I just finished watching Hitchcock's suspense film "Beauty's Plan" in 1946. I took advantage of my clear memory to record the interesting techniques in the film. It is not an article devoted to analyzing the film, so I am sorry to write what I think of.
Due to the influence of the Hayes Code, the scenes of murder and sex cannot be presented in the "Beauty". So Hitchcock used a lot of suggestive camera techniques to suggest murder and sex to the audience.
Hitchcock made Ingrid Bergman and Cary Grant kiss incessantly as a hint of their passionate sexual relationship.
In the middle of the film, the German organization wants to get rid of the erring Emil, only to imply murder by driving him home.
The members of the organization closed the door of the conference hall for Emir, and "closing the door" represented murder. At the end of the film, the same group members close the door for Alex, implying that Alex would be murdered. Here is the last shot of the film, pay attention to Hitchcock's composition: Alex reluctantly walks towards the narrow door, which is the door of death, his fate, after he walks in, his life will be taken away . The composition here has a taste of German expressionism, and Hitchcock used tragic background music to set off the atmosphere. In fact, this is just Hitchcock's foreshadowing, a strong psychological suggestion. door = murder.
It is very interesting that when Cary Grant fell in love with Ingmar Bergman, Bergman asked Grant to bring a bottle of wine and go home to eat. Grant accepted the task of his boss and recognized Bergman's working relationship with him. He didn't dare to face his love with her, so he lost the wine in the boss's office. The bottle here represents the love between them.
And the most tense scene in the whole film, when the two came to the wine cellar, the most important prop in the whole film is also wine: a wine bottle filled with uranium ore. At this point the bottle symbolizes danger and mission. Connecting the feelings between the two, wine has a double meaning: the entanglement of tasks and love. This is the theme of the whole film "Beauty's Plan". In a spy mission, the hero and heroine don't know if the other person really loves each other.
In the movie, Bergman tried every means to open a door, that is, the door of the wine cellar. The key to this door is kept by the owner Alex, and Bergman has no right to open it. This aroused the strong curiosity of the audience, namely: What secret is inside that door? Regarding this topic and this meme, it can be traced back to the long-running folk horror story "Bluebeard" in France. Bluebeard gave the key to the little girl and warned her that there is only one door in the whole castle that cannot be opened. That is his biggest secret . This horror story used to keep me tossing and turning at night as a child. [The only door that cannot be opened in the entire castle], this is a magical horror magic that can arouse the greatest curiosity.
Alex's mother always interferes with Alex's love affair and hates his girlfriend. Alex even used the word "jealousy" in the movie to berate his mother. Today, when we call Alex "Mommy Boy," it's obviously a love affair. Hitchcock expressed this theme more intuitively in Strangers on a Train and The Psycho.
In the end, in fact, the entire movie "Beauty's Plan" just uses the task of "spy exploration" to express the unpredictable and unpredictable love between men and women. As for the espionage mission, at the end of the movie we don't know whether the German organization has been eradicated, we only know that the hero saved the heroine, and the two confirmed their true love. This is Hitchcock's MacGuffin technique.
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