Adapted from the first part of the Günterglass Danzig trilogy, set in the Danzig region of Prussia during the two world wars, the protagonist tells the contradictory reality from a unique perspective, and escapes the real world in a way of defiance . The director Schlondorf was the main general of the New German Cinema Movement, and served as assistant to Malerenay and Melville. The early works of the New German Film Movement explored themes of Germany's past. Criticism of social reality and reflection on German nationality have always been the themes of Schlöndorff's films. The director believes that Oscar Jr. has two contemporary personalities: rejection and protest.
The first part of film ontology analysis
1 Introduction (born from Oscar, telling the story of his grandmother, grandfather, father , mother and cousin before he was born )
The paragraphs before Oscar's birth are from the beginning of Oscar's narration perspective. This happened before Oscar's birth. This is not a retelling or memory, but a knowledge that was known before his death. This design makes the story shrouded in an unpredictable layer of doubt. .
Visual elements and static composition
The gloomy sky and rain in this section imply the depressing and disharmonious atmosphere of the town, and the repeated appearance of smoke has the meaning of revealing the past behind the dust and smoke of history. What the director deliberately unearthed is a visual element that can create a sense of history and drama. The first shot brings the audience into a strong sense of history. The horizon and sky in the wilderness are shot at a low angle, like a picture that has lost its sense of depth (in line with the director's pursuit of a mural). In a deep scheduling shot, the grandfather runs to the grandmother in the foreground, and the movement of the characters inside the shot gives the characters in the frame drama. Dramatic performance is also reflected in the skills of entering and exiting the painting. The people entering and leaving in the picture break the original picture pattern and determine the direction of this new time. The reason and basis for going out and entering become the development of drama. 's motivation.
· Environment and details
The grandfather escaped and took refuge, using the rain to create a desolate atmosphere, implying the grandfather's embarrassment. In the play of the market town, there is smoke in the air, and a building can be vaguely seen in the distance, and the environmental factor closely related to the narrative at that time is the first appearance of the post office. In this paragraph, the big skirt connects two events, the big event is the military police pursuit, the small event is the relationship between the grandfather and the grandmother, and it is completed through the details of the grandmother's voice and the action of the grandfather's zipper. Shots are medium close-ups and close-ups. The repetition of large skirts has a symbolic meaning. When my grandmother was selling the goose in the market, she took out the goose and the hot bricks from under the skirt. The skirt changed from the details of the incident to the details that emphasized the meaning, symbolizing the continuation of a woman's vitality and the state of life of forbearance and sacrifice.
·Lens shape
The grandmother and grandfather are the relationship between rescuers and beggars. The camera establishes an elevated viewpoint relationship for them, and uses a large overhead angle to highlight the atrophy and incompetence of the grandfather lying on the ground. The reverse shot is a 90° elevation angle, and the smiling grandmother looks like a Virgin against the background of the sky. The establishment of viewpoint shots is based on the relationship and position of the characters.
A character's first appearance should accurately and clearly reveal or hint at the direction of his character. For example, the grandfather appears in the first shot, but at a point on the horizon, and the shot where the face can be seen clearly, is lying on the ground. This and Yifang leave a feeling of my grandfather being petty and insignificant. Uncle Yang's appearance was to tell his mother happily that he had not passed the physical examination and no longer had to serve, conveying the character message of Uncle Biao: timid and weak.
Alfredo appeared clumsily to simmer soup for his mother, Agnes, and the people around him made fun of him, but he didn't hear it and asked Agnes what they said. Only stupid people are insensitive to the reactions of those around them. Father Alfredo was such a dull, dull, even stupid man.
The birth of Oscar
1 birth scene
An unforgettable subjective shot of a baby being born, a spectacle in the history of cinema. The narrator's first appearance is when he sees the world for the first time. The director must use the lens to tell us that Oscar is born with the ability to feel the world, so he uses a subjective lens.
He first saw the moths flying around the 60-watt light bulb, symbolizing the shortness of life and the unknowability of fate. Oscar saw that his grandmother, parents and cousin were all upside down, which meant that Oscar came to The world of wine lives in a perverted family relationship. Oscar's voiceover says that if the temptation of the tin drum hadn't held me back, I'd really like to go back to my mother's womb.
2 birthday party scene
The shot handling of this scene is loneliness and observation.
All the scenes of the banquet were made of close-up shots in fixed lenses, divided into several groups to break up the crowd for observation. There was no panoramic shot, and the spatial relationship was established entirely by the sight of the characters. This kind of camera setting and editing method that does not rely on panoramic shots to explain the relationship between characters, and all are Oscar's front and back shots, can substitute the audience into the idea of solving confusion. An important way to the secrets of the mind.
The film provides two texts that reflect Oscar's response to the objective world: the world under Oscar's gaze is the small town of Danzig, fascism and World War II, family changes, while Oscar's own world is tin drums, shouting, love and betrayal, destruction. The means of connecting the two texts is the combination of subjective and objective lenses, establishing the lens specification of the film.
3 card games
One shot explains the panorama of the game, the camera position is very low and almost parallel to the table, then the camera moves back and sees Oscar in front of the table, let us understand that the angle just now is Oscar's subjective perspective. The camera went from Oscar's eyes to ours. Then came Oscar's first subjective behavior, getting under his grandmother's skirt. After being rejected, the camera took Oscar's action as the center of interest, and smoothly received the next shot. From his point of view, after seeing the flirting scene, the camera shot up.
