In this film, the director tried to use Hitchcock’s experience in filming the masterpiece "The Cry" to explore his inner motivation and mental journey when he created this work, and to show his personal psychology and his relationship with him. The relationship between his wife Alma.
First of all, in the director’s understanding, as Marilyn Manson said, “artist’s work is an interpretation of the self”. The relationship between "The Terror" and Hitchcock himself also constitutes a This is a mapping of the work to the creator's self. In the film, the director emphasized this point from the beginning-the opening paragraph is the part of Hitchcock's storytelling, and the protagonist in the story murdered his brother, and has a sin against his mother. Unusual possession complex. Subsequently, this story appeared many times in the first half of the film and was repeatedly emphasized. Through this short story, the director strengthened two points-the correspondence between the storyteller Hitchcock and the protagonist of the story, and the significance of this story as the prototype of "Scary". Therefore, with the help of these two points, we can more clearly see the message that the director is trying to convey: to quote the storyteller Hitchcock, "From the beginning of Cain and Abel, brothers will be mutilated, and humanity will exist. "On the dark side", and the protagonist who murdered the brothers in the story undoubtedly reflects this, so Hitchcock himself has a dark side corresponding to it, and this deep inner factor contributed to his filming of "Scary". Intrinsic motivation.
In the second half of the film, the interspersed appearance of the short story no longer continued, but replaced it with a more straightforward form, continuing to deepen the relationship between Hitchcock himself and "The Cry"----Hitchell In Kirk's solitude scene, the protagonist "Bed", who is the prototype of the "Cry" event, began to appear in large numbers. It was this Bader who led Hitchcock gradually to the depths of the dark side. Therefore, through the short story in the first half and the protagonist of the event prototype in the second half, the director gradually strengthened the inherent identity between Hitchcock and the protagonist of "The Cry"-Hitchcock is the same as the protagonist. Possess a dark inner side that is different from the outside: the desire to possess women.
In the movie, the direct description of Hitchcock himself, the clues are also mainly based on the excavation and analysis of the inner face of his person-for this movie with "Terror" as the main plot. In other words, exploring the origin and opportunity of creation, and then interpreting the human nature of director Hitchcock, who is the core of creation, is a very smooth way of thinking.
In the movie, the main image of Hitchcock is extended in a direction that is aging but still wants to regain youth motivation. At the beginning of the film, the director arranged an awkward moment for Hitchcock at the premiere of "North by Northwest"-he was asked "Are you supposed to retire" and then failed to answer. Hitchcock's aging has been thrown out as a theme in this scene. To be more specific, Hitchcock also encountered a kind of "aging" obstruction in film creation. His successor list as a master of suspense was discussed in depth by the media, and the production companies wanted He shoots some self-replicating things, and rejects his innovative attempts "unlike Hitchcock". It can be said that here, the director has more accurately found the common dilemma of the old masters-the outside world believes that you are old and difficult to continue the glory of the peak period, and the partners only want you to be successful in your own work. Make a copy. This is precisely the problem that many elderly masters, including Hitchcock, will encounter.
Then, entering the part of his personal life, Hitchcock also showed his own aging-facing his naked wife Alma, he just glanced at it casually, and then no longer interested, facing his wife's well-dressed The body also dealt with it casually without looking at it. For the shooting of "The Cry" and Hitchcock's personal psychological analysis, "personal lust" is a very important clue. In a subsequent scene, Hitchcock peeked at Janet Lee through the window, and it was this peeping that allowed him to establish his first impression of the protagonist of "The Cry", and determined that he was filming it. The determination of the film---he had a passion for Janet Lee, so he wanted to satisfy his desire through the filming of the film.
