De Sica devoted himself to acting in his early years. He performed professionally on stage for the first time in 1923. In the 1920s, he was a very popular stage idol and singer. After the 1930s, he also doubled as a director. The piece of "Children Are Watching" directed in 1942 is of great significance in his career as a director. It is known as the pioneer work of Italian new realistic film, and its value is very high. It can be said that De Sica is a veritable Italian movie giant.
1. The historical background of the story.
At the beginning of World War II, when the dark clouds of war were permeating Europe, in fact, Italy had no material preparations for a protracted war. However, with the victory of Germany's 40-year blitzkrieg in Western Europe, the dizzy Mussolini was unwilling to only provide Germany with tomatoes and lemons, and finally brought the country into a war of self-destruction. After Italy entered the war, the people began to taste the bitter fruits of the war. Italy was not able to support itself in food, and soon even some of the most basic food began to be lacking. This situation continued for a long time during the post-war reconstruction. Reflected in film production, it is that Italian films have moved from the magnificent set to the streets, into the countryside, and turn to current social problems, and critically examines late modern history. [1]
Two, the character’s living environment, social environment description and the film’s plot development
The story told by "Candle of Wind" happened in Italy in the early 1950s, which had not yet recovered from post-war poverty. Wimpelto D, who was lonely for half his life, retired from the municipality where he had been a civil servant for decades. His meager pension made his life very difficult. He participated in a protest petition by pensioners. At the beginning of the film, a distant view shows the streets of the turbulent Italian city. The demonstrators moved from far to near, and soon, they could see various slogans reflecting the demands of the workers. With the deep background music and dark black and white tones, we can't see the slightest vitality and vitality of the city. Immediately afterwards, the protagonist of the film appeared on stage. He was already grey-haired, holding a puppy, and mixed in the parade, adding to the sentimental sentiment of the film.
The demonstrators were quickly dispersed by the military and police. Wimpelto D "without the help of family, sons, brothers", only 18,000 lire a month pension, but the rent will cost 10,000 lire. In desperation, he had no choice but to sell his beloved watch, even if the object of the purchase was the Orez who had just met during the parade or the diners he met in the dining hall. When selling a watch, there is one detail we should pay special attention to, that is, a close-up shot of the buyer taking out a lot of change. Just imagine, if the buyer is a rich person, how can he bring a lot of change with him? It can also be seen that people’s lives were generally difficult at that time.
Back at the accommodation, Wimpelto D was almost driven out of the door by the landlady because he couldn't pay the rent, but the landlady's little maid's sympathy for him made him feel that there is still warmth in the world. Maria helped him take the thermometer, brought hot foot wash, visited him in the hospital, and helped him take care of the puppy, etc. It shows that Maria is a very caring person. However, her own life is so miserable: the place where she sleeps is only a tiny bit of the stairwell, which is very noisy; now she is pregnant with a child, and once she is found out by the landlord, she will be "kicked out." The tragic fate of the little people can be seen everywhere. The philosophers have said that one leaf can tell the world in autumn. From the plight of the maids, Wimpelto D and others, the fate of the whole society, especially the people of the lower classes, can be seen. How miserable.
It is worth pointing out that after the film describes the protagonist Wimpelto D, after returning to his residence, it took a long time to describe his accommodation environment and the character characteristics of the characters around him. There are two main ones: acrimonious. The landlady and the caring little maid. Moreover, when watching the film, I also found that the dialogue of these characters is unrefined and completely the most common words in life. I wonder if the actors are so skilled in memorizing the dialogue that we can’t see it. Where are the carved traces? After I checked some materials, I realized that this is also an important feature of Italian neorealism movies, that is, the pursuit of a purely natural language style and a faithful reproduction of real life, regardless of language or living environment.
When the film tells the living conditions and living environment of the protagonist Wimpelto D, it also portrays the characters around him in a simple or detailed manner. These plots may not have much causal relationship with other events, making the audience unable to distinguish which are "important scenes" and which are only "supplementary material." In fact, this is precisely the low-key approach of neo-realistic movies, with special attention to the artistic characteristics of secular scenes and character behavior. One of the scenes in the film is a detailed depiction of the process of the maid Maria from getting up in the morning to the beginning of her day in the kitchen. The famous film critic Bazin said, "This kind of in-depth depiction of the trivial'fine manners' is a traditional movie. It is not shown to us.” I think it is the in-depth description of individual life in neo-realistic films that can better unearth the unrecognized facts of the poor life of the working people at the bottom.
