Scene information and film language

scene information

"Jeanne Dillman" builds a woman's living space with very few scenes. The information contained in these scenes and the relationship between scenes are undoubtedly the most important parts of the film. The main scene is an indoor closed space, namely Jeanne's home, including five parts: kitchen, corridor (the door connecting the house and each room), bedroom, bathroom and living room (also the room where the son sleeps). Listed in order. Several key scenarios are analyzed below.

(1) Kitchen

As the first scene of the whole film, the kitchen is also the most important scene that the director wants to highlight, which will be discussed in detail later when analyzing the language of the film. The kitchen is the embodiment of a housewife's daily routine, where events seem the most repetitive and "boring", but contain the core of the heroine's identity . In addition to household chores such as boiling water and washing the table and washing dishes, the film focuses on three scenes. One is getting up every morning to shine his son's shoes, which contains a mother's care and love; the other is preparing lunch for himself twice at noon, which is the loneliness of a single mother living alone; the last one is tasting coffee. Jeanne decided to pour out all the coffee and re-grind it after repeated debugging twice. This description shows that she treats her life in a dull and rigid manner, and begins to go into a kind of disorder. There is also a coffee-drinking scene later in the article, both of which are the author's foreshadowing. There is also a balcony extending out of the kitchen. In this closed indoor scene, the balcony is the "window" of the movie "picture frame", but unfortunately this small balcony has become the most mysterious space in the film. We Only a small part of it can be seen through the kitchen door, perhaps this is also the director's moral - in this dark home, there is a door leading to the outside, but it is mostly ignored.

(2) Corridor - doorway - living room - son's room

When Jeanne walked out of the kitchen and came to the corridor, the film immediately showed us her other identity - a prostitute. The information contained in the corridor is mainly concentrated at the door, and the rest is only filled by Jeanne's movement. The door is where Jeanne greets her neighbors at noon, guests in the afternoon, and her son at night. The events at the door within three days also reflect Jeanne's changes. On the first night when her son came back, Jeanne got up to meet and kiss her son; on the second day at noon, she chatted with the neighbors for a long time at the door; on the second night, when her son came back, Jeanne sat there instead of welcoming him; At noon on the third day, I greeted my neighbors with just two words and nothing else. Jeanne's "aphasia" is not an accident, we can analyze it from two aspects. One is the estrangement in her relationship with her son. Here we can talk about the important place "living room". First of all, this is a public space. Although there are only her and her son, their conversation is not intimate, but polite. For example, the first sentence Jeanne said in the whole film is: "Don't read while eating. ." Jeanne routinely read letters, checked her son's endorsement, etc., and the two of them were silent for more time. At night, the "living room" transforms into the son's room, which also implies the transition from public space to private space. The two conversations the son had before going to bed were both personal, and this was the real mother-son communication. But this exchange did not appear intimate. In the first dialogue, the mother is the subject of the conversation, telling the past with the deceased father, but the son asks why the mother is no longer married. He has no understanding of the mother's choice; in the second dialogue, the son talks Jue said what was on his mind, but his mother didn't respond, and simply excused it by saying "it's too late". In the second scene, the mother is standing at the door, and the son is leaning on the bed with his back to the mother. Second, Jeanne's "aphasia" is due to her obsession with the past. In a button-finding scene, Jeanne told a story about this dress in detail in a conversation with a shopkeeper. The good old days seemed to reappear in front of her eyes. However, this nostalgia is after all Without a response, none of us can enter Jeanne's world.

(3) Cafe

Another important scene is the coffee shop. The first appearance of the café was on the afternoon of the second day, when Jeanne came to the café for a cup of coffee after buying wool, which was one of the few free moments in her life. It is worth mentioning that this scene is almost (rare in the whole film) completely still, except for the subtle movements of picking up and putting down the coffee cup, Jeanne is always sitting in the center of the picture, like in a daze, as if thinking. What's on your mind, this shot is a visual tribute, an effective way to guide us to identify and enter Jeanne's inner world:

In a picture or a shot, compared to a character in constant motion, a character who is always in a static state has a psychological advantage, showing some kind of control over the situation.

