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In the fourth grade of elementary school, I watched the Hitchcock movie "Doctor Edward" broadcast on tv. Since then, I have known the name of Ingrid Bergman: it turns out that there are people in the world who have grown into marble sculptures! In particular, her 45-degree angled side face is not a "masterpiece"? Whether it's God's or the work of an artist.
Doctor Edward
A little older, I gradually found that she seems to be a little different from most Hollywood female stars, not only because she has always been "naked makeup", dressed very plain outside the movie, and do not like "fashion", but also because Bergman has a "cold and hard" feeling. In the rhetoric of Mr. Qian Zhongshu, it seems to be carved with a square pen. This feeling is definitely not the fake style of many female artists today who claim to be "female men" in order to circle fans. Bergman's sense of "coldness" is naturally revealed from time to time, of course, this is not because she is too tall, in Casablanca, she is so much taller than Humphrey Bogart, she can still be "a bird". Her sense of "coldness" is actually a bit like what the common people call "various colors", or as the intellectuals say, independent and assertive, perhaps it can also be said to be stubborn, stubborn, self- and independent...
Bergman in Casablanca
As time goes by, this feeling grows: in Bergman's Autumn Sonata, can the image of the cold, hard,communicative mother pianist, as if suffering from loving aphasia, be seen as a portrait of her soul? Although Bergman has a lot of differences in understanding with him in filming, is Bergman's performance not convincing? Isn't that role played by her as if she were possessed by herself? Isn't Zhu Yan, the truest state of human nature, more fascinating in art?
Bergman in The Autumn Sonata
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Therefore, when Ingrid Bergman resolutely abandoned Hollywood, risked the insult of a slut and the betrayal of fans, as a wife with a husband, sent a famous "text message" to the great Italian director Roberto Rossellini, and fell in love with it, was it a frivolous or rash move? Or is it bold and courageous? The relationship was more than just an entertainment "melon" at the time, it was elevated to the moral and ethical events of the entire Western society, and the US Senate voted to declare Bergman an "undesirable person" - a "slut humiliation" open to the entire Western middle class, and the spearhead was also aimed at Roberto Rossellini, who was famous at the time. For both of them, it was a completely traumatic event.
Rossellini
So, can rossellini's six films with Bergman be seen as Rossellini's traumatic stress response? At the height of her career, the goddess of cinema betrayed Hollywood, the symbol of capitalism, and threw herself into the arms of Europa. Then, as a man of Sicily, of course, you must use works that adhere to your artistic ideals to "single out" Hollywood. If you look at it this way, it seems a bit tragic, these films at that time except for the French "Film Manual" gave praise, in other places suffered a fiasco - whether in Italy or in the United States, the box office was dismal, the reviews were very rude, it was simply a denial of the director's talent. Moreover, the crystallization of Rossellini's love with Bergman – this is of course love, but a betrayal of Hollywood audiences: Rossellini is not a male god, but a badly receding hairline, belly-belly uncle - Isabella Rossellini still returned to Hollywood, and her most famous scene is not the image of "Lancôme" spokesperson for many years, nor the recent name of various chicken soup trumpets as an inspirational goddess, but in David Lynch's "Blue Velvet", she almost reproduces a kind of "slut humiliation" " scene.
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Today, when we revisit these films from more than 60 years ago, we find them so "modern." When critics criticized Rossellini's "degeneration," it was precisely his "evolution." In films before working with Bergman, Rossellini had retreated from the "fire"; the films with Bergman reflected a shift in his perspective: modern society, the loneliness, alienation and despair in people's hearts, and the relationship between these modernity syndromes and the spirit of Christ, which are more resonant with contemporary people. Interestingly, Ingrid Bergman's sense of "coldness" comes into play in these films.
