Regarding "A Man and a Woman", the screenwriter and director of the film Le Roouche once said:
What is the theme? The confrontation between passion and marriage, between life and death, between high speed and love. This is an emotional movie. Sound is more important than dialogue, and color is more intoxicating than color. Every moment there is a shout, a roar of a car engine or a song. In my opinion, this is my first romantic film. Through this film, I am convinced that people only need performance, not narrative. The characters' subtext is often more important than what they say.
The most important things in life often happen in one hundredth of a second. At times like these, no one has time to set up a film installation, arrange sets, cameras, and give directions. No, one has to record life in this hundredth of a second, to take more shots as soon as possible... Sometimes it's too late to shoot at tenths of a second. So, that event had to be recreated. That's why I tell the actors about the mental state of my characters. However, I never prompt them with the mechanical tricks of character-building. Use chalk to draw exactly where the actor has to stop, and he's done.
Before summarizing the audio-visual program of this film, I will quote Le Roouche in order to give us a more accurate grasp of the film.
When we look at Le Roouche's words, the biggest feeling is that he is a screenwriter and director with a strong personality, even a rather emotional one. This is what we often say "he is a man of temperament".
Le Roouche's films are just like him. "A Man and a Woman" is an unusually emotional film. To put it more mysteriously, it is a "feeling film".
Therefore, regardless of the use of film drama or the use of film audio-visual language, a certain genre and system are used. Evaluating Le Roouche's work seems to be inaccurate. From the point of view of drama, Le Roouche not only "tells the story" according to the rules of the episodic film, but at the same time, he "swipes the pen" in an unusually emotional manner. From the perspective of film audio-visual language, Le Roouche has typical French-style unhurried, slow-moving long shots, and at the same time, he has standard Hollywood-style dazzling shots. Therefore, it is undoubtedly wrong to use a fixed system to cover Le Roush's films. "There is no system" - this is the characteristic of Le Roouche's film, or rather, this is Lerouch's system.
1. Clip
The editing of A Man and a Woman is diverse. It has both long takes that stay alive, and rhythmic ensembles. It should be said that Le Roouche is arranging the editing plan of each paragraph according to the needs of each paragraph, or, in other words, Lerouch is arranging the editing according to his own feeling.
2. Scenery
Like editing, this film includes medium shots, panoramas, and long shots that express a wide range of scenes, as well as close-up shots and close-ups that emphasize exaggerated details of the object. The director arranges the scenes of the shots according to his own needs, rather than deliberately pursuing a certain style and system.
3. Audio
Perhaps because of the recording technology at that time, the sound of this film is all post-production sound, which is the so-called post-dubbing. The difference between the later dubbing and the simultaneous recording is that the sound of the later dubbing is pointed clearly, it is not as real and rich as the sound of the simultaneous recording.
The sound of the film is mainly the whistle and the chirping of seabirds. This sound runs through almost the entire film. Other sounds are often simple sound preparation according to the environment of the picture. Such as in the car, with the sound of the car radio. Of course, in order to express the professional characteristics of Jean-Louis, when Jean-Louis is in the racing circuit, the sound of the car is often accentuated.
It should be pointed out that there is a section in the film that is silently handled exceptionally well. It was when Jean-Louis had sex with Anna. The silent treatment at this time is not to express the physiological feelings of the men and women who have sex at this time. It strongly expresses Anna's heart and portrays the character of Anna. For Anna, making love is an important thing. She gives her "body" and "heart" to each other without reservation. So, at this moment, the director used silent processing. Just after this silence, in the hazy expression, Anna strongly thought of her dead husband.
4. Music
The film uses a lot of music, and the use of music is also diverse. Some are lively, some are soothing, and some are teasing. The use of a large amount of music is consistent with Lerouch's emphasis on expressing feelings and feelings. Because music is the most effective means of expressing feelings and feelings. Of course, the most prominent musical treatment of the film is the theme music that often appears in the film. The music is light, beautiful, lyrical, and at the same time jumpy. It is precisely because of its beautiful melody that the music has become a well-known love light music that is often played around the world today. It's called "A Man and a Woman".
5. Conversation
Different from the deliberately arranged dialogues of characters in conventional films, there are many meaningless dialogues in the film, such as the dialogue between Anna and Jean-Louis in the restaurant as we analyzed earlier. Jean-Louis's words are almost absent-minded and specious. Because, at this very moment, Jean-Louis's heart is in his "hand". Through the dialogue between Jean-Louis and Anne in this passage, we can feel that meaningless dialogue is also a means of shaping characters.
6. Light
The handling of light in this film is exceptionally dramatic. For example, in the passage "Reminiscence of First Love", the lights on the windshield of the car are used to describe Jean-Louis's complicated and disturbed state of mind. Another example is the blunt, black-and-white lighting in the "Introduction to Occupation" paragraph, which expresses the absurdity and ridicule of the event narrative. In the scene where Anna and Jean-Louis are having sex in the hotel, the lighting on Anna's face is almost hairy, and the lighting is so intense that it expresses the huge turbulence in Anna's heart at this moment.
7. Color
What stands out most in A Man and a Woman is its color treatment. It is almost the most diverse use of film color in film history.
Earlier, we have done a lot of analysis on the color of the film. Here we add a few more points:
① Color and structure
In the film, the appearance of different color passages is an important means of film structure. As we pointed out earlier, this film is an emotional film. Moreover, the time-space structure of the film is complex, including present time-space, past time-space and psychological time-space. How to make the many emotional and non-narrative details in the film more completely presented in front of the audience, and at the same time, so that the audience can grasp the clues in the emotional rendering? Furthermore, how to make the multi-time and space-time story of the film more clearly expressed? First, the color paragraphs combine scattered details into a whole and distinguish them from other paragraphs; secondly, the color paragraphs make the complex space-time relationship clearer.
②Color and lyric
The director expresses his emotions in the film, and color is an important means of his lyricism. In different paragraphs, the director uses different colors to express different feelings.
③Color and theme
Whether Leroouch admits it or not, he expresses his subject through color, his view of the world, of love. For example, high-profile black and white colors are used to express the absurdity of the real world; bright colors are used to express the beauty of traditional love and first love;
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