3. Unique film structure
The time-space structure of "The Dawn is Quiet" is quite complex, but it's well-arranged so that it's neither artificial nor easy to understand. The film has four space-time relationships: it is based on peaceful life twenty years after the end of the war, which is shown in color; the main body of the story takes place in the time and space of past wars, which is shown in black and white; The main time and space of the main body also has the memories of the characters at that time and the memory of peacetime. This is the super-narrative time and space of the past (the reality in the mind), but there are also the super-narrative time and space caused by the fantasy of the characters. The imagination based on memories and the warrant officer's reverie, etc., are all expressed in color. The time and space of past wars are tightly embedded in the framework of post-war peaceful life, between the harsh war years and the quiet peace, the heroic female anti-aircraft gunners and the carefree picnic youths. There is a stark contrast between people. Even for the time and space of the past wars of the main story, the film is divided into two episodes, the first and the second, and there is also a contrast between the two episodes, an emotional and atmospheric contrast. The first half of the film has little or no plot development, just episodic events that serve to introduce the characters and express the optimism of these female fighters and their different personalities, and despite the fact that there are air strikes in the first half of the film Alert, there is also Deko, but full of optimism. The soldiers enjoyed the joy and ease that had been stolen from the artillery fire. At the same time, the first episode of the film is almost about love. On the one hand, it is the love in the memories and imagination of the girls; ,etc.
Crossing the swamp is the beginning of the change in the emotional atmosphere of the characters in the film, and the arrangement is very natural and believable, so that the audience does not feel that there is a dividing line. But after that, the temporary peace of wartime atmosphere of the first half was gone, and it was replaced by brutal local battles, hand-to-hand combat, and death. The rhythm also begins to change from soothing to tense, and the girls' fortunes have been changed by the end of the first episode. If you analyze it carefully, you will find that from the time Lisa is sent back to deliver the letter, the plot rises sharply along a curve, and the film shows the running Lisa and the warrant officer and the remaining four female soldiers at shorter and shorter intervals. Activity, Lisa's shot is getting longer and longer, and the five-person activity shot is getting shorter:
A. After Lisa departs B. Activities of the five:
Move to back-up position 45"
Lily Run 16" Dress Lumberjack 11'19"
Lisa Run to the Everglades 31" Blessings for Lisa Scud 1'16"
Lei over the swamp 27" found that the enemy did not leave 55"
Li Guobo Swamp 52" Warrant Officer Reconnaissance Enemy 26"
Li drowned 1'21" Sonia was stabbed to death by German soldiers 2'30" while going to get cigarette purse
Warrant Officer and Genia kill two Deko 4'57"
As can be seen from the above table, the death of Lisa and Sonia was only 2'30" apart, and within five minutes, two more Dekos died one after another, and within seven and a half minutes, four died in a row. Personally, the dramatic plot broke out and went downhill until the end. Only the warrant officer was left alive, and all the enemies were eliminated or taken prisoner. There is no doubt that this kind of structure arrangement is unique, but it will definitely guarantee the success of the film. The whole event of the film develops very naturally and reasonably, mainly because each shot is carefully designed, the content and processing can attract the audience, the connection between shots is very accurate, there are no redundant shots, audio-visual language Rich and varied. More importantly, this is the viewing effect brought by the time in the hands of the creator. For example, in the section where the warrant officer took Galiya to reconnaissance, after the enemy's gunshots, the warrant officer immediately returned fire, which failed to save life Galia. After the four forward and reverse shots, there is a 14-second motion shot, which can be said to be a very ordinary motion shot. But if you do a more careful analysis, you can understand that How filmmakers use various audiovisual factors to dictate viewers' perception of time and how a single shot in so-called real-time creates a film time that differs from reality.
At the beginning of this shot, the submachine gun of the warrant officer is in the foreground, the middle shot is Galia lying on the dirt slope, and Deko is hiding behind the dirt slope behind her. They tried several times to the warrant officer. He rushed over and was crushed by his firepower. When the warrant officer started to retreat to the left, the camera immediately pulled to a medium and long shot and followed to the left. When the warrant officer passed a dirt ditch, there were several German bandits in the background jumping over the dirt slope and following closely. The warrant officer gave them a shuttle and continued to run to the left, followed by the camera. When he ran into another dirt ditch (the camera followed, stop), he encountered two Germans chasing from the background dirt slope. After shooting down one, he rushed out of the frame to the left. The camera didn't move, and another Deko rushed through the ditch and shot the warrant officer in the off-screen space on the right slope. This is an in-shot montage commonly used in Soviet films. Not only is the camera moving, but the shot is also full of multi-layered violent movements. The audience is attracted by so many movements. Nervous enough to forget the fourteen seconds long. Therefore, by fully grasping the laws of film audio-visual language, this feature can be used to consciously control the audience's sense of viewing time, so as to achieve freedom in creation.