Love on the Edge of the Volcano (1949) was Rossellini's first film with Bergman. Karin, a Lithuanian woman played by Bergman, met a handsome Italian soldier in an Italian war refugee shelter, married him, and followed him back to his hometown, Stromboli Island, one of Italy's three major active volcanoes. But there is a huge gap with Karin's imagination: poor, almost barren land, the husband is just a fisherman who lives by fishing; the inhabitants are conservative and closed, and her dress and casual conversations with men will be interpreted as sluts. She did not want to build her own new life here, but her values were incompatible with here, and the estrangement from her husband was deepening. In the end, Karin fled the island despite being pregnant, but was hit by a volcanic eruption and was cornered, and she finally cried out to God for the child in her belly: God, save me, give me strength and courage.
"Love on the Edge of the Volcano"
Rossellini's Bergman is more vivid than those in Hollywood, and it subverts her past image of "Hollywood's first lady". Her "looks" are of course online, but Rossellini photographs her "cold" side. She is here as an "interloper", out of place with everything, and the whole film gives the impression that she seems to have come here as if she had come here to endure some humiliation and then leave—although this humiliation can be linked to Bergman's situation at that time, but she only came to "meet" - not to meet the scene of the Italian fisherman harvesting tuna, not to meet the populist local humanities; but to meet what? In fact, the director has already used a sentence in the book of Isaiah to point out in the opening subtitle: "If you have never visited me, now ask me; if you are not looking for me, I will ask them to meet." The answer is here. The heroines of the materialistic world seek happiness of their own, but true happiness cannot be elsewhere, not even in romantic love. It is impossible to truly understand Rossellini's films without understanding the spiritual meaning of divine grace and redemption in suffering, and many of the careful criticisms are only superficial in themselves.
Back in Rome, the Undefended City, the identities of the two male protagonists are a matter of controversy: one is an Italian Communist, the other is a Catholic priest, and they fight side by side and die together. This is no accident. The most delicate and moving chapter of "Fire of War" is probably the wave caused by the Jews in the quiet monastery. Bergman has always given people a sense of "holiness" in Hollywood movies before, especially she has successfully starred in Fleming's "Joan of Arc", which is just a kind of "human design"; after leaving Hollywood, in fact, this "human design" has collapsed, but the collapse of this superficial human design is just the beginning of the real inner spiritual construction.
Joan of Arc at the Stake
Rossellini's manhood is also manifested in his tailor-made for Bergman another "Joan of Arc on the Pillar of Burning" (1954), to know that Bergman was almost 40 years old at the time (Joan of Arc was 16 years old when he died); this movie has no shortage of remarkable points, Rossellini made this story like a stage play, Bergman basically did not have much sense of violation, but because Carl Delais's "Joan of Arc of Saints" is really classic, has been deeply rooted in people's hearts, So the film doesn't get particular attention in Rossellini's films.
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But isn't Europe in 1951 (1952) the same work? In the end, the heroine played by Bergman is sent to a mental hospital, through the window of the hospital's high-rise building, she looks at her mother, husband and the poor people who have been rescued downstairs, and the sense of distress and compassion on her face is not exactly the reproduction of Dreyer's classic picture? In the face of the judge's questioning, didn't the words she said exactly the same as the scene where Joan of Arc was tried?
Europe in 1951
As Andre Bazin points out, Bergman does not "perform" in it, and her expression is a mark of a painful trait. The film received a lot of criticism at the time, but Bazin vigorously defended it. In this film, Bergman plays a high-society celebrity who usually has little time to echo the emotional demands of her children, leading to her son's excessive behavior (suicide). After the death of her son, she was never able to get out of the predicament, under the influence of her cousin, a leftist, she went to the "bottom", she helped the women and children in distress; she went to the factory to work (temporarily, of course); took care of the poor and dusty woman who was terminally ill; and even, after the robbery, learned that the robbers really had a hard time, she helped the robbers escape, and gave false testimony at the police station, denying that she had been robbed. Unable to understand her behavior, the family sent her to a mental hospital, where she refused the chance to return home in the face of the judge, saying she simply wanted to share the suffering of the people in despair and ended up staying in the mental hospital.
