As a work produced by the famous French director Jacques Perrin in 2004, "Cow-like Spring" brings us not only the sound of children's chorus and the fresh and natural story style, but also let us see the director's Inheritance and innovation of the French film tradition. The following is a brief review of the film in four aspects: story, picture, sound and actor performance.
one. Story
Story plays a vital role in a film, and it is also the aesthetic subject that the audience appreciates. A good story is often the key to the success of a film.
As European art school films, their understanding of stories is completely different from Hollywood films. There will be no rich plot, no climax stories, no dreamlike fiction, and no A happy ending. Everything looks so bland, like real life, and the film inherits this feature of European cinema well at this point.
The first is to be good at using pictures to explain the plot, and dilute the role of dialogue. Even from the point of view of a musical film, the discourse in the whole film is very small, and there is almost no dialogue that clearly explains the plot. At the beginning of the film, it is explained to the conductor Pierre Morhange. In the incident of the death of the mother, the director only used two people and three sentences in total, and the coherent pictures made it clear. The same is true when explaining the musician's life experience. The relationship between the past and the school is completely explained, but patiently let the audience "understand" naturally through the echo of the picture and the story. This is completely different from the popular Hollywood movie style. It also shows that the director is confident enough in the narrative. David Mammy once said in "Director's Homework", "If you find that a certain part of the script cannot be shot without narration, this part must be unimportant." If a story needs to be constantly explained, it can be understood by the audience. , then this must not be a good screenplay.
As a French film, the director often likes to challenge the audience's aesthetic stereotypes in some places, such as when Clement Mathieu first came to the "Fond de I'Etang" school. In the scene, the audience followed Matthew's footsteps and approached the school with doubts. The first thing they saw was the introverted and taciturn Pepino at the door. This gave the audience a bad psychological preparation. And what I saw were a few girls who talked freely, which made the audience suspicious, and then the director treated them as the principal's daughter through the oral confession of Uncle Ma Sang, that is, the audience had not actually seen the school students when they got here. After all, the third one saw a student who was punished on his knees and wiped the floor. So far, the audience's sense of oppression towards the school has formed. Perhaps the director can arrange for the audience to feel the oppression of the school as soon as he comes up, instead of having to go through such troubles. , but making such a contrast is also a method used by European directors that is different from the popular aesthetic taste of Hollywood.
Let's take a look at the director's detailed handling. The handling of the details of the plot often brings more highlights to the story. There are countless details worth noting in the film, just to name a few:
the first is Matthew's first class, and after being instructed, Matthew opens the door of the classroom - but not yet, the director Deliberately arranging for him to walk through the aisle in the midst of the noise, further accumulating unease.
The second is Matthew's understanding of teaching music to children. He didn't plan to use music to educate children. On the contrary, as an unsuccessful character and an unprofessional music lover, he was very interested in music at the beginning. The attitude of music is very selfish, and in the film it is the details of him locking the sheet music in the closet, which not only shows the importance of music to him, but also shows that he has no intention of sharing his music with others. This is also reflected in his attitude when children are interested in his music scores. It can be said that his music has influenced and educated the children, and it is also the children who have given him inspiration and redemption.
The third is the Qing Festival when he angrily "teachs" the children to sing for the first time. Faced with singing and mocking his children, he helped them correct their tune, and after the children fell asleep, there were still children playing The minor key he taught, this small detail has already reflected the incomparable appeal of the music.
The fourth is the plot of the principal Coppino, which is a typical plot of French-style film humor. In the film, although there are unease and ups and downs, there is also humor from time to time. This humor is not exaggerated or cynical. , but light and simple, reflecting the director's creative concept of life throughout the whole chapter.
two. Picture The pictures of
French films often give people a strong artistic atmosphere. As a symbol of the famous French film in the world, the "New Wave" film emphasizes the photographic nature of the film, and advocates a natural, realistic and accidental creative style. realistic movie performance. As an elegant and light musical film, "Fang" is also very suitable for expressing it in the usual way of French films, but Jacques Behan, a descendant of the "New Wave", has added a lot of personality on the basis of his predecessors. The elements of change make the film have a more diverse style.
First look at the use of the lens. At the beginning of the film, the director changed the inherent introverted use of mirrors in French films, and instead used a modern aerial panning lens to show the bustling urban scene in the United States (like the Manhattan financial district). French films have always been rejected by their artistry. Commercial, focusing on the expression of ordinary life, and a French director adopted such a Hollywood-style beginning, as if he would boldly show his different movie styles from the beginning. In fact, thinking of the mirrors used by Jacques Behan in his documentary "Heaven, Earth and Human Trilogy", we can also find some such shots that boldly subvert the traditional human perspective (for example, in "Migrating Birds", the camera is fixed on the body of the bird to shoot ), which is different from the "author's film" advocated by the New Wave, which reflects the director's integration of the special effects concept of Hollywood films while inheriting the connotation of French films. But what is more puzzling is that after this shot, the whole film is quickly restored to the traditional French film on the lens: a long shot with a strong record, a depth of field shot, and a "author's film"-style bystander performance. It makes me feel that the first shot is not more about storytelling, but as if the director was eager to express his film stance that is different from traditional French films from the very beginning, in order to establish an attitude for the audience to appreciate next. .
