Stanley Kubrick (1928-1999), a name that cannot be traced in the history of world cinema.
The audience praised Kubrick as "the filmmaker closest to God"; actor Matthew Modine believed that God himself mistakenly called Kubrick after he fell into the mortal world; and the director Steven Si Pilberg’s point of view is more “landing,” he said. Compared with Kubrick’s works, his films are only for children.
What kind of people and works can be known as such?
Perhaps we can sort out Kubrick’s important works from the beginning, specifically analyze his narrative characteristics, expression styles, and thought content, and combine his personal experience to observe the development process of his narrative, performance, and thought, as well as his The value of later generations can thus obtain a more comprehensive and objective cognition.
The best way to interpret Kubrick and his works is to start with his first important work "Killing".
Since the short film "Day of Fighting" (1951), Stanley Kubrick has created 3 short films and 2 feature films, all of which are hand-training.
By 1956, the 28-year-old Kubrick had created the feature film "The Killer," which marked the maturity of him and his works-of course, in terms of characteristics, style, and content.
01/story
In our current words, "Killing" is a black-style genre film .
The movie tells the story of a group of low-level people robbing cash in racetracks in a planned and organized manner, involving 7 people:
The mastermind Johnny who has just been released after five years in jail, the gay accountant Gavin who loves Johnny, the policeman Dylan who is heavily indebted, the racecourse bartender Mike whose wife is sick, the racecourse cashier George who is rejected by his wife and takes money. Nicky the killer, Morris the money thug.
Johnny’s plan is very careful:
Nicky shot the racehorse in the parking lot, creating chaos outside the racecourse; Morris provoked Mike, causing chaos in the racecourse hall, and lured the police in the office where the cash was stored to deal with it; George took advantage of the chaos to open the door to Johnny and enter the office area; Johnny went to Mike’s locker to get the gun, mask, and bag that he had put in advance; Johnny robbed and threw the bag full of money through the window. Dylan got the money bag downstairs and drove away in the police car; Dylan would Put the money bag in a room in the parking lot; After Johnny went to the parking lot to get the money, he returned to the agreed place and shared the spoils with the 4 people other than the killer and thugs; Johnny took the allocated money and went to the airport to meet his wife, Xiaofei, and fled Go abroad.
However, no matter how careful the plan is, uncontrollable factors will inevitably occur, causing the ending to be miserable:
Nigene insulted the parking lot administrator. Although the shooting mission was completed, the police officer called by the administrator caught him upright; Nicky was shot and killed by the police officer. George was pinched by the cheating wife Shirley and revealed the news; Shirley told her lover Val the secret in a blink of an eye, and Val began planning a "Cardinal Behind". Gavin, Dylan, Mike, and George went to the looting office after completing the mission as planned, unexpectedly, but Johnny did not arrive in time because of a traffic jam; Val and another accomplice came in to robbery and triggered a gun battle, except for the seriously injured George. All dead. Shirley packs her luggage at home and waits for Val to come and take her away. It is George who is desperate and is shot by George. Johnny, who discovered the change, bought the largest box for the money. When he arrived at the airport, the plane was almost flying; he planned to bring his money on the plane, but because the money was not distributed, it can only be put in the big box. The box must be consigned; during the consignment process, the consignor caused the top box to slip and fall apart in order to avoid a puppy, and the $2 million in cash was all blown into the air by the gale at the airport. Johnny felt Huang Liang Yimeng, and when two agents at the airport arrested him, he decisively gave up resistance.
02/narrative features
The narrative characteristics may be the biggest reason why the movie "Killing" was not well received at the box office at the time, but was widely praised by its peers.
It should be known that it was 1956, and American audiences' aesthetics were still at the stage of watching three-act dramas. Although genre films had been developed in the 1940s and 50s, works that subverted classical films in form have not yet appeared.
In "Killing", Kubrick used the narrative techniques of multi-line narrative and non-linear narrative -this is an unprecedented thing-we didn't really realize the magnificence of these techniques until Guy Ritch appeared. , Even in the 21st century, China's learning work "Crazy Stone" appeared in this field.
We look back at "Killing" in 1956, with continuous flashbacks and interruptions . The director flexibly used flashback editing and non-linear methods to spread the story to the audience in the form of puzzles .
This non-linear and complex puzzle has not affected the multi-line narrative. The motives, tasks, actions, and endings of each character are clearly explained-but if the audience does not concentrate and miss some shots, Will definitely be confused.
Isn't this the "brain burning" we pay attention to when watching movies?
Under the method of shifting the viewpoint of Kubrick's character, the movie is shown in detail and accurate to a few minutes and seconds under the perspective of each line. At the same time, a large number of switched shots are also the perfect way to create suspense.
03/Expression style
The expression style is the real signature of the artist—the artist does not need to sign his work, but people will know who is the author when they see his style of work.
Dialectically, in the movie "Killing", Kubrick's personal style has taken shape, but has not yet been finalized.
