Foreword: French film critic François Truffaut, after shooting a short story similar to the theme of "Four Hundred Blows" "Naughty Ghost", and won the recognition of the Brussels Film Festival, Truffaut decided to shoot the long "Four Hundred Blows", "Four Hundred Blows" In addition to the French audience's favorite, the copyright of the film was also sold to the United States, Italy, Japan and other countries, Truffaut became a new director of French New Wave films with his debut novel "Four Hundred Blows", this article will be from the audiovisual language, scene scheduling, metaphorical symbols, To interpret the charm of Truffaut's films.
In 1959, Truffaut's film "Four Hundred Blows" was released in France, a youth growth film starring Jean Pierre Lyod, Claire Morie, Albert Remy and others, and in the same year, Truffaut won the Oscar for Best Picture for his self-written and self-directed "autobiographical" story "Four Hundred Blows", and the "notorious" film critic Truffaut became famous in one battle.
After the film's release, Truffaut's parents broke with Truffaut because they could not accept the image in the film, and Truffaut responded: "After the death of Andre Bazin, I have no more parents. Therefore, the movie "Four Hundred Blows" is often mentioned as Truffaut's autobiographical film,
The protagonist Antoine (13 years old) lives with his father and stepfather, is always harassed by the teacher at school, and when he returns home, even if he is very well-behaved to help with housework and has no time to do homework, the reason for the quarrel between his mother and stepfather will be blamed on himself. During Antoine's truancy, he accidentally discovers the fact that his mother has cheated on him, and Antoine's experience of running away from home eases Antoine's relationship with his mother.
When Antoine was forcibly expelled from school for plagiarism, Antoine ran away from home again, in order to survive, 13-year-old Antoine decided to steal the printer in the scorekeeper's office to make some money, but the printer was not sold, and Antoine's theft caused him to be sent to a juvenile correctional facility.
Truffaut pays great tribute to the documentary aesthetics of his mentor Bazin, and the film strives to satirize the traditional film of remake art and literature, calling on young directors to create films with their own ideas and styles, revealing the style of French New Wave films everywhere. This film will analyze the unique charm of "Four Hundred Blows" from the lens language, scene scheduling, metaphor and its practical significance.
As a representative of realist theory, Bazin ushered in the second milestone of world film theory, and his film documentaryism includes three aspects: the truth of the object of expression, the truth of time and space, and the truth of narrative structure.
Truffaut Bazin's "fans" of documentarianism, Bazin pointed out, film directors should make full use of panoramic shots, long shots and the advantages of scene scheduling, depth of field shots, handheld photography, as far as possible without camera editing, the relationship between time and space and space is explained, Truffaut in "Four Hundred Blows" perfectly showed the realism style.
1. Documentary shooting, so that the film comes to life, narrowing the distance between the audience and the characters of the film, and truly showing the French street scene of the 50s and the state of the protagonist Antoine
The original first feature of film art is the "documentary feature", which is closer to life and closer to reality than any art, and Bazin put forward the slogan of "film is the asymptote of reality", which is called realism. The movie "Four Hundred Blows" broke through the popular "daddy movie" in the French world, and turned to an objective perspective, leading the audience to calmly watch Antoine's life.
In the truancy, Antoine and his friends went to the roller to play, play games, physical education class, the teacher took the students to the street to run, the street was crowded, "one two one one two one", with the slogan, the students ran less and less, all sneaked out to play. After Antoine's sale of typewriters is discovered, the stepfather grabs Antoine, "Maybe doing this will make you learn to be obedient, sooner or later this matter will be over", walking through the crowded street, the stepfather decides to send Antoine into the game...
Many of these extremely real-life scenes close the distance between the audience and the film, the film records the bits and pieces of Antoine's life through documentary techniques, and the lens delicately and truly reproduces the French street scenes and Antoine's life in the 50s, and the audience is willing to assimilate with the film works.