In addition to the beginning, the application of the entire film on the camera is very skilled and traditional. For example, in the scene where Matthew meets the principal for the first time, the director arranges the principal to enter the screen from above, the principal is above, and Matthew is in Below, the headmaster stood upright, and Matthew walked towards him in a hurry. The headmaster looked down, and Matthew looked up, instantly showing the headmaster's incompatible sense of authority and the status relationship between the two characters.
Looking at the color of the film, with the full development of the whole film, the unique feeling of the French director in color gradually emerged. In the "now" time domain, the director uses relatively warm tones and high-saturation colors: in the concert hall, in the cemetery, in the hut where the rainy night is lodged, the material of wood appears continuously (the walls of the concert hall, the coffins , the walls and furniture of the hut), the wood makes people not feel cold even on such a rainy night, giving people a feeling of dryness, stability and warmth; in the time domain of "recollections", the director uses a relatively low saturation The bluish color of the school and the abundance of black, white, and gray make the boarding school a lifeless place. The solemn principal and other teachers are dressed in black, the superintendent Matthew is dressed in gray, and the students are dressed in gray. They are all dull colors, and at the same time, the director also used the fog effect as the finishing touch at the beginning of the recollection. The first feeling generated by the fog is a sense of illusion, which echoes the memory, and the second is a potential sense of crisis, which also implies that Matthew's arrival will not be smooth sailing, but will always be full of unease and haze.
It is worth noting that the director has always paid attention to maintaining the tone in a single frame throughout the film, and the tone (brightness relationship, purity relationship) of each still frame maintains an inner harmony. In modern movies, Often like to use the movement and interaction of color blocks (such as people wearing specific colors) to create a specific sense of picture, which is the so-called "color scheduling", but the director in this film is more inclined to use a relative Unified color composition to maintain the audience's relatively simple viewing experience of the same picture. But there is one scene worth noting, the one where Matthew walks out of school after being fired, and the kids origami planes and sing their farewells. Matthew is in the panorama. At this time, the light is oblique sunlight with a large angle (judging from the shadow of the ground and the wall). Matthew is wearing a dark gray jacket, brown trousers, carrying a brown suitcase, and the wall of the school The ground and the ground are also warm tones in the sun, the whole picture is in a warm and peaceful atmosphere, and the principal is still dressed in this dark black suit, a color that is out of tune with the environment, he desperately slaps the classrooms, The black contrasts with the warm colors of the environment, his violent movements contrast with the natural movements of Matthew and the children, the slaps contrast with the children's singing, the colors, movements and sounds are highly unified here, but this detail is enough to see the film Extraordinary power.
In addition, let's take a look at the space. The space changes in the film are not only related to the requirements of the plot narrative, but also reveal more details of the director's conception. There are three most important spaces in this film after entering the memory: one is the school, including classrooms, aisles, etc.; one is the room where Matthew and the children rest; the other is the space outside the school. The director also adopted three different expression methods for these three spaces: for the school, more use of colder natural light to scatter light, which enhances the texture of the walls and stones, giving people a feeling of coldness and inhumanity; For the rest room, it is mainly the mixed light of warm lights, which gives people a more relaxed feeling. For Matthew, his room may be the only place in the whole school where he can think about some problems by himself. Matthew's monologue is often used here. It can be said that this objective space is also the thinking space provided by the director to the audience to think through Matthew himself. In this space, although the children sometimes have some bad behaviors (smoking, singing songs mocking Matthew, conspiring to do bad things), but in general Matthew and the children coexist peacefully here, and the overall picture The warm tones also confirm this from the side. For the space outside the school, the most profound impact should be the tree. This is a forest. The director used direct sunlight here, combined with the green trees and the stone walls in the school under the diffuse cold light to form a strong The contrast can't help but make people yearn for it. At the end of the film, Peppino left the school with Matthew, and the director has already expressed the reason for this yearning in his manipulation of the picture.
three. Sound The sound part of
a film includes sound, music and speech. As a music film, music undoubtedly has a special meaning and status.
