In 1958, the producer of [Li Jie Jiaren] carried the version edited by Wells on his back and was released without a trial screening. The film received no attention and was released. Ended with failure. And the most legendary story later was the 58-page memo that Wells struggled to write after seeing the filmmaker cut his film into a "malform". He submitted the memo to the senior executives of Universal, hoping to edit the film again. But Wells, who didn't sell money for several consecutive films, could not get the support of filmmakers, and no one paid attention to these 58 pages of "waste paper." Although at the end of the memo, Wells almost used an imploring tone-"At the end of this memo, I sincerely ask you to agree to edit the film in my editing mode, and I have put in many days of hard work in it. "
The dance
of the screen [The Beautiful Lady] is because of Orson Wells’ unique film language style-making full use of the oblique angle of photography, the close-up of people who are cramped and unstable, and the use of a lot of real light-for B-rated films and film noir have opened up an unprecedented situation. [Li Jiejiaren] Split the screen with dim black and white to create stunning colorful light and shadow; use the changeable and wandering camera movement to perform intricate and blurred screen scheduling. So every frame of film seems to be full of deep internal strength, which can firmly support the characters and the story.
The beginning of the film is a complex long shot of 3 minutes and 20 seconds, which has been talked about by film critics and fans for many years. The shot started with a close-up of a young man turning the time bomb knob, and then followed the young man to a car. The young man put the activated bomb into the trunk of the car and quickly fled before the owner took the showgirl into the car. , The car started. Since then, the camera has been moving with the car in the noisy town on the border between Mexico and the United States. Wife Susan: The motion camera stopped at the border crossing checkpoint between the two countries. Vargas and his wife were preparing for a honeymoon to brew a sweet kiss. The bomb-carrying car had passed the border and exploded in the United States. This long shot immediately stopped and quickly cut to the car that was blasted into the sky, with a raging flame.
This group of shots has both horizontal movement and vertical movement in space, as well as push and pull of near and far. The complex scheduling of scenes changing from close-up to wide-angle at any time is hard to see in the history of movies since then. The power of this set of shots, in addition to the technical complexity and ease, is that the bomb that may explode at any time, emotionally pulls our nerves all the time.
In addition to this classic beginning, there are also several scenes in the film that can be used as movie scene scheduling specimens.
One is the small hotel where Quinlan's subordinate Mansis sent Susan to. When the plot developed into the night and the sky darkened, Wells started his game of light. When Susan was in the room, only a beam of light from outside the window shone on her, and she was also shrouded in shadows. Her own shadow was often reflected on the wall of the room, as if Wells had placed it on the wall. A depressing element is in the picture. When the gangsters of the Grandi gang entered Susan’s room and tried to stun Susan with narcotics and drugs, close-ups of various hideous faces crossed over, and Susan’s scared face appeared in the meantime. When it was on the screen, it was again covered by the shadow brought by the gangster's body, and it became pitch black. When Vargos rushed to the small hotel to pick up his wife, his wife had been taken away and the hotel fuse was cut off, so we saw Vargos and the nervous night watchman shuttle through the dark room with the light of a flashlight and moonlight.
In another place, Susan, who was covered with drugs, was taken to the Ritz Hotel in town by the gangsters. The gang leader Uncle Joe tried to frame Vargos and pull Quinlan into her own conspiracy. But Kun Lan didn't accept this kind of blackmail, which would make Uncle Qiao grab his handle, and the drunk Quinlan and Uncle Qiao would fight in the cramped hotel room. The neon lights outside the window flashed and disappeared, and the fierce movements also flashed and disappeared. When Kunlan strangled Uncle Joe with a silk scarf, the movement of the portable camera made the picture go crazy. Lan's face hidden in the dim light, and Uncle Qiao's frantically struggling movements crossed back and forth. After Quinlan killed someone, he closed the door and left. With the help of flashing neon lights shining on Uncle Qiao’s violent face, it was comparable to the horror scene of any horror film, and shocked the woman who had just awakened from a coma. And howled.
In the last segment of the film, the eavesdropping tracking from the oil well to the small bridge, the camera has a wide range of motion angles, and the combination of night and light is also very exciting. The eavesdropping device, which looks rudimentary and backward, brings a particularly tense effect to the film. Vargos must hold the receiver not far from Quinlan to receive the clear voice, so Vargos first Moving on the numerous support structures of the oil well derrick, avoiding Vargas’s sight, tracking to the bridge of the small river, Manses led Quinlan to give evidence of perjury on the bridge, and Vargas waded under the bridge to follow. . The picture is constantly switching between the two floors above and below the bridge, creating a sense of tension that will be exposed at any time.
