Before the war, Al was a senior clerk in a bank with luxurious apartments and a happy family. But at the end of the war he was just a general army sergeant. On the contrary, Fred, a small blue-collar clerk who worked in a department store before the war, eventually became an outstanding air force captain. metaphor. But the mediocre performance during the war did not affect the postwar career of the 40-something old man Al. Although the original position was replaced by someone else, he was waiting for the position of the head of the higher-income risk loan department; but the young Captain Fred did not have such luck. After returning to the department store, he had to accept to continue as an ordinary clerk because the skill of flying a fighter jet was completely useless. Even degraded to be led by his original apprentice. Through the strong contrast between the identities and situations of the two protagonists before and after the war, the film highlights the social reality: the war once gave individuals who were originally in different social classes a new opportunity to position and display their own values. But once it was over, the original hierarchical order once again dominated their destiny. For someone like Fred, it was so unfair.
However, in a Hollywood genre film, any satire and flogging of social reality can only be a moderator. The film will eventually return to the main theme of how the great American people overcome the trauma of war and face a better life again. So despite being at the bottom of society, Fred is facing various difficulties. Although I don’t like to work in a department store anymore, I suffer from not having any skills and I am hitting walls in the job hunting process. Although I hope my wife who earns a high salary in a nightclub stays at home, my meager salary of $35 a week cannot sustain the daily expenses of the husband and wife. (Al's salary after promotion is 1 million 2). Although as a married man, he fell in love with Al's daughter Petty... But by the end of the film, Fred finally defeated himself. He decided to stay in his hometown as an ordinary airport demolition worker, and personally dismantling the type of airplane he had piloted was also a symbol of getting rid of the dark war in his heart.
At the same time, Al, who can be described as smooth in all aspects, did not return to the trajectory of the past. The cruel but extremely precious experience of war gave him the opportunity to re-examine his work. As he summed up at a company dinner party: fighting should not weigh the risks too much like working in a bank (this also explains from the side why he is just a sergeant), but to release more trust. Therefore, the company’s unsecured risky loans to veterans are not, as some people think, “taking the money from the depositors to take risks, but putting the treasure on the future of this country!” It was very sensational and the main theme. Aroused strong resonance among the audience. But I don’t know how much recognition the American people who are currently in the shadow of the subprime mortgage crisis will have when they relive this episode.
The third protagonist, Homer, is a mechanic serving on a naval ship. He had never participated in a real battle, but lost his arms in a fire caused by an enemy air strike. This slightly black humorous character background design is very clever. On the one hand, it brought more dramatic plots to the film-because the secret of the son has never been known to his family and neighbors, when Homer locked himself in the garage and practiced shooting, his father was very puzzled: Is it his son? Haven't played enough on the frontline? On the other hand, the dual physical and mental pressure of disability with both arms and lack of combat experience makes Homer face greater challenges in the process of reintegrating into society and family. In turn, the audience will have more attention and sympathy for this role. Of course, the main theme film needs a happy ending, and Homer is no exception. But even so, the scene where he led his girlfriend to the bedroom to show him (and more importantly to the audience) his disabled arms was very touching. The touching reason is that everyone knows that he is a real disabled veteran. In contrast, modern movies of the same type are difficult to produce the same appeal. Because they usually use computer special effects to cooperate with celebrities to create similar disability effects. But the problem is that the audience knows the star and knows that he can't really lose his hands or feet!
For Homer's Harold Russell, the Oscar judges originally thought that he might not get the award, so a special honorary award was set up. But I didn't expect Russell to win the best supporting actor in the end. So he became the only actor in Oscar history to win two performance awards for a role.
Compared with the distinctive male protagonists, the female characters in this film are slightly monolithic and typified. Fred’s wife’s promiscuity, and Al’s daughter Peggy’s kind and virtuous personality contrasts too sharply, making lovers eventually become dependents without any harsh test. What is surprising is that Peggy is not the most perfect woman in the film. The girl next door to Homer, who is determined to pursue a disability with both arms, seems even greater. However, for such characters and stories (similar to Juno’s girl giving birth to a son), there is no need to despise the nose as a pure sensation, let alone use the topic to make use of current malpractices. Perhaps it is the correct mentality to interpret it in light of the specific story background (such as the sound security system in the United States and the middle-class family in which the person concerned belongs).
The films of William Wheeler and Toland cooperating always provide classic bridges with deep focus + scene scheduling. In a scene in a bar in this film, a close shot with a large depth of field is Homer enthusiastically performing to his uncle and Al with the hook piano he just learned. At this time, Al was distracted by Fred in the phone booth in the distant view, and turned his head to look around from time to time. The dramatic effect is great! However, once I contacted Bazin's theory to analyze it, confusion arose. Because if deep focus scheduling can really liberate the audience from "a passive position", and "freely choose their own interpretation of things and events." So can this scene be changed to put the camera in the phone room, with Fred as the foreground and the three people beside the piano as the distant shot? Because the premise of the so-called "free choice" seems to be that events at different depths of field have the same or similar value of attention. But in reality it is impossible. Since the audience had already learned in the previous episode that Fred agreed to call Al’s daughter and said that he would no longer associate with her. At this time, using the phone room as a prospect must be an unnecessary repetition. The taboo of narrative. Therefore, Homer's piano performance must become the only choice for prospects. But in this way, the so-called free choice of the audience does not exist. They must "passively" accept the director's position setting and scene scheduling.
Another example is Homer's wedding at the end. In the middle shot on the right side of the screen, the priest is witnessing the marriage of the two newlyweds. The priest's marriage proposal obviously touched the mood of the best man Fred in the foreground. He turned his head and looked in the direction of El's daughter, and the other person in the distant view was also looking back affectionately at this time... The problem of this scene is: Because Homer and his girlfriend next door sworn to wear a wedding ring and other incidents have been explained. . The audience's focus is no longer on how the newlyweds are so affectionate, but on whether the other two former lovers can get back together. In other words, the audience does not want to actively "freely choose" "events" with different depths of field in the shot and explain the events at this time. The director is forcing them to "passively" accept. What's more, this scene is also not satisfactory: after Fred in the foreground turned his head, he actually left the back of his head for the audience. They couldn't see Fred's facial expression like El's daughter in the distant view. This is fundamentally different from the previous example. In the bar scene, at least Homer and Uncle in the foreground were playing the piano side by side to the audience, and we could see their joyful expressions. And Al in the middle shot also conveyed emotional changes by turning his head back and forth. So is it daring to say: The director actually used a montage (close-up of the expressions of two people) + voice-over (the priest's marriage proposal) to express a paragraph, wrongly used the depth of field and scene scheduling?
BTW: Why are some of the statements made by great French directors and theoreticians which are clearly applicable to certain types of movies, but they are often exaggerated and magnified to the height of guiding the overall situation? For example, Bresson’s theory of unconscious performance by actors has indeed been perfectly interpreted in his "Escape from Prison", "Diary of a Country Priest" and "Pickpocket". But when faced with grumpy jugglers such as Anthony Quinn in "The Road", and even the ecstatic and drunken Arnold in his own "The Donkey of Balkzal," it was obviously powerless. Similarly, if the deep focus + scene scheduling advocated by Bazin is to reveal the essence of the film, then the German expressionism that appeared before him, and the later Hollywood police, gangsters and other genres are not movies. ?
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