What’s interesting is the title of the film—“Miss Shanghai”, except that the heroine mentioned Shanghai ambiguous in the background of her identity, there is only a passage in the Chinese theater at the end of the film with a strong exotic flavor. But such an ambiguous "Shanghai" that seems to have nothing to do with the theme, how can it appear in the most central and thematic position as the title of the film? This article will sort out this issue and its connotations in detail from the film itself.
desert in ocean
This film is undoubtedly a typical noir film - tough guys, femme fatales, violence, death, madness, conspiracy, visual design with a taste of German expressionism, and even the protagonist's self-reported narration is typical of film noir. most representative element. Such a film about intrigue, violence, mad love and death opens with a sea scene, subtitles flash across the screen to blaring music - and so on! This opening is not black at all! The mood is so high, it seems to be flying across the sea with the wind and waves to reach the beautiful holy mountain in the distance! The good times didn't last long. With a huge wave rushing towards the camera, the music changed to a somber tone, and the film officially began. What appeared on the screen was the gloomy and eerie urban landscape of Los Angeles. From the whole film, there is a strong moral effect behind this opening. As the art of film, all the elements (including vision and hearing) displayed on the screen are strongly directed with symbols. When these directional elements are combined together, a certain chemical reaction occurs. In addition to expressing the external image displayed by its pictures and sounds, a more important factor is to explore the combined meaning behind these external forms. Back to the opening just mentioned. Let’s break it down to see what external elements are present in this opening – the sea and exciting music. In the ideology dominated by the ocean culture in the West, the sea often points to a spirit of agitation, upward, and yearning for a broader and more The greatness of liberty, even colonialism. Throughout the history of modern Western development, the development of industrial civilization largely depends on its continuous expansion and plundering of colonies overseas. Colonial expansion has a deep-rooted historical and psychological influence in Western ideology. The image of the visual element of the sea itself has a variety of interpretation methods (in fact, all visual element symbols have a common characteristic - when it is proposed alone, it often only has its signified meaning, and its signified meaning must be in the It can only be established in a complete systematic expression) - freedom, abundance, vastness, danger, loneliness, etc., only some of these many referents are closely related to the film, that is to say, they must be seen The film will look back at the sea in the opening scene. The answer is obvious. The marine image here in the film must point to a stage for the spirit of Western colonialism. Just as the film begins at 3047 seconds, Michael tells a fable about sharks nibbling away at each other in the dark and deep sea, the entire ocean provides a most fundamental performance venue for us "murder beasts".
Wandering and exploring in the vast sea will always be a very poetic and romantic thing for ordinary people's cognition. But such a great noir classic will never satisfy vulgar Hollywood's mediocre pursuit of the so-called "normal". So when the main characters of our film come together for absolutely selfish reasons and are crammed into a small space on the same boat, something happens in a very subtle and complex chemistry with each other's hearts. Michael was confused by Rosalie at first, and had already begun to feel intimidated and hesitant during the boarding section, but he was still confused and half-pushed on the boat. And Rosalie is also trying to bewitch Michael, her greatest hope is to use Michael to get rid of her husband.
As Rosalie's husband, Bannister is full of the author's disgust and irony towards him from the inside out - a lame dwarf, insidious and cunning, old enough to be Rosalie's father. It is such a man, but he is the richest and most powerful character in the film, and under his exaggeratedly large hooked nose hides one after another false lie. The craziest of all the lunatics in this boat is George. He has a "dead face" on his face and is nervous, and there is nothing but madness in his small eyes. With such a boatload of lunatics, what else can we expect of "luxury and freedom in the bright sunshine of the Caribbean"?
Wells is here to break all our illusions about the world, and at the same time tell us a cruel truth - this world is supported by sin and money, and the original power that supports sin and money is the endless madness and madness of people. greedy. In the passage of the sea voyage, there is a very important dialogue scene. Money, money, and money again, Bannister used money and power to blackmail Michael, hoping to have unparalleled influence on him, he said a set of his own almost indisputable logic - he himself is a lame, if Without money, he wouldn't have such a comfortable life, and if he didn't have money, he wouldn't get beautiful women, and the director deliberately arranged for a typical colored maid to accompany him (we can also regard these small details as director's performance. The elaboration of colonial ideology). However, Bannister's method of grabbing money is often a life-and-death hatred.
The woman lay on the deck of the ship and sang softly, her singing resounding like a drunken grief over this sultry tropical ocean. There was no wind that night, and George's face was covered in sweat, and he sat there groaning like a bloated corpse. Suffocation, yes, just suffocation. In this space, the ocean stopped fluctuating, all people were trapped by desire and madness, the ocean was no longer an ocean, it was a barren "desert". Just like the fable told by Michael, this "ocean" is full of sharks without a drop of water. These sharks will be stranded in the "desert" and bite each other in the madness stimulated by the bloody smell that follows.
