Horror" is Wen Ziren's first film to be released on a large scale in North America, and the popularity of this work led to the production of the next seven sequels, which is the longest-lived horror series of the new century, and a new reboot is in preparation.
The "clown" in "Chainsaw Horror" does not exist in the form of a living body, that is to say, the "clown" here is not a movie character, but a movie prop used to advance the plot and set off the atmosphere, called Billy doll.
The prototype idea of Billy dolls can be pushed to the 80s "The Shining", "Ghost Driving" and a type of doll horror film represented by "Ghost Baby Returns".
Billy Doll, a clown in a black suit and pedaling a tricycle, is a prop used by the film's protagonist Jigsaw to deliver information to those who have been tortured, throughout the Chainsaw Horror series. Wen Ziren also used a similar doll when filming "Dead Silence", which shows that he has a high degree of identification with this prop.
"The Great Road"
From the beginning of the directorial career of "Spring and Autumn of Selling Art", the imagery of "circus" and "clown" almost runs through the film creation of Italian film master Federico Fellini. The special experience of traveling with the circus in his childhood gave Fellini a strong sense of identification with circus culture.
In Fellini's films, the "clown" is an everyday image, the "circus" is the epitome of life, and wandering is an expression of liberalism.
The film "The Great Road" is one of the most outstanding works of Fellini's directorial career, and it is also a gift to his beloved wife, Giulietta Massina, for her tenth wedding anniversary.
The film tells the story of Jessomina's tragic and happy new life after being sold to a wandering entertainer by her mother. Jessomina in the film is undoubtedly complex, and when she works, she is a clown who draws a smiley face to entertain the public, and is a symbol of happiness.
Outside of work, she is wrapped up in the difficulties of life and human nature, and she witnesses the joys and sorrows of the bottom as a wandering artist. "The Great Road" is a rare work in the history of cinema that has shaped the image of a female clown.
"Sad Trumpet Song"
In a sense, "absurdity" is fundamental to modern Spanish art. From Buñuel's surrealist films to Almodóvar's melodrama armed with color, "absurdity" has travaded the entire history of cinema in Spain. It was franco's dictatorship of Spain that intensified the absurd atmosphere of society and became the source of creation for later film directors.
The film "Sad Trumpet" is a critique and reflection on the late Franco regime, a "scarred literary image" belonging to Spain, but this work that won the best director and best screenplay at the 67th Venice Film Festival is not easy to understand.
The film takes the emotional dispute of a circus member as the starting point, but the narrative includes a large number of metaphors and a thick social and cultural background, the form of expression is exaggerated, but the core is heavy and serious. The Joker is a symbolic presence here and a key clue to the history of dictatorship.
The Circus
From the perspective of film history, Chaplin's "Circus", whether artistic or script-deep, is far inferior to the peak works such as "Modern Times", "The Great Dictator" and "City Lights". But in my opinion, "The Circus" is Chaplin's most humorous and natural expression.
The film tells the touching story of a kind tramp who mistakenly joins the circus that is about to go bankrupt, helps the circus to revive the dead, and helps the lonely acrobatic actress to achieve happiness.
The clowns who appeared in the movie "The Circus" actually do not have a realistic interpretation, and they are more inclined to use them as a tool for juggling and humor.
But in a non-rigorous sense, the Joker in the film actually includes chaplin's tramp. The classic images of the screen created by Chaplin's silent film era are themselves a derivative of the "clown", whether it is the makeup appearance or the exaggerated sense of humor of his body performance, to a certain extent, the "clown" is imitated.
"The Son's Big Doll"
The film "The Son's Big Doll" is an early work by Hou Xiaoxian, which tells the story of the unemployed young protagonist Kun Shu, who dresses up as a funny clown to promote the local cinema in order to support his family, and then causes a series of family conflicts and work setbacks.
The whole film is composed of simple scripts and realistic scenes, and there is no intense drama. Hou Xiaoxian in 1983, the shooting method and aesthetic system have not yet been constructed and full, but can already see the delicacy and sincerity of the plot level.
At the end of the film, Kunshu gets better working conditions provided by the movie theater, and no longer has to dress up as a clown with oily noodles to solicit customers. When he returns home from work, the young child cries because he does not recognize his well-dressed father. In order to make the child happy, he once again opened the clown makeup box, and Kun Shu will always be the child's big doll.
"The Man Who Was Slapped"
Victor Sjøstrom is Sweden's most important pioneering film director and actor, whose films such as "Ghost Carriage", "Wind" and "The Man Who Was Slapped" are all masterpieces in film history, and he also played the male lead in one of Bergman's most important classic works, "Wild Strawberry".
The film "The Man Who Was Slapped" is a tragedy with a thrilling element, the protagonist of the film was originally a scientist devoted to academic research, and his love is only two: doing theoretical research and wife Mary.
But in the process of writing a study on the origins of mankind, Mary cheated on the Duke of Renard, and the two conspired to steal and publish the scientist's study, and the beaten and humiliated scientist eventually collapsed. Years later, the scientist became a clown for human amusement, and he would perform a comedy called "The Man Who Was Slapped" in the circus every night...
As the founding father of bittersceros, Syosterom is comfortable with shaping tragic characters and tragic stories, and he creates perhaps the most charismatic and emotionally deep clown image in the film "The Man Who Was Slapped".
There are many clown-infested movies, such as "Suicide Squad", "Outer Space Killing Clown", "King of the Drama King", etc., and for example, "Paris, I Love You" or "Soul Break Venice" also have the highlights of the clown, and even Director Fellini has made a documentary about "Joker".
Leto's clown appearance in Suicide Squad
Cecil M. B. Demir's Joker in The King of Drama
The clown in the short film collection Paris, I Love You
Fellini's 1970 documentary Joker
It is no accident that the image of the clown has been able to maintain its strong vitality in the history of cinema, in fact, at the beginning of the birth of cinema, it was generally regarded as a kind of reproduction art and juggling art.
The magician-turned-film pioneer Georges Mélières first presented cinema to audiences as a "magic trick", while other filmmakers used the camera as a tool to record circus juggling performances. People go to the cinema to see the circus on the screen, watch the clown show, and gradually abandon the circus scene. Joker has been active on the big screen ever since.
The complexity of the clown image makes it have a broad space for interpretation: the clown can be terrifying and vicious, can be humorous and cute, or it can be incomprehensible.
Perhaps it is precisely because of this structural ambiguity and mystery that the image of the clown can always have a place in various types of films: horror films are used, comedies are used; superficial films are used, profound films are used; vulgar directors are used, and film masters are also used. The Joker can almost be said to be an all-round image in the history of cinema, without steps and baggage.