"The Fourth Man" (1983) won: Avoriaz Fantastic Film Festival (Gerame Film Festival) Special Jury Prize, Grand Prix Nomination, Hugo Gold Award Nomination for Best Feature Film at Chicago International Film Festival, Los Angeles Film Critics People's Association Award for Best Foreign Language Film, National Critics Association Award for Best Foreign Language Film, Toronto International Film Festival International Film Critics Award.
1. Concept Explanation
To understand this film, you need to know three concepts first:
1. Black widow
spiders are terrible predators. They weave a large web and wait for their prey to fall into the web. This is especially true of black widow spiders. They have strong neurotoxins. In order to ensure the continuation of the race, male spiders will even risk their lives to mate with female spiders many times until they are exhausted and eventually eaten by female spiders.
2.
The three-act opera "Samson et Dalila" (Samson et Dalila) by the composer Saint-Saens is based on the "Old Testament Bible - Judges", the plot is as follows:
Hebrew (Israel) ) The people were ravaged by the pagan Philistines, who thought they had been abandoned by the God Jehovah. The brave young Hebrew Samson led everyone to unite to defeat the Philistines and regain their freedom. The Philistines could not resist the divine power of Samson, so they used the beauty trick to obtain the secret of the source of Samson's power: the Felix girl Dalila was so beautiful, she made Samson fall in love at first sight with her peerless beauty; When the two were in love, Delilah induced Samson to reveal the secret of his power - a strand of God-given hair; then, while Samson was sleeping, Delilah cut off his gift. The hair of the gods made him lose his strength and became a prisoner of the Philistines. Later, in constant repentance, God forgave Samson, and the re-energized Samson suddenly overthrew the enemy's huge temple, and he perished with 3,000 enemies.
3. Oedipus and the Sphinx
from Greek mythology: Laios was the prince of Thebes, who lost his father at a young age and was persecuted by political enemies to defect to Pelops. But Laios fell in love with Pelops' son, the beautiful boy Chrysipos, abducted him and caused his death. Because Laios betrayed his benefactor, Pelops placed the curse on Laios that he would be killed by his own son.
After Laios returned to power, he and Queen Jocasta gave birth to Prince Oedipus. Oedipus was abandoned to his territory since he was a child, and when he grew up, he got rid of the cannibal Sphinx in Thebes, but he killed his father, King Laios, without knowing it. After the king of Thebes, he married Queen Jocasta as his wife according to custom, which is the famous myth of "Oedipus killed his father and married his mother".
The sphinx originally originated from ancient Egyptian mythology. It looks like a huge lion with sharp poisonous claws. The black wings on its back can cover the sky, but its head is a beautiful woman. "Sphinx" is derived from the Greek word "Sphiggein", which means "tighten," because the Greeks imagined the sphinx as a monster that would strangle people to death.
In Greek mythology, in order to make the curse of Laios-Oedipus come true, Hera sent the Sphinx to sit on a cliff near Thebes, blocking passers-by and using the words taught by the Muse of Music. The riddle asked them, and those who could not guess would be eaten by it. The riddle was: "What animal walks on four legs in the morning, two legs at noon, and three legs at night? He is the one who has the most legs. When you walk the slowest and your physical strength is weakest." Oedipus guessed the correct answer, and the answer was "people". The Sphinx was so ashamed that he jumped off a cliff and died (one said to be killed by Oedipus).
The sphinx was later compared to an enigmatic person or riddle, which in a deeper sense means "fear and temptation", that is, "real life".
2. Character Analysis
Most of the characters in the film are divine.
1. The heroine Christine (originally means Christian) is the embodiment of three things: Black Widow, Dalila and Sphinx, the most vicious woman, representing the temptation and punishment of God in reality. She signs up for Dalila shampoo, cuts men's hair herself, and owns a Sphinx beauty salon, but inadvertently reveals the essence of a spider.
Christine's first three husbands died in Delilah, Sphinx and Black Widow respectively. The first John's hair was cut by Dalila and the parachute malfunctioned. The second Gee encountered the Sphinx and was killed by a lion (Sphinx). A third dies in the water with fishing nets instead of cobwebs, and Black Widow throws obsessed men into their own nets like a fish.
2. The male protagonist Gerald is a combination of three gods: Samson, Sphinx and Laios. He represents the fear in reality in the film. As a famous writer, he is rich in imagination. Like Samson, he constantly strokes his hair to obtain surrealistic fantasy inspiration, which makes the public admire; he is obsessed with the beautiful young Herman like Laios, seducing and causing his death; Jay Ladd also has the ability of the sphinx to strangle people, and he constantly picks up the noose in the film and fantasizes about strangling people to death. However, he nearly died after experiencing the punishment of the curse of Oedipus for the crime of seducing Herman and causing him to die.
3. Herman is a combination of the three tragic figures of Chrysipus, Oedipus and Jesus. Chrysipos was supposed to be his father's favorite prince, but unfortunately, he was seduced by Laios and was stabbed to death. Later, Gerald, like the mythical Oedipus, dreamed that he was blinded by stabbed eyes. Dreaming that Herman was stabbed in the eye, Herman was like Jesus and Oedipus to atone for the sin of Gerald, and finally, Herman was stabbed to death in the eye and brain, and completed the Russian mission. Dipus, Jesus-like act of redemption. It is worth mentioning that all the events in the film may be just Gerald's fantasy, especially Herman, who can only serve as Gerald's savior and cannot represent the great image of Jesus.
4. Leah is the incarnation of the Virgin Mary, representing God's love and redemption. She gives God's revelation many times in the film. Gerald, who survived the disaster, almost did something stupid: trying to murder the heroine, but at a critical moment, Maria came to the rescue again.
3. Theme idea
Gerald was guilty and encountered evil spirits again, and should have been punished, but because he was a Catholic, and he was not a stubborn person, he also possessed divine power, so the Virgin and the Son saved him, and finally reunited with him. Grim Reaper (the funeral parlor receptionist) passed by.
Therefore, the core idea expressed in this film is very clear: God is everywhere, and in the real world full of temptation and fear, only God can redeem the world.
The picture shows Gustave Moreau's early masterpiece "Oedipus and the Sphinx", a representative painter of French Symbolism painting at the end of the 19th century.
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