Van Dyne’s Twenty Articles also stipulated that most orthodox suspense novels must reveal the answer at the end.
It is true that Van Dyne’s 20 rules have been broken by latecomers a long time ago, but he ended all the entanglements and contradictions in the film with a sudden accident so naked, and he immediately forced the end of the behavior even in today’s view. Can't help but make people feel deceived like "Huh? This is over?"...
If a suspense fan of Bengue School (such as classmate Liangchen) has a suspenseful heart looking forward to a "exquisitely structured and unexpected" game— -After watching this movie, there is bound to be a sense of loss. No wonder that in the 1950s when the Bengue school was in full swing, the response after the film was released was only mediocre compared with Hitchcock's other films. Of course, it was not included in the ranks of the great movies mentioned in the book "The Power of Movies"... However, what is interesting is that after nearly two decades of fermentation, a new generation of young filmmakers who represent the new wave excavated Out of the value buried deep in the weird plot of this film.
Here we put aside the arguments of the New Wave film people, and just talk about the stimulation of my intuitive feelings.
Let me quote the principle of "tension" put forward by Arnheim: The visual perception of the audience is always pursuing internal dynamic balance through simplification and tension. The first half of the film is missing. If the creation of an abnormal atmosphere is an imbalance, then the climax monologue in the middle section will play a rebalancing role, which will naturally give the audience a sense of pleasure. Most movies that use suspense as their selling point That's it, that's all. But the point here is that nearly half of the film’s time is left in the emotional drama that is tied to the first one, and the most horrible thing is that it is this section that can completely constitute the plot of another film independently, which is a metaphor. Some things-the hero’s fear of heights stems from the overlap (imbalance) of height and the self-blame of his companion falling from the building; the love for the heroine is the separation (imbalance) between the real person and the phantom created by the conspiracy Su, and finally the tower In the scene above, the overlapping separation overcomes fear of heights and depression (rebalance), and the abrupt accident (strong imbalance) makes the separation deep in the actor's heart overlap (rebalance), which is also correct It is this episode that allows the audience (me) to be relieved from the mid-stage rebalance in just ten minutes, accompanied by the hero's heart being simultaneously impacted by both imbalance and rebalance, and finally ends with an imbalance stress. ...In a sense, such "playing" with tension is a kind of torture, and I also fell together at the end of the film.
Although standing on the values of traditional film critics, we can simply regard the conspiracy story in the first half of the film (causing the protagonist’s mental confusion) and the love story in the second half (the death of the heroine) as a kind of moral atonement. A kind of religious complex like fatalism, but it is so awkward in Hitchcock's hands. I remind myself not to be fooled by this fat guy, (although these ideas may have caught the director’s trap, but this is not important, because after the film is released, it no longer belongs to the creator.) But any left judgment appears here. It's trivial, because all the thoughts after the film fell to pieces with that. Except for "Whether what you are afraid of is what you are afraid of, whether what you love is what you love, whether your actions are your actions..." Such sighs. And more importantly, a psychological experience like riding a roller coaster.
All because the fat man broke a few rules in key places.
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