The above scheduling has the conversion of subjective and objective perspectives. Generally speaking, the conversion of viewpoints is completed through editing, and the movement of the opinion shots here realizes the change of the moving viewpoints. This is inseparable from the narrative lady of this film. Oscar is the narrator, so the audience function is to see the story from the perspective of Oscar and his own. It is precisely because of the establishment of this mechanism that the director's lens specification can be smoothly understood.
4 Self-wrestling a scene
The transition of the two scenes is accomplished by the action and sound of closing the door, which separates the world of Oscar from the world of recognition, and the sound changes. This scene was almost completed by sound. Oscar walked to the cellar, and the sound of water droplets came out. This was a subjective sound, like Oscar's inner voice. The clear sound of water droplets renders a tense and mysterious atmosphere,
3. Changes in Oscar's physiology and changes on the eve of the war
The establishment of Oscar's concept from normal to deformed is done through one shot. A depth-of-field shot with Oscar in the front and below on the cot, uncle leaning over to talk, mother watching lovingly and father and doctor in the background. The characters are arranged in layers in the picture, suggesting the layers of the characters' relationships: the mother and uncle are more closely related to Oscar, while the father is indifferent and out of place at any time. The scene is a one-shot and deep scheduling. Because if you use short shots to cut, it will cut the complete Oscar's monologue into different pictures, destroying the emotional integrity of the scene.
After recovering, Oscar came home beating a broken drum. His father was playing the drum, but he didn’t manage money. His mother was scratching the drum and shaking his head. His uncle said that he should pick it up, and he would get a new one tomorrow. This is the first line after Oscar's appearance, and Oscar's voice has been used as a voice-over before. Unwillingness is the strongest expression of Oscar's nature of rejection and protest. Drums and Screams are used for the first time in this scene as symbols of destruction.
"The Tin Drum" is a movie with strong political colors. In 25 minutes, Oscar's children saw a Nazi military band on the street. This is the first appearance of political elements in the film. The director used a meaningful single shot, Oscar He and his partner and the Nazi team entered the painting from the lower left and upper right of the picture respectively, and walked across it. The visual center of the picture is the reaction of the onlookers. The crowd threw objects and cursed, portraying the hilarious image of the Nazis making their first appearance, just doing sideshow games like stunted children and dwarfs.
The next scene was a man dressed like Hitler excitedly selling potatoes and introducing potatoes to customers. His eyes were a bit neurotic and greedy. Potatoes were a metaphor for land, and his performance symbolized the mentality of Germans at that time. Oscar was painting potatoes at this time, and the neighbor entered the painting and said something like a prophecy to the camera, "Writing, studying, all the classics, the eternal truth is over", a sneer came from outside the painting, and the camera moved with the eyes of the neighbor and Oscar. , found the prostitute on the second floor, and then the trumpet sounded, the camera did not stop and continued to pan, and saw the trumpet upstairs playing the prelude of "The Internationale". This is a way of dealing with sound and visual skills. This man and his trumpet are the prompt subtitles of the political themed part of the film, and Nazi Squad is two consecutive scenes. Before that, the film has been telling the story of Oscar and his family, but since then, the political force has been dominated by images and sounds. Form officially appeared.
In the confrontation between the teacher and Oscar, there are only objective shots and Oscar's subjective shots, which are different from front and back. The first time the camera gives the female teacher the right to watch is when Oscar screams in destruction. The failure of the female teacher is Oscar's defeat of civilization and order. Oscar's cry is his disapproval of civilization and order, and his adherence to the personal subjective world.
The main task of this passage is tape and preserved eggs, and the protagonist is a man who has stopped growing but has extraordinary self-control. In addition, the precursors of war are already looming in the small town of Danzig.
4. Going to the city with mother to visit cousin
Great movie passages often have both superficial and shallow content. His mother took him to visit his uncle. The superficial meaning is that his mother and his uncle went to the hotel on a date every Thursday.
1 Post Office
As an important narrative element, the environment is often symbolic. The first is the post office. Simple actions such as three close-ups and postmarking immediately present the environment. The main point of using audio-visual language to reveal the environment is to capture the most characteristic images and sounds of the environment, and solve it in one or two shots, otherwise the narrative process will be stagnant. Introducing the characters is also very clever. The name in the third close-up is Yang, and in the next shot, the uncle picks up the list and stands up. At this time, the camera is zoomed out to show the whole picture of the post office, but our eyes are inseparable from Yang. Because according to the principle of vision center, once a person or object becomes the center of vision, we will still pay attention to her in the background. Therefore, Yang's appearance and the internal environment of the post office can be explained clearly with only a close-up shot and a moving lens.
2 toy store
In this scene, the director frequently moved the camera and arranged the characters inside and outside the frame, which fully demonstrated the spatial layout of the toy store and showed a fairy-tale atmosphere.
3 Churches
The church appeared for the first time. The director used an elevation lens with Oscar to highlight the insignificance of Oscar and the height of the church, but when he faced Oscar's shouting, the glass windows were broken, and the scattered glass fragments were reminiscent of the shattering of beliefs, giving people Uneasy and ominous feeling.
