Despite the powerful shadow of Rui Baika hovering in the sky, the woman played by Joan Fontaine is undoubtedly the number one role in the film. The two-hour film is her mental journey of self-breakthrough: from a ignorant ignorance, The innocent and kind girl turned into a scheming, sophisticated and mature mistress, the next Rui Baika. After watching the whole film, and then looking back to taste the dreamy monologue at the beginning, it is difficult to say who said it. Is it the ghost of Rui Baika? Or Mrs. Derwent whose sparrow turned into a phoenix? Or is it a combination of two people?
The innocent heroine is not easy
Perhaps the heroine was not as innocent as we thought from the beginning.
In fact, from the beginning of the film, through the mouth of the lady Mrs. Van Hopper, we saw the contradiction of this character. Mrs. Van Hopper has made two evaluations of the heroine. The first time was after talking to Mr. Derwent in the hotel lobby. Because the heroine overexpressed herself, she said that the heroine was "a little presumptuous just now." However, in fact, the conversation about drinking coffee was almost only between Mr. Derwent and Mrs. Van Hopper. The heroine originally had no chance of performance, so how can it be presumptuous. However, she cleverly seized the only opportunity (perhaps the only opportunity in her life) and successfully captured the heart of her prey. Because she judged Mr. Derwent’s hobbies very accurately from the beginning-after tired of overly sculpted women, he wanted to make a simple one this time-so the hostess said, "There are too many artificial carvings in this place. "This is not her evaluation of Monte Carlo, but a strong promotion of herself, "Look, how natural and simple I am." We saw it and it worked. The hostess and Mr. Derwent had a flash marriage.
After learning this news, Mrs. Van Hopper evaluated the heroine for the second time. She said, "You can't be Madame Mandori...you have no experience, you don't understand the environment there." Interestingly, Mrs. Van Hopper did not use the word "naive". In her eyes, the heroine was not regarded as Madame Mandori because she lacked certain characteristics, namely "beauty, wisdom and education"-note These three indicators come from the male characters Maxim and Frank-but because they have no experience! Without beauty, wisdom cannot be acquired. But without experience, it can be changed. Fortunately, our heroine is very hardworking. So there was Mrs. Van Hopper's semi-sarcastic farewell: "Mrs. Derwent, good luck." There is not only her sarcasm and surprise, but also a little admiration and anticipation (maybe she, Mrs. Van Hopper, back then That’s how I took the seat of Mrs. Van Hopper). Therefore, the heroine, with her "presumptuous" and accumulating experience over time, will one day become the real Mrs. Derwent.
In the story of Monte Carlo, although far away from the mandala, the shadow of its former owner always hangs over the three characters. Rui Baika is the main reason that makes the male protagonist come here to relax. It is the object of Mrs. Van Hopper's gossip (and Mrs. Van Hopper once again said that she described the male protagonist and Rui Baika very accurately. The relationship between "he is fascinated by her" = Rui Baika firmly controls the male lead). Although the heroine has never met this Rui Baikasu, she is the best heir to her spirit. If you want to control a man, the first step is to be able to judge the man's preferences and seize the opportunity that is beneficial to her. In these two aspects, our heroine can be said to be naturally beautiful.
The transformation of the heroine
After Maxim, Frank was the second prey to fall into the palm of the heroine. Similar to the coffee scene (she has almost no opportunity to express herself), the hostess is also in a very disadvantaged situation. Everyone seems to be fighting against her: the scary servant, the strange Ben, the husband who is often absent, even the dog Do not get close to her (for dogs, see MissUnderstood "Rebecca's Dog-Jasper"). But with her instinct, she immediately discovered the availability of Frank, and once again used her innocence to draw Frank over. In that separate conversation with Frank, the heroine was extremely "presumptuous", asking a lot of things that shouldn't be asked, and she also set out a lot of facts. However, to become a real Rui Baika, the heroine needs two transformations.
In Mandoli, the heroine's knowledge of Rui Baika and herself was very vague at first. Because everything about this former hostess, she was hearsay. And in this unfamiliar environment, she has not yet recognized her position. The hostess consciously compares herself with the original Madame Mandori, and is also compared by others (her husband, her husband's family, her husband's servants, her husband's friends, etc.) in this way. She is eager to understand Rebekah and also eager to understand herself. Rui Baika's house symbolizes the never-opened corner of the heroine's heart. When the heroine stepped into Rui Baika's bedroom for the first time, with the assist of Mrs. Danvers, the heroine recognized her heart for the first time, and then there was a brief collapse. Here, she clearly saw the choice in front of her: to become Rui Baika or get rid of Rui Baika.
Then we saw the various struggles of the hostess. On the one hand, he tried to resist the plague-like former hostess (destroying the phone book and letter paper with her name, etc.), and imitating her everywhere on the other hand (changing her hairstyle, buying new clothes) , Organize the dance party). Until the eve of the prom, because of Mrs. Danvers's teasing, the heroine finally merged with Rui Baika (at least in form) by mistake. Therefore, we can regard the scene in front of the window as the heroine's first metamorphosis. When Mrs. Danvers pointed to the rough sea and told the heroine that she was not worth living, the heroine almost committed suicide by jumping off the cliff. However, when the remote alarm sounded, she was indeed dead once: she did not kill the body of the heroine, but had already pushed her soul down the abyss. Note that in this scene, the heroine is still wearing clothes that remind Maxim of Rui Baika.
