The film was shot in 1961 and was released in France in January the following year. After the Second World War, European culture needed to be restructured. At this time, following the European pioneers and Italian neorealism, the third French new wave of film movement came. It interacted with various cultural trends including the above-mentioned feminism. Interpretation brings a liberation of the mind.
In the early 1960s, the second wave of feminism was unfolding in the Western world. Sexual liberation was an important issue in the movement. Sexual freedom was used as a weapon to change the existing social structure represented by patriarchy. In the film creation in the early stages of the movement, women are still vassals of the patriarchal society, or they are consumed from another male perspective. It was not until the French New Wave that women found their true voice. The main genre during the French New Wave was radical feminism. This is the first time that feminism has appeared. Feminists who hold this view believe that patriarchy is the root cause of the most serious problems in society.
As one of the core figures of the French New Wave period, Truffaut also naturally focused his lens on female characters. Although the original work is based on the post-World War I background, Truffaut combined it with feminism to construct a triangular relationship centered on women. The heroine Catherine wandered between Zu Yuzhan and her other lovers, always maintaining her supreme "queen" status, and the lives of the two heroes were also shaken up in this emotional whirlpool, constantly struggling.
As the heroine, Catherine was shaped from multiple perspectives. The voice-over is an important means of it. They are God’s perspective and the two male protagonists. Catherine’s voice-over only appears once in the opening title: "You said, I Love you. I say, stay. I want to say, take possession of me. But you say, you go." This passage in this film is both the beginning and the end.
In the first half of the film, Truffau uses a lot of montages, sliding and panning, fast zooming, and freeze-frame to make the time and space of the lens jump continuously, creating a vibrant life scene. In the latter part of the film, the switching speed of the camera is obviously slowed down, and the movement of the camera is like the feelings of three people, confused, chaotic, and weak.
In terms of composition, they are relatively consistent. Catherine was always anxious to occupy the center of the picture. She couldn't bear the two of them ignoring herself when they were playing dominoes, and forcibly inserted between the two; when the male protagonist was chatting by the river, the camera did indeed reach Catherine during the conversation. After a series of sound and pictures were out of sync, she jumped into the river, turning their long-formed talks into meaningless. After returning from the war, the four of them talked in the hut. She has always been the bridge between the two, so that Zu and Zhan could not skip her to communicate. Catherine has not changed, just like she painted a mustache that represents male sexual characteristics, put on a male "coat" but still maintains the inner female, so that the female audience still obtains the identity. They raced on the bridge, and she didn't care about the rules as long as she won the race. The space on the bridge is completely separated from the outside, forming an inherently small space. Time seems to stop here, making a dazzling foreshadowing for the end of the three people's attraction and confrontation, and ultimately their destruction.
Of course, maybe Catherine's creation is mixed with Truffaut's personal emotions in addition to the original book itself. He comes from a Catholic family. His mother was unmarried and gave birth to him. His birth was regarded as a crime by society and his mother, which caused subtle emotional entanglements with religion and women. Hitchcock once asked the ending: "Can the Catholic Church accept cremation?" Combined with the director's life, this is not a kind of resistance.
The feminist movement under Truffau’s lens really takes women as the subject of the narrative, not as a purely stared object. This approach also breaks Laura Mulvey’s gaze theory. As a great director in the same era as many thinkers, I think Truffaut agrees with existentialism. Subjectivity and freedom are the starting points for studying the existence of human beings. This film is also a utopian conception arising from the collision of freedom and morality.
Finally, let me just say a few words casually. Feminism has a history of more than a century now. Women still suffer from all kinds of injustices in the society. Although I am a man, I also hope that feminism will not be reduced to empty talk, actively breaking the class barriers of the middle class, and driving all women to truly grasp what they should be. The right to speak is the direction of our efforts.
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