Last week, I watched "Letters from a Strange Woman" filmed in the 1940s in the United States. To be honest, I didn't think Xu Jinglei's filming was as good at the time. Joan Fontaine is really not like a girl. A girl with a natural face like Xu Jinglei used a real teenager to play the heroine of Girls' Generation, but Joan with a lady's face did not have such a name for herself. The male protagonist is very beautiful, but when it comes to charm, it is too far from Jiang Wen. And the film also added some inexplicable things at the beginning and the end. Anyway, when the movie was over, a student who came to ask questions made me feel that she was already angry with the movie. Of course, I think she's mainly incapable of understanding that woman's love.
When the old man started talking today, I realized the beauty of this film. Mainly the beautiful motion shots used on that staircase. What's the point of stairs? He was at the top of the stairs, and she looked up below. Every time he brought back a different woman, he walked up the spiral staircase, not knowing that she was sitting alone at the other corner of the staircase, waiting and disappointed. And one day, she will come up the stairs with him, to him, just like all the mistresses he brought back; to her, the love of a lifetime is realized in this strange way. Not once, but twice.
In this way, the film suddenly shows its beauty in the spiral staircase. Merely beautiful shots are meaningless. Putting a beautiful lens in the right place where it's needed is the key. Those complicated feelings and strange fates were realized not by language, but by such wonderful visual images. Think about it, Xu Jinglei's version really doesn't have this wonderful stroke.
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