World When many people mention silent films, the first thing that comes to mind is Chaplin, which is understandable. Master Chaplin is one of the representatives of the silent film world. His films are witty and humorous, which can make people happy. Chinese people like Chaplin because his films are easy to understand, and Chaplin mainly focuses on body expressions and movements. But with his contemporaries there is also a comedy master Buster Keaton, "The General" as his masterpiece. But the silent film era is not just comedy. I always feel that the first Oscar was born too late. In 1929, the best picture of the Oscar was given to "Wings". On the contrary, FW Murnau's "Sunrise" was even better. Still very young and missed a lot of great works before 1929.
In the silent film era, French films were the pioneers, and American films later developed and expanded. DW Griffith pushed silent films into a new era. Griffith connected each shot of the film according to the development of the plot, using the physiological characteristics of the human eye. It made the audience feel the smoothness of the picture, which was later called the "classic cut". His method influenced the subsequent rise of Soviet films. The Soviet film master Eisenstein realized in "Battleship Potemkin" that editing is not only to express the plot, but also to express the metaphor, and created the montage theory. At this time, silent films had reached a very high level, and later German expressionism pushed silent films to a new height. "Dr. Caligari's Cabin" and "Metropolis" are its important representative works.
From the birth of the film in 1895 to the first Oscar in 1929, silent films developed rapidly. With the birth of "Jazz Singer" in 1927, everything was disrupted. The film was finally no longer silent, and the sound film completely overturned the original everything and so suddenly. But "Jazz Singer" has little impact in the short term, and silent films are still developing. Carl Theodore Dreyer's "The Passion of Joan of Arc" is one of the masterpieces of the late silent age.
First of all, "The Passion of Joan of Arc" is a silent film with sound. The film uses a large number of subtitles to describe the dialogue between the judge and Joan of Arc, which emphasizes the importance of subtitles. The film does not have the super-luxurious scenes of "The Birth of a Nation" and "Party Fighting Against Differing", but the scene is specified in a room, and the focus of the plot is shown in the trial. The lens emphasizes close-up and close-up, which strongly deepens the audience's sense of facial expressions on both sides. In particular, it showed the large close-up of tears flowing on Joan of Arc's face. Later, this film was called "Expressionist" masterpiece. In the scene of the execution of Joan of Arc, the camera is turned to a panoramic view. At this time, the camera not only captures the expression of Joan of Arc, but also misses the actions of the onlookers. The film presents the cruelty of the church and the unyielding perfection of Joan of Arc, which constitutes an epic tragedy. This film confirms the classic law in the film: "use the long-range to express the comedy, and use the close-up to express the tragedy".
It can be seen from the above that the scene scheduling has developed into a primary stage, and this method of Carl Theodore Dreyer has influenced many later directors. The silent film has developed from theatrical documentary style to the story style style. With the rise of the sound film, the editing and scene scheduling methods have also undergone great changes, making the film more diversified and becoming one of the important art forms in the world today. Every mature art is inseparable from the process of development from low to high. The silent era as the foundational stage of film art can never be forgotten and ignored.
View more about The Passion of Joan of Arc reviews
