Metaphors are hard to understand

Soledad 2022-03-24 09:02:12

"Spiritual Night" was a film that was very controversial in the American film industry at that time. It touches on a lot of serious post-marriage issues and alcoholism, as well as sexual provocation and sexual interest. This was a big challenge for the American film industry, which had not officially adopted the rating system at the time. According to the old film system - the "Hays Code", none of the above mentioned factors can appear in the film. Under normal circumstances, such a film would not have passed censorship, but it also happened at a time when the Hays Code was broken and the film rating system was born. At this time, "Hays Code" gradually lost its restrictive power, and was rejected by many filmmakers, and the release of a film like "Spiritual Spring Night" has logically become a pioneer in impacting the old film censorship system. Therefore, the film has also become the fuse of the decline of "Hays Code". Due to the novelty of the subject matter, the film was sought after by the Americans at that time, and received a wide range of attention, which also made the content of the film more topical, and was discussed and studied by many people in the future.

The problem of alcoholism mentioned above is the most important social problem narrated in the film. The protagonists drink one cup after another, and after drinking at home, they drink outside, as if they can't stop. The dialogues of movie characters often contain metaphors and views on the society at that time. If you want to have a deeper understanding of the meaning of the movie, you really need to understand the current state of American society at that time, and then seriously consider every line in the movie. Another highlight of the movie is on the old couple. The old actors from the golden age of Hollywood have full tension in every word and expression they say. When it is performed, it is two people in one play, and there are no flaws.

First of all, let's talk about an old couple played by Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor in the movie. They themselves have good social status and good economic conditions. But they live in endless sarcasm and ridicule on both sides. Throughout the movie, they often try to find each other's mistakes as much as possible because of some small things, in order to laugh at each other. At the same time, they imagined that they once had a "son", and this imagining meant "enriching" the marital relationship and thus sustaining their marriage. They also have a bottomless quarrel over the "son" issue. The wife is neurotic and refuses to admit the fact that she does not have a son. She has always regarded this illusory imagination as a fact. quarrel. From such a plot description, the old couple seems to be living in a hopeless purgatory. What's more, the husband is a subordinate of his father-in-law and teaches at the same school. The husband has not been able to become the manager of the department for many years. For this reason, the wife keeps digging at the husband for this. The husband expressed his helplessness. Even if the wife makes trouble with her husband unreasonably on weekdays and bombs repeatedly, the husband can only suppress his emotions. When her husband couldn't bear it anymore, he had an emotional outburst, vented the resentment he had endured, and finally turned into an endless quarrel.

The young couple met the old couple at the banquet, and the old wife invited the old wife to be a guest at the beginning of the film. The young couple has endured the sarcastic quarrel between the old couple from time to time since they stepped into the old couple's house. Later, because the young wife was drunk, she became confused along the way, seemed to have lost her mind, and often said some indecent stupid things. The young wife is not beautiful, but her husband is handsome, and the young husband is also teased and seduced by the old woman. As the story develops, it is discovered that the young couple got married after misunderstanding that the woman was pregnant. It also explains why young husbands show less love for his wife, and sometimes even a look of disgust. Gradually, the young couple seemed to be caught in a trap, and they were "trapped" by the old couple and couldn't walk. As there were more and more conversations and more alcohol, naturally, many unknown household things broke out during the chat.

"Spiritual Spring Night" revolves around the dialogue between two couples, revealing the social atmosphere and problems in the marriage relationship in the United States in the 1960s. The way the characters speak, the way they think about things, and how they handle things is also very different from today. Different eras have different lifestyles, and life attitudes are also very different. Such a status quo movie shows exactly the most familiar living conditions and social problems at the moment, and the four leading roles can be said to go straight to the heart.

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Extended Reading

Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? quotes

  • Nick: To you, everybody's a flop. Your husband's a flop, I'm a flop.

    Martha: You're all flops. I am the Earth Mother, and you are all flops.

  • Nick: I'm tired, I've been drinking since nine o'clock, my wife is vomiting, there's been a lot of screaming going on around here!