Death Row 9.0 (1956)
④
The commentary of "Film History" uses an analogy, saying that Bergman's film is a "theatre", Fellini's film is a "circus", and Bresson's is a "prison".
Paul Scheeder said, "Bresson's film is 'the progression of a soul from confinement to freedom'".
Fontaine finally removed the cell door. He walked quietly on the long corridor of the prison, looming in the shadow of midnight. At that moment, I suddenly felt that Robert Bresson might be Dostoyevs who made the movie. base.
⑤
Bresson is the ultimate minimalist, and I have reason to doubt that, if he wanted to, he could make 90% of all films of the past and present in under 30 minutes.
His films have always been concise and clear, and all the "moisture" has been squeezed out. As long as the shots, sounds, characters, and plots that he thinks are meaningless, they will never be presented.
If "The Great Phantom" shows rich and full humanity through an ambiguous moral standpoint, then all the ambiguous and difficult points in "Death Row" have been cancelled, and even morality is no longer important, and everything is abstracted into one. A conceptual existence, an existence that only serves the theme of "prison break". In Bresson's view, beauty and ugliness related to moral inclinations do not matter at all. He has always cared more about "clear" beauty.
The protagonist Fontaine was sent to be tortured, and everything was shot, and he was thrown on the floor of the cell with blood on his head. Bresson thought that even if you filmed how he was tortured completely, the audience would still clearly recognize this. It's just a performance. He was captured by the German army during World War II, and what he experienced was nothing more than "heard someone being whipped and then falling to the ground through the door". In his opinion, this is more than witnessing atrocities. It is ten times more cruel. After all, the most terrifying things always come from imagination.
⑥
Even the "parallel sound and picture" was disgusted by him as complicated. He always insisted, "If the role of sound can replace the picture at a certain moment, then cut the picture or try to let the audience ignore it, and the vision can only stay on the outside, On the contrary, hearing can penetrate deep into the interior of the environment. If you must let the sound and the picture assist each other, then you must establish a master-slave position, and the evenly matched will only cancel the two, and in the end, the effect will be completely useless.”
Death Row is an unprecedented and pioneering exploration of the use of sound elements in the filmmaking process. He uses sound to create depth of field and open up space beyond the picture. When the jailer closed the door and left, the expressive power of the picture was blocked. At this time, the sound of the police baton hitting the railing sounded and faded away with the sound of footsteps. The intimidation of the jailer and the yearning for freedom of the prisoners were established in this sound. Superimposed echoes in the space.
What is the yearning for freedom? Bresson said, you are sitting in your cell and hearing the sound of the outside world.
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