In the film, the director set up the important element of "Hitchcock's peeping" and gave it the meaning of "Hitchcock's possessiveness to women", which is used throughout the film. First of all, in a peeping shot of Janet Lee, Hitchcock confirmed his original inner motivation for filming "The Cry"-through filming, to satisfy his possessive desire for Janet. And then, he peeped at the changing clothes of Villa Myers-----This actress was once one of Hitchcock’s heroines, because she got rid of his "possession", chose to marry and establish His own family was thus abandoned by Hitchcock. Furthermore, in the filming of "The Cry", Hitchcock's motivation to satisfy the sexual desire for women through filming was revealed more publicly-in the name of the director, he used to watch this In an upright way, she "peeps" the sex scenes between Janet and the actor at close range. This clip seems to be deliberate by the director---he tried to remind the audience of a set shot of Hitchcock: He stared at the intimate scenes of James Stewart and Grace Kelly from a distance. And, in addition to the "voyeur" part, the director also arranged for Hitchcock to repeatedly watch and stroke the photos of Grace Kelly, Marlene Dietrich and other "Greek girls" in the middle of the night, in order to strengthen his use of film shooting To satisfy the performance of the erotic desire for women.
It can be said that the performance of this layer is quite similar to Hitchcock in history. Hitchcock is widely regarded by the outside world as "have a special desire for her queen heroine." The heroine of "The Birds" Tibi Headley has even accused Hitchcock of "sexual harassment" of her on set. Therefore, the director’s use of "desire for women" as the driving force for Hitchcock's filmmaking is self-evident to a certain extent, and it is also an interesting direction of analysis. After all, in Hitchcock's films, his heroine often encounters acts of assault, fright, etc., resulting in a masochistic reflection. If you regard it as a kind of Hitchcock's self-satisfaction, it seems all right.
Therefore, from the perspective of film creation, the director gave Hitchcock's duality between the surface and the inside, exposing the dark side of his heart. His behavior actually corresponds to the commonality between him and Norman Bates, the protagonist of "Cry" established by the director --- Norman has the "external appearance of a gentle gentleman" and "attachment to the mother, through the body of a woman" To satisfy the inherent duality of the possessive desire for mothers, Hitchcock also possesses the “don’t want to admit aging, but want to make a great movie to regain youth and vitality” and “constitute the driving force of film creation. The duality of "inner desire for women's strong possession." Moreover, the light and dark sides of Hitchcock are precisely interacting and inseparable---when he lacks interest in women, he cannot find inspiration for filming movies; and when he starts to be passionate When creating "Scary", as he said to himself, "recovering the vitality of youth", what was also recovered was the adolescent and strong desire for women. Therefore, in the director's understanding, Hitchcock himself is undoubtedly the same as what he said in the opening story, "the light and the dark side are symbiotic."
For Hitchcock's depiction, the director certainly cannot ignore the existence of his wife Alma. In the movie, Hitchcock and Alma actually form a mutual and identical relationship. Like Hitchcock, Alma also has two sides. On the one hand, as the wife of an old great director, he has a strong sense of "good help" as an older woman-helping Hitchcock modify the script and maintain elegance to the outside to maintain Hitchcock's Save face, step back when the credit comes in order to ensure the glory of her husband, and endure Hitchcock's eager desire for co-actresses. However, deep down, she also has the "youth" side of being an independent woman-in the opening paragraph, she backed up in front of the reporters who surrounded Hitchcock, but she was not willing to this state. She wants to create a script with her writer friends so that she can be recognized; and in terms of personal life, she also wants to seek a love that belongs to her completely, and she has a faint affection with writer friends. It can be seen that Alma, like Hitchcock, shows duality-in a very typical dinner scene with Janet, Alma first saw Hitchcock’s intimacy with Janet. Keeping etiquette on her face, she then went to the bathroom to touch up her makeup (trying to overwhelm Janet’s heart in terms of her beauty), but after a female friend met by chance expressed her speculation about the traces of Hitchcock’s affair, Alma left directly. (Externally to protect her husband's virtuous and internal help).
