Comment on "la strada"

If someone looks at the history of Chinese film in recent years in a few years, they will probably feel that they will be saved when they see this path of disappointment gradually leading to despair, but will not be able to return to the sky. When it comes to the reason, it is nothing more than "you can't wake up someone who is pretending to be asleep". The introduction of commercial blockbusters has brought film creators collectively into the capital age, and the audience's aesthetics have been forcibly reversed by the powerful energy of habit, hidden in silence, and dragged into the illusion of Manli's set and bright colors. Fifty years ago, the social environment brought harm to realist films and their creators without damaging the foundation of their vitality. However, in today's increasingly free environment, realist films that pursue free and true expression are under the impact of the prosperity of film and television. The broken bones are hard to find. While supporting the box office of the popcorn movie, the audience sighed at the decline of the film culture, and then pushed the reasons to the cultivation of the soil of the era. Genre films with strong structural conflict have successfully sat on the throne of popular film aesthetics by relying on the ability to bind audiences to theater seats in the capital market, and let people forget the realism, which has a strong expression in itself. It is the most vital way of expressing the emotional impact of reality and tragedy; it even hides a time when realism was triggered in Italy 70 years ago. "New Realism". One of Fellini's masterpieces - "la strada", It is a film with strong neo-realism characteristics. Different from the early "new realism" films, like a premature baby catalyzed by social problems such as war and poverty, it has a congenital deficiency of lack of aesthetic value. Fellini chose to refine and develop on the basis of the neo-realism of De Sica and others. The director used his own keen intuition to combine the aestheticism that the public likes with the highly condensed realism with news characteristics. Authentic expression, rigorous structure, and delicate performance go hand in hand to form its unique aesthetic structure. The film "la strada" is such a film, and in my opinion, this film still has great significance for filmmaking today. In "la strada", Fellini tells a story of "popularization" and even "pauperization": Zampanó, a strong and "iron-lung" wandering entertainer, buys an optimistic silly girl Gelsomina and becomes him helper and wife. The two experienced betrayal, escape, and quarrel along the way, but at the same time they had mutual unknowing feelings. It was not until Zampanó accidentally killed the "fool" and abandoned Gelsomina, who was stimulated with mental problems, on the side of the road in the town that he noticed a trace of emotion hidden by his subconscious. Years later, Zampanó returned to the town with the circus, and when he learned that Gelsomina had died that winter, he had to use alcohol to numb his grief. On the seashore late at night, the back of the man who suppressed the deep loneliness and sadness remained in the last shot. "la Strada is a film with a strong neorealist narrative character, which describes the ordinary social life of the most ordinary characters. The script does not strictly follow the specific rules of drama. In order to preserve the authenticity of the film and the natural and unpretentious documentary style as much as possible, the director chose to give up some of the drama that might be attractive in the narrative at the beginning of creation, and instead used a relatively free and vital expression. The narrative is no longer like a rococo decoration full of fancy colors, but a real mood drawn in white. Needless to say, the film has a clever dramatic structure. The director structured the film with characters Gelsomina and Zampanó with strong personalities, connected the events on the road in series, and enriched the passive characters in the film with the environment created by the events. The script establishes dramatic plot punctuations on the basis of the social reality, and then spreads and renders it with extremely realistic daily life, so that the plot can be promoted with vitality. A film constructed only by authenticity and social status may not have real film significance and aesthetic value. The Italian neorealist director Visconti's "The Earth is Fluctuating" tried to follow the reality of reality in the film. The result of using ordinary fishermen as actors is to make the film an awkward documentary. Coupled with the inexplicable recognition of the "new" in the voice of criticism by the "neorealism" at that time, and the constant emergence of new experimental forms, the aesthetic characteristics contained in the film are increasingly dissipated. "la Strada is obviously not such a film. After stripping away the social meaning in the film and erasing the characters' identity as poor people at the bottom, what the film shows is love, sadness and loneliness that forever stand in human emotions. It is the emotional perception that is often affected by too many needs and desires in life and becomes insufficiently sensitive. People often love but do not know it, or do not pay attention. After all, Zambano has not paid attention to his inner emotions, such as " The "fool" said, "like a dog" can only express the neglected emotions in the heart in the way of "barking", which is a common problem of human beings. The final scene of the whole film is the expression of this emotional state. When Zampanó, who finally lost Gelsomina forever, realizes that his love is dead, standing alone on the seaside at night is enveloped by the cold sea breeze, boundless sadness and loneliness. A man with an "iron lung" finally revealed the fragility in his heart, which was rare, and this was his silent mourning for his