Filmed in 1947, "Jade Face Love Demon" can be said to be in the golden age of film noir, but from the point of view of the film itself, although it also covers black symbols such as crime, femme fatale, alcoholism, fate and mystery, in black In the film, however, it looks a little different, except for the black veil, the audience can see the orphans in Dickens's books, the men who struggled to no avail in Jack London's books, the ghostly circus show in Southern Gothic literature, and perhaps The core of religious admonitions in "Night of the Hunter".
A special small environment like the circus seems to gather people from the fringes and the bottom of society, but it itself is a weird fun mirror of the entire American society. Even in such a humble group, there are all kinds of people, from bosses to employees, from young and beautiful to old and fading, and there are drunkards like Pitt who were brilliant when they were young and finally fell into the quagmire and survived, and there are even circuses. At the bottom of the world, "weird people" who are treated like animals; there are success and failure, sincerity and fraud, desire and temptation, conspiracy and betrayal. Stanton, who grew up in an orphanage, relies on his young and handsome appearance, innate intelligence, and unremitting persistence and ambition to deal with the relationship between "mentor" Zena, her alcoholic husband Pete and young girl Jasmine. In the interim, he finally mastered the magic code that brings fame and fortune, and both wealth and beauty have a good harvest. The first half of the film depicts Stanton's ascent, but there are always disturbing notes in this successful melody, such as Stanton's clever "mind reading" to lure the police away The triumph of the people of faith manipulated in the applause is not a talent or a curse; he can easily go from one woman to another and use it for his own use, but the true love is very thin; more importantly, Stanton A. The jump to success was Pete's "accidental" death, and guilt and fear followed him.
The film uses a symmetrical ring structure to outline the fate of the protagonist Stanton's road to destruction, and those deliberate repetitions and contrasts highlight the tragic color of fate.
1. The ominous tarot: In the first half of the film, Zena used the tarot cards to calculate a hexagram when he was hesitating whether to teach Stanton the secret words of mind-reading magic, and the card that landed face down, "The Hanged Upside Down" The message of death conveyed by "people" was quickly confirmed by Pete's death. Stanton benefited from Pete's death on the one hand, but it also became a lingering nightmare for him. In the second half of the film, Stanton and his wife Jasmine relied on the more skilled mind-reading magic in the club. Na gave him another tarot divination, and the "hanged man" that fell to the ground sounded the death knell of fate again.
2. The Whisper of an Alcoholic: Before Pete died, he unknowingly drank the "poisonous wine sent by death", while intoxicated recalling the glory of the past, he looked into Stanton's eyes and seemed to read him Childhood Secret - "A boy running on the grass with a dog", when Stanton was amazed at Pete's mind-reading magic, Pete interrupted him: "Every boy has a dog", which also points The secret of the so-called "mind-reading" came out. In addition to the cooperation of the set of code words, it was more of a general description, common-sense inference, clever guidance and silent suggestion. In the second half of the film, when Stanton is expelled from the "altar" and reduced to an ordinary liar, he also drinks like a dead alcoholic Pete, who used to be a high-profile magician now only among the beggars Mocking the psychological tricks of the boy and the dog, the alcohol devil consumed the "jade face" he once used as a weapon, the deep-set eye sockets, the puffy eye bags, and the vicissitudes of the gully each tell the unbearable sin and regret.
3. Geek: At the beginning of the film, we see that the geek show is a circus stunt. This geek who was fed live chickens suffered inhuman treatment. round up". Later, through the mouths of others, we found that the eccentric was once a smash hit star, and the troupe manager couldn't help but sigh "how can a person fall so far". At the end of the film, Stanton, who was in exile, wanted to take refuge in the original circus, but in the end he was only worthy of being a "weird", like a depressed and trapped beast. "How can a person fall so far?" People sighed again, but this time the answer was "because he climbed too high".
The drunkard and the eccentric are two figures in the shadows, the traps of Stanton's fate overlapping, and the symbols in the sense of two spiritual allegories - the paralysis of the spirit and the alienation of the spirit. And Stanton's journey from ambition, desire to greed, ruthlessness, and finally to numbness and alienation is a Faustian destructive journey that deals with the devil because he is never satisfied. In Stanton's magic, there seems to be a fine line between shrewdness and evil. All magic is essentially deception, but why is Zena so proud of the code word trick she and Pete invented, but can't stand the spiritism that Stanton wants to "go further"? Why is Jasmine willing to cooperate with Stanton's mind-reading magic using code words, but when Stanton deceives others into thinking that he sees dead souls kneeling and praying, he collapses and falls short? Maybe it's because in their opinion, mind reading through code words is a magic trick, deceiving the eyes, entertaining the public, and a craft; and pretending to see ghosts is to use people's feelings for deceased relatives to deceive people. The soul, more importantly, wants to take the name of God in vain, and this sin written in the third commandment of the Ten Commandments is truly unforgivable. As Jasmine said in the film, the most chilling thing about Stanton is not deception, but that he pretends to be as holy as a priest when he deceives; He also exhorted others to be devout and pray in false apparitions, but the so-called piety of these people was only the object of his mockery; the help of many "believers" pushed him to the altar constructed by himself, and in the end he used blasphemous tricks Forged himself into a pagan golden calf, an "anti-Christ" who seduces people with illusions. When people asked him to perform miracles to make the undead appear as Christ raised Lazarus, the face of God finally slipped. As for how the words of God and the devil were intertwined in Stanton's psyche, we can only speculate that it had something to do with his childhood experiences in an orphanage where he was admonished by a priest, perhaps when he learned both the deterrence and hypocrisy of religion.
Like most noir films, "Jade Face Love Demon" also created a femme fatale - "psychiatrist" Lilith. But unlike the traditional deadly girl, Lilith does not rely on her sexy and beautiful appearance to attract men. It is better to say that her relationship with Stanton is more like getting what they need. What a romantic color. In the end, Lilith's "victory" over Stanton is because she is more rational, cold-blooded, and calculating. This is also the victory of "scientific rational" psychoanalysis over the mysterious "mind reading". In fact, the name Lilith alludes to the evil nature of this woman. Lilith appears in some apocryphal scriptures and is said to be Adam's first partner, who ran away because he did not want to condescend to Adam, and was later portrayed in circulation. The mistress of the devil, when feminism prevailed, was also taken out by some feminists to reverse the case. In the film, Lilith's capable suit from the first appearance, her insight into deception, and her hidden scheming all suggest her masculinity, and she is the one at the higher end of the food chain, who will put Stanton such a "professionalist" "The cold-faced witch who also manipulates the palm of her hand. And the three women who are closely related to Stanton's fate in the film: Zena, Molly and Lilith are like three sides of Eve. The plump Zena who educates Stanton is like a mother, while the beautiful and kind Jasmine is a gentle and loyal wife, and Lilith is the destructive lover. This man who lacked the role of mother since childhood finally found a possibility of redemption in the arms of Jasmine's wife/mother.
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