· Visualization of character relationships
Oscar has both disgust and subtle sympathy for the relationship between his mother and his uncle. This complex psychology prevents Oscar from actively destroying or turning a blind eye. After my mother brought Oscar home, the sky darkened, in contrast to the bright sunshine when I went to my cousin's date. The sound of Hitler's speech on the radio was off-screen. The atmosphere of war was getting stronger and stronger, and the film slowly entered the track of political themes. .
In the first three paragraphs, Oscar has two-way failures in communication with adults, children, and the environment. He cannot grow up normally, and is lonely and indifferent. He cannot accept or reject others. He uses destructive resistance to make up for the violation or indifference he has received. . These three scenes are preparatory scenes for explaining the relationship between characters and positioning Oscar's character.
5. The circus meets bosom friend
The appearance of the circus dwarf made him find his belonging. The task to be achieved in this scene language is to introduce a new character Bebella, to express the mutual recognition and communication between Bebella and Oscar, and to evaluate the emotional evaluation of the dwarf world.
The circus performance is all edited with fixed shots, and no moving shots are used because of the special environment and form of the theater performance, and the camera is the audience's point of view. In the theater performance, we repeatedly cut into the reaction shots of Oscar watching the performance. When Bebella appeared, the switching was more frequent, and the length of the shots was lengthened, using editing to establish the effect of the two staring at each other. The sight of the two people and the reflection of the lens suggest the tacit understanding and communication between the two, and it is natural for Oscar to visit the backstage in the next game. This is the first time Oscar has actively communicated with people and expressed himself. For the first time, Oscar has been recognized as a very human world full of juggling.
6. Witty Song in the Rain
1 The power of details
Yang visited the Oscar family, the drama design and handling were excellent, and the concept of war was deeply rooted in the hearts of the people, and the situation was about to come.
·Children who play games compete for swastika flags, see Yang in unison with Hitler, and the political content has entered the games of children with the least political concept, which shows its influence on people's lives. At the same time, this detail also means that people, like children, see war as a blind and ignorant state of play.
·My father bought a radio to please my mother. The underlying implication was that the Nazi fascist ideology was demagogic through radio and other media's propaganda offensive. My father replaced the Beethoven on the piano with Hitler, showing complete acceptance of Nazi ideology. The image shows the political enthusiasm of its civilians incited by Nazi ideas.
· Military uniform and leggings
Tell us visually that my father has become a member of the Nazis. It revealed the atmosphere of everyone being a soldier, and the reason why fascism was rampant was that Hitler fanatical propaganda of national chauvinism pushed the national superiority and foreign expansion consciousness to the climax, and aroused the political passion of the middle and petty bourgeoisie, who accounted for the majority of the population. Several details of this scene show that fascist ideas have infiltrated ordinary families, and even the once war-weary mother and honest and responsible father have become its devout believers.
2 depth of field lenses
My uncle visited this scene, and the director used a fixed lens with a large depth of field, which involves a wide-angle lens, so that every level of the picture is clear. At this time, due to the strengthening of racial concepts, the relationship between father, mother and cousin changed. As a Polish mother, because she married a Prussian, under the propaganda of Nazism, she also got a sense of national superiority that could discriminate against Poles. Therefore, the mother is close to the father and alienated from the cousin. The depth of field shot reflects the relationship between the three. It alludes to the mother's dilemma in terms of identification and choice between two men and between two political ideas.
3 A song in the rain - audiovisual language genius
From a radio horn, to a close-up of a mouth that is speaking aloud. This section uses 58 shots, using all movements such as push-pull, panning, etc., as well as split shots, quick edits, etc. The scenery is also very rich.
The first picture is a documentary-style account of the picture, establishing a documentary style. When Oscar entered the venue, the emotional tone of the film gradually contradicted the strict documentary style, and finally developed into an absurd group dance scene. The inclusion of Oscar is the key to changing the mood of the play,
The meaning of the drum has also changed. Previously, the drum sound was a language used to express resistance and a tool to protect oneself. In this scene, the drum sound not only expressed Oscar's instinctive resistance, but also became a conscious intervention to destroy the harmonious atmosphere. the elements of. It shows that with the aggravation of the war atmosphere, Oscar and his drums have become more and more involved in politics, and their political expressions have become stronger and stronger, and they are no longer purely personal.
7. The mother in the triangle
The previous scene implied that the mother, whose mentality has undergone a subtle change in the political atmosphere, is faced with a dilemma. As the war draws near, emotional conflicts are bound to break out. This play is mainly about the mother who is struggling intellectually and emotionally. The underlying content is to insinuate the blindness and irrationality of people's state of mind during the war.
In the beach scene, in the composition, Yang and his mother are stuck together, and his father is behind, which shows that the improper relationship between Yang and his mother is an open secret of the family. Don't take it as a humiliation, but also take pictures, which is ridiculous and pitiful. When the fisherman hit the wild beast on the head, the mother backed away in panic, asking for help, the uncle stepped forward to hold him, and the father ran to the fisherman to get him out, very enthusiastic. Cousin and his mother have a close relationship, and his love for his mother is in stark contrast to his father's concern for dead fish. Here, a fixed panorama is used to reveal the relationship of several people.
