The film explores the connection between fantasy and reality in art. A tired and nihilistic photographer Thomas came to the park after losing his patience with everything around him, and accidentally photographed a sweet and beautiful couple, but the park girl Jane chased him all the way to the studio in order to get the photo back. After the ambiguity, the unusual Jane made Thomas interested and fantasized, and entered the realm of art. After sending Jane away, he proficiently exposed and developed the photos. While appreciating, he found Jane's unnatural expression. This mystery greatly aroused his interest. After zooming in and excavating, he discovered that it was a deliberate murder case.
Although the film does not describe the specific circumstances of the murder, according to a letter from O'Casey, who played Jane's gray-haired lover, to the famous film critic Roger Ebert, the original script for the film was that Jane's new boyfriend was murdered in the dark. Jane's gray-haired dewy lover, however, this process is not reflected in the film due to subsequent shooting and editing time and budget issues. So my understanding of this part of the film at the end is that Thomas thought he had saved Jane, and was eager to get in touch only to find that Jane had given him the wrong mailing address, just as he had given her an empty negative. Jane is like an inspiration, existing in the fantasy of his art. When he wants to return to reality and contact her, he is first interrupted by a colleague who comes to move the propeller, then only the wrong address is nowhere to be found, and then he goes back to the street. When I saw it by chance, it was fleeting.
After discovering the murder, Thomas went to the park at night and found the body, which is the reality part. And when he went to the park the next day with the artistic fantasy represented by the camera, the body was gone. What is reality, what is nothingness, what is art, shows Thomas' confusion in a slow-moving shot of the park. In the scene where he strayed into the rock scene in pursuit of the fleeting Jane, the dull and indifferent audience paid no attention to the artistic performance until the broken and twisted art turned into a piece of bass and flew to the crowd. Looting, it seems that he finally understands art and treats it as a treasure, and when he leaves the scene and returns to reality, the fragment becomes a piece of garbage that no one cares about. The most impressive scene at the end of the film is when a group of people play tennis that doesn't exist, and in the midst of everyone's attention, Thomas finally drops the camera, picks up the ball that doesn't exist, throws it into the air, and at that moment, leaves the camera. Thomas representing the artistic fantasy fuses reality and nothingness.
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