A hasty viewer reading the story will probably come to an arbitrary conclusion that "the Virgin's Heart is overflowing." But this is not the case. The film has a special meaning for Rossellini, who projected the pain of the death of his eldest son into the story, and if Bergman could not empathize with him at this point, not only would the film be false, but their love would also be distorted; moreover, the film was shot at a time when The European post-war legacy was still very serious; and finally, it is impossible to ignore that the archetype of the character played by Bergman is partly from the French female thinker Simone Weiyi.
Simone Weil
Milosz called Wey "a precious gift from France to the contemporary world", with a saintly legend. She was born in Paris in 1909 and died in London in 1943. The two world wars are bound to profoundly change the thinking of Europeans, the rethinking of good and evil, especially the evil of the 20th century has exceeded the limits of human nature, and the interrogation of the "suffering of the innocent" in the book of Job is so sharp and piercing, how much weight does the tears of children really weigh on Job's scale? Because of this, theodic theism has suffered a crisis of bankruptcy in contemporary Europe, such as Camus's categorical rejection of the God who allowed the innocent to suffer in the Plague. Wei Yi used "divine grace and burden" to summarize the spiritual dilemma of human beings in the 20th century. She refers to the various "rolling wheels of history", social Darwinism, etc., as the "heavy burden" of all mankind in our time; but at the same time, "charisma" has always been there, not in the church, not in any organization, but in the lives of ordinary laborers, and in the practice of the body, the suffering, that is, the astonishing slavery: the rejection of thought. As an elite, Wei went to work as a female worker in a factory, taught at the lower levels, and when she became seriously ill, refused to eat more than her rations, and died as a result. Milosz called him "anachronistic."
Europe in 1951 did not reflect deeply on Weil's thought, which was criticized at the time, but a film has its own task and destiny, and it should not exist to explain some theory of thought. After all, this film has done a good job of completing the angle of the scene according to the change of the protagonist's mental state, which is perfect. Bazin commented on the film: rigorous, complete and transparent.
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"Visiting Italy" (1954) tells the story of a middle-class British couple who travel to Naples, Italy, to inherit their inheritance, and their fragile marriage relationship is repeatedly tested, and on the way, they are repeatedly close to the brink of disintegration. In Naples, they seem to have casually visited the National Archaeological Museum of Naples, the volcanic craters, the ruins of Pompeii, and the Catacombs of Fontanelles. The jealous heroine seems to be casually, constantly seeing pregnant women with young mothers pushing strollers ... Just when they seemed to have decided to divorce, they were scattered by the procession celebrating the feast of San Viès, and when they found each other again, they suddenly realized that they needed each other so much that they decided not to divorce.
"Tour of Italy"
If it is really "casual", then isn't this a tourist scenery film? Isn't that ending abrupt? Like many hasty and condescending interpretations. However, this is precisely not how it can be understood. If you look at it in the religious and philosophical sense of the word "miracle", this is precisely a complete, solid, clean and clean film. Don't forget that the Italian in the shot is shown through the eyes of a middle-class British woman, and the Naples we see is filtered by her consciousness, which is a very subjective shot. She was just an ordinary person, she was anxious about her marriage, and there was no spiritual life to speak of. But here are a few scenes that hit her: the remains of men and women clinging to each other in the last days of Pompeii, the supernatural worship of Fontanelle, the piety of the people... It was here that she remembered the poet who had pursued herself, as if she had begun to understand him a little. The couple did not come to inherit the inheritance, and they finally realized that their trip to Italy was to repair the love link between them...
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Rather than being "underestimated" as the audience is "overrated," audiences have long been accustomed to Hollywood's cinematic model and think it's "reality." Rossellini's The Machine That Kills the Bad Guys (1952) answers his view of "neorealism" to some extent, an absurd comedy that tells us that the camera's "eyes" are not so faithful, much less a true reflection of reality, and that the boundaries between good and evil are not so clear-cut, but more human self-righteousness.
The Machine that Kills the Bad Guys
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