The second transformation was when Maxim confided the truth to the heroine in the seaside shed. The heroine was completely blackened, which can be regarded as an evolutionary version of Rui Baika. After the heroine learned that her husband had killed someone, she did not hesitate in the slightest moral, but became her husband's accomplice involuntarily (reminiscent of the senator's daughter in "The Train Stranger")! Maybe the murderer Maxim is still a little bit repentant. The audience here is struggling with their own morals (whether the male protagonist is guilty or not), and what our female protagonist is doing, the only thing the female protagonist cares about is whether Maxim is Ariel Baika or not. More! When she learned that the original male protagonist not only didn't love, but also hated, her life suddenly became clear. The heroine also has the ultimate answer to the character’s ultimate question "whether to become Rui Baika": it doesn't matter whether she succeeds or not, the point is to replace her. And now she knows the answer. In this contest between women and women, she is the winner. Therefore, if Rui Baika is as cold-blooded as the male protagonist describes (not to mention the male protagonist is still an unreliable narrator), the female protagonist is even colder than Rui Baika. When Maxim recounted how he killed Rui Baika, it was actually a visualization of the heroine's heart. The male protagonist killed Rui Baika's body for the first time, and the female protagonist killed Rui Baika's soul for the second time. So Rui Baika's body reappeared, this time completely dead.
Fooled husband
So in the end, when we see the heroine who fainted and saved her husband during the trial, we cannot help asking, is the heroine deliberate or unintentional? This question can actually run through the entire film. From the seemingly unintentional "presumptuous" in the first coffee drinking dialogue to the escape of the fire with the dog (lucky?), we can all ask, is she deliberately deliberate, or Just relying on luck? We know that Xi Pang is very fond of creating dual bodies (the dual male protagonists of "Rear Window" and "The Train Strike" are typical Doppelgänger). However, in his first Hollywood movie, the other dual female protagonist does not appear (but is everywhere). Rui Baika and the heroine can be seen as two sides of the same coin. Although they have different means, they have the same goal: to control their husband. It's just that Rui Baika uses vicious to control, and the heroine uses innocence to control. Facts have proved that the "pretend pure" trick works better.
Maxim, despite being rich and powerful, calling out to his servants, even the sheriff respects him for three points, but he can't help not being jealous of his wife. However, he desperately wanted to get rid of his wife's control, but in the end, the organs were exhausted, and he just escaped from the tiger's mouth and fell into the hands of another femme girl. This character had a clear understanding of his own destiny for a moment, and the phrase he said "Rui Baika won" is a pun. Mingdi said that as Rui Baika's body surfaced, he was worried that the murder would be revealed. Secretly, it was actually revealing his relationship with the heroine. At the moment he revealed the secret, he obediently handed over the shackles that controlled him to the new Mrs. Derwent.
The truth about marriage
Recently, due to the epidemic, the company started to implement home office. I thought that everyone was scrambling to stay at home, but I didn't expect many colleagues to come to the company to stick to their posts every day. Upon asking, the answer was shocking. Basically, "I can't bear the children making trouble at home", "Because the husband/wife also works at home, I can't bear the two big eyes and small eyes of a couple 24 hours a day". What's more, some people deliberately work "overtime" in the company because their husband/wife stays at home 24 hours a day. A single colleague of mine complained to me, "I really don't understand why these people are still getting married?" He probably couldn't figure out the answer to this question, but Xi Pang has a clear insight on this question: The golden boy and jade girl envied by others actually think about how to control the other party or how to kill the other party all the time. In the face of this cruel and helpless fact, he humorously put the coat of love on his movie "Butterfly Dream" (see how many film critics think this is a great love), just like "Jane Eyre" hundreds of years ago. "And the authors of "Wuthering Heights" did the same thing (how many people think these two books are about love).
For this reason, Xi Pang specially set up three characters to let the narcissistic audience have a moment of sobriety. Ben was the first person to see the essence of the marriage relationship, so he became a marginal person in society. In court, he was killed without telling the truth. Because he knows that if he tells the audience the truth, such as "Butterfly Dreams has nothing to do with love", or "The heroine doesn't love Maxim and just wants to control him", he will be thrown into a mental hospital as a lunatic. Mrs. Danvers was the second person to see the truth about marriage. She was also single, so she burned this hypocritical world, along with herself. The third sensible person is not as extreme as Ben and Mrs. Danvers. He is more like a person who sees the facts but chooses to compromise, namely, Maxim's good friend Frank. After the so-called truth came to light, the weak Maxim wanted to confess to Frank before getting in the car: "Frank has something you don't know." Frank, who had insight into everything, immediately blocked Maxim's mouth: "No, nothing about me. I don't know. "No matter what happens, life will continue. Please! must! Continue to play with the new Mrs. Derwent.
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