The concept of film as a consumer art has been discriminated against in France for a long time. Many writers and artists are active in the French film circle. As a result, the French government has pursued the so-called "cultural exception" cultural policy principle since the time of Mitterrand. In the decade after entering the 1990s, it completely collapsed, and the new director Karax at the time was an iconic figure in the big wave.
No matter how you deny it, it is an undeniable fact that the film, as a costly art, is subject to economic constraints. Even for the French New Wave films from 1958 to 1961, the fundamental reasons for their formation are still inseparable from the economic and human resource problems of post-war European countries. A new generation of French directors is striving to find an equal status with Hollywood in the world. They want to reproduce the scene where EMI was vassal to the French Writers Association. How is this possible? Since the 1990s, the French box office charts have proved that it is impossible to revitalize French cinema by relying on the continuation of the left bank. The director Luc Besson, who was once promoted as the representative of the new generation of "my films", also openly slogan to be the Spielberg of France, while the same young Carax, spent three years and spent 120 million francs in the giant production. "Lovers in the New Bridge" was a fiasco at the box office, a lesson for the French film market. However, after watching the movie, it is obvious that this has little to do with the quality of the movie. The reason for the fiasco is not only too little box office, but also too high cost (120 million francs at that time was much higher than the current cost of "The Thirteen Hairpins of Jinling") , it comes down to the director's control.
As for the film itself, aside from the box office fiasco that Karax has written into film history, and the great achievements of dragging down three producers with underworld backgrounds, I want to talk about the two core issues of story and directing techniques. the movie itself.
one
Some people say that Karax is a "New New Wave" director. This concept is recognized by some people in the film industry. The film "New Bridge Lovers" is well-made, and the details have been repeatedly scrutinized, integrating the left bank. The advantages of the novel are different from the roughness of the New Wave, and at the same time, it also has some characteristics of the genre continued by the New Wave: the pursuit of realism, but it is not like realism. The movie completely disrupts and distorts the original appearance of life. Many people also believe that Karax is a continuation of Godard, although he himself does not agree.
To be honest, I didn't have a good impression of Karax before watching the movie. Because books with film history used him as a counterexample and "paraded the public", the cost was so huge that it dragged down many producers, and even indirectly ruined his directorial career (in the following 20 years, he only It's unbelievable that a film of which I made a feature film is just to make such a subject that can be controlled at a low cost. But after watching the film, my influence on him has changed a lot, and I even thought about it in reverse. Under the circumstances of such great financial pressure and the background of the bankruptcy of the producers, the box office is destined to be unable to recover the cost. Under the circumstances, to insist on building a bank of the Seine, it really has an extraordinary firm will and artistic pursuit, and I have to be admired by future generations.
Karax is a director who represents the development trend of European cinema after the 1980s. In that era, after many experiments and the overthrow of tradition, master directors such as Antonioni, Fellini and Godard gradually moved closer to tradition. Narrative art exists, and this is what I have always insisted on.
One of my own views is that to tell a story well, you need a combination of characters, imagination, and playwriting skills. Characters include the author's understanding of life, detailed observation, the inner meaning and emotional expression given to the characters, and the imagination is responsible for producing wonderful plots and enriching the characters with details. Finally, the whole story is expressed through the big framework provided by the playwriting skills. The imagination is innate and the characters are accumulated, while the students of the film school can only learn the skills of drama in their student days, and through the number of watching more than 1,000 movies in the four years of college, they can improve their understanding and indirectness of movies. Enrich your imagination and expand your horizons. In the following creative career, I will continue to accumulate, create wonderful characters, design wonderful plots, and finally create excellent works.
Emotions cannot exist independently of the story. The reason why this film is fully emotionally expressed is that the story is told in a complete and comprehensive way, which is different from the irrational conscious activities and illogical plot structure or flow of life that I thought before watching the film. , the story is told smoothly, the context is clear, taking into account the two major ways of expressing the story, narrative and details.
From the moment the two met, Alex saw Michele paint one of his paintings, and I had a lot of expectations for his storytelling ability. From the plot structure, the first act is the climax of the two meeting Alex and unilaterally developing feelings for Michelle, to the climax of Michelle's disillusionment with her ex-boyfriend, the two running and dancing on the broken bridge and under the fireworks. The relationship between the two changed. In the second act, the two fell in love and experienced an unforgettable time until Alex found that Michelle's family had hope for her to find a cure for her eye disease, and tried to prevent Michelle from leaving. Things have changed again. In the third act, Michelle couldn't forget Alex, and the two eventually eloped. The whole story has clear layers and rich plots, and each event drives the transformation of the characters, making this film a love story full of raw power and free from the shackles of rationality. This means that European directors are moving towards simplicity in narrative techniques.