The jungle city within the
city is a vestige of colonialism's most immediate beneficiaries. Greatness, prosperity, splendor? maybe. Dirty, ugly, bizarre? Any kind of impression is attached to the creator's point of view and perspective.
When the sea at the beginning dissipated with a wave, the film officially brought us into a city scene. The appearance of the picture of this city makes people feel unfavorable psychologically. In the dim light, a ship screamed into the port, looking even more old and tired, while the black and tall buildings of the city were crisscrossed like the teeth of a giant beast biting the sky. All the visual elements are paving the way for the concept that the city is not a paradise on earth, but a reflection of hell. What kind of creatures will survive in such an extraordinary artificial forest? So with the muttering of the narration of the male protagonist, our female protagonist is the first to enter the camera. She sat in the carriage, and the light from her face illuminated the carriage, as if a fairy had descended into the world. Oh, don't let the illusion fool you! This woman's vague identity background (she herself said that she was from Kiev, and then wandered around, and can be sure to "bet" her luck almost all her life) not only gave her a mysterious halo of goddess, but also on this layer There are more bottomless dangerous undercurrents hidden under the halo. And the monologue of the male protagonist in public has already carried out a very deep psychological analysis of the relationship between the two-men are always attracted by the mysterious halo of women, and at the same time they are extremely worried about being used and deceived by women; Fear is the fear that a man will kill her. How does this series of psychological aspects relate to colonialism? People who survived under colonialism often wandered around, or opened up and plundered new territories, or traded in various trade areas (to put it bluntly, it was speculation). This leads to the formation of an ambiguous and unstable trading relationship between people. Men exchange their lives for the capital to survive and grow. When a strange and mysterious woman forms a relationship, there must be countless worries and anxieties in her heart, while women are in physical strength. In the absence of dominant social status, in order to gain survival status, one must use countless tricks to gain power from men, so this almost jungle wild animal-like survival law was established under colonial ideology formed. When our era develops into the post-colonial era, all fantasies are shattered in front of reality, but the violent inner impulse still drives people to love and kill each other.
In this world under the control of the law of the jungle, no matter whether it is love or the struggle of interests, there is a naked taste of blood. When the so-called "love" befell the male protagonist, as a proactive suitor, he accosted a woman and replaced his status in an instant. Because he is obsessed with her, he will inevitably bow down to her, because he has a crazy desire for her, so she can use him as a pawn at will! Who is the hunter and who is the prey is always a philosophical question of yin and yang in the jungle. This logic is confirmed not only between men and women, but also more concretely in the struggle between interests and conspiracies between Michael, George, Bannister and Rosalie, and is a central theme throughout the film. Think about the scenes of these people traveling in the tropical jungle. Why does the camera repeatedly show the wild animals in the wild tropical jungle? Aren't those animals the most vivid reflection of the "wild animals" in these urban jungles? By the way, don't forget the situation when Michael and Rosalie secretly dated in the aquarium. When they were talking, everyone was behind ugly, ferocious and sinister sea creatures such as octopus and eels. These visual elements with strong expressionism are presented to us in the most appropriate way, subtly affecting the emotions of every moviegoer, and hinting at the ferocity and ugliness contained in each character at the spiritual level . However, the hero and heroine turn their backs to dangerous and ugly creatures as if they are blind, which shows their blindness to the crisis.
Why city people? What are country people? What is a barbarian? What is a civilized person? Can we really judge our inner high or low based on material basis? I think everyone will come up with a beautiful answer to this question - "labor is irrelevant", this slogan like a fart is a fart in reality!
On the other hand, when we look at our city and the urban civilization shown by the film, we can find that the core of this "material civilization" built on plunder, conspiracy and greed is a cancer at all! In the post-colonial period when colonialism is declining, all the laws and institutions have become jokes. No one is full of mysterious respect for this world. Everyone is using any loopholes in it for profit grabbing. As a result, It can only further accelerate towards materialistic consumerism. George's method of defrauding insurance money is almost insane, but it becomes a possibility in an even more absurd legal system. Michael was inexplicably involved in it and went to court. This courtroom scene is very characteristic. The whole process is a farce. The various characters in the courtroom are like clowns. They play the masses who do not know the truth, stupid and ignorant. It was disgusting; in the courtroom, Bannister's self-questioning and self-answering, the judge's stupid and old-fashioned, all seemed to be playing a shameless joke on us. Finally, when Michael understood the fact that Bannister took the initiative to defend him was nothing more than wanting 100% to ensure that he was sentenced to kill, Michael's way of getting out was to use the most primitive violence to pierce the center of this hypocritical system. In the hands of this man as strong as King Kong who was struggling to survive, the law and system collapsed and destroyed like a paper model! Civilization and savagery, deceit and straightforwardness, all false pretense can't hide its inner decay and festering.
The disappearing colony
finally, we turned a big circle and returned to the title of the film "Miss Shanghai".