Forced to eat fish, only one fixed lens was used, and only the movement of shaking was done. The objective lens shows that the uncle is comforting his mother on the bed, the father's figure is projected in the mirror, and the mirror is closed, and the little Oscar looks contemplative inside.
In this scene, eating fish is the focus of the contradictions and disputes between the characters. Fish is an important masterpiece of vocabulary to establish the relationship between mother, father and cousin.
The first time the fish appeared was when Oscar followed his mother and his uncle for their rendezvous. On the street in front of the hotel, a cyclist fell to the ground in order to avoid him. The fish in the basket were scattered all over the place. The fish here is a hint of sexual relations. The second time at the beach, the behavioral reactions of the three people hinted at their respective mentalities. Father - yearning for sexual relations Mother - painful cousin to her chaotic sexual relations - passive and powerless. The fish also symbolizes the intractable and contradictory relationship between mother and father. The third appearance of fish is forced to eat fish, which is endowed with new meanings. Father cooking fish is linked to his identity as a chef in the previous article. Mother's sensitivity to fish is regret for her choice. Sexual relationships and painful flashpoints. The cruel cutting of the fish by the father becomes the image of death, suggesting the connection between the father and the mother's death psychology through the symbol of the fish.
Oscar's reaction
When the two have an affair, Oscar is always given a single shot to show his bystander role. The final pages fell on Oscar's face. This is because a film should maintain the unity and integrity of viewpoints, which is the basic requirement for the lens to reflect the idea of the play, and should be implemented in every scene and every shot.
8. The death of the mother
Focusing on the mother's death step by step after the outbreak of the inner crisis, the focus is to interpret the reasons for the death of the mother through images, and the different attitudes of various characters towards the mother.
1 Toy store and church
Confessing to the owner of the toy store and going to the church are two positive actions that my mother tried to resolve her inner conflict, but both of them deepened my mother's pain because of Oscar's intervention. The characters in this scene are all close-up and close-up large scenes to highlight the emotional confrontation between the characters. The toy store owner's sincere persuasion even moved the mother, and the two held hands together, but Oscar's sound of plucking the clockwork reminded the mother of his existence, and the hateful gaze awakened the mother's faint sense of guilt.
Confession in the church is the mother's last effort to survive, Oscar climbs the statue, accusing it of not being able to beat the drum, showing his extreme contempt for religion and rebellion against the power of God. Oscar was beaten by the priest, and the mother felt more original guilt when she saw this. Oscar and his drums block the path to spiritual relief from the mother's victory. The priest handed back the tin drum, which occupies a large area in the foreground, implying that the drum, as an active force that plays a role in the plot, cut off the last possibility for the mother to survive.
2 Crazy eating fish
Chiyu did a quiet treatment, numb expressions, mechanical movements, and amplified chewing sounds, depicting the mother's huge psychological pressure, on the verge of collapse, and seeking relief from self-abuse. The contrast between the smooth movement and the hard chewing sound is strong. It highlights the abnormal behavior of the mother and the extreme depression in her heart.
The first time my mother eats fish, I used an overhead shot to match the overhead shot of Oscar sitting at the entrance of the stairs. This is the mother's first subjective shot, and she has always been under Oscar's peep and scrutiny. For the first time, she got the right to watch it, but it was her son Oscar, and the overhead shot was pushed a little, expressing her mother's shocking feeling. He is the deadly force of the mother's death. The mother saw her sins on the Oscar. The dwarf figure and the eccentricity of drumming were all punishments for her indiscreet extramarital affairs in the mother's eyes, which strengthened her determination to die.
3 grandmother appeared
The grandmother appears, and the two female images are compared, with similar fates, and they are both deeply lonely and helpless. My grandmother lost a man very early, and although my mother had two, neither could give her any real spiritual support. The grandmother denounced her if she was pregnant, reminding her of the most unbearable fact, that this scene was the final foreshadowing of the mother's death, depth of field shot, the grandmother was by the mother's side, and the father was busy in the depths, after the mother left, the father's grandmother Say how I don't know. This depth-of-field shot reveals that at all times the father is a shadow of the mother's life, an insignificant person who remains indifferent to the mother at all times.
4 The death of the mother
Close-up of mother leaning against the glass door with a desperate expression. The camera pans to the father and Oscar. This arrangement is meaningful, because the two people in the painting are the direct and indirect producers of the mother's death. This door separates the world of life and death, and the mother slides toward death. There is a glass between Oscar and his mother, which symbolizes their relationship state that they are separated from each other and cannot be separated.
In the political text of the film, the death of the mother has a profound meaning. The director arranges the death of the mother when the war is about to break out. The mother is Polish, married to the German Alfredo, and the cousin is also Polish. The position of the mother symbolizes Danzig, and the husband and the lover are two symbols: fascism in Germany and nationalism in Poland. The mother's deep pain is a metaphor for Danzig's pain, that is, how to choose between resistance and humiliation. The helpless death of his mother heralds the annihilation that Danzig is about to face.
9. Funeral
After the death of the mother, the trumpeter's loud horn realized the transition. The funeral of the mother was in progress, and the church bell rang not far away, like a force of fate. The death of the mother indicated that the destruction was about to begin. Oscar fate will also change.