We can see that Kubrick retained the classical way of expression of " scene + narration ", which will be used in his future films. The most typical one is "Barry Linden".
Kubrick, a photographer who started with 35mm film, has been experimenting with fresh and interesting lens expression throughout his life : For example, at the starting point of "Killing", he used a long lens of nearly 20 seconds at the 49th minute. beat horse racing; such as when George and Shirley the same time frame the couple composition , Shirley always "superior", this is the film's charm fit.
What deserves the most talk and attention should be the realism style he has adhered to throughout his life , which is also reflected in "Killing".
In "Killing", the accuracy of the narrative level can be clearly felt. Time, tasks, actions, including full and reasonable character images (especially Shirley), rely on off-painting narration, character behavior, and lines are relatively perfect. To show it out.
The props and scenery are in line with reality, including the horses ate half of the feed on the day of the competition, and they all need to deliberately remind the audience.
Reality is what any Kubrick movie pursues.
There will be friends who don’t know Kubrick very well, questioning Kubrick’s realism mentioned above, and attempting to summarize Kubrick’s life style from the perspectives of expressionism, postmodernism, etc. ——Actually, this is a misunderstanding :
Whether you think Kubrick’s early works express satire or the mid-term works express absurdity, in fact, he himself has not been constrained by various "isms." It seems that Kubrick just used a camera to record the truth—because after editing the truth and putting it in front of your eyes, you yourself discovered the irony and absurdity of the world.
Of course, with regard to this point, the author will summarize Kubrick's person and his works in an in-depth analysis in the last article of the series.
04/Thought content
Kubrick is a recognized thinker among filmmakers.
He has read many books throughout his life, and maybe apart from Mao *dong, we still don't know anyone who can compare his reading.
On the one hand, his thinking comes from his extensive books and diligent thinking, and more from his true concern for the world and absolute curiosity about the unknown. We know that he cares not only about the depths of the human soul, but also about civilization in the depths of the universe, and he is very realistic. The movies he created are all related to the current and future of human existence.
The movie "Killing" is Kubrick's first important work, but the theme of the first has been throughout the rest of his life.
Precise plans, interlocking characters, and appropriate executors, everything looks perfect, but when things arrive at the execution stage, or reality comes, the results are often ridiculous due to the ubiquity of chaos!
Human nature is always the most difficult X factor to control.
In addition to "Killing", we can find this point of view in films such as "Dr. Strange Love", "2001: A Space Odyssey" and even "Barry Linden"; including "Napoleon", which he prepared for a long time but did not shoot. "Artificial Intelligence" is nothing more than that.
Gene Phillips believes that Kubrick "demonstrated the rational construction of the master plan on the one hand, and at the same time was skeptical of human defects or opportunities that affect success."
The Gene part summed it up right:
The lunatic general in "Dr. Strange Love" invalidated the US's sophisticated nuclear defense system; the most rational and intelligent computer Hal in "2001: A Space Odyssey" actually made a fatal error; the actor of "Barry Linden" for his life After all, the bereavement caused by his doting on his son, and the unbearable shooting and killing caused by his compassionate heart, eventually caused his own tragic ending...
The last half sentence of Jean's summary is inaccurate:
Although Kubrick often throws out reality cruelly, he has never participated in the evaluation to put himself on the moral side.
The world prefers to classify Kubrick as a "cold-blooded Darwinist" simply because of his objective perspective, coldness, solitude, and little self-defense.
In fact, Emilio Dali Sandro’s memoirs about Kubrick recorded Kubrick’s true thoughts-Kubrick’s evaluation of "Pinocchio" (as the early stage of "Artificial Intelligence" Research materials):
"It tells the tortuous journey of people from imperfection to perfection, from unhappiness to happiness."
However, whether in the face of the media, family members, or partners, he seems to have revealed his true attitude this time in his entire life.
Generally, he never talks about what he wants to express.
05/Summary
The movie "Killing" is Kubrick's first important work, and it is also a work of great significance to the promotion of the industry.
Prior to this, theatrical three-act play form flooded the screen, and directors were either too focused on the form or simply focused on the content. When he arrived at Kubrick, he combined Charlie Chaplin (only content) and Orson Wells (only form), and surpassed everyone's guts, experimenting with multi-line narrative and non-linear narrative. And it became famous.
There is no doubt that the greatest value and significance of this "Killing" to the film industry at the time and in the history of film is this-later noir genre films and multi-line narrative genre films, it seems that you can always see the library The shadow of Brick's "Killing".
In addition, putting "Killing" in all Kubrick's works for diachronic research, its "first" already has distinct personal characteristics in terms of expressive style and ideological content.
The focus on realism, the discussion of the relationship between the development of things and human nature will be an unavoidable issue in all Kubrick's future works.
Even though his style and ideas will continue to precipitate in later works, the "Killing" at the age of 28 is enough to make him stand out.
(END)
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