The scene where Jeanne comes to the cafe for the second time is more interesting. After she entered the door, she was stunned for a moment, and found that the seat at the door was occupied by someone - this shows that this is where she often sits, and when she sat in the adjacent seat, the camera did not move with Jeanne, but Still staring at the original position. So Jeanne is squeezed to the edge of the picture (this is not the first time Jeanne has been on the edge of the picture, but it is the first time we feel a clear squeeze, because the center of the picture has been there from beginning to end by a occupied by strangers). These two shifts in the position of drinking coffee (reflected in the composition from the center to the corners) are the hallmark of Jeanne's disorder. Jeanne was still stunned, but this time she didn't drink coffee. She made the coffee quietly, raised the coffee cup slightly with her fingers, then put it down suddenly, packed her things and left. Originally, I thought that the director used another jump, like what happened between the man entering and exiting the bedroom door the first two times, and the process of eating dinner the next day, were skipped and replaced by the two actions before and after. But after I watched it twice, I found that there is no trace of editing here, and Jeanne really didn't drink coffee! Why is this little action so important? As I said before, coffee is the foreshadowing of the disorder, and Jeanne at this time is not even in the mood to enjoy the leisure time of the afternoon, which is the last thing she does before killing - maybe it is At this moment, she made up her mind to kill, and this unexpected move showed the restless and struggling state of mind vividly.

film language

(1) Seat

The film is shot in an objectively documented way, where the camera is always at an appropriate distance from the characters, without any close-ups. Films dominated by close-up shots, such as last year's "Youth as a Teenager", can infinitely magnify the emotional tension, and at the same time, the delicate capture of the characters' emotions can easily make the viewer feel immersed. In contrast, I appreciate Ackerman's cold, restrained approach. This approach was undoubtedly pioneering at the time. At the same time, I also think of another director who is good at this style in the new century-Mongy, whose masterpiece "Three Weeks and Two Days in April" fully reflects the advantages of this shooting method, that is, the power of objective long-shot realism .

The film basically uses long to medium shots . The farthest long-range shot appeared downstairs at Jeanne's house. In this shot, we saw Jeanne walking out of the building and walking into the street from a distance. Before this shot, an obvious empty mirror was used to connect, showing A deserted scene in the neighborhood where Jeanne lives. The closest medium shot in this film is in the kitchen, which also confirms what I said before: the kitchen is the most important scene that the director wants to highlight. Because the kitchen best reflects the core identity of this woman. Likewise, the whole film adopts an equal shooting angle, and the camera position is almost level with the characters, but the camera position is low in the kitchen. We know that equality is also the core appeal of this feminist film. First of all, it is natural for the audience to watch it from an equal perspective. An overhead shot represents a scrutiny gaze, while an overhead shot has the meaning of enhancing the image of a character—for example, Wells often uses an overhead shot to show the tall image of a character in his own works. And the low camera in the kitchen has the same meaning. These household chores are usually nothing but repetitive work, but they condense the core of Jeanne's life as a wife and mother, and also represent the most moving energy of an ordinary woman. Under the gaze of the close-range low-camera, Jeanne's image seemed to suddenly become taller and became the pillar of the whole picture.

Compared with the relatively large scene/small screen image, the character presented in the relatively small scene/large screen image has more positive value in defining the control or meaning presentation in the scene.

(2) Composition

First of all, the film uses a stable and conventional closed composition most of the time . Except for a few empty shots, most of the shots are character-led. Therefore, we can mainly interpret the meaning of the picture from the position of the characters. The character as the center of gravity of the picture does not mean that the character should be placed in the center of the picture. In fact, the director has absolutely no intention of pushing Jeanne to the center of the audience's line of sight. In most scenes, Jeanne is on one side of the screen, or even just a little off the center line. For example, in a table scene, the picture places the son in the center, while Jeanne sits on the side. These scenes seem to be saying that Jeanne is just a supporting role in her own life and that she never does anything important for herself (until the end).

