At the end of February, the 84th Academy Awards were announced, and "Hugo" and "The Artist", which grabbed the limelight, won several awards as expected, and "The Artist" won the best picture, director and leading actor. It won the best costume design and soundtrack awards; while "Hugo", which focuses on the technical flow route, won the best photography, visual, sound, sound editing and art direction awards, becoming the most dazzling pair of twins in this year's Olympics. What is quite meaningful is that, although the ideas are different and the expression methods are diverse, both "Hugo" and "The Artist" have followed the same path in their own way - paying homage to the classics.
In recent years, the Oscars have increasingly been accused of appending to the taste trend of "old white men" (the judges are overwhelmingly elderly white men). From last year's "The King's Speech" to this year's "Iron Lady", the history of the law-abiding Sexual themes and classical style expressions have always been favored by the Academy Awards. And "Hugo" and "The Artist", respectively, through two main lines that pay tribute to the film and production methods of the past century, play an antique nostalgic style in the current situation of colorful blockbusters.
Technology, walking with ideas,
from the initial poster to the trailer, the publicity effect of "Hugo" will make people mistakenly think that it is a children's drama theme film supplemented by brilliant 3D effects. However, the sincere friendship between 12-year-old French orphan Hugo and the adopted daughter of a toy store owner, Isabella, is not just about the children's efforts to restore a writing and drawing robot left by Hugo's father. The core behind the story of the puzzle is to silently show tribute and greetings to the filmmaker predecessor George Méliès. As far as the effects of the film technology are concerned, the visual effects and pictures of the film are wonderful. From the panorama overlooking Paris at the beginning, to the long shot of the train station and the big clock, the stunning and beautiful visual effects depend on outstanding CG technology. The undeniable fact is that director Martin Scorsese called himself a "die-hard fan of 3D movies". He swept all the 3D movies available at that time when he was young, and also applied this technology to such a movie. It's not just a fairy tale movie with a child as the protagonist.
Following the perspective of the mechanical control boy Hugo, Guanyin fans can appreciate the orderly operation of countless grand pipes, clockwork and gears between the clock towers, and the detail of the scenes is breathtaking. The contrast of bright yellow, dark blue and dark colors with extremely high purity adds a strong retro style to the film because of technology. Although the production method relies on technology, the retro nostalgia and humanistic meaning reflected in the film greatly reduce the cold sense of technology; as an American film that describes the story in France, many details in the film are in the old Paris. A tribute to classic culture. Not only the beautiful streets and alleys of Paris and medieval buildings where time is frozen in stone, among them, the French composer Saint-Saëns' "Dance of the Skeletons" was used as the soundtrack of the black and white old-fashioned movie, and the movie has a long-standing reputation for Paris' modern architecture. One of the representatives is the display of the Bibliothèque Sainte-Geneviève, which inadvertently shows the charm of classic culture.
In the film, every detail echoes the classics. The "Fairy Country" directed by Méliès in 1903 is reproduced in the glass studio of Méliès. The exquisite scenery and hand-painting techniques are used to show the unrestrained imagination at that time. The horror brought by the 3D special effects of the collapsing train is no less than that in 1896, the first batch of films shot by the Lumiere brothers, the inventors of the film, "The Arrival of the Train", the audience escaped from the roaring train and displayed on the screen. panic on the top. And the most classic scene in the movie, the little boy Hugo hanging on the hour hand of the big clock in the desperate juncture of escaping from arrest, is without exception borrowed from the 1923 Harold Lloyd's "The Last Safety" The classic rendition in. And George Méliès's only surviving film, 1902's "Journey to the Moon", is the clue of the whole film, and the moon face with one eye smashed into the spaceship is the clue of the whole film, and it is also a symbol of returning to the classics symbol. Although the rattling old-fashioned projectors show black and white pictures and silent silence, the technological means and dazzling special effects in the film ultimately point to the respect and reproduction of the classics of the old generation. The nostalgic style is very popular this year, but it reflects the attitude towards the problem and the thinking about the film technique-whether it is necessary to use technology for the sake of technology.
reappeared yesterday
If "Hugo" is borrowing 3D to go to the realm of the ancestors, then "The Artist" really uses traditional silent film techniques to achieve the ultimate in retroism. In "The Artist", the outstanding silent film actor George Valentine could not be like a duck in the world of sound, while his rising star Pepy Miller shines in the new sound film. By contrast, George's insistence on the performance art of silent film is more lonely and tragic—development and progress are usually accompanied by some degree of self-sacrifice. One of the most moving scenes in "The Artist" is when Pepi breaks into George's dressing room. Embracing the consolation of the admirer's clothes, that moment seems to flow through time, and the silence contains all kinds of emotions, which is very moving and inspiring.
At the end of the film, the two perform a perfect tap dance, and the former silent film star finally has a new charm in the world of sound. As the hero and heroine saluted the camera, the music faded; excited gasps and ambient background noises slowly rose from the silence of the black-and-white era, the hidden meaning of which is moving: a new world of sound has finally unfolded, the development of the times Naturally, it has its own helplessness, and more gives the unknown new hope.
In the era of the increasingly rapid advancement of film production technology, the audience's visual nerves have been refreshed time and time again by grand special effects scenes. The dazzling special effects and hot action scenes seem to be the only criterion for testing the quality of blockbusters. However, technology and tradition are not contradictory, and while using stunts, they can also express the beautiful emotions that human beings have hardly changed since ancient times. With its outstanding 3D visual effects, "Hugo" lays out a moving story with a strong emotional and humanistic meaning, while "The Artist" uses silent film to evoke the viewers and producers' feelings for the earliest stages of film development. Retro and nostalgia are not resting on their laurels, but a reflection on the entire impetuous environment of today; and the significance of facing this point affects the wider social world behind the limited screen world.
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