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British director Alfred Hitchcock is a famous master of film art in the history of world cinema, and is also recognized as a "master of suspense" around the world.
Alfred Hitchcock
Hitchcock produced more than fifty films in his career as a director, spanning the silent and sound film eras. As soon as he arrived in Hollywood, his first film, Butterfly Dream, made him a blockbuster name, winning the 13th Academy Award for Best Picture and Best Cinematography in Black and White.
In the following two decades, Hitchcock successively produced classic works such as "Soul Requiem", "Rear Window", "Ecstasy", "Horror Story" and so on.
Today, the four words "Hitchcock" are not just a name, but a synonym for his unique style: "McGuffin", suspense setting, blonde, framed people, voyeuristic shots and so on
Turning his attention to the early days of Hitchcock's career, after becoming director of the subtitling department, Hitchcock has been involved in the production of some films, but most of them have been written as a director's assistant and dialogue.
One day, a producer named Michael Balcon asked Hitchcock if he would like to direct a film himself. So Hitchcock adapted a novel by Santis and made his debut novel, Garden of Joy. Strictly speaking, "Garden of Joy" is not a good movie, the story is very strange and childish.
But through this shooting experience, Hitchcock learned a lot of shooting techniques and techniques in Germany, and two years later launched the first true "Hitchcock-style film"
It's also the "Tenant"
The Lodger Poster (1927)
One night, a tenant checked into a house rented out by a landlady. The tenant was suspicious in terms of both dress and behavior. The landlady thus suspects that the tenant is a terrible serial killer.
There was a killer named The Avenger who haunted blondes every Tuesday night. The landlady has a daughter, Daisy, whose boyfriend is a police officer. With the arrival of the tenant, the three fall into a love triangle relationship.
Stills from "The Tenant"
As we all know, Hitchcock likes to set time bomb-like "suspense" in his own movies, by creating suspense to keep the audience's attention and promote the plot.
At this point, the suspense of "whether a tenant is a killer or not" has been buried.
In The Lodger, Hitchcock uses a two-line narrative of murder and love, with the two lines intertwined to advance each other.
The police had to go to Daisy's house every day and make a set by giving gifts. But he behaved rudely, often playing a "handcuff game" with Daisy and hurting Daisy from time to time. In contrast, the tenant, though strangely behaved, was polite and gentle and would buy Daisy the clothes she wanted. The two were like two extremes of the scale, and Daisy slowly leaned toward the tenant.
When Daisy's love affair with the tenants begins to germinate, the "Avengers" are getting more and more violent, and the citizens are more and more panicked. In order to ensure the safety of her daughter, the landlady was determined not to let the two be together.
The jealous police also began searching the tenant's room, where he found a gun in the tenant's luggage and a map full of the trajectory of the "Avengers".
The previous "ticking time bomb" finally exploded, but then Hitchcock created another reversal.
The tenant explained that the first victim was his sister, who was also tracking down the killer in order to get revenge.
Faced with this explanation, the police did not believe it, and handcuffed the tenants to prepare to take them back to the police station. But Daisy, who is in love, believes the tenant and helps him escape.
The two fled to a bar, where the tenant's handcuffs were recognized by those around them. The suppressed anger in the hearts of the crowd erupted, and the tenants became the target of everyone. Subsequently, the sheriff was also informed that the real "Avenger" had been captured.
It is here that the final mystery is truly revealed
Tenants are beaten by angry crowds
"The Tenant" is a romance film with a thriller shell, and it is also very reluctant in many plots.
But on closer inspection, the film has in some ways taken on the form of a later Hitchcock style.
Hitchcock considered silent film to be the purest form of cinema, and in Hitchcock and Truffaut's Dialogue, he confessed: "When writing a film script, it is indispensable to distinguish between dialogue and visual components, and whenever possible, pay more attention to visual effects than dialogue." Whatever the final choice of plot development, consideration must be given to making the audience watch the movie with bated breath as it can be. ”
From beginning to end, Hitchcock has always been adept at leading the audience's emotions
As a silent film, the best thing about "The Tenant" is that it renders the atmosphere of suspense. The lack of auditory experience allows the viewer to focus more on the film.
The most stunning shot in the whole film is a glass shot.
After the tenant was settled in the room, he began to pace and wander, moving back and forth so that the chandelier also swayed. The audience follows the landlady's perspective and stares at the dangling lights on the ceiling. Suddenly the ceiling became transparent, as if seeing the fear and uneasiness of the tenants.
Freud also said in "Pansexualism" that "voyeurism can satisfy everyone's inner needs." Hitchcock also believed that voyeurism was an instinct of everyone's psyche, which could be used to strip away humanity.
To shoot this shot, Hitchcock actually installed a very thick glass floor. Such shots rarely appear in his later works, but the use of light and shadow effects to show the psychological activities of the characters has become an indispensable "Hitchcock factor".
There is also a scene in "The Tenant" where the landlady who witnesses the tenant going out in the middle of the night sits on the bed, and the outside light shines on the landlady's face, while also projecting the shadow of the window on the wall. The distorted window shadows project the anxiety and fear in the characters' hearts.
The setting of the character of "the tenant" also follows Hitchcock's favorite "framed man". But unlike other films, in The Lodger, Hitchcock deliberately brought the image of the tenant close to the murderer.
Even if the viewer is in God's perspective, they don't know that the tenant is innocent from the beginning. The purpose of this is to increase the thrill of the film without sound.
To make it happen, Hitchcock specially scheduled the guest's appearance fifteen minutes later. When tenants show up at the landlord's doorstep, even the music on the spot becomes a bit harsh.
Emerge from the fog in a coat, cover your cheeks with a scarf, unable to look directly at the blonde's portrait, creep out in the middle of the night without sleeping...
Even if these behaviors are put into the current life, they will feel very suspicious.
Jumping out of the screen, in fact, when writing the script, the tenant's setting is the murderer. However, due to the "star system" at that time, the negative image would have a negative impact on the star image. The male protagonist of "The Lodger", Ivor Novello, was a popular drama star in britain at the time, and in order not to destroy his image, Hitchcock specially changed the ending of the script.
As mentioned earlier, Hitchcock applied the shooting techniques and techniques he learned in Germany in The Lodger. But beyond that, Hitchcock was exposed to German Expressionism.
German Expressionism originated in Germany in the 1920s and was first used to express the panic and fear brought to Germany by the First World War. Focus on opposing realism and naturalism, emphasizing the importance of catharsis. Representative works include "Dr. Caligari's Cabin" and "Metropolis"
Later, in the 1920s and 1930s, it was integrated into many films, and through the control of lighting and sets, the atmosphere and mood of the film were enhanced.
It was also from "The Tenant" that Hitchcock began to slowly build his own unique style and audiovisual language.
With its unique visual effects, "Greek films" will not be buried by the sand waves of film history. To this day, it is still an important inspiration for many filmmakers.
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