4. Space-time relationship
1) Two eras of cuckoo
The temporal and spatial relationship between shots is a very important means in audiovisual language, and montage is one of them. The temporal and spatial relationship between shots is not limited to finding formal editing points. In "The Dawn is Quiet" There is a very good example of a lens relationship. Audiences who have watched the film will remember that at the end of the last episode, there was a young girl in a red shirt counting the cuckoo calls coming from the forest. As you will recall, in the previous paragraph, a small group of female warriors led by Warrant Officer Fedot discovered that the number of enemies was overwhelming. Early in the morning, the warrant officer monitoring the enemy's situation, based on the noise of birds disturbed in the distance, concluded that the two Dekos they were waiting for were approaching. He quietly woke up the squad leader Lida, and the two of them observed the movement across the river through the stone crack, and then ordered her to wake up the other female soldiers who were resting, and asked Sonia to come to him. Shortly after Sonia arrives, they find Deko on the path by the forest on the other side of the river: one, two, and the camera cuts back to the warrant officer and Sonia, who are hiding between two stones to monitor the enemy. When the camera was turned over to shoot the forest on the other side, a third Deko unexpectedly appeared from the woods. From now on, the camera is like the eyes of the warrant officer and Sonia, staring at the forest on the opposite bank, and we can only hear Sonia and Renya in the space behind the camera. , Lisa, Lida, and then Sonia, counting softly in a slightly nervous voice: three, four, five, six...six, seven...the camera keeps looking at the forest , let us see more and more German Kou appear. They counted down at an almost rhythm-accurate rhythm. Whenever the Deko on the opposite bank appeared a little later, it would appear that another female warrior was counting, and she would repeat the previous number. Last number passed: ...six...; nine, nine...twelve...twelve (this shot lasts 37"). When the shot cuts back to Sonia and the Warrant Officer At , she counted: fifteen...sixteen. At this point the camera cuts out again, allowing us to see (at a closer distance) the female warriors who are alertly and nervously watching the enemy at their respective positions: Lisa , Renia, Lida, and finally Galia, who is still sleeping. The creator did not make excuses because it was an extremely tense moment to do any subjective processing, inner voices, and counting voices of female warriors. There is also no posturing, "deep" reverberation. This presents a problem of artistic proportions.
When the camera cuts back to Sonia and the warrant officer again, she repeats: Sixteen. Note that the original novel has a separate chapter here. At this time, we only heard bird noises, and after a while, there was a cuckoo cuckoo close by, then a distant one, and another close. cut! The girl in red turned around and faced the camera, quietly listening to the cuckoo chirping three more times. Then she stood up straight and said to the forest, "Cuckoo, cuckoo, how long do you think I can live." She counted to eight (the shot was 54"), and the last episode was over. The inspiring and tragic sounded again The horn sound... The best part of this sequence is the choice of editing point. After the third cuckoo call in the black and white sequence, it cuts to the color sequence where the girl in red turns back - she obviously heard the past war The last cuckoo cry in the black and white passage of time and space. So through this ingenious switch, when the five female warriors in the Great Patriotic War were counting three times their number of enemies armed to the teeth. The cuckoo's cry seemed to be heard by the girl who is now living a happy and peaceful life. She also turned around to listen. However, the difference is that Sonia and the others are facing the god of death and the number of Deco, who is far ahead of them, while the happy girl is giggling and counting fortune-telling cuckoos. This creates a deep contrast, and the editing points are so tightly connected that the contrast between the two passages is even more intense. Strong. In fact, this contrast is achieved through various factors set by the director: color and black and white, two peers in different eras, counting, that is, the contrast of fate. The final horn sound summarizes this Thought. The film uses audio-visual language. The audio-visual language of this passage is worth more than a thousand words of missionary dialogue. It deeply touches the young people who are now living a happy life, and makes them cherish the memory of the sacrifices made for today's happy life. The peers of their own life, they also have the right to live a happy life. The vivid, profound and simple audio-visual language arouses the audience's thinking and makes the audience participate in the creator's reflection. In fact, the more profound the thought Emotions need more simple language, whether it is missionary dialogue or esoteric reverberation, which will only turn the audience away thousands of miles away.
