In fact, I have seen many Hitchcock movies before, such as "Psycho", "Vertigo", "Rear Window". This kind of movie looks very comfortable for people like me who love suspense and horror, the story is cleverly arranged, and the sound and picture language is used properly. Hitchcock really is a master at creating a horrific atmosphere.
This week's "Reaper of Souls" is the perfect example of how the atmosphere of horror is created. In fact, my viewing this time is not subjective, I only thought of it after listening to Mr. Li's "Flip Radio" talk about Hitchcock. In the past, it was like a layman watching the fun, but this time, I carefully combined the sound, picture and movie concept to look at it.
The story is actually very simple. Two Harvard students want to do a kind of perfect murder similar to a social experiment. They murder their classmates and put the bodies in a box. In the evening, other classmates were invited to the banquet, and the box containing the corpse was used as a table setting for things. Just listening to this story is already incredible. The subtlety lies in the fact that the box is like a time bomb. The audience from God's perspective has always known that it may explode at any time in this place, but they don't know when. It's like the Hitchcock show I listened to before, the best way to create fear is not to create an unknown fear (like the movie Alien), but to put the fear there and not reveal it, like Ling Chi or Delayed execution is more terrifying than violent death, and you know about the time when the fear will be revealed, but you don't know exactly when or how.
He is also very good at speaking and painting, a technique that is not seen in most of the movies today. The movie is actually very similar to the comic, with less dialogue, and the most important thing is the storyboard and the picture. My favorite episode is when the meal part of the banquet is over, the landlady slowly removes the food from the box, the candlesticks, and the tablecloth, while with a voiceover, the people at the party are discussing which one is in the box The whereabouts of the dead are unknown. All viewers know what's in the box. Just at the landlady; when everything was about to be revealed to open the box, the hearts of all the audience were hanging in their throats, and then this fear came to an abrupt end, and the murderer appeared to resolve the "crisis". In addition to this, there are many other such techniques. For example, when Robent, who is a detective character, pressed one of the murderers, the murderer played the piano faster and faster, which not only showed his guilty conscience, but also successfully hoisted the audience. mood.
Hitchcock said that the movie hasn't looked so good since the dialogue appeared in the movie. In the silent film era, only masters can make good movies, and all information is transmitted through the screen. After having a dialogue, it seems that you can be lazy when you make a movie. But in the Hitchcock era of the talkie movie, every line he wrote was not nonsense, it was carefully choreographed, and it was all for the sake of the movie. Especially in this kind of suspense film, every sentence is an asura field, and it is a constant test by both sides. Cinema is essentially the art of images, and dialogue is the icing on the cake in Hitchcock's hands.
The sound and picture are just the surface, so what exactly is this story trying to express? This story actually has a very strong sense of avant-garde right now. Most of the murderers in the stories kill because of necessity. And the top Harvard students here are just because they want to complete the perfect crime murder, want to make murder an art. The reason is also very simple: the elite can ignore the laws of society and kill the inferior.
It sounds reasonable at first glance. Murdering the "inferior people" can lighten the burden on society and make society more progressive and faster. But then the victim's payment raised a piercing question: Assuming that this kind of privilege exists, who will divide it, and who is the elite and who is the inferior? Even gods can't tell the difference, let alone just two top students who went to Harvard? In fact, it can also be seen here that the director does not trust higher elite education.
Social progress and development are important, but personal happiness and dignity should not be abandoned. When I read the last chapters of "A Brief History of Humanity", the author suggested that most of the research on history is from the perspective of social changes, economic, technological and cultural development, while few people study the happiness index of people in each era and each region. Of course this is difficult to study, the age is old, and happiness is such a subjective thing, but that doesn't mean it's not important.
Everyone knows the word "class" these days, and it's not out of date to discuss films from more than seventy years ago today. Now I am afraid that there are some people who hold the view that "money can buy everything", "high-class people" and "low-class people". It is not denied that people today have certain class contradictions, but everyone's dignity and happiness are inalienable and need to be respected.
Hitchcock lived in the war years, and his films' portrayal of fear is a portrayal of reality. Murderers who classify themselves as "elite" cannot escape the fear of punishment. Today, at this time, this writing event, Hitchcock's film still has great practical significance.
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