The house structure in Hitchcock's movie is very interesting. After all, all character activities must serve the film. There is a book The Wrong House that talks about Hitchcock from an architectural perspective. In "Beauty", the first floor of the house is the living room, the second floor is the bedroom, and there is a small underground wine cellar. This actually separates three small worlds at once.
Let me talk about the main part of the house and the small wine cellar. While Grant and Bergman were searching for secrets in the cellar, the champagne at the party was drunk little by little, and Rains was ready to go downstairs to find the wine. The editing of this section is wonderful. In fact, the closed environment of the wine cellar naturally isolates Grant and Bergman from the outside world. The two complete spying missions wholeheartedly, without knowing what happened upstairs. Until Rains came downstairs, he approached the two spatially, and the activities of the characters in the two spaces also had a meeting point. However, at this time, the two groups of characters (Rains and the butler, Grant and Bergman) still have a distance, which also gave the latter a chance to conceal the truth. In order to cover up the real action, the two pretended to be Grant who tricked Bergman into the wine cellar and kissed her, successfully turning Rains's attention to the issues of love and sexual morality. The subjective shot of Rains here is very interesting, looking at the two kissing through the door, as if it were a theater audience watching a play. In fact, the drama of the two people is true and false, but also true. The actions are tentatively conceived, but the feelings are real. The moment Rains opened the door, the barrier was also broken.
Look at the first and second floors of the house. The staircase connects the two floors and is also two worlds. The first floor is where the male host engaged in Nazi activities, and the second floor is a relatively private bedroom. When it was discovered that his wife was an American spy, the host and his mother planned to poison her and imprison her in the bedroom. At the end of the film, after Grant rescued Bergman from the bedroom, Rains found out and tried to stop him. Rains went upstairs, in fact, it also heralded that he was in another world. Then, other Nazis downstairs heard the movement and walked out of the conference room. In order to cover up the fact that he married an American spy, he and his mother had to choose to stand. On the wife's side. On the one hand, the existence of the stairs prolonged the time, and the camera switched between the four people and the Nazis downstairs, which increased the sense of tension; on the other hand, looking down from the stairs, the overhead shot made the Nazis downstairs look more A sense of threat and oppression. The four went downstairs together, Bergman was escaping from the dangerous bedroom, but Raines was walking towards his own bad luck step by step, and the stairs became a turning point in fate.
Finally, the famous passage from the overhead shot to Bergman's key in "Beauty's Tactics" actually took advantage of the open lobby on the first floor. Placing Bergman in the center of the picture implies that she is deeply trusted by Raines at this time and is the real hostess of the house. Compared with "Butterfly Dream", Joan Fontaine appears more from one side of the screen, suggesting that she is in a relatively passive position.
My current body feels that a great movie has to be seen at least a second time to get a little deeper understanding. Especially for Hitchcock's movies, it's hard not to focus on the plot the first time. After seeing it the second time, I will observe how and why he shoots like this. The so-called review of the past to learn the new, this is the charm of the master's works. The details are all asked by the university, and this principle applies in any line.
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