In the previous paragraph, the creator used several front and back shots. But instead of using this back-and-forth pattern to present long-winded nonsense, every back-beat comes with shocking information. And the last paragraph, which uses only one shot, prompts the viewer to think deeply.
2) Warrant Officer in the Swamp
After Galya was killed by Deko, the warrant officer deliberately drew the enemy away, so that Lida and Genia could report back to the enemy. They stood by a birch tree, listening nervously and restrained to the gunshots and shouts in the distance. After the last burst of submachine gunfire, there was silence. Transition - the anxious waiting of the women in the resident. What happened to the warrant officer? The creators left the audience with a little anxious suspense for the time being. Next came the warrant officer lying motionless in the grass beside the swamp. Is the warrant officer dead or alive? I saw him move a bit, and then slowly sat up. As he rolled the cuff of the wounded left hand with his right hand, the grand piano played the tone used in Lisa's recollection. In the color picture, a woman gradually becomes solid. The music and the virtual-to-real footage give us the illusion that this virtual image must be Lisa. Because we are already familiar with this Russian folk tune played by the grand piano in the flashback scene of Lisa, and we also know the vague relationship between Lisa and the warrant officer. But when the image in the lens becomes solid. What we saw was the landlady. Why does Lisa's leading music lead to the landlady? The connotation of this lens is more complicated. Someone missed reading the music, and his understanding might just be that the warrant officer thought of the landlady, and his relationship with the landlady seemed to be a simple life relationship of milk and potatoes. Of course, this interpretation also makes sense, especially when the landlady pours the milk out of the crock, the close-up of the white milk and the juxtaposition of the grim war footage in black and white is starkly contrasted. However, people with stronger audio-visual reading ability have a more delicate understanding of this shot. We know the Warrant Officer's attitude towards the landlady and Lisa, and we know Lisa's attitude towards the Warrant Officer. The landlady appears on the screen, but the music belongs to Lisa. Who is more attractive to him? Obviously Lisa. Just because what is hidden is often more important than what is revealed, and what is in the subconscious is often closer to the truth than what is on the conscious level.
The camera then returns to the harsh reality of war, and the camera slowly moves forward from its original position for a close-up of the warrant officer. As if something was attracting him behind him, he slowly turned his head and looked in the direction of the swamp. Che, three female warriors: Renya (left), Lisa (middle), and Sonia (right) appeared in front of him (color lens), Lisa took a step forward and entered the vision of the warrant officer again. in the image. The music is still Lisa's. Then back to the warrant officer, but the camera seems to be in the fantasy position of Lisa, so we see a close-up of the front after the warrant officer turns his head. As if seeing something, the warrant officer turned his eyes to the right and tilted his head a little there. The back shot of the camera used to be the crutch that Lisa took when she was crossing the swamp. Then cut out a colorful close-up of Lisa, her loose hair gleaming golden in the sunlight, and her face paler. If your audiovisual reading is sharp, you'll see that she's wearing the same white army shirt she wore when she drowned in the swamp, except now it's white and neat. After six seconds of this shot, we hear the warrant officer's voice: "How can you do this?" Lisa replies, "I'm in a hurry!" At this point, the black and white swamp begins to overlap, Lisa slowly Slowly sank (hidden) in the swamp. Cut, close-up of a warrant officer's eye. Cut again, it's the same crutch that Lisa used again, and the shot lasts less than a second. The music also stops here.
The use of time and space here is complex: narrative time and space – super-narrative time and space – narrative time and space – super-narrative time and space – narrative time and space – narrative time and space overlay narrative time and space – narrative time and space – narrative time and space. However, because it accurately reflects the inner activities and feelings of the warrant officer, it does not give people a superfluous feeling, nor does it become a trick to play with time and space.
3) Present tense of the movie
Let us first look at the transition from the peaceful life after the war to the time and space of the past war. The first sentence of the red girl is a poem - "The dream of the dead is the smoke of war", the more important meaning of this poem is not the meaning of the poem itself, but later in the past war time and space, it also It was read out by Sonia in the same place, in the same scene, and with the same affection. Perhaps this comparison is to illustrate that girls in different eras and under different backgrounds have the same feelings, but have different fates. After this poem, a red flame appeared on the screen, gradually filled the entire screen, and then gradually weakened. At this time, the tower of the monastery by the lake of Liaogongtov, which was exposed again, changed from the previous color to black and white. , so the film enters the past from the present. Here, we must present another feature of cinema, the present tense of cinema. As George Bruston points out, the present tense is the only tense of the movie. "A film that unfolds in a tense that is always present, like the visual field of vision itself, cannot express neither the past nor the future." From this point of view, it can be said that the film has no tense. So, no matter what era a shot is in, we see the action in it with the same appeal as if it were happening right now. In addition, because everything in a shot is actually happening now, each shot can be connected to the next to form a continuous development of action, the flow of action from one shot to the next A series of endless, ever-changing shots come together. "The ephemeral shot disappears into a series of rapid changes, where the past and the present seem to merge."