In these images, the skills of Orson Welles and his photographer Russell Metty are dazzling, but they are not meant to show off their skills. From the beginning to the end, the fate of the main characters is entangled. Photography needs such a complicated purpose, which is to frame people with entangled fate in the same frame, or use cross-editing to cause conflicts between different people. , Resonate.
■The loop of the plot rises.
This B-level film 50 years ago is very advanced in the play. The film does not have a simple story clue that goes through to the end. Like [Citizen Kane], Orson Wells must be in The movie is full of fun and disregarding the audience's appreciation.
After the murder of the rich man by the bomb at the beginning of the film, Mexican prosecutor Vargos and his wife Susan split into two clues. Vargos leads the protagonist Hank Quinlan Sheriff. The two speak Discord, set the tone of competition and conflict from beginning to end-this is about to lead to several branches of the plot; Susan's side, it leads to Vargos's opponent, one of the leaders of the Grandi gang in the small town of Mexico "Uncle Joe" and a group of young gangsters threatened Susan to ask Vargos to withdraw the lawsuit against the other leader of the gang-this ambushes clues that the Glendy gang will do something bad.
Subsequently, Vargas separated from Quinlan. After a brief meeting with Susan, Quinlan and Vargas got together again to investigate the case, and Susan was accidentally "jailed" to a small hotel run by the Grandi gang. In the joint investigation case, Vargas found that Quinlan was eager to catch the criminal and gave false testimony, so the two people in the group disagree, and the clues branched again. Vargas left the bombing case and went to investigate the evidence that Quinlan used for perjury. Quinlan feared that his honor would be destroyed, coupled with Uncle Joe’s conspiracy, also broke away from the bombing, and began to design the frame of Vargas; at the same time, the young gangsters of the Grandi Gang began to attack Susan. . As a result, three separate clues emerged.
After finding evidence of Qunlan’s perjury, Vargas contacted a senior police officer in an American town to talk to the hotel in an attempt to expose Qunlan. After Quinlan learned the news, he also came to the hotel. The clues of the two met again and spoke. Become an enemy in the confrontation. The clues have since escalated. After the two separated, each began a more intense investigation and murder.
This continuous dispersion and aggregation of clues has caused many loops in the film, and each loop has further aggravated the conflict of plots and has become a plot structure with loops rising. The plot finally completed a big circle and returned to the original point of promotion-Vargas and Quinlan met at the end of the film and ended in Quinlan's death.
The Universal Company back then felt that such a complicated plot structure was not as easy to make money as a straight line structure, so it directly removed it from the film, and then made up some scenes that could smooth the plot, excluding Wells from the editing room. This leaves a bewildering 95-minute version. The interweaving of plot and characters in the film was so complicated that it was beyond the ability of the senior executives of the film company to accept it. The genius of Wells also became the reason for the miserable end of the film. His previous films such as [Mr. Arkadin] (Mr. Arkadin), [安贝森大族] (The Magnificent Ambersons), and [上海小姐] (The Lady from Shanghai) were also because of his genius, which could not be a profitable tool. All encountered the editing "bad hands" of the studio.
■Men’s Judgment
Not long after the film's plot has progressed, it can be seen that the bomb incident at the beginning has almost become a clue to the disappearance, and the focus of the plot has become the contest between Quinlan and Vargas. The contest between these two men is the perfect blend of moral "good" and "bad" necessary for film noir. Film noirs, or films that describe thieves and bandits, are more or less to highlight the benefits of these people, and then watch them helplessly do a lot of evil, and eventually die tragically because of the uncontrollable fate, and they feel sympathy and respect. , A kind of love. The birth of tragedy in film noir is often caused by this.
They are filled with two kinds of power respectively. Quinlan is a primitive and barbaric power representative. When he appeared in the film, he was dangling a cigar, and his fat body was slanted out of the dark car. A face was not known because he was tired. The endless cases are still distorted into inhuman form because of the cigar dangling, but Quinlan does not lack the basic sense of justice that criminals should be punished. Vargas represents the majesty and formulation of the law. Before there is evidence, even if a person is found guilty by strong intuition, he cannot be convicted. His image is handsome and healthy, like a spokesperson for the law.
