Perhaps in most of the film history works, Alain Resnais's film creation ends in "My American Uncle", but few people pay attention to his creation in the past twenty years. Over the years, he has always maintained a strong interest in a series of cultural phenomena such as period texts, pop music, comics, burlesque and modern dramas. In 1980, he still maintained the good results of French films and became a symbol of new wave directors. Notable after 1980 is his "Love to Death", although this film does not have "Some Winds and Rains", "Smoking/No Smoking", "Old Talks" and "Heart Belongs". " is famous, but it has achieved unity in form innovation and in-depth excavation of the theme, which can be called the summary of Alain Resnais's films in his later years.
Closer to home, among Aaron Resnais' numerous films, "Hiroshima Love" and "Last Year at Marienbad" are indisputably regarded as his masterpieces, as well as the representative works of the "Left Bank".
One of the first issues raised here is the definition of French "left bank" cinema and its controversial definition.
"Left Bank" is an important realism film genre in France. It was formed in the late 1950s in the last world. Most of its members live on the left bank of the Seine in Paris, so it is called "Left Bank". Like Alain Resnais, Marguerite Dura, Alain Robbe-Grillet, Henri Korpi, Agnès Varda, etc., the representative works are in addition to the above-mentioned "Hiroshima Love" (1959) and "Last Year at Marienbad" (1961), as well as "The Long Parting" in 1960, "The Express Across Europe" in 1966, etc.
However, because "left bank" was discovered almost at the same time as "new wave", and the surging wave of "new wave" seemed to envelop "left bank" movies, the result based on this is that a considerable number of people refer to it As part of the "New Wave", some film studies also include "Hiroshima Love" and other books under the "New Wave". Even though the two have a certain French consistency in their artistic pursuit of innovation and change, their differences in aesthetics, film concepts and narrative language are obvious. It is generally believed that the "left bank" exploration in these areas is more radical and extreme than the "new wave". Its own experimental characteristics are also more obvious. The pioneering nature of this modernist film was also inherited by the films of Ingmar Bergman and the German New Film Movement in the later prosperous period, and even in the Japanese New Wave-style film innovation in Asia and Taiwan in China with Yang Dechang The new film movement represented by film directors such as Hou Hsiao-hsien and Hou Hsiao-hsien can also be glimpsed.
Most of the main directors of the "Left Bank" come from the literary world, or they are deeply influenced by literature. In the process of choreographing and directing, the dialogue and the inner monologue of the characters have become an important part of the film, such as Alain Resnais, Margaery Te Doura, they wanted to create a new cinematic language, balancing literary text and cinematic imagery.
Among them, "memory and forgetting" is the most classic narrative theme developed by the directors.
Take Hiroshima Love, for example, in which the heroine (“she”) tries to forget her painful relationship in her hometown of Nevel during the war years, thinking she has forgotten it. However, when she came to Hiroshima, Japan, a time and space full of war memories and scars, the memories came surging like a tidal wave, and the newly established love between her and Japanese men, which was easily understood in the film, also mercilessly disappeared in the past. of trauma.
What Alain Resnais is trying to make people understand is definitely not her extramarital love with him. Through this appearance, the director hopes that people will understand that forgetting is to say goodbye to the past in order to obtain the peace of mind that they long for. But the cruel side is that although memory can be suppressed by people's so-called reason, it has been deeply imprinted in people's hearts. To understand it in Freud's sense, it is turned into the subconscious mind and becomes the A part of her life body that cannot be given up, what the director reinforces is actually the haunting and tormenting of her whole life by the pain of memory and forgetting.
Another feature of "left bank" films, or their contribution to the artistic expression of films, is that in their creations, the traditional concept of time and space is completely eliminated, and the logical and linear concepts that Westerners (Europeans) are good at are used. The (movie) time has been changed into an almost inexplicable "psychological time", which also provides great convenience for the "left bank" movies in the time-space jump conversion.
For example, the structure of "Love of Hiroshima" completely abandons the traditional storyline and linear narrative structure. There are a lot of flashbacks and voiceovers in the film. The structure is skillfully connected, or "parallel structure" in popular parlance. The two concepts of time and the past occur in parallel. In her thoughts, the director uses "Flash Cut: Interweave the past and the present. From This analysis shows that the directors of the "Left Bank" have brought familiar movies into people's hearts. Therefore, in the history of film, the contribution of the "Left Bank" has indeed expanded the concept of time and space in modern movies. Although it is difficult, it is actually profound.
Interestingly, the directors of the "Left Bank" call themselves "film editors", which is quite consistent with the Soviet Union's Eisenstein's montage theory, which emphasizes that there is a certain inherent inheritance in the composition of shots.
In fact, "Left Bank" movies certainly emphasize The emphasis on editing itself is particularly prominent in "Last Year in Marienbad". More than 60 to 70% of the value of this type of film is given by editing. Therefore, at the end of the article, we can discuss the "left bank". The film's unique exploration and thinking in film language.
The title of "Hiroshima Love" is very special. The French woman and Japanese man did not appear in the camera from the beginning. The director made them appear alternately with the Hiroshima nuclear explosion, and gradually Showing the hero and heroine in the picture, this kind of oppressive treatment of light makes the audience feel no abruptness to the alternation of reality and history. "Left Bank" cinematography emphasizes picture composition and lighting effects. In application, we often find that facing a stationary material (or person), the camera is slowly pulled back or advanced, and the details are continuously enlarged until the whole picture is filled. Think about it, this is not the same as the human eye. But The eyes of the "left bankers" are very cold and serious.
Sound and picture processing should be at the same time in the view of the "left bank". As mentioned above, balancing text and video, they also pay attention to balancing sound and picture. "Hiroshima Love" also exposed at least Alain Resnais' tendency to put sound in a priority position, the use of sound in the off-screen space in "Hiroshima Love", the description of memory by the hero and heroine Running at the same time with the past pictures, of course, this is also the charm of dialogues, monologues and narrations. The voices in the hands of the "left bank" choreographers are expanded into a vast space.
Among the "left bank" films, "Hiroshima Love" has become a classic, and if we put aside these verbose theories and sermons, "Hiroshima Love" should actually be understood as more convincing than "an average news documentary" (Margo Rite Doura's documentary-style film, Alain Resnais is compensating for our past experiences of peace and war, love and loss.
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