In the film, the director did not simply use Hitchcock and Alma as their single clues to perform separately, but in the first half and the second half, they established a simultaneous expression and mutual connection between the two. In the first half, the synchronization between Alma and Hitchcock is mainly the synchronization of "the old people want to find the peak of youth"-the scene of the two people discussing the script of "Terror" at home In the movie, the two enthusiastically discussed the script, showing a kind of youthful hope of "recreating glory", and in the background at this time, it is the gardeners who care for the garden (the garden has a special meaning in the film: before , Alma was asked what she was doing recently, and answered "Take care of the garden"-an activity of an elderly retiree. At this time, she and Hitchcock did not care for the garden, but discussed the script, indicating that the two of them were at this time. His mentality is not to admit aging, but to try to regain youth), the withered leaves in Hitchcock's hands also hinted at his desire to "don't want to be this leaf". Moreover, Alma’s duality, in addition to her own independent part, is also manifested in the way Hitchcock treated Hitchcock. On the one hand, she supported Hitchcock to regain her youth and film "The Cry," on the other hand. He also restrained his diet: not to eat sweets and drink to prevent excessive calorie intake, which is obviously a regimen for the elderly. In other words, on the one hand, Alma keeps his mentality in sync with Hitchcock, and at the same time shows "want to bring him back to his youth" and "recognize his old age" in the way he treats Hitchcock. The two-sided properties of.
In the second half, Hitchcock's inner dark side and Alma's inner dark side have been further strengthened. First of all, on Alma's side, she seems to have decided to abandon Hitchcock and chase her own youth---the seaside creation and date with the writer. And more importantly, on Hitchcock's side, his inner dark side got a bigger explosion-he discovered Alma's abandonment of himself, thus inspiring his own despair about the unfulfilled desire for female possessiveness. Love, and lead him to a deeper dark side (in the scene where Hitchcock discovered Alma’s seaside date, Bede appeared again and became an important presence leading Hitchcock to find clues, suggesting that Hitchcock and Bader’s connection deepens). And ingeniously, it was this feeling of despair that stimulated Hitchcock’s creative inspiration for the most classic scene of "The Cry"-under the anger and despair of the frustrated female desire, Hitchcock Kirk personally took the knife, slashed Janet, and guided Janet's horrible performance, thus creating the "bathroom murder" scene in the movie that was quickly edited between the knife and Janet. Here, Hitchcock personally plays Norman Bates, showing that he is desperate to deepen Norman's identity on the dark side. And, just like Hitchcock’s previous show of "a narration of Janet’s desperate venting to guide Janet’s performance," Hitchcock is based on this inability to possess women. Only with the negative emotions, he has the ability and inspiration to create classics. Therefore, the director is reminding us: Hitchcock's dark side, it happens to determine the greatness of his creation.
In fact, if this interpretation is enlarged to Hitchcock's creative career, it seems to be true to a certain extent. In Hitchcock's life, he has always been in a state of "desired" for his queen blondes. As some public opinion said in the analysis of Hitchcock: He understands that compared to a tall and handsome actor like James Stewart, he is just a short, fat and bald guy, so he will never get those blondes. . Therefore, from this direction, we can also think that: in Hitchcock’s career, regardless of his youth or aging, he has always maintained an attitude towards Grace Kelly, Mary Dietrich, Ingrid Bergman, and Qiong Fang. The intense enthusiasm of blondes such as Den, Tibby Headley, Janet Lee, Doris Dai, Jin Novak, etc., and with him, generations of blondes will always leave him-especially The marriage of Ingrid Bergman and Grace Kelly (For the part about Grace, special lines have been arranged in this film, through the mouth of Alma to remind the audience: the impact of their marriage on Hitchcock) Therefore, the frustration of possessiveness for blondes derived from this inferiority complex formed Hitchcock’s main driving force in his creation, leading him to shoot classic scenes-Bright and The gloomy duality of personality is once again shown here. Take "The Cry" involved in this film as an example, perhaps Hitchcock brought himself into the Norman Bates who has a deep identity with himself, and transferred his possessive desire for blondes to Norman. The female possessive desire arising from Oedipus was based on Norman’s perspective and used Norman to vent her own possessive desire for Janet, thus giving the film a true expression of horror and distortion of human nature. This great work.