However, Ackerman also implanted some instability . For example, in the scene where Jeanne talks to her neighbor, the neighbor complains to Jeanne about her life in a voice-over. The composition here is an obvious breakthrough from the "picture frame" of the film. Ackerman refers to the existence of space outside the painting with the open composition of "window theory", which reflects that she is not only talking about Jeanne's personal life, but reflects the cage-like life of all housewives. The involvement of the role of neighbors makes this refraction even more pronounced.

In addition, there are many uses of "frame in frame" in the film. The most obvious one is that before and after the sex scene at the end, the director deliberately used mirror images to show Jeanne's actions to enhance the unpredictability of the characters' psychology, and the murder scene was also completed in the mirror. The final picture stays on the corpse in the mirror, and next to the mirror is a photo of Jeanne and her husband in the past, which is the most ruthless irony of life.

Figures and their mirror images are reflected in each other, and various metaphors about mirror images can be used to form expressions of falsehood and reality, truth and falsehood, truth and lies, and constitute a certain inner state of the character, a certain inner conflict, and even schizophrenia. A visual presentation that constitutes an expression of the self that confronts or refuses to confront it.

(3) Viewpoint

The point of view of this film is the most paradoxical existence in this film, and it is also the most important thing in understanding this film. How should we "see" this movie? Answering this question first needs to be clear about "who is watching". The film's subversion of traditional narratives is largely reflected in the fact that it has absolutely no intention of concealing the camera, but it is not the mechanical gaze of the camera as an objective recording method, but a blatant voyeurism. The multiple use of "frame in frame" in the film is a reflection of this peeping behavior:

The frame in the frame highlights and emphasizes the characters in the situation; at the same time, it may also form a self-reference to the picture composition/frame, thus forming a rich visual expression; it occasionally implies a certain The presence of a peeper's gaze or act of peeping.

In this way, the relationship between the camera and the characters seems less equal. In the process of peeping, the camera is endowed with powers beyond moral boundaries (to watch the characters bathe, have sex, etc.), and its intrusion causes the characters to be nailed in the frame - the whole film of Jeanne is always front, back, The side is shown in front of us, and its movement is not free (it cannot be shown in 360 degrees in front of the camera), but is restricted to make any "flexible" movements.

Therefore, the equal perspective of this film is actually only reflected in the paragraphs of individual frontal positions, which are also the highlight moments in the film. Such as the scene of drinking coffee for the first time in a cafe, or the long shot at the end of the movie - all the accumulated energy burst out in this long shot, in this still stare, the gushing emotion Finally found an outlet for release. Jeanne sat alone in the dark room, sitting at the table next to the money jar used to store her "income", her hands and white shirt were stained with blood, and the faint car humming sounded from the window from time to time, We follow Jeanne into a moment of contemplation, or just bewilderment. The son is about to go home, how will he react to the murdered mother and the corpse? What will be the fate of Jeanne? We only saw that she tilted her head slightly, and the picture came to an abrupt end, but this image has remained in our hearts forever.

Finally, let's talk about an interesting little episode. I watched the second half of the film with my mother. As a housewife and a complete film layman, she thought the large number of long shots in the film was unbearable, and joked to herself: "So my life is so boring, I don't know if I don't watch it, it's scary at first sight. Jump." At the same time, she also told me that she was impressed by the scene when Jeanne slipped her hand and threw the brush out during the second shoe shine. She said, "This detail of life is very real, and I have experienced it." Yes Ah, a movie from more than 40 years ago can still touch the life and spiritual corners of an ordinary person, which is enough to be called great. Thanks Ackerman for this genius work.

*The quoted passages in the article are from Dai Jinhua's "Film Criticism"