Aside from psychology, [Under the Gas Lamp] is a great suspense film, intertwined, full of doubts, and full of tension.
The girl Paula’s aunt was brutally murdered under her own portrait. Paula left London in order to forget this story, but met the handsome young Anton. In Anton’s passionate pursuit, Paula quickly fell in love. The two returned to their old house in London to build a love nest together. However, whenever Anton leaves home, Paula always hears strange noises and sees the gas lamp dimming gradually, but her husband tells her that it is just an illusion, the death of the aunt, the suggestion of the husband, the contempt of the maid, and the depressive environment. Paula is approaching the brink of collapse step by step...
The director George Gu Ke, who has directed "Slim Lady", can be said to be quite successful in creating an atmosphere of suspense and tension.
Hitchcock once said in an article titled "Why I Fear the Darkness" that shock can make the audience jump in panic, while suspense keeps the audience in a state of suspense and anxiety. If a table of people sitting and playing cards suddenly explodes, the tension may only last for 15 seconds, but if you change the shooting method, first shoot the bomb that is counting down, and then shoot the people playing cards, then the audience will be in the next 10 minutes We will hold our breath.
In [Under the Gas Lamp], the bomb is the gentle and considerate husband Anton, watching movies in a dark room, we are all anxiously counting the countdown to the bomb. When was this time bomb planted? Probably when Anton's expression became rude and he snatched the letters Paula found in the music score. It could also be earlier, since Anton persuaded Paula to return to the murder case. The old mansion began.
Charles Bowyer, the perfect husband Anton, has to admit that he is a master of psychology, calm, cruel, and ruthless, pushing the heroine into desperation step by step. The trick he used is the most common method in psychology-psychological suggestion.
The so-called psychological suggestion is the "heart attack first" as used in ancient times. Friends who have read [Three Kingdoms] should all remember how Zhuge Liang died indirectly at the hands of Sima Yi.
Sima Yi didn't ask the messengers sent by Zhuge Liang about the Shu army, but asked Zhuge Liang how much food he ate and how many sleeps he slept, and whether he was busy or not. The messenger told the truth, Sima Yi sighed: "Kong Ming eats less and is troublesome, how can it last for a long time!" Zhuge Liang eats less and is more busy, so how can he live longer? As a result, Zhuge Liang felt "restless" after hearing this, and died not long after.
Sima Yi used psychological hints to successfully "curse" Zhuge Liang to death, showing the power of psychological hints.
Returning to this old American film from the 1940s from ancient China, let us see how the ill-intentioned husband used psychological cues to force the poor wife to collapse.
Anton had planned for a long time. He arranged a romantic encounter with Paula, a crazy love, and a lightning marriage. When they returned to London as planned, Anton stretched out his claws of suggestion to Paula and started. The gradual brainwashing of her.
In the process of Anton’s brainwashing of Paula, there are a few steps that must be taken:
1. Information blockade
means that the other party keeps contacting a type of information for a period of time. In the movie, from the brooch incident during the visit to the Tower of London, the pictures taken down, the watch lost at the party, to the denial of the letter Paula ever found in the music score, Anton sends the same message to Paula: Your memory is getting worse and worse, you always forget what you have done, and you have hallucinations. Such information kept hitting Paula, making her less and more distrustful of her feelings, she was dazed, and mentally exhausted.
2 Relational blockade
is to restrict the other party's personal freedom. From the first day he moved into the old London house, Anton looked for reasons to prohibit his wife’s contact with the outside world. He turned a deaf ear to the visits of his enthusiastic neighbors. He used the excuse of being unwell and the old housekeeper was deaf and inconvenient to communicate. He also told the newly hired maid to only report to himself. He neither allowed his wife to participate in social relations nor let his wife go out for a walk. In name, he cared for his wife, but in fact, he isolated his wife and realized the blockade of the relationship.
3 Moderate threat
Either use violence or hysterical rants. Anton obviously used the latter type. When Paula showed dissatisfaction and defiance, Anton used her husband's majesty, and a little stricter, Paula went on hold.