deceased emotions. If it is a dramatic event that is deliberately arranged and full of coincidences, while capturing the audience's curiosity, seeking knowledge, and seeking stimulation, it also makes the audience distrust the film's narrative and the authenticity of the characters. Too many story elements make the audience distrust. Increasingly certain that this is just a story, adding interest at the expense of aesthetics. The relative film "la strada" captures the real and ordinary events that occur in ordinary characters, but has a common reality, which is the emotional support that can arouse universal feelings, and is a universal film aesthetic form brought by emotions. one. The portrayal and performance of the characters in the film are equally remarkable. The characters in the play have a clear image, an innocent and optimistic silly girl sold to a man by a poor family, a stray entertainer who is hard and closed only to live, and a tightrope walker named "The Fool" who is extraordinarily smart and sees through the heart. . Several ordinary characters with delicate and personal characteristics have completed a perfect cooperation in the film, supporting the whole plot, but not too bright and prominent outside the situation, so that the characters can maintain their uniqueness, authenticity, and reality. Ambiguity of life. The proper selection of the actors who play the roles is showing the extraordinary eyesight and directing ability of director Fellini's intuition and experience. Actors live as characters in the camera. They are not like most drama actors or most popular movie and TV actors. They care too much about whether they have a background and whether they are beautiful and delicate enough in the camera. "la In strada, they lie down and turn around naturally, paying little attention to the naturally exposed scars and fat. Compare that to the innocence in Gelsomina's eyes as she runs to Zampanó, who's just spent the night with other women, and her repetition of "You killed 'fool'" . ” The emptiness and despair that the soul is shattered at the time is far more attractive than the delicate faces of beautiful actresses. What’s more, in Fellini’s view, the bonuses that actors bring to the film’s aesthetics are far more attractive. No weaker than the narrative, the actors he chooses are also professional actors with great looks. In the United States a few years before the appearance of "la strada", an equally innovative and rebellious film was born - Orson Wei Wilson's "Citizen Kane". Wilson also pays attention to the establishment of authenticity in the film, and creatively uses a lot of new shooting techniques and expressions in this film. Among them, the rejection of the big studio model was born. Shooting in a factory studio, and moving the camera to the real environment outdoors, to ensure the real nature of the scene as much as possible. Probably great directors will always agree with each other, Fellini more directly not only uses real scenes, but is more practical and real and natural The lighting of the film, the editing and the scene difference that emphasizes authenticity. The American film master of the same period, Hitchcock, the actor-centered lighting method in the studio has become one of the characteristics of his films, and has influenced later A large number of directors have embarked on this road of appearance aestheticism. Focusing on sensory effects and giving up the support of some films' inner expression, this choice cannot be a mistake, but in my opinion, the gains outweigh the losses. And Fellini pays attention to the real nature and pursues the car. According to Ernyshevsky, "beauty is life", and he doesn't care about adding a layer of soft light to the actor's face when the real light source is not enough, or filling it up to show the details of the bright and dark parts of the picture clearly. "Unknown source" lights. Similarly, in order to ensure the authenticity and smoothness of the film's narrative, Fellini hardly uses shallow depth of field shots and close-up shots with a sense of guidance and jumping out. At the same time, the director does not use a lot of long shots. Or montage, perfectly avoided the mistakes made by a large number of directors at that time and even now in production guidance. It is precisely because of the director's pursuit of authenticity and firmness in self-expression that "la "strada" breaks out of the dramatic stereotypes that have long plagued movies. I personally think that the dramatic emphasis in the film has the film creator's self-satisfaction and pandering to the audience, and it is also a direct manifestation of lack of self-confidence. Of course, the film must not lose its drama, otherwise it will be generally unsuccessful, such as "Clear Sky" and "The Earth is Fluctuating", the initial attempts of "New Realism". However, drama and film are only homologous, and the comprehensive art form of film not only contains the characteristics of drama, but also contains the characteristics of fiction and so on. Therefore, the actions emphasized in the drama can be elicited by the narrative itself as a less intense conflict, and the film has the ability to formulate expressions that do not rely on the dramatic structure. The essence of film existence lies in the performance of recording, expression and aesthetic value, not the illusion that is forced to cater to the audience. In conclusion, technical skills are essential in filmmaking, but they are not the film itself. Fundamentally, cinema is a movement of thought, and movement needs movement to be validated. Therefore, the creation of films requires not only the spectacle created by technical skills, but more importantly, the expression and communication of consciousness, emotion and aesthetic cognition based on reality. This is undoubtedly very important for artistic creation, especially now.

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