·The trumpeter
The funeral begins when one person interrupts the trumpeter and the two attack each other with political stances. "The Tin Drum" is a film with a strong political color. While telling the story of the Oscar family, it always stitches political plots and lines at the right time. The subtitle of the political text part of the trumpet portrait film generally implies a change in the current situation. He expelled the Jews, indicating that he has become a Nazi, and that the fascist forces have come to power and began to persecute the Jews.
·beggar
This is the beggar's first appearance, three times in total. The second time was after the death of my cousin, and the third time was at my father's funeral. He is like the director's spokesman, he evaluates the death of the characters, wearing a weird clown, high hat, wide-leg pants. The director treats it as an abnormal person to express the idea that in that crazy era, only a beggar with nothing and a lunatic is truly awake.
What a good day the beggar said, she went to a better place where things were cheaper, I saw God. The phrase has multiple meanings, and he said that the weather was fine to imply that death was a painful relief for a mother. She went to a place where everything was cheap. This sentence shows that the German economy was in recession at that time, prices were soaring, and the people lived in poverty. In short: Germany is like hell on earth, and the dead are not necessarily unhappy.
2 Oscar changes
At the funeral, the rhythm and intensity of Oscar's drumbeats changed. The camera shot from the side of his mother's coffin. Oscar stood with his father for the first time, showing a look of love for the first time, showing a moving expression about the disintegration of the family. .
At the banquet, Oscar imitated his father to drink, and Oscar, who had left the blessing of his mother, seemed to have an adult consciousness again. On the field, by the campfire, he got into his grandmother's big skirt in loneliness and helplessness. This is reminiscent of my grandfather getting into the skirt, which indicates that Oscar's fate will take a turning point like his grandfather. On the other hand, the big skirt is also a symbol of sex. Oscar's getting into the skirt at this time also means that his sexual consciousness is mature. grow up.
3 Death Banquet and Card Game
At the banquet, the live sound was eliminated, and the picture was downgraded, creating a sad atmosphere. And the card game is more bleak than it was before. The light processing is special. The faces of the characters on the screen are bright spots, which are pale, and the clothes of the people are integrated with the surrounding environment. It is black, which forms a huge contrast with the highlights of the face, making people look like ghosts. The whole scene is permeated with the breath of death.
·music
On the carriage return from the funeral, the three men sat together, and Oscar beat the drums, but the sound was muffled, in favor of soothing theme music. At this time, it plays a role in setting off the mood of the characters. The carriage is driving on the field, and the lens is a distant view. This is similar to the opening scene of the movie. The wilderness, cloudy sky, and this sound form a sound and picture symbol, which refers to the life of the mother. A person's life and death are so close, as if they happened in the same time and space.
Oscar got into his grandmother's dress, and the theme music sounded again. This combination of sound and picture is very consistent with the scenes and movements of his grandfather getting into the dress. This treatment not only means the fate of reincarnation and change, but also reveals the semantics of the play. Oscar's life will change forever.
·Through the details
big skirt. When analyzing the details, pay attention to the effect of the first appearance on the development of the plot, which can often be used as its symbol and hint function throughout the film. The first function of the big skirt is to save the grandfather and change his fate - the big skirt is related to the salvation of people and the fate of people; the second function is to give birth to a mother and lead to a family. The big skirt - a symbol of sex, life, motherhood.
10. The Coming of War and the Death of Uncle
At the end of the funeral, the grandmother lit a bonfire in the wilderness and raised a curl of smoke. This is exactly the same as the opening paragraph, where Oscar begins to tell his story in the atmosphere of a cloudy sense of history. Therefore, at this time, the film interrupts the narrative in the present tense, and uses similar composition and similar visual elements in the picture to remind people of similar narrative situations and identify with the sudden change of narrative tense.
For the first time in this paragraph, the war is pushed to the front of the screen for a positive performance. The director's understanding of war is concentrated in this paragraph. The Tin Drum is an expression of human desire for true equality and peace through the eyes of Oscar's scrutiny. It has profound anti-war connotations, but it only uses one paragraph to express the war scene positively, focusing on showing that war has become an environmental factor that changes people's fate and harms people's souls, and pays more attention to shaping war as an objective force. In front of him, people inevitably lose their dignity and go into madness. This is a higher-level anti-war theme. This passage is not concerned with the heroism of the tyrannical men of the invaders, but more concerned with the destruction of men by guns.
·card
The card details come up repeatedly. At the birthday party, the flirting between my mother and my cousin was just playing cards. At my mother's funeral, my cousin took out the cards and played alone. Solitaire represents the love between mother and cousin. From the game characteristics of solitaire itself, combined with the plot of the occasion in the film, it expresses the lightness of life and the meaning of life and death like a game. It represents the fate and woman in the sense of life and death, and the confusion in the sense of survival. Love and affection are uncertain. Love and death are the double meanings of playing cards in the film.
Cards appear three times in this section. First, the Germans bombarded the post office. My cousin, Oscar and Cobbiera sat on the ground and played cards. Cobb died shortly after. Then, before the German army rushed into the post office, the uncle built a tower with playing cards. The third time, just before Yang was shot by the Nazis, he smiled and turned over the q of hearts in his hand to the German camera who was shooting a documentary. The card encapsulates the whole meaning of this detail of the card: his entire history of persecution, his love for Agnes, his entire exchange of pacts with pain and death.
