It is also a woman who is on the verge of collapse, and is also in a process of constantly being forced to encounter knowledge. What effect will be achieved through film performance, this is what I am most happy to discover in the process of watching movies. Naturally, this hope is largely in vain, because the psychological portrayal is only a secondary aspect of the film's intentions, and Varda starts from a certain "real film" standpoint and ultimately leads to a kind of social critique.
The most amazing thing about this film is that the 90-minute duration of the film completely corresponds to the time between 5:00 and 6:30 of Cleo's activities in the film, that is to say, the time inside and outside the film is the same, which is a great deal. To a certain extent, it challenges the illusion of time caused by montage. I found people on the Internet comparing this movie to Hitchcock's "Reaper of Souls", Sokolov's "Russian Ark", etc., which were made in one shot. In fact, in terms of experimentation, this film cannot reach the level of the latter two films, because a film without any editing is not only the same in time, but also completely continuous in space, which completely subverts the montage Aesthetic illusion of space and time, and "Cleo" at least divides the space with editing. Varda is not the first director to make such a "real time movie", the famous 1952 western "High Noon" is another precedent, when Sheriff Kane learns at 11:40 that four gangsters will come to town to avenge him The time when the four gangsters are completely subdued by Kane by noon also corresponds exactly to the 85-minute duration of the film, although the aesthetics of the two films are very different. The same internal and external time in "Noon" is that the screenwriter cleverly compresses the plot in the shortest time in order to achieve the greatest tension and horror dramatic effect. "Cleo" is based on the aesthetics of "real film", in order to maximize the recording function of the camera.
The so-called "real film" that emerged in the late 1950s was mainly inspired by Vertov's "movie eye" theory, which advocated direct capture of real life with a hand-held camera, recorded soundtracks on the spot, and rejected any scripts and actors' performances. Varda herself was deeply influenced by this faction, and in her later years she made a film called "The Scavengers", which consisted mainly of her shots of people picking up rubbish on the street (the scavengers). "Cleo" deliberately absorbed the creative techniques of this school, but did not fully practice it (it still used actors and designed the main plot in advance).
We see Cleo in the movie wandering from one street to another, from hat shops to cafes, from schools to movie theaters, from parks to hospitals, with the camera following her all the time, seemingly "completely" recording her the entire activity process. But even the human eye cannot see everything, it has to selectively see, the camera imitates the human eye, and the objects it captures naturally have to be selected. In this sense, the "reality" of any film is also fundamentally an illusion. Varda knows this, so she mainly captures different scenes selectively, and then combines these shots to form a meaning. People in cafes talk about Algeria, poetry, art, taxi radio broadcasts news of adventurers crossing the English Channel, female driver cheerfully recalls her adventures driving at night, one of two street performers on the street Devouring a live frog, and the other piercing steel bars into his arms, it is difficult to say that there are any metaphors or symbols in what we have seen and heard with Cleo, and at the same time, it is impossible to directly imply the heroine's psychology (perhaps two The exception of the performances of a busker), they were made into the film largely only because the streets of Paris in the early 60s were full of such scenery, which was part of the world Cleo lived in.
But this isn't a sightseeing movie after all, and audiences always expect these landscapes to have some meaning. The theory of "movie eyes" also emphasizes that using the camera as an eye to watch things should achieve the effect of implying the viewer's psychology, and ultimately its protagonist should be the viewer himself. The viewer in this film is naturally Cleo, but it has been explained earlier that the street scenes in Paris cannot deeply depict the psychology of characters. Even if there is a hint, it is not clear, because a shot is usually not as clear as a paragraph of text, it is to a certain extent. Always ambiguous. For example, the artist devouring frogs might suggest Cleo's disgust for the world, and putting steel bars through his arms might suggest the cruelty of the world, but it's not clear, because you can also fully understand that it's just a normal street scene in Paris. odd part. Varda, of course, feels this too, so in the 48th minute of the film, she boldly breaks the aesthetic constraints of "real movies." At this time, Cleo had just come out of a bar, and the sound of the originally noisy street on the soundtrack of the movie suddenly only left Cleo's footsteps. The switching back and forth between the subjective shots of the pedestrians watching the roadside may be affected by the change of the sound. This switching has changed from the previous inattentiveness, and has become hurried and tense, leading the audience to quickly perceive the psychological state of the character at this moment. At the same time, Cleo's subjective shot does not have the previous length of time and the spatial span of lingering on different people and objects, but a close-up shot of a character with a short time span, and there are shots of passers-by approaching from far and near. . At this time, the audience can clearly feel the fear in Cleo's heart. Then, Varda deepens this fear with a series of jump cuts that she is good at, and Cleo's subjective shot suddenly includes a close-up of the face of the old witch who uses the tarot cards to calculate her doom at the beginning of the film. A close-up of a passerby is followed by a close-up of the young composer who composes for her but does not agree with her talent, a close-up of an alarm clock suggesting that time is running out, a close-up of a lover who is indifferent to her, a maid who binds her life with all kinds of superstitions The close-up of the wig that symbolizes her social identity, this group of forcibly inserted close-ups can be understood as the picture flashing in Cleo's heart, expressing Cleo's fear of disease and the restraint of her life very strongly. The disgust of various social mechanisms forms a psychological climax of the film.