2. The use of a variety of lenses objectively shows the life of the characters, so that the audience can deeply appreciate the loneliness of the characters' inner world and the incompatibility with external life
Depth of field lens: increase the realism of the picture, deeply portray the character image and psychological state
Bazin affirmed several of the advantages of the depth of field lens, one increases the realism of the picture, the second depth of field lens contains a lot of potential information that is not easy to use the performance performance, and the three depth of field lens can compress the number of shots shot. The first to master the depth of field lens was the 1941 modern film landmark "Citizen Kane".
Truffaut was influenced by Bazin's theory, and there must have been a lot of use of depth-of-field lenses in the film. In "Four Hundred Blows", Antoine runs away from home and lives in an almost abandoned factory, when a worker comes to work, Antoine picks up the clothes that cover him and leaves, the foreground is a major cold machine, the background is two workers talking, Antoine is low to walk out, showing the helpless situation that Antoine was in at that time, but also increases the realism of the film.
When Antoine almost burned down the house because of Balzac, he was counted down by his father and his mother became a qualified mother, at which point the depth-of-field camera once again introduces the image of Antoine's parents in the family, and the protagonist Antoine is a typical example of a French child, who has become a victim of a stylized social system, and after trying to become a good child, he has been slaughtered by educational defects.
Long shot: realistically focus on the individual, "compulsively" the audience is in a state of viewing, let the audience understand the life of the characters, and lay the tone of the entire film.
At the beginning of the film, with the Eiffel Tower as the main body, using handheld photography, shooting the Eiffel Tower under the subjective lens from far to near to far in the line of sight, the Eiffel Tower is like a very important thing in Antoine's heart, getting farther and farther. At the same time, the opening long shot establishes that "Four Hundred Blows" is a depressing movie that people will sympathize with the protagonist.
At the end of "Four Hundred Blows", the continuous use of three long shots becomes a more classic part of the film, one of which is an 80-second long Antoine escape shot, panning the shot, Antoine is always in the center of the frame, there is no soundtrack, only Antoine's footsteps, so that the audience hopes that Antoine will get rid of the sea of suffering and be happy for Antoine's temporary freedom.
The second shot is a long shot of running to the sea for 52 seconds, shaking the camera from Antoine's body to the left to the sea, in addition to Antoine's footsteps, began to add background music, Antoine has always longed for the seaside, and the music sets off Antoine's temporary pleasure.
Shot three Antoine arrives at the seaside long shot, from the left side into the audience's line of sight, arrived at the sea, Antoine ran horizontally into the sea, took a few steps to the camera, the film finally fixed on Antoine's facial close-up, frowning, eyes very as if melancholy helpless and confused, but also seems to be full of hope, as if asking the audience for answers, this freeze frame has also become a classic technique in the history of cinema.
In the creation of film and television, the lens belongs to the basic unit of film and television works, it is the new Hollywood study of French New Wave films, only began to give the lens a new meaning, so, as the Representative of the French New Wave "Four Hundred Blows", the expression of the theme is inseparable from the processing of visual effects, the director through documentary techniques, truly showed the life of the 13-year-old Antoine of France in the 50s, not liked by his family, incompatible with the outside world, so that the director will be the story he wants to tell to the greatest extent possible to be expressed.
As the main leader of the New Wave of French cinema, Truffaut has a very high role in promoting the "author theory", Truffaut pointed out that it is not possible to blindly shoot the art and literature of the existing documents, to abandon the old film shooting methods, and to pursue the original script with the director's creativity for shooting, of course, the direction pointed out by Truffaut is the direction of film creation advocated by the French New Wave.
Truffaut proposed a method for interpreting the "author's strategy" of the film, one is the scene scheduling, and the other is the director's personal expressiveness. About Truffaut's "Four Hundred Blows" in terms of scene scheduling: set design, performances have tried their best to get close to real life.
Set design: In "Four Hundred Blows", Antoine comes to the street, the camera is filmed in real-life, Antoine steals milk in a small corner, in the picture, one light and one dark, the director shoots Antoine from a fair angle. Moreover, in terms of scene scheduling, in the milk theft incident, Antoine's action trajectory has running, walking loosely, climbing up and down, the use of panoramas, close-ups, and medium-shots, combined with the use of long shots, not only increases the sense of reality, but also increases the nervous psychological activity of stealing milk.
