Text: Overnight flowers
The 1941 William Wheeler film Little Fox is a representative of the classic Hollywood era realist films, written by Lillian Heilman and starring Betty Davis, and received 8 nominations for the 14th Academy Awards, including Best Picture.
The title of The Little Fox is derived from an allusion in The Song of Solomon, where the little fox destroys the vines in order to eat grapes. Therefore, the "little fox" itself has a profound metaphorical significance, that cunning, greed and selfishness, which are used by screenwriters to reflect the emerging capitalists in the transition period of american southern civilization. In addition to reflecting the reality of a specific period, the film reduces the root of the contradiction to the weakness of human beings themselves, so the film is an allegory that explores human nature.
As a famous American film and playwright, Lillian Heilman not only has a distinct realist color, but also uses a kind of enthusiasm and rebellion to create a conservative and dull literary and artistic atmosphere at that time to bring deep reflection and criticism. If "Guarding the Rhine" pins her humanitarian spirit and extremely idealized humanistic care through the promotion of anti-fascist values, then "The Little Fox" is a work of a certain autobiographical nature, based on The Family of Heilmann's childhood grandfather, exposing the hypocrisy, greed, selfishness and indifference under its exquisite, gorgeous appearance.
"Little Fox" focuses on the transition period of civilization , the family of The Lady of the South at the turn of the century in 1900. After the Civil War, the industrial civilization of the North gradually replaced the manor aristocracy civilization in the South, and the former Southern nobles could not maintain a prominent position through the possession of land and labor. The merchants who came into being gradually became a kind of upstart - emerging capitalists through the control of labor relations in the industrial age, and in "Little Fox", the heroine Regina and the Hubbard family represented by two younger brothers Ben and Oscar are representatives of this power.
"Little Fox" grasps the economic structural changes in this period of civilization transition, focusing the narrative on the interest game of the southern merchant family in the negotiation with the northern (Chicago) capital industrialist Marshall to build a large cotton factory, exposing the essence of capital accumulation and money worship, that is, the extreme greed for material and money alienates the goodness of human nature, so that the warmth between the brothers and relatives of the family is gone, and replaced by the indifference and hypocrisy after the interest.
Therefore, while restoring the real life state of the southern Civilization transition period in the early 20th century, "Little Fox" perfectly integrates the most concerned female value appeals, the living conditions of the underclass, and the living conditions of laborers into this allegorical story.
The film's success in character development lies in the precision of the casting, which appropriately combines the "big star system" of the classic Hollywood era with the narrative strategy of the film, that is, the role of Regina Giddens is subtly integrated with the image characteristics of Betty Davis. Betty Davis, as the premier star and acting representative of Hollywood in the 1940s, although her works are not as influential as Audrey Hepburn's "Roman Holiday" and Vivien Leigh's "Gone with the Wind" in the world, her significance to the Hollywood film industry is that she has set a benchmark for actors of the same period and future generations with her professionalism and performance artistic achievements.
The reason why Betty Davis is loved by audiences and filmmakers is that, unlike the elegant and sweet mannerism or stereotyping common mannerisms of female stars in the same period, she always uses precise and profound performances to expose the truest undertones of human nature. In the series of stunning roles she has created, there is no absolute good and evil, black and white good and bad, whether it is arrogance, vanity, selfishness, greed, snobbery, or fragility, sensitivity, inferiority, cringe, or perseverance in loneliness, indomitability in adversity, different levels of emotions, different dimensions of personality, human nature is unpredictable, good and evil are intertwined, and they are vividly presented in her relaxed and relaxed one-trick style.
It is precisely because of Betty Davis's sitting that the seemingly greedy and mean Regina Giddens is shown more thickness in addition to indifference and hypocrisy, betty Davis uses details to make the characters more three-dimensional and complete and vivid. When she examines herself in the mirror, although she is strong, proficient in design, and well versed in the survival rules of high society, it is difficult to avoid the pain of the passage of time and Shaohua no longer; when she longs for her husband to die of illness and ignores her sick husband, her expression still shows panic, not only for her husband's death but also for her own indifference and numbness; when she sees her future daughter who has taken care of her future and left the family angrily, she reveals confusion and loneliness.