4 Establishing authority
means emphasizing your own correctness. In the movie, Anton is good at using human and physical evidence to verify his correctness. When the portrait was taken, he asked the housekeeper and maid to swear to the Bible. It was not the housekeeper or the maid who took down the portrait. It could only be pitiful. This is a dead-end question of thinking. It is often the thief who calls for catching the thief, but how can Paula, who is panicked, suspect her husband? Anton also arranged the brooch and watch incidents "ingeniously". To be honest, I still haven't figured out how he did it. Isn't he not just a jewel thief or a magic sacred hand? In short, he will always make sure that the evidence is unquestionable, and then drive the heroine crazy with his face full of disappointment and helplessness.
Wu Zhihong concluded in his book "Why the Family Hurts": One-to-one brainwashing is enough to meet the above conditions. Because the person who carried out the brainwashing was too persevering and resolute, the brainwashed party would surrender in the end, and when it began to surrender, he would take a calm attitude and think: "Forget it, give up this time. I'm too tired."
Sure enough, this was the beginning of Paula's nightmare. Anton brainwashed again and again, and Paula's psychological defenses collapsed thousands of miles away.
On the other hand, this has a lot to do with Paula's own suggestiveness.
American psychologist Sturgeon once divided people into two categories: field-independent and field-dependent. Field-dependent people tend to show a higher level of impliedness and lower independence. The heroine of the movie Paula is a typical field-dependent person. She is not confident enough in her own feelings and is often influenced by the outside world.
I heard footsteps above my head and saw the gas lamp dimmed, but I had to find a semi-deaf housekeeper to verify. Under my husband’s constant suggestion, I had deep doubts about my memory and mental condition. At the end of the film, Even at the end, the detective revealed the truth to her, and once the husband came back, she only had to repeat to her: "It was just your hallucination," and she hesitated again.
I think that personality traits like Paula are also affected by her own experience. Paula has no father, her mother passed away very early, and she was fostered in her aunt's house. Coupled with her delicate artistic temperament, she would naturally have a sensitive, fragile and insecure personality. This is the main reason why she is easy to be hinted to a certain extent.
However, Paula has also resisted. This is called "self-worth protection rebellion" in psychology. People sometimes react in the opposite direction to external influences due to the motivation of self-worth protection. Under Anton's control, Paula intuitively felt repressed and unfair, but it was a pity that this weak resistance was completely vulnerable to the mighty Anton.
In the suggestive cage cleverly organized by Anton, Paula suffers mentally every day and hesitates. At this moment, detective Berlin appeared. He broke Anton's blockade, and the truth became clear, and Paula could not be reduced to a lunatic asylum.
In the movie, Anton’s criminal motive is a few precious gems that are priceless. In real life, such a gem-crazy husband is rare. However, malicious psychological hints in the family are not uncommon and gradually evolve. It is a tributary of cold violence in domestic violence.
Especially in intellectual families, mental violence often replaces punching and kicking as the main form of domestic violence. Intellectual society expects high pressure and face-saving, and their psychology is easily depressed and difficult to vent. Interfere with the spouse’s freedom, deliberately belittle, deliberately make things difficult, and reduce the partner’s self-confidence and self-efficacy. In some corners of our lives, there may be a well-dressed and handsome husband like Anton, and a desperate wife who is on the verge of collapse.
Spiritual violence is a dead end of the law. Among the victims, there are not only women, but also many men who live in humiliation with their wives.
American psychologist Rogers once said that love is deep understanding and acceptance. True love is based on respect and equality. Any suppression and trampling in the name of love is a lie of love.
"Betrayal of self is betrayal of nature." Patrice Evans wrote in the book "Don't Control Me". If we always accept others' definition of ourselves, we will believe that their evaluations are more true. Knowing oneself through the viewpoint of others, this inverse way of knowing oneself from external factors can only make the self-understanding more vague.
What we need to do is to firmly believe that we know how we feel, and the hints are surging again, and I am open-minded, and I am flat.
PS: I plan to write this for the exam next Wednesday. I have written too much. I will definitely delete it by the time. I wish me a pass and good night and luck :)
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