Actors: French New Wave film directors were heavily influenced by Italian neorealist films, shooting with non-professional actors, and the protagonist Antoine was recruited by director Truffaut through the French Evening News, and during the filming of the film, the director shot in a semi-improvised manner. For example, at the end of "Four Hundred Blows", Antoine's interrogation is the audition process of director Truffaut acting as a censor and playing the role of Antoine. In this scene, Antoine confesses that he is a person who is not needed by his family, is always driven around, lies are better than the truth, and the performance close to the truth shows the lack of family education.
Lighting: An author director, always have an inertia in scene scheduling, such as Tim Burton, in the films he directed, always appear in the fantasy horror light and shadow, and in "Four Hundred Blows", Truffaut mostly uses natural light for live shooting, such as: When Antoine steals milk, the light is bright and dark, and Antoine uses natural light to shoot when he slips, which perfectly matches the overall visual tone of the film.
"Four Hundred Blows" is Truffaut's film dedicated to Bazin, in addition to the use of realist theory, advocating natural style, long shots, depth of field shots, in the scene scheduling, street shooting, non-professional actor use and authorship theory are also perfectly presented in the film, hinting at Antoine's sad and lonely childhood and the lack of education of his parents and schools. Truffaut's autobiographical film became the beginning of his authorial films, and Four Hundred Strikes set an example for the French New Wave, and even for many film directors today.
Literature focuses on intention, such as the poem "Raise your head to invite the bright moon, bow your head and think of your hometown,", the bright moon and actions can cover the poet's inner activities, and the metaphorical expression in the film is a means for the director to express his inner intentions. For example, in Jia Zhangke's "Destiny of Heaven", the use of the Jin opera "Yutang Spring", "Su San, do you know the crime? ", not only asked the audience under the stage, but also asked the audience.
Truffaut scoffed at traditional cinema, so he used a metaphor for it in his films.
First, there are two scenes in the film where students write in the classroom, and at the beginning of "Four Hundred Blows", the students sit in the classroom and silently write what the teacher has taught, and in the seventh minute, the students dictate the text spoken by the teacher, and these two scenes last for a total of seven minutes.
Second, Antoine admired Balzac so much that after reading Balzac's article, he copied the wonderful parts of his essay completely, and the teacher dissuaded Antoine with plagiarism.
These two examples in "Four Hundred Blows" show Truffaut's zero-tolerance attitude of "boss movies", which is the first time Truffaut called for "authorship" in filmmaking, as well as a satire on dull education, although most of the time it is Truffaut's criticism of education, but it does not lose its feelings.
Another example is the title of the film "Four Hundred Blows", what is four hundred blows? The original title of the movie "Four Hundred Blows" is translated from the English "the four hundred blows", which in turn is translated from the French "les quatre cents coups", in French, this sentence means the strong rebellion of youth, the French believe that disobedient children hit 400 times, the child will change bad habits.
The protagonist, Antoine, is a typical figure of the French child in history, who himself became a victim of a stylized social system, and after trying to become a well-behaved child, he was slaughtered by the defects of school education and family education.
As a visual art body of the film, in addition to showing deep surprises through the lens, you can also use metaphors to increase the depth of the story, bringing the audience more space for thinking, metaphors may be the title of the film, may be color, or imagery, its role is to turn the seemingly simple story, trigger the thinking of human nature and society or life.
Growing up, 13-year-old Antoine was always in a state of being "discarded", the documentary filming method looked at his growth as a bystander, and the variety of shots and scene scheduling deepened the realism of the story, creating a real child for the audience, and the child made no more mistakes in front of the camera.
"Four Hundred Blows" criticizes the rigidity of education, the lack of parental education, and the disdain for the "father film", which is an important work of French New Wave cinema and even a model for future generations. Until today, "Four Hundred Blows" has played a huge role in contemporary parent education and school education, children need the company of parents, the role of education for children is beyond reproach, and blindly "giving up" children is never the right way.