In "Fang", the most moving part is undoubtedly the chorus of the children's voices. Since the film describes such a "cow herding class", the singing generally follows the progress of the plot: with Matthew The children were divided into different parts humorously and began to teach singing. The children's singing changed from the initial out of tune to the beautiful harmony, which constituted another process of influence and purification. It is worth noting that, unlike many music films that often use a combination of songs of various styles, the chorus in this film all uses the same style, and the pure music not only cleans the hearts of children, but also The hearts of adult audiences make such a work showing children's themes give the audience an aesthetic experience without noise.
But compared with the general children's chorus, the chorus of this special group has a different flavor. The music is holy but not hollow. For example, the children's chorus "Cerf-volant" begins with a light and cheerful tune, after two lines, the pitch rises, hovering in a beautiful high pitch, and then returns to the beginning. The melody is repeated layer by layer and advanced layer by layer. The melody is brisk but not irritable, and the treble is clear and not thin, revealing a kind of tenacity and vitality. For such a choir composed of troubled children, when other children are happily enjoying the care of the family and the warmth of the society, they have already experienced the hardships of life and the misfortunes of the world. For them, music does not matter. No longer is it just beautiful art, but more importantly, it illuminates their sunshine and sustenance for a better life. The success of the music of this work is precisely because of its beauty, which makes the audience feel the children's persistence and yearning for life.
Let’s take a look at the sound and picture relationship of the film. As a music film, although the director will be more creative in the use of music, it will also be subject to some corresponding restrictions, and this film is different from the general song and dance type film, which cannot be used in the same way. Simple body language to connect picture and sound. But the director of this film still showed his unique skills in the processing of sound and picture. As music entered the children's lives, the tones of the pictures began to gradually change. A typical contrast was when Matthew came to school on his first day, it was a cloudy day, with only pale light, but no shadows cast by the sun. The background music is first a long aria, and then an instrumental music full of unease and doubt. This out-of-tune, indistinct music matches the picture perfectly. When Matthew was teaching the children to sing, the singing entered, and at the same time, the oblique warm light entered the picture, giving people warmth and hope. This warm-toned picture and the children's singing accompany the film to the end, as if echoing the plot: even if life will still have some bumps, but from the moment the music starts, the cattle herding class ushered in spring , everything is hopeful.
Four. Acting
When watching American films as well as French films, the performance of the actors is a point of interest. For Hollywood movies, it is to appreciate the acting skills of big-name actors. For French movies, it is to watch non-professional actors' "non-performing performances": no drama, real, simple and natural.
Hitchcock advocated "negative performance - the ability to express discourse by doing nothing" in his film philosophy. And, in the words of Frederick Macquarie, "I shouldn't be acting." The French tradition since the "New Wave" has always been opposed to the star system and advocated a plain performance style. In "Release", the director deliberately selected a group of non-professional actors to play the children of the "cow herding class", which is unacceptable in Hollywood - but it has long been commonplace in French and Italian films. The advantage of non-professional actors lies in their life, and in this film, this is really well reflected. It also forms a good unity with the plot, picture and sound. The principal's image is always serious, his face is expressionless, and there are not many words. Only his "action-reaction" "school motto" and "Silence" shouts are impressive; the bald Matthew looks fat and clumsy, but in fact He is always kind-hearted, and is also the one with the richest facial expressions in the film, but the actor's performance is not sensational, but a good expression of how a cheerful person adjusts himself and strives for change in such a depressed atmosphere; Mo Hangzhi is known as having an "angel's face", but he is a very introverted child. At the same time, he is older than other children and shows a sensitivity to life that other children do not have. The actor conveyed this feeling very well. The youngest Pepino, the director did not use a child actor, but rather humorously played the role of Jacques Behan's son as such a simple and shy child, which also played a very good role.
It is worth mentioning that, as early as the French film "New Wave", directors liked to appear in their roles. Hang Zhi's role appeared on the screen. As a filmmaker born as an actor, it is obviously not difficult for Jacques Behan to play such a role. His performance continued in the style of "Cinema Paradiso", which may be reflected in the similar requirements of French and Italian films in the performance of actors.
On the whole, "Cow-like Spring" brings the audience a kind of inner warmth and pure innocence. It is undoubtedly an excellent film that is touching and memorable.
Bibliography:
[America] David Mamei. "Director's Homework". Guangxi Normal University Press
[German] Siegfried Kracauer. "The Nature of Film". Jiangsu Education Press
[French] Jacques Ormont Michel Marley. "Contemporary Film Analysis". Jiangsu Education Press,
Zheng Shusen . " Film Types and Genre Films. Jiangsu Education Press
, Zheng Yaling Hu Bin. History of Foreign Films. China Radio and Television Press,
Su Mu. Honor. China Film Press,
Jiao Xiongping
. Jie. "Audiovisual Language - Influence and Voice". China Radio and Television
Press , Wu Yigong, Li Yizhong. "Film and Television Art Appreciation". Peking University Press
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