Up to this point, the direction and ideas of the film are good---under the leadership of the director, we have seen the duality of Hitchcock and Alma, and Hitchcock and the director’s desire to express The dark side of Ou Kirk's heart contributed to his artistic greatness." However, at the end of the movie, all the changes seem to be a bit unsatisfactory---the interaction between Alma and Hitchcock leads to a mediocrity that does not seek merits but seeks no demerits.
When Hitchcock discovered a scene where Alma was communicating with a friend of the writer outside, he peered at Alma through the window. Here, the director tells us: Alma has also become Hitchcock's voyeuristic target-she is classified as a "blonde" Hitchcock wants to possess (Alma also happens to be blonde). This level of expression actually coincides with an anecdote in the filming of "The Cry", and may also be a reference for the director: Hitchcock once put the props of Norman’s mother’s skull in the refrigerator at home, letting Alma Inadvertently received a huge shock. In this peripheral anecdote, Alma has undoubtedly become the same kind of "blonde" in the film, and together with Hitchcock has become the object of shock.
Therefore, the director took this as a change to guide Hitchcock's dark side of women's possessiveness to his love for Alma in the later period. In fact, this is a good design. After all, for a great director like Hitchcock, to shoot a biographical film with him as the protagonist, of course, at the end, he must try to neutralize his negative image and return him to a relatively positive character summary. As for the direction of the film, it is a very suitable idea to attribute the dark side to the love for his wife at the end. Later, after Alma broke away from his control and pursued love, Hitchcock's dark side was further deepened, and he created the classic bathroom scene of "Personally Raise the Knife and Cut at Janet". It can be seen that the departure of Alma, the "only blonde girl who obeyed him", completely aroused Hitchcock's desperate desire for women. And, when Alma refused to mediate, Hitchcock devoured ice cream frantically-he completely resisted the health regimen as an elderly person, but overeated like a young man, trying to prove his youth and resist The fact that I am unattractive to women and my desires cannot be satisfied.
However, in the end, Hitchcock had no choice but to face his own aging-overeating mixed with the despair of the blonde girl leaving, he was seriously ill. In this illness, he finally realized his reality and sincerely expressed his heart to Vera Mayerstein: "Why are you leaving me to get married?" and accepted Vera's response, "I have In your own life, your blonde is just a fantasy existence." It can be seen that, at the end of the film, Hitchcock finally accepted his aging, and subsequently accepted that his possessive desire for blondes was inevitable.
However, the ending of the film based on this is vague. After Hitchcock confessed that his desires were frustrated, Alma returned to him, in a form where both sides took a step back---Hitchcock saw her return and realized that "only she "Is the only girl I can get", so I gave up my own possession of blondes and devoted myself to her. (At the premiere, Hitchcock was no longer looking at blondes, but the audience---peeps. The possessiveness embodied by the desire to change disappears), and she is willing to admit and promote her contribution to her own film ("I can't make a good film without you") to satisfy her self-seeking; and Alma also gives up In order to pursue his own independent creation, he continued to serve as Hitchcock's wise assistant. Under such mutual compromise, the line of love was reasonably closed, and Hitchcock's character image returned to light from the dark side. And, for Hitchcock’s other performances, like his “self-admitting aging” when he found out that Alma’s derailment appeared when he was “caring for the garden”, he recognized his own aging, and he no longer had youth. The impulse-no longer die-hard against the review committee, but always deal with it, and achieve his own goals. As a result, all Hitchcock's twists seem to be sorted out, and the film can end there.