Rosalie's appearance itself is very abrupt, as if falling from the sky, water without a source has no roots, she has wandered in many, many places in the world, but in "Shanghai" this place highlights a certain divinity of her. Why Shanghai? Why not New York? Not London? Why not even Hanoi, Laos or something like that? What is so special about this place in Shanghai?
This film was made in 1947. The historical background at that time was that two years after World War II ended, the whole world was gradually recovering from World War II, and many parts of the third world countries were still in the midst of war. At that time, China was in a civil war. state. Since its opening as a port in 1843, China's Shanghai has become a frontier for Western countries to colonize the far and mysterious East on a large scale. In the most prosperous period of colonialism, the navigation technology was highly mature, and the rich resources and mysterious oriental culture also attracted a large number of colonists to settle here. Since then, Shanghai has started a period of crazy development. There are many high-rise buildings and merchants here. Prosperity is also accompanied by corruption and loneliness. The most fashionable commodities and the most fashionable cultural entertainment are blooming like waves on the sea at the frontier of this distant colony! Forget it, after all, the waves are waves. All the prosperity of the waves will fade away with the development of the hurricane. Since the beginning of the last century, colonialism has gradually come to an end. One colonial revolution after another and one world war after another have liquidated the abnormal prosperity of the past. When colonialism moved towards the post-colonial period, what was left to the colonists and colonies was the infinite pain and hangover-like decadence and hesitation.
When Bannister's fleet took us on a tour of the colonial landscapes of the tropical ocean, we saw this group of "rich" white men go deep into the jungle to eat, drink and have fun on other people's land, but they bite each other into madness on other people's land. This is the pain of endless wandering. George stood in the strong sunshine of the tropical seaside city, sweating and telling his "death", this "death" is not a symbol of the death of the colony! Isn't this "death" a symbol of the decline of white people!
"Shanghai", what kind of feelings does the word have for white people! Wandering here, making a fortune here, losing myself here, and finally sinking deeper and deeper into the mud pit of the colony. "Shanghai" is no longer a geographical noun, it has become a symbol of a state of mind, a symbol of alienation, a symbol of a new freedom, the final decline of a new freedom, and more It symbolizes a direct ambiguous relationship between colonies and colonizers in the post-colonial era. "Shanghai", the "bitch", is affectionate, mysterious, fragile and dangerous, and can never be trusted. In this way, Rosalie has become the most typical spokesperson for the symbolic concept of "Shanghai"!
Michael fled to the Chinese Theater in Chinatown in a panic after breaking all the "legal" farce. In this space environment full of foreigners for Michael, the chaotic language is mixed with weird stage drama performances, and he is completely abandoned in a strange foreign land. After escaping from an old and absurd system, he entered an even stranger and more desperate place, where he was a cornered orphan. Looking back on the colonial history of the West, isn't it Michael's situation at this time! And Rosalie, who came after him, was able to do well in this "foreigner" environment. The original desire of the original colonists was to bring their own culture to assimilate the "other". At this time, there was a chaotic inversion between the purpose and the result - the colonizer himself became the colonized at the spiritual level, even The colonists' own language was also "contaminated", and from then on, the "hometown" became a "foreign land".
"Shanghai", "Shanghai", a being so far away, so prosperous, so mysterious, her light will shine on the rough and aching hands of all sailors weary from sea travel; her light will shine on all who have lost their homeland And the lonely wandering beauty is helpless in the heart; her light will also shine on all those who have experienced disability but still struggle bravely, at any cost to seize and protect the status and money that they have exchanged with blood for. In that black heart; in the same way, her light will shine on the twisted and rotten corpses of all lunatics, fools, conspirators, perverts in this world! And this light will not fade over time, her light will turn cancerous like nuclear radiation on everyone who bows to it, until everything turns to dust and disappears in the legend of postcolonial despair.
The self-
crazy desire and survival instinct in the mirror finally lead the characters in the film to run to the finish line wearily. After a psychotic torture (the haunted house in the playground), finally, several protagonists are reunited. The space is filled with mirrors that constantly reflect mirrors of their selves.
"We can fly away," Rosalie said expectantly.
"Where the sun rises. You and me, or you and George?" (Where the sun rises - east?) Michael said coldly.
"I love you".
In such a closed dead space with only themselves and their countless reflections, the two talked about flying far away, talking about "love" and talking about dreams in a distant foreign country...
The question of whether Rosalie loves Michael is very ambiguous, She may really love Michael because she really wants Michael to run away and take her with her; or she may not love him because he has nothing and just wants to use Michael to get rid of her current embarrassment. But what's the point of "loving" or "not loving" at this point? In the end, all we see at the end of it all is ourselves. In fact, there is no more so-called "East", no more so-called "going far away". Everything is just speculation in the mind.
gun! The bullet passed through one figure after another, and what it shattered turned out to be only its own shadow. Finally, Bannister and Rosalie, a pair of long-dead colonialist freaks, both fall under "bullets shot at themselves."
Rosalie was struggling to die, and I almost heard the famous last words from her mouth - "Horror!"
2014.11.07
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