This film is adapted from Zola's novel. I remember when I was young, there was always Zola’s "Nana" on the shelf, accompanied by Hugo’s "The Laughing Man" in tatters. I never touched it. Later in middle school, the teacher said he was The masters of realism and naturalism, they are displayed in the memory in the name of the master and only in the name of the master.
Renoir also heard about it when he was in high school. At first, I heard that the old Impressionist Renoir. The art teacher said with almost awe about the women and grass he painted. They said that they were transparent and bright. They didn’t start listening until they were in college. Said little Renoir. The latter inherited his father’s endowment of light and shadow and composition, as well as the hardness of European humanistic thinking and social practice in the 19th century. It also inherited the soul of those great silent films of that era, standing like a tree in a certain part of film history. The intersection.
For the director's own work, I personally think that this film cannot be regarded as his superior work. In a traditional love triangle, there is a sweet and pleasant wife, a greedy, selfish, bossy and reckless husband, and a few wealthy ones. "Partners" who are powerful or think that they are dedicated to love will naturally result in murder and adultery.
It is worth remembering that the train that appears as a prop in the movie is full of symbolic flavor.
The first thing that rushed into the picture was the style of the steam train of the last century. The protagonist Jacques had a dusty face as the driver and the other deputy pulled the gate while burning coal. The tension of the picture was increased. The next character is " Into the play, "stay" and "out of the play" enter in a random fashion. There are also many large train shots in the middle. The camera is fixed on the side of the nose and passes through the depths of the outskirts of Paris. People have to feel that this kind of strength is an unstoppable life, so Renoir does not seem to deliberately go. What did Jacques do? Instead, he was "indulging". From a genetic point of view (Jacques suspected that his parents’ alcoholism had a bad inheritance on him) and an erotic psychological point of view (almost vaguely instinct), he was sliding along the railroad tracks of life. As someone said, "His film works have never neglected the people who come naked or go naked", and this life is like his movie motives. It is open-ended, improvised, and balanced. .
Perhaps the value of this movie is far from here, because I can see the shadow of Hitchcock from it, it seems that I also saw the appearance of "Citizen Kane", and also saw the clues of the poetic noir film, after all, it was in 1938. The film, that era has just begun, and all exploration is full of possibilities. Such a wave of hands may become experimental, even if it is vulgar, but at least it is easy and sincere.
Now it seems that these single things seem to be richer. After watching, I could not help but call out "Let the era of black and white silent film come again" silently, to wash away the glitz of the current film industry, and return the original intention to reality and humanity. The hand method is filtered to reach the soul most directly.
(Zhang Yan)
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