But here, there is a very huge question: how did the later success of "The Cry" come about? It can be seen that when the rough cut version of "Scary" was screened internally, the feedback from Paramount executives was not ideal, and the version at this time was Hitchcock's "substituting Norman himself and venting to Janet." Possession, and then Alma left herself and the despair of possessiveness was lost.” The finished product was shot under. In other words, the rough cut version at this time is Hitchcock's creation through the explosion of the dark side of himself. In the part of the classic murder scene in the bathroom, we can clearly see the director's expression: it is because of the dark side that Hitchcock can create classic scenes. Therefore, this rough cut version should be of good quality. However, the feedback for this version is bad. Instead, in the follow-up, Hitchcock admitted that his desires fell through and he was sincere about the relationship between husband and wife, Alma returned, and the post-production of the two collaborated to finally create a perfect release version. So, in this direction, Hitchcock's dark side obviously cannot support his creative ability, but he has this ability after excluding the dark side. This is undoubtedly contrary to the previous expression. It can be said that, in order to make Hitchcock's character image finally positive, so that his love with Alma can go in a direction that is understood and praised by the world, the expression content that has been emphasized as the backbone of the film has been processed into Passed by the area of ambiguity. As a film that explores Hitchcock’s inner motivation and driving force as the main clue to the creative process of "The Cry", the inconsistency at this level is a decisive blow to the core logic of the film. In the subtitles at the end of the film, the director tried to restore some of his original expression, saying that "Hitchcock was never able to shoot a work that surpassed "Scary" again", to show that Hitchcock was abandoning The creative inspiration behind the dark side disappears. Regardless of the pros and cons of "The Flock of Birds" and "The Terror", the subtitles alone only make the director's theme expression more and more swaying.
In addition, in fact, even if the film’s self-expression logic is fully established and unambiguous, the director’s performance is also biased. It can be seen that in order to express the theme "Hitchcock's dark side of female possessiveness contributed to the driving force for his creation of classics", the director chose the creative stage of "Scary" as the background of the film. Indeed, in all aspects, "Scary" is perfectly in line with the director's expression direction-the inner duality of the actor Norman, the desire to possess women, and the abuse and killing of blondes. But, in other words, only "Scary" can exactly correspond to the director's expression. The director used "The Horror" to provide solid evidence for his theme to analyze Hitchcock himself. However, in addition to "The Terror", Hitchcock's other masterpieces, such as "Rear Window", "Victorius", "Doctor Edward", "Northwest by North" and other works, are actually not so accurate. Provide evidence to the director—Blonde girls are often not killed or abused, and the male protagonist or villain does not have a fanatical desire for women. At most, there is only the voyeuristic desire of the male protagonist in "Rear Window", it seems It can be used as a self-projection of Hitchcock's own immoral "peeping desire" (as shown in this film). Therefore, if you put aside "The Horror" and put the director's point of view in other Hitchcock works, you can easily find the bias of this view. And, more importantly, to attribute Hitchcock's artistic achievements to the "dark side" is itself a kind of generalization.
In this film, specific to "Victorius", Hitchcock indeed borrowed his dark desire and the despair that followed to film the classic bathroom murder scene and a profound expression of Norman’s heart. And created a chilling horror effect. However, the greatness of Hitchcock is obviously not limited to the direct shock to the audience, but lies in the use of "Mugfin", the construction of suspense in the narrative, and the flexible control of the amount of information obtained by the audience. (Or omniscient perspective, or protagonist perspective) to create tension. Furthermore, in his highest masterpiece "Victorius" (the British "Video and Hearing" magazine held the top 100 film history selection every ten years, he won the first place), he showed the kind of faint The predestination and the theme of "reincarnation" under discussion is obviously by no means comparable to the level of "scaring the audience." Therefore, it is undoubtedly not enough to understand the profound horror created by Hitchcock's inner dark side as the inner source of Hitchcock's artistic height. Of course, as filmed in this film, Hitchcock in history does have the kind of fanatical love for blondes shown in the film to a certain extent, and perhaps this partly promoted his creation, but Obviously this is not all of his great inspiration.
In the movie "Hitchcock", you can see the director's imitation and tribute to Hitchcock elements-he tried to make Hitchcock movies, such as "Edward "Character Psychoanalysis" often involved in "Doctor" and "Scary". From this perspective, the film is very interesting. However, from the perspective of the theme, the director chose the film that best fits his theme as the background, and gave an interpretation that is basically self-explanatory and may be partly close to the facts, but this interpretation is undoubtedly a kind of interpretation. Deliberately seek innovation with partiality and completeness.
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