The traditional way of expressing the psychology of characters is flashback, which means that the characters are immersed in the memories of a certain period of time, and the emotional colors of the characters are expressed by the colors of the stories that happened during this period of time. Varda certainly rejects this approach, the problem is that such subjective shots of the characters' psychology don't make up the whole film, they only come alive at certain moments. Overall, the film's depiction of the characters' psychological activities in an hour and a half is far inferior to Tolstoy's description of Anna's psychological activities before her suicide in just a few thousand words.
Tear off the film's documentary aesthetics and the disguise of psychodrama, we find that the remaining elements that constitute the film's theme and meaning are the result of Varda's careful design in advance. It talks about the process of a woman breaking through various social repressions and constraints at a critical moment in her life, finding her true self and regaining the integrity of her life, and its criticism is obviously directed at various external social mechanism.
Cleo in the film is a somewhat superstitious woman, and at the beginning of the film, she is asking someone to use tarot cards to fortune her destiny, which means that she gives her life to some kind of mystery, seeing it as a certain mystery. Something unknown but destined. Then came the very expressive black hat. Cleo liked it after buying it from the store, but the maid said it was Tuesday and it was not appropriate to wear a new hat. Cleo didn't object at first, she agreed with this kind of ridiculous. social customs. This hat not only represents some kind of social restraint, but also has a very important visual function. After that, Cleo decided to live more self-consciously, and resolutely took off his wig. After wearing this hat, the image of this character seemed to be affected by Refreshed the same. Then came the alternating appearances of her lover at Cleo's house and the two musicians who wrote and composed for her, who were concerned either with her beauty or her status as a pop star. For them, Clay Au wasn't a "person" with a real connotation, so Cleo said, "All people dote on me, no one really loves me". Seeing this, the audience can mostly feel where the theme of the film is pointing. Those seemingly random encounters are actually the result of Varda's intentional arrangement of themes. After a series of repression, it was Cleo who rehearsed the new song and directly revealed his singing part. Varda intentionally staged the rehearsal and singing. The camera slowly focused on Cleo alone, on his face, and at the climax of the song, he sang Cleo's accusation: "I'm going to lie down, gray and white. Yes, pale, lonely."
Next, Cleo's series of encounters on the street became the process by which she was inspired to break through the shackles and find herself. Cleo arrives at the art workshop where his friend Dorothée is mannequins, and the camera shoots through a group of unformed mannequins. This metaphor is so obvious that it is not difficult for the audience to imagine that the director's intention is to point out that the only way to liberate is to return to the more primitive, simple, and natural state of man. The next conversation between Cleo and Dorothée about nudity deepens this point, Cleo says, "I think it's too revealing, I'm afraid of being picked on", Dorothée: "Nonsense, my body makes me happy, and Not to make me proud...". Gradually, Dorothée became Cleo's guide to finding himself. Next they went to the Dorothée friend's cinema, where Varda intervened in a black-and-white silent film featuring Godard's friendly cameo. The metaphor of the silent film is also very obvious. Godard, who wears sunglasses (tinted glasses, symbolizing customs and social mechanisms), mistakenly admits his girlfriend, causing a tragedy and being heartbroken. She didn't get it back until he took off the sunglasses. girlfriend (love). In the end, Cleo's redemption is accomplished by the soldier she met in the park. Here, Cleo not only finds someone who truly cares about her, but also finds her love, the haze of cancer that shrouded her head also dispersed. There was an interesting conversation between them about love, Cleo asked the soldier, "Have you ever been in love?" "Often, but never as deeply as I thought, it's all the girls' fault, they They just want to be loved, they're afraid to give, they're afraid to lose, they just don't love fully, their bodies are toys, not their lives." It was like Cleo before, and now she finally understands the meaning of life and love.
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