Life is cruel and ruthless. In a society ruled by money, only one can live with money, and the penniless Wimpelto D can only be reduced to the point of begging on the streets. At this time, the film's psychological portrayal of Wimpelto D can be said to be indifferent: he wants to save face, but he is forced by life, so he has to do it; when he is hesitant, he has to order Frick to beg on his behalf. Whenever I see this, my eyes will be wet. I dare not say how much sympathy I have for the protagonist Wimpelto D, but the helplessness of life and the panic of survival can really destroy a person's mind. Desperate for life, he wants to get rid of his beloved puppy and end his life. At the moment when he left his rented house and was about to commit suicide, the film used a close-up shot to focus on the long shadows left by Wimpelto D when he went down the stairs. The "shadow" moved extremely slowly and landed silently, which shows how disappointed and helpless Wimpertor D is in reality and life. He really wanted his beloved puppy to live happily, so he avoided it to end his life, but the puppy found him again and nestled on him as usual, which made him I saw a glimmer of light still in life.
Third, the sublimation of the theme of the story and the scale of grasping
For most of the time in the film, we saw Wimpelto D and his beloved dog Frank alone. Just imagine why a person loves a puppy so much, and even this puppy has changed. His fate (he didn’t commit suicide because of the puppy’s solace to him); through De Sica’s lens we have got the answer, we already know an old man, when there was no family or his own real estate house, he The only thing worthy of care is his puppy, just as it is his child. In addition, it is worth mentioning that the maid in the film tells Wimpelto that she is pregnant with a young soldier's child, but the child's father is unwilling to admit it, which indicates that the child will have no father of his own from birth. This also refers directly to the social reality of Italy after the war. The tone of the whole film is a kind of very realistic loneliness. Even when Wimpelto D met his friends and colleagues in the city square, they just took a few words and left in the car, and the rest He can only stand silently in the middle of the square. Whether he is walking on the street, or in the hospital, whether he goes to the dog shelter, or returns to his rented apartment, he gets the indifference between people under the cruel reality. In short, we can hardly get out of the film’s sadness unscathed.
This film is a representative film in Italian film history and one of the representative works of Italian neorealism. This is definitely a moving work. The outstanding performance of all non-professional actors has performed at a high level that professional actors cannot match. Moreover, the rhythm of this seemingly dull film is extremely fast, 90 minutes passed in a flash, de Sica's directing skills can be seen. [3]
Fourth, the aesthetic significance of Italian neorealism films
The final open ending of the film makes us vaguely feel that the happiness of the old man Wimpelto D and the puppy Frank can only be short-lived, and all we can do is to pray that the old man will have a good end in the end. Instead of choosing to commit suicide. This kind of ending method is a very typical treatment method for realism and later modernist films. It is the biggest difference between them and the closed ending of classical and Hollywood films. From the film title, we can already see that what De Sika wants to express in this film is the tense relationship between the individual and the entire society. This expression reflects the spiritual core of neorealism, that is, to maximize the attention and Describe the bottom of society and expose the suffering of ordinary people. [4] At
this point, I remembered that when I was studying "Introduction to Literary Theory" in my sophomore year, the book used Belinsky's words to describe the "realism" characteristic of realist literature. That sentence probably said In this way, "What we are asking for is not the ideal of life, but life itself, as it was originally. No matter whether it is good or bad, we don’t want to decorate it. Because the distinguishing feature of this type of literature is that there is nothing Under the guise of frankness, life behaves naked to a shy level, exposing all the terrible ugliness and all the solemn beauty together, as if it were cut with a scalpel." [5] I think the reason why "The Tears of the Wind" is touching is not because of how majestic and majestic the film is, or because there are so many high-tech things, but using a meticulous and sharp "scalpel". Did Italian society "expose all the terrible ugliness and all the solemn beauty together"?
It can be said that in this respect, "Candle of Wind" has reached the extreme of Italian neo-realistic aesthetics, because in the film we hardly see a dead person, nor do we see a city ravaged by war. Ruins, and no harsh gunshots were heard in the film. However, at this time, silence is better than sound. The dark, lifeless and vigorous picture, the low and weak voice language, the film lens that truly shows life and society, does not need too many other film special effects, but it has already changed the history. The vicissitudes of life, the pain of life, the scorching coldness of the world... all show up before the eyes of the world, and there is no need to use too much pen and ink to highlight anything.
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