·drum
Oscar said he had committed a second major crime, dragging his uncle into the Polish post office and killing him. The Oscar-winning uncle dragged into the post office just to fix the drums. Drums are directly linked to death, when Oscar saw the drums on the shelf and insisted on taking them, and Cobb died because of them. Drum, caused a person's death. The tin drum originally had the meaning of resistance and destruction. When the war came, the second attribute came into play. The drum became a murder weapon and an image symbol of Oscar's selfishness and cruelty.
· Bullets and Beggars
The beggar appeared again in the image of wind power and gave Oscar a bullet, saying that they took away all the bullets, but just forgot this one, showing a bloody slaughter from the side, and he actually knew this Secret and intriguing.
11. A new triangular relationship
This section begins with a parade scene with the German occupation of Danzig. Maria comes into life and Oscar's life changes, presenting a new triangle until the birth of little Kurt, who is the product of a non-marital relationship, a plot that hints at the essence of the occupied Danzig Still an area of turmoil with no real father. This play is based on the triangular relationship between Maria, Oscar, and his father. Focuses on Oscar's arousal of sexual consciousness and the frustration of falling out of love.
1 Oscar and Maria
When Oscar saw Maria, he smiled like never before, and when Maria played the harmonica for him that night, the audience saw Oscar happily singing for the first time.
The two scenes at the beach and in the dressing room write about Oscar's deepening feelings for Maria and the sprouting of his sexuality. Maria's attitude towards Oscar can be seen from the scene of cleaning the stairs, the two met on the stairs and asked Oscar's age. In Leah's eyes, Oscar was always a dwarf, separated by a considerable height and distance from the adult world.
2 Father and Maria
The father has always been a stupid and cowardly figure, part of the mother's pain comes from the father's impotence, and the previous paragraph also implies that Oscar is actually Yang's child. This paragraph is the first time that a positive portrayal of the father's male power appears. The impotence of the German father is actually an insinuation of Hitler, who is said to be impotent.
3 details processing
Traumatized Oscar walks down the street, the prostitute Alex calls him upstairs, and in front of Alex's bed, he throws the tin drum and drum sticks to the ground, this action detail changes the consistent meaning of the drum, the drum Originally it was an integral part of his life, and he poured the vitality for the growth of his limbs into the drumming and shouting, but now he takes off the drums as easily as taking off his clothes, which implies that the status of the drums in Oscar's heart has changed. It has become a stumbling block to prevent him from growing up like a normal person and falling in love. This is the first time Oscar has taken a critical attitude towards the drum. The drum is a mark that distinguishes him from normal people. Its existence deprives Oscar of the possibility of becoming a normal person.
The cactus in front of the prostitute's window is a symbol of sex in Western film vocabulary. The next scene is a group of teenagers riding their bikes home from the vegetable store. This scene seems to have nothing to do with the plot, but in fact the director uses it to imply that the teenagers are the same old children who played with Oscar.
4 banquet scene
It was clear that Oscar's younger brother was actually the son of Kurt's Full Moon Feast. Two men were discussing the war situation on the map. Suddenly, the camera was pulled back, and a roast chicken appeared in the picture. This is an obvious metaphor. The world is a plate of things waiting to be divided up in front of the German army. In this lively scene, the dissonance between Oscar and the people around him is highlighted, constantly cutting into his single shot. Oscar pushes Kurt out of the room, and a woman tells him that you have a younger brother who can play with you when you grow up. And the next shot Oscar hugs Kurt and says: You are my son. This sentence not only named the relationship between the characters, but also revealed that in an era when everyone was hot-headed and rationally lost, only Oscar, the dwarf who was excluded from the normal world, was sober.
12. Oscar's career
In this passage, Oscar becomes a real participant in the war of aggression, and through his perspective, he narrates the process of the war sideways. His experience as an actor was the experience of the German army moving to the European battlefield, and leaving the theatre was the day when the German army began to crumble.
1 Acting career
The most lively and relaxed scene in the whole film. The tragic World War II was shown only as a playful show and a harmonious dance by the gnomes, and the war was put back into the background. The lines are rich in meaning, revealing information about the war.
Under the Eiffel Tower in Paris, overhead shot, Oscar tells dwarf actress Moncevita that it makes him sound like his grandmother's big dress. This hints that the two have fallen in love and that fate will change.
2 Oscar's New Love
Oscar and a female Italian midget fall in love, the plot has a double meaning.
On the one hand, after he lost Maria's love, he found equal love in the dwarf world, which was an important experience for him to become psychologically mature.
On the other hand, the love between Oscar and the Italian actress, which is part of the film's vast and complex coding system, changes Oscar's drumming and cries in a fundamental way, from expressing protest and anger to a tool to please and entertain others. . At the same time Oscar degenerated into Nazism, with actresses representing German and Italian fascism. The actress was killed under the watchful eye of Oscar, suggesting the fate of Italy's first collapse in World War II.
Oscar's love affair has obvious political implications. After the actress died, Oscar's voiceover said: I don't know his age, all I know is that you smell like vanilla. You seem to be able to see through a man's mind, but you can't see through yourself. This confession tells us that Oscar fell in love with the actress only because she had the same taste as Maria, and that Oscar just needed her, not really loved her. This seems to be in line with the alliance between Germany and Italy during the war.