■Quinlan Sheriff
Quinlan is personally played by Orson Wells, who is not inferior to the director's level of acting. He is not a policeman corrupted by money. According to what he said to his loyal subordinate Mansis: "Don't you think I should have money, a policeman like me? And I have only earned a small amount of money after 30 years of work. Farm." What Quinlan hopes is to catch the murderer, but his methods are barbaric and corrupt. After searching for some clues, he uses his intuition as the basis to torture and instruct the criminals he identified. Mansis gave false testimony. The detective process of the bomb murder in the film is like this. Quinlan learns that the rich man’s daughter is in love with a poor and white leather shoe salesman, and discovers that the explosives in the mine owned by the rich man have been stolen, so he believes that the salesman is the murderer. Evidence, just use the bombs you bought as perjury. Quinlan insists that all the people he "framed" are "guilty, guilty, guilty, and everyone is!" Quinlan's inner evil and a kind of chivalry are in a final contest. But evil prevailed. The old man Mansis finally forced him to confess his guilt of perjury, and he was drunk and killed the old man in order to protect himself. He didn't take it easy. He slowly moved to the river, washed his blood-stained hands in the water, sat down in frustration, and a tear slipped quietly down the rough skin.
What makes Quinlan's image richer and more charming are the two loves implied in the film. One is his wife, because Vargos wanted to investigate him, and he was so annoyed that he started drinking again after 12 years of abstinence. In the tavern, he muttered to himself in his memory, saying that when he was a novice, his wife Strangled to death with a rope-"I followed him, waiting for the opportunity to catch him, but I didn't succeed... That was the last criminal who escaped in my hands." This implies that he used bad methods in handling the case. From this blow. Another love story is the sound of an automatic piano in Tana’s small hotel in a depression in a small town in Mexico. The sound of the piano was full of his memories. He chatted with Tana, the female boss who can fortune telling. We know that the two had a relationship before, but now, Tana no longer knows this man who has become too obese because he quit drinking and ate sugar. Old policeman. But Tana still loves Quinlan. At the end of the film, Quinlan fell miserably in the river. Tana looked at the corpse and said: "He is a disgusting policeman... He is more or less a man... How do you judge a person, really Does it matter?" Then the director arranged for her to walk into the night in the dark shadow, and the last trace of affection about Quinlan disappeared immediately.
Comparing Vargas with supporting actors
, Hollywood superstar Charles Heston is much boring playing Vargas. He abides by the "law" and does not agree to abuse the power of the state apparatus. His theory is: "I don't think a policeman should put people in jail like catching a dog... In any free country, the police should abide by the law. The law protects both innocent people and criminals." He asked angrily. Quinlan, who has illegal criminal investigation methods: "Who is the boss, the police or the law?"
But like Quinlan, he is a man of flesh and blood after all, and in the end he cannot avoid a kind of loyalty. After his wife disappeared, he went to the tavern, and angrily picked up the gangsters of the Grandi family like a chicken, and roared like a lion, "I am not a policeman now, I am a husband! My wife is here. Where?" He didn't realize that he had already stepped into a situation where Quinlan was deaf to the law. The young ones couldn't beat him either, letting him overturn the bar counter.
The supporting actors of the film also have experienced performances. Quinlan’s wife, Susan, went from the wisdom of dealing with the gangs to the last weak and helpless; the Uncle Joe of the Grandi gang went from the first treacherous cunning to the horror of seeing death at the end; Quinlan Pete Mansis, the old subordinate of Peter Mansis from the beginning, fell into a kind of loyalty that is indiscriminate between good and evil, and finally his heart is lit by the light of justice... Their transformation, fully cooperating with the protagonists, provides a possibility of friction and resonance.
■The tragedy of Wells: an exhausted future In
the 1990s, it was edited by several Oscar-winning editor Walter Murch and others based on Orson Wells’ 58-page memo. "Director's Cut Version". Compared with the movie version released that year, this version includes more than 50 major and minor changes. Despite the efforts of posterity, after all, it is impossible to truly restore the director's intended editing. This is also the long-standing tragedy of Wells in Hollywood. This genius has always dealt with various producers in order to be able to display the director's genius in the film. Truffaut once said, "The real tragedy of Wells is that he spent so much time dealing with producers who have all the power in the past 30 years. The producers asked him to smoke a cigar, but even a hundred feet of film. Not to him."
Near the end, in Tana's tavern, Sheriff Quinlan had such a dialogue with her old lover Tana. "Come on, help me calculate my future." "You don't have a future." "What do you mean?" "Your future has been used up." Tana said Quinlan's words, how much of Wells's own shadow was projected. , Wells sprinkled all the geniuses who did not compromise with the audience and the box office in every film he got. In the end, no one dared to make a film for him. The price of his artistic freedom was his future.
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