Of course, the past tense is not necessarily a memory in the film. Many films use flashbacks as a simple narrative technique for storytelling. But once the flashbacks are presented objectively, advancing the storyline from an omnipotent perspective, we're bound to see the action as something that happened "now". Shortly after it came out, the past immediately became the present, and when the flashback ends, we generally feel a little stunned and find ourselves back in the future and dealing with a new present tense. It is this feature of the film that makes the use of super-narrative time and space about memory and reverie in the film play a unique contrasting role in the audience's psychology.
4) The girls' super-narrative time and space
We know that the war broke out in June, so the memories of all the girls are naturally about the time before the war, and the performance of "May Day" appeared in Reniya's memories; Sonya's is 41 years New Year's Day, and all the memories are tied to the weather at the time -- snow -- which justifies the white tones in these passages.
If you explain it carefully, you will find that the memories or reverie of the five girls are different. First, in these passages, a sharp zoom lens is often used to represent the transition from memory to reality for a dramatic presentation. However, this technique was only used on Lida, Renya, and Sonia. This is important, because only the three of them have truly enjoyed the love that really existed. While Lisa is unrequited love, Galia is more fantasy. For example, Lida's first recollection begins by the bonfire and ends at the bed. The omission of time and space is extremely concise, and the fire corresponds to the bonfire. In this flashback, there are no real-world sounds except for the applause, but all music, which in turn combines with the almost surreal white-toned style of the passage. Lida's second recollection begins in bed and ends with a battle alarm. Since the second recollection is the event before her deceased husband's expedition, it is not difficult to understand as mentioned above. Why did she have to kill the parachuting Deko, and after hitting the enemy, she couldn't help but recall her husband's look back before he went out. Renia's memories are also divided into two stages, the first part is romantic, and the latter part is extremely stylized. This is first manifested in the fact that the family is on one side of the dining table when eating, which itself is not in line with the actual custom; then the dialogue between Renya and her father about the head of the group, although there is no mouth shape, seems to be imaginary However, judging from the expressions of the two and the position of their bodies, it actually happened; finally, the position of the family members at the long table was the same as the human-shaped target when Renya and the regiment commander practiced shooting together at the beginning of the paragraph. There is a shift in between, the action is frozen, frame by frame. Galya's fantasy is the most unrealistic, a complete copy of Prokofiev's musical and the Soviet musical "The Path of Light" (the one sitting on the meniscus is the most obvious), a treatment that fits the character Character who loves to watch movies. And her fantasy is also full of fairy tale flavor, such as the appearance of crystal slipper.
5) Warrant Officer's Hypernarrative Time and Space
Regarding the Warrant Officer's imagination by the swamp, the previous article has already analyzed it, so I won't repeat it here. Let's analyze the different processing of the three paragraphs on the lens language of the warrant officer's imagination about female soldiers. After the warrant officer stole the enemy's gun, he came to the logging lake and thought of five female soldiers, this time in black and white, and they were all not wearing military shirts, just white shirts. This section uses a slow panning shot, showing the female soldiers standing by the lake quietly and motionless, only Lisa turned her head slowly and faced the warrant officer head-on.
After all the five girls were sacrificed, the camera quickly pushed the close-up of the warrant officer walking in the forest, and then flashed the close-up of the five female soldiers, this time in color (mainly in army green), the girls wearing military uniforms , and carrying guns, their flashing order is basically in the order of their sacrifice. At the end of the whole film, there are finally five female warriors standing by the rock in full force. This time it appeared in a worn color. Unlike the Warrant Officer's recollection or imagination, the five girls shown in the former are static and motionless, while in the latter there is an element of wind and a moving camera, so that the wind blows the hair, and the camera pans. When there were five girls, due to the different heights of the five girls, the cameras were up and down. The combination of the two produced a feeling of life. This was for the psychology of the audience who had experienced the deaths of the five girls. It was a huge impact, and this audio-visual language really expresses the concept that martyrs will always live in people's hearts.
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