Characters are extremely important to a movie. In order to create characters, the author needs to weave various plots and details, so there is a saying that characters = plots. To shape the two protagonists, the change in their relationship is the main clue. They have changed step by step from strangers—the same people who are fallen from the end of the world—lover—separation—elopement, showing that the complex emotional world of the two heroines brings unique charm to the film. They meet on the road at the beginning of the film, and Michele draws Alex so that the two meet on the bridge. Then Alex fell in love with Michelle while modeling for her. In order to understand Michelle, Alex got her notes, and in order to prevent her from meeting her ex-boyfriend who played the cello, he drove him away. After Michelle said "the sky is white", he shyly and hurriedly answered "but The clouds are black", drinking and dancing with Michelle, for Michelle, he can be willing to be Michelle's guide dog, in order to keep Michelle who is not in the same world as him, he can burn posters, can Bombing off his own fingers with a pistol, and even going to jail for burning others by mistake, he still failed to hold on to Michelle. Two years later, Michelle came to him and found that Michelle's life difficulties could not allow them to be together again. Later, holding her and jumping off the bridge, finally let Michelle give up everything that exists and sail to the unknown Atlantic Ocean with him. From Alex's point of view, his love is selfish and brave. He is a tramp and Michelle's social status is very different. As a weak man, he has a natural sense of tension. He is afraid that Michelle will leave him, so he watched Michelle step by step while shaking with excitement. Even weaker than him, in the face of change he had to stop him, he closed he was afraid that the change would take Michelle away, so deliberately let Michelle throw their money into the water in order to keep Michelle at the bridge up, stay by your side. In the second half of the film, if he let Michelle's family take him away, he wouldn't end up in jail with a severed finger, all of which underscore Alex's selfish and courageous notion of love.
The character design of Michelle is more interesting. Although it is not mentioned in the movie, her father is a colonel officer. It is conceivable that she is in a family atmosphere that loves her but is strict and conservative. Eye disease and lovelorn are her runaways. The reason is that she ran away from home and wandered around with a drawing board. This character itself has a French romantic atmosphere. So two people who could not have communicated met on the bridge. From her, we can see some things left over from the tradition of "cultural special cases". Wandering and falling in love with the lame wanderer, but her nature is to wander between wandering and stability, and it is difficult to choose, even I think her side of seeking stability is greater than the other side of being free and easy. The money can be seen in a better place to live. She drank heavily on the bridge, shot under fireworks, and Alex went to see the sea when he had money, and had sex on the beach. From her point of view, falling in love with Alex was a kind of " I'm willing to fall", and even made a deal with the old man on the bridge in order to enter the museum for one last look, although the director used the method of sound and picture montage to make Michelle say: "I'm sorry, Alex." To express her complicated inner world, but this is the downward side of the character, and I can't believe that she really fell in love with this lame tramp, and then she heard the broadcast and left resolutely also confirmed She is not willing to enter the dark world. And she wrote on the wall that she never loved Alex, and was overthrown in prison, indicating that she didn't know and could not confirm whether she fell in love with Alex before, and she didn't understand until two years later. But my other guess is: instead of representing her love for Alex, it's better that her free side once again challenged the stable side. She represents a kind of ambivalence about the relationship between stability and freedom. out the contradiction of choice.
Karax is a creator of rich emotion and brilliant imagination. Whether it's "the sky is white, the clouds are black", "the person who dreams in the dream, you will see it when you wake up" these poetic lines, or the wild dance under the fireworks, riding on the statue and shooting , a free and happy life like a "male and female thief", and taking Alex to see the sea, these plots all show the excellent imagination brought by his crazy creative passion, worthy of the name of his genius director. And Michelle played by Binoche carries Carax's understanding of love. To love thoroughly, you must first fall into hell. This role is obviously tailor-made by Binoche, which transcends the works and reality. time and space. That's why people ask why Karax has few future works. His explanation is the lack of a lover, and his role is to represent his personal emotions. As a love film, the story is particularly cold and irritable. Until the end of the film, the story turns to the freedom and beauty pointed to by many love films. I think it is the swing of Karax's personal concept. He is a man who yearns for beauty but does not believe in beauty, and the end of his six-year relationship with Binoche makes it clear.
The second
film is a special art that requires multiple people to work together to complete it. The editor and the director are the two core parts. Therefore, outstanding creators, especially the creators of the so-called "artistic films", must combine the director and the editor. As a director, Karax's use of lens language and montage techniques is also very good. Earlier I said that he was an iconic figure in the return wave of the Western film industry from modernity to popularization, which can also be reflected in his directorial awareness.