The entire gnome condolences are full of strong allegory: the huge imperial army highly respects the gnomes, which symbolizes the shrinking of the entire German national spirit. They were small and ugly, and they reveled in the sea breeze on the huge military fortifications, ironing that Germany is also arrogant in the world like a small dwarf.
Thirteen, the death of the father
· Oscar goes home
Oscar goes home and hugs his father, which shows that after the baptism of war, Oscar is returning to normal human nature and longing for emotional warmth. The movie has a long time span and a fragmented structure. When Oscar came back, Maria said that Kurt was going to be his third birthday soon. Oscar gave Kurt a tin drum. The details of this action are full of symbolism. The drum is Oscar's way of expressing life, reflecting his unique personality and behavior. Sending the drum symbolizes the transmission of the spirit of protest and rebellion.
·The reappearance of Vulcan Lord
The war ahead is set off by Oscar's narration and the burning of the synagogue. In this paragraph, the reversal of the war situation is once again revealed by fire. In the dark night, the German army was defeated, and new forces occupied Danzig. Danzig was once again immersed in the sea of fire. Oscar beat the drum feebly, as if mourning the destruction in front of him (this is the last time Oscar beat the drum)
The family drama uses four shots to show the fear and disappointment brought to the family by the changing situation of the war. Fire appears in every shot. First, the camera pans from a burning photo (father in a Nazi uniform) to a gleaming wine glass, then to a portrait of Hitler lying flat on a table, to a distressed father. Throwing the portrait into the fire. Fire has become the most accurate image form for directors to express the texture of war. Texture is the most basic information of representation. When expressing an emotional atmosphere, material, character or event, it is necessary to choose a representation that can accurately reflect the basic information and characteristics of the object. form.
3 The setting of the death of the father
The characters in this film all lost their lives due to some accidental force. The director does not deal with the reason for the death of the characters and the process of death, but abides by the symbolic meaning of the characters.
The life and death of the characters are part of the film's complex cinematic vocabulary. The death of the father represents the end of the fascist era, the death of the ignorant and blind national chronic disease and the demise of the Nazis. The plot of the father swallowing the badge and choking on it is an insinuation that the war makers reap the consequences. After his father died, Oscar called out his father, just as he called out his mother when his mother died. This marks the revival of humanity when Oscar, who has always been a eccentric and freakishly emotionally indifferent, faced death and destruction.
14. Rebirth and Farewell to Hometown
1 Completion of the Drum's Mission
At his father's funeral, Oscar made the drum as a funeral object for his father. The death of his father symbolized the end of an era, and Oscar, a special product of this era, also began to wish to return to normal growth at this time. The drums and cries of protest and rebellion are buried with the era that produced it.
2. Regeneration
Oscar was struck in the head by his son and fell into the tomb, awakening him completely from the tight personal confinement of intense fear and defiance. It's similar to when he fell into a cellar at the age of three. The beggar ran over and commented on Oscar's fall: He's growing, look, he's president, I see God. That means Oscar will resume growth. The era of just is over, Oscar is ending his past self and starting a new life.
3 leave home
The last words of the grandmother indicate that Danzig has a new ownership, the era of mixed ethnicity is over, and the grandmother will stay on this land to take responsibility. The final shot of the film is similar in composition to the opening shot. The grandmother was walking alone in the smoky field in a big dress, the theme music sounded, the train whistle sounded, and the train galloped into the distance, probably on this train where Oscar, Marita and his children ran towards a new life, symbolizing that Germany will and Oscar was given a new life. The railroad tracks reaching into the distance convey the director's optimism and confidence in the future of the new Germany.
video theme
"The Tin Drum" has a strong tendency to criticize and reflect on the theme, and it is a film with a very clear concept of the director's rational existence.
·Perspective Oscar
The artistic characteristics of this film are between the real and the absurd. The director focuses on the symbolism of the story and characters, the theme of political reflection below the narrative surface, and pursues an aesthetic style of generalization, exaggeration, and subjective expression. Characters are not developed, but only show their symbolic meaning in special situations. The film's absurd plot combined with absolutely true detail descriptions allows Oscar's unusual personality to be credibly stitched into the real-life scenes provided by the film.
The uniqueness of the perspective is that Oscar is a part of history, even though he tells the story, and is a dwarf himself. This uniqueness is easier and more unusual in moving from the story level to the thought level. Telling adult life scenes from a child's perspective will produce a powerful penetrating power. Children always look up to adult social groups because they do not enter the world. Films create strangeness and alienation through a child's perspective. The director borrowed Oscar's child-like stare to make the world shown in the film more cruel and real.
The significance of the dwarf design is that the zero growth of the dwarf symbolizes the history of Germany from 1924 to 1945, the deformed society and the distorted national spirit. The specific identity of the dwarf makes the protagonist observe the world of normal people from an alienated perspective. The defamiliar point of view is related to the director's stern image style and rational reflection theme interpretation. The film is a work with obvious existentialist tendencies.
·Personalized Historical Narration——The Symbolic Significance of Oscar's Image
The Oscar is a symbol with a high degree of symbolism, a surreal and unique existence, which acts as a personified German history in the film to the theme of the film.
