Bazin believes that the nature of reality is ambiguous and changeable, so reality can be interpreted in different ways. But the mission of the film is not to interpret reality, not to qualitatively choose reality for the audience. On the contrary, the film should capture the ambiguity of reality as much as possible. In other words, film directors should try to maintain their humility in the face of reality, and let reality lead the direction of the film. "The movie is a window open to the world." Bazin said. This is the realism style of the movie.
And Truffaut's scene scheduling in "Four Hundred Strikes" can be called a classic template of realism style. Like the long shot at the end of the film that was talked about for more than 3 minutes. Formalists will definitely dismiss this shot: Montage can easily condense the three minutes into more than ten seconds. You only need to take a few seconds of escape shots, and then attach a set of close-ups of Antoine’s face, or simply follow Eisenstein’s example, attach a set of shots of birds flying freely, so that the audience can The association between flight and the flight of birds can show Antoine's ecstasy of regaining freedom to the fullest, so why take more than three minutes to repeat the same flight action? Little did they know that Truffaut did this to break the audience's old movie-watching habits, to force the audience to mobilize their thinking ability, and to take the initiative to understand the meaning of the scene, rather than passively accept the reality instilled by the director. On the other hand, this reality presented through montage is still a distorted reality. Because "Formalist techniques (especially subjective editing) destroy the complexity of reality. Montage imposes a simple structure on the real world of many changes, thereby distorting its meaning. Formalistic people are too self-centered, and It's easy to manipulate, and the field of view is short and complex" ("Knowing the Movie", illustration 11th edition, P150-P152).
Realism is also reflected in the film dealing with Antoine and his father. In these shots, Truffau always tried his best to include the father and son in the same shot. On the one hand, the closeness of the space reflects the closeness of the father and son, and on the other hand, it can also increase the objectivity and realism of the film. And reduce the distortion that editing may bring to the movie. When the positions of the father and son moved and left the original viewing range, Truffaut also used panning instead of editing to maintain the position of the two in the lens, as Bazin recommended. , To maintain the continuity of real time and space.
However, we should not forget that there are two guides (or more blatantly, idols) in Truffaut’s life. It is Hitchcock, the most famous master of formalism. Therefore, in "Four Hundred Strikes", while we see Truffaut's realism style, we can also see his future formalism tendencies. Ironically, this is reflected in the shots dealing with Antoine and his mother in the film: the director uses frequent cross-cutting shots to alternately present the two, forcibly pulling the two close at hand away, creating a fictional distance. Distance, thus highlighting the distance between the two. In this regard, Bazin may be difficult to agree with.
Naturally, the labels of New Wave, Long Shots, and Realism cannot prove that a movie is good or bad. The greatness of a movie does not make it great because of its superiority, but it achieves its artistic value through the ultimate concern for the human condition contained in the movie. Stripping away the endless praise of "Four Hundred Strikes" from the literary youth, we can see that Truffau is actually telling us a story of growth, a story of growth that may be cruel or pale. No matter how the twelve-year-old Antoine pretended, he was still a boy with clear eyes and a fragile heart in the end. He looked around, and finally saw a dark adult world behind the barbed wire. The so-called "four hundred strikes" is actually a French slang term that refers to parents who have to strike frequently when educating their children. It is best to strike four hundred times before giving up, so that the child will be obedient and "grow up." The commentator often said that "Four Hundred Strikes" is the autobiography of director Truffaut, but the author thinks that this film may be a true portrayal of each of us, just taking the director himself as an example. Please try to remember: How did we "grow up"? We gradually "grew up" under the scolding of our parents. We gradually "grew up" under the authority and slap of the teachers in elementary and middle schools, or you would think that society is progressing and corporal punishment is gradually disappearing. But in fact, we all understand that the so-called "four hundred strikes" does not necessarily have to be corporal punishment. In this "four hundred strikes", the most important thing is not physical abuse-Antoine in the movie did not receive much Physical punishment, the important thing is that the whole society is telling us that we are wrong, we are naive, and we should follow their teachings and do what they tell us to do. Thus, we have become them. As a result, we successfully "grew up". We will "grow up" like this, we will study hard, we will work, we will get married and have children, and we will become so mature. We will become so mature that when we face our children, we will do to them what others have done to us, but we have not seen the faces of the children so familiar, we have not found them today It was us who were in the past, and didn't realize what we had actually lost.
I think this is what Truffaut tried to do in "Four Hundred Strikes": to clarify our state of existence and tell us that our growth is actually so sad. So what should we do? Do we still have to grow up so sadly? I have no idea. I don’t think Truffaut knows either. Because, in the end, he only showed us an Antoine who was running desperately, and an Antoine who was escaping and growing up. Then, Antoine finally ran to the beach. In the black and white light and shadow, we saw that the clear sea was shining with moving brilliance in Antoine’s clear eyes. However, how do we know that this endless sea really means what? Is it a new world of vast freedom? Or a cage that is hard to escape after all?
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