In the late 1940s, long takes began to appear in the West, and this realism-inspired approach was all the rage, and some directors even tried to use full long takes to compose a film. At the same time, the theoretical struggle between long-shot and montage broke out, which prompted some of the two opposing schools of technicalism and realism to go to extremes. This kind of debate has long been concluded now. Sometimes a movie needs long shots to express reality, and sometimes it needs fast editing to set off the atmosphere, etc. These montage techniques can be used in a movie at the same time. used at the right time. Although in terms of film aesthetics, there are two distinct factions of montage and long shot in Western movies, but with the development of film for a hundred years, people have long seen that full montage and full long shot are not feasible. Therefore, some French scholars put forward the argument that montage is being revived. Since the 1990s, it is no longer a montage in the narrow sense of the past. The revival does not mean the rejection of long shots, but how to combine the two expressions in the film. . It was under such a big wave of "montage revival" that Karax fully displayed his talents as a director.
I have always believed that sharp editing techniques can only be used as a reflection of a director's style, not as a standard to measure a director. In today's era, the days of relying on montage to establish the status of a master are gone.
The skillful application of long shots and montages is a must for every director. Karax has no shortage of still images in this film, such as the old man falling into the water, the old man and Michelle, Michelle and Alex on the bridge The panning + rising shot after drinking alcohol; it is also different from many slow-moving literary films, skilled use of long and short shots, and a montage technique of repeatedly editing an action to increase the rhythm of the film, Alex performing fire-breathing and the two turning into "male and female thieves" "After that, the "victims" passed out one by one, Michelle shuttled through the streets under the "May Storm", and the large number of segmentation processing of these episodes increased the rhythm and interest of the film. Illusionary montages are not uncommon now. Whether it is David Fincher, Aronofsky or Ning Hao in China, they are all masters, but they were still relatively new at the time, from Michelle's eyes to fish. Eyes, from Spitfire to Jets, these apps add to the smoothness of your film. The dislocation of sound and picture is not used frequently here, but it played a key role in the plot before Michelle entered the museum (mentioned above), and the montage of sound and picture is also a common grammar, such as the most classic "Once Upon a Time in America" The sound and picture formed by the phone ring and the picture are misplaced. In the past, many directors who insisted on their own style disdain to use such "little tricks", especially film workers in countries like France, but Carax is very familiar with it. From the point of view of montage skills alone, it does not belong to Directors trained in the technocratic tradition of Hollywood. Karax, like many good directors, intends to expand the sense of space in the picture, the movement of the camera and the rapid editing are the main means of creating tension and increasing the tension of the plot. Michelle is chasing the sound of the cello, Alex is chasing Michelle, the dance under the fireworks, the run on the beach, and the violent shaking of the camera bring people a sense of tension and a kind of free-spirited sensory stimulation. The movement of the camera can also cause a strong sense of psychological insecurity, This is also often seen in the hands of many directors, such as Fassbender's "Marriage of Maria Braun". Karax's grasp of the meaning of the shot is also quite good, although some analysis of the language of the shot, especially the metaphorical shot, may not be the original intention of the creator. For example, the classic shot of "Citizen Kane" about Kane's childhood, there is actually Two dozen kinds of metaphorical analysis, of course Orson Welles' talent is amazing. Several points in "Lovers in the New Bridge" are worth mentioning. For example, when Alex answered "the clouds are black", Michelle was sitting on the railing, Alex was standing next to him, and the main body of the picture was rice Although Michelle and Alex are standing, they are in a weak and shrinking position on the screen, implying the dominance of Michelle and the gap between the two in their fundamental social status. Michelle was crawling on the ground outside the ballroom and looked inside. The camera moved forward in the chaotic room. We saw Michelle's eyes and Alex's shoes. Obviously, Michelle will still be caught in ordinary people's life. Attracted by beauty, Alex is forever free. Regarding film grammar, Carax can still see the shadows of French films or the New Wave, using long shots instead of "long-range, medium-range to close-range" (this seems to be more common now), with casual Mobile photography and camera positions replace the traditional front and back to deal with dialogue scenes.
After abandoning the blind pursuit of modernity, European films began to recover gradually. After several growths in the 1990s, the films made by Luc Besson, Jacques Arnold, Genet and others attracted a large number of local audiences, and the film market was unprecedented. The basic reason for the recovery, from a commercial point of view, is the fading of the influence of traditional art concepts in the film field. Everyone finally understands that film is a consumer art. Of course, the increasing investment in film also makes it more and more difficult to recover costs. The roughness and low cost of the new wave era are not recognized by the public, and the change in the wind direction of the Cannes Film Festival is also one of the factors. Fundamentally, everyone recognizes that film exists as a narrative art, and recognizes the huge role of montage techniques. Even if it is a so-called art film, what distinguishes it from commercial films is the depth of the story, not the form of modernism and solipsism. . From 1988 to 1991, "Lovers in the New Bridge" was a pioneer in this big wave of European cinema. Karax, who was walking on the waves, also won several European awards with this film. More importantly, he established his role in the film industry. It is a pity that there are not many people who are willing to give him the opportunity to make a feature film after this. After all, no one wants to be dragged down by an investor who is a director.
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