The film spanned nearly half a century, lasted the Franco-Prussian War, and two world wars, involving multi-ethnic issues, Danzig's belonging, German nationality and other complex and multiple themes. The film's description and understanding of this period of time can be seen in the presentation of Oscar's personal destiny and family changes. Oscar's personal characteristics and the characteristics of the nation's era are closely linked.
1 The drums and screams of rebellion - a social reality in crisis
Oscar was three years old in Germany in 1927. Prices were soaring, the value of goods was unstable, and various reactionary forces were quietly active. Under the strong social oppression, Oscar refused to be alienated, so he took the initiative to fall down the stairs and resisted with this self-abuse method. Demonstrated a strong protest against the fascist system. 3-14 years old (knock mother into the grave) This period of time, 1927-1938, was a period when Germany gradually went to war, and the Nazis entered the stage of history. Oscar's drums and screams work with the environment to create the pre-war pre-war precarious and unsettled atmosphere. During this period, Oscar's drumming had a strong and positive resistance. The drumming and cries broke through the shackles of fathers, doctors, and teachers, and rebelled against authority, order and civilization respectively.
"The Tin Drum" is a political film. It is very expensive and newer is reflected in the stitching of political factors with strong metaphorical functions in narrative China. Oscar's personal fate and personality changes are a piece of personal history, so the analysis of the film text cannot be separated from historical facts. .
Oscar knocking his mother into the grave at the age of 14 and disrespecting the gods in church can be explained by the confusion and inversion of reality. Because this year was 1933, the year Hitler established the dictatorship, he overthrew the Weimar Republic, abolished all parties, and expelled the Jews. During this period, Germany was overcast, and it was the beginning of the blind credulity of the Germans.
2. Cruelty and confusion - nationality in war
After the death of his mother, during the war, Oscar's behavior and meaning of the drum changed, from watching from the sidelines to actively participating in the war. His tin drum was no longer a tool to convey free will, but a murder weapon. Oscar, who is in love and lovelorn, no longer maintains his usual state of self-control, and his eyes looking at the world are no longer pure and calm, but are caught in an emotion. He gradually became unaware and incapable of his own behavior. Oscar is a personified piece of German history. Oscar's performance is a portrayal of the state of the German national spirit during this period. It fell into a frenzy, and the people have a kind of aggressiveness and expansion frenzy. The director digs deeply into this kind of aggressive, expansionist, and racist ideas as the inferiority of the nation.
3 The return of human nature and the desire to grow - the new Germany after the war
The Soviet army killed his father in the cellar. Oscar showed his intense emotions for the first time, and his heart was shocked. At this time, he had a normal personality and his humanity was restored. At his father's funeral, he will bury everything in the past as a funeral object of the old times. Oscar, who escaped from reality in a masochistic way in a terrifying and deformed society, regained his desire and function for growth at this time. After the war, the German people gradually regained their ability to think rationally, re-choose the road, and the train at the end expresses the director's optimistic attitude towards Germany.
4 Strange characters and unique performances
The director's theme design and style pursuit should be expressed through images and sounds. The images are divided into three aspects: character modeling, environmental modeling and performance modeling.
The important principle of character modeling is that the actor's image must conform to the narrative regulations. The 12-year-old David Bennant was found all over Germany, and he himself has a growth and development disorder. It is said that Günterglass saw director Schlondorff and David Bennant as the protagonist before he was relieved to change it into a movie.
·Family changes and the fate of Danzig
Both Oscar and Kurt Jr. live in misplaced family relationships, with Oscar's two fathers being Polish and Prussian. So does Kurt Jr. The narrative background of the film is in the 1920s and 1940s. The two sons of this family have never been identified as their real fathers. The dislocation of the relationship between the son and the father symbolizes the fate of Danzig. The German occupation of Danzig, the birth of Oscar and Maria's son Kurt, and the celebration of Alfredo as his own son, have obvious morals.
Poland's history was divided three times by Tsarist Russia, Prussia, and Austria, and lost its independence. The country was restored after the First World War, and the country consisted of Polish-speaking residents of the three countries. The contract of Versailles after World War I, which separated the port of Danzig from Germany, was under the supervision of the League of Nations, but was a free city completely under the control of Poland economically. This aroused the resentment of the Germans against Poland and laid a hidden danger for World War II. In March 1939 Hitler asked Poland to cede Danzig, but Poland refused, so the German aggression first pointed to Poland. Danzig is a multi-ethnic gathering place, and Alfredo said that the first people to live in Danzig were the white people of Kasu. The last shot in this section is the Polish Yang Prussian Alfredo walking side by side with the mother of the white descendant of Kasu, symbolizing the harmonious national relationship in Danzig at that time.
After their mother is pregnant and struggling with painful choices, the two men embody typical German and Polish personalities. Father's stupidity and blindness, Yang's weakness and cowardice. The mother's pain actually symbolizes the pain of Danzig, and the death of the mother also heralds the fate of Danzig's impending destruction. Unable to resist in the post office, Young was shot by the Germans, alluding to Poland's fate in the war. In the blitzkrieg, they were losing ground. The German army attacked on 9.1 and occupied Warsaw, the capital of Poland, on 9.24. Yang's weak personality reflects the director's positioning of the Polish national character. Husband and wife Your character focuses on the weakness of German nationality, numbness, selfishness, blind impulse.
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