Another significance of Betty Davis's interpretation of the role is that it shows the change of women's status and the reshaping of values in modern civilization. Betty Davis, who has been nominated for the Oscar 11 times, is herself the representative of the modern female image, and in the films she starred in, the female characters dominated, the personality was independent and strong, and the "independent self-confidence" in this image was in line with the value orientation of women in the film to find self and spiritual freedom.
Through the mirror image of three women and their different destinies and life trends, the film shows a kind of release of modern civilization for women's self-development.
Aunt Porty is a typical example of a traditional woman, practicing the patriarchal etiquette of the traditional southern plantation aristocracy, for her husband's oppression and arbitrariness, she dares to be angry and dare not speak, often uses a state of madness as an anesthetic to reality, in order to escape the oppression of patriarchal husbandship, she is a victim and martyr of patriarchy; the heroine Regina, despite greed and indifference, her behavior logic still reflects the resistance to this unfair, unequal male-dominated order and discourse power, and she can't get her parents' face from childhood. Her father's inheritance was also divided between her two younger brothers, and she toyed with her husband and brother between the palms of her hands, and her pride and publicity were all manifestations of this rebellion and resistance.
But the heroine Regina's resistance is still incomplete, all she does is to use the laws of patriarchal norms to restrain each other and wrestle with each other to achieve their own interests, and still can't get rid of their attachment to male power. Thus, her daughter Alexandra, enlightened by modern thought, boldly achieved true spiritual freedom and independence by rebelling against her mother's machinations and questioning the greed and indifference of the nobility.
Therefore, the first half of Alexandra shows the typical traditional Southern high society lady, arrogant, docile, sweet, but lost herself in the etiquette norms. And her growth is based on seeing through this hypocrisy and pathology, daring to break with the old-fashioned, pedantic, profit-loving, indifferent family, so that she has the character and courage, courage and strength of modern women.
William Wheeler was one of the most prestigious directors of the Hollywood blockbuster studio era, having been nominated for the Academy Award for Best Director 12 times and winning best director awards three times. Throughout his classic works, from the war film "House of Loyalty", the "film noir" "The Great Detective Story", the romance film "Roman Holiday" to the epic blockbuster "Binxu", various classic genre films will achieve both commercial and artistic success after being directed by him. The reason why William Wheeler can freely move between films with different themes and styles is naturally inseparable from his familiarity and accurate grasp of the audience's psychology and film language.
Whether it is an obscure theme or a complicated story, William Wheeler can always present it through a popular and artistically expressive and skillful lens language. In short, all complex propositions are transformed into character relationships in the space scene, and the expressiveness of the picture itself is increased through composition metaphors, character interaction, and prop interpretation, which is embodied in the fact that the allegorical nature of the story is strengthened by spatial scheduling and depth of field composition.
For example, in a scene in which Oscar's uncle and father are washing in the same room, Wheeler interprets the relationship between father and son through three rectangular compositions of "mirror-door-window". The moral of the mirror reflection is self-evident, Oscar uncle father and son is tantamount to a kind of male power, patriarchal transmission and inheritance, the son's greed, cunning, unscrupulous means is not a copy of the father; if this hint is not strong enough, the director through the father and son appear at the same time in a similar door, the same window, emphasizing this kind of "reproducibility" between father and son, that is, because of the greed and snobbery of human nature, the minions of this money will still grow in a kind of high-society kinship bond. Undoubtedly a classic example of spatial scheduling.
In the villa where the heroine lives, the use of deep focus lenses and depth of field composition is further strengthened. The heroine Regina always firmly occupies the most advantageous position (the center of the sofa, the main seat of the dining table, the top of the stairs) whether it is in the family's husband and wife, mother-daughter relationship or in the struggle and competition with the family brothers and foreign merchant capitalists, and the central position on this visual composition is a symbol of the heroine's dominance of the rules of the game and strategizing. And when the daughter broke through the door and completely broke with the family, this growth was groundbreaking, and she walked out of the stereotypes and bad habits represented by this villa and the chain of interests of the family.
"Little Fox", as the representative work of William Wheeler and Betty Davis after "Red Shirt Tears" and "Tears of Incense Notes", has a stronger social criticism and reflection than the previous works, so it has a stronger inspirational significance for future generations in the restoration of the characteristics of the times, the reflection on women's growth, and the exploration of performance and directing art.