"Life Must Not Be Seriously Discussed": Paradise Questions, 1932 In her famous "Notes on "Camp"", Susan Sontag said that Lubitsch's 1932 work "Trouble in Paradise" (Trouble in Paradise) is the most perfect "Camp film", which benefits from "making the style The casual, mellow way in which it is preserved".Perhaps this approach, this new sensibility, which has been christened by the fashionable term "camp," is what cinema calls the "Lubitsch Touch."There are various interpretations of this famous signboard term in the critic circle.Let’s take some off-the-shelf ones: Roger Ferristo thinks “it’s a subtle souffle that seems to reconcile two flavors of sexual humor and dark passages”; Richard Christensen it represents "Elegant, stylized, elusive, witty, charming, tasteful, likable, nonchalant, and wanton gender difference"; David Bordwell, in his history of cinema, calls it " It is very clever and uniquely expresses the suppression of sexual hunger and intrigue and intrigue hidden under the appearance of polite manners"; Hong Kong film critic Du Du simply said that it is "waving a nimble pen to make a fuss; on the one hand, it needs to go deep On the one hand, it must successfully avoid strict film censorship and superficial social and moral requirements" "Totem of Eroticism"...

Gradually, we will understand that Lubitsch and his touch mainly come from his obscure but very interesting description of eroticism.As Charlie Chaplin said, "He expresses sexual elegance and humor in a way that is not pornographic, and no other director has this skill." 1. "True Love, False Love" is the translated name of "Trouble in Paradise" when it was first released in Shanghai. It points out that the main theme of the film is about love, and the title "Paradise Problems" more or less shows that the film refers to "trouble in paradise". social intent.No matter how it is translated, the content of this film always implies the connection between money and lust.It is said that Hitchcock's "ToCatchaThief" (ToCatchaThief) and "Marnie" (Marnie) were inspired by this film.If jewelry is a symbol of lust and stealing is a kind of satisfaction, then the male thief Gaston and the female thief Lily in "The Problem of Paradise" are really like firewood.The opening scene is a night scene of the water city of Venice - to be precise, a scene where a cleaner sings "My Sun" and takes out the garbage.This interesting idle pen appears twice in the film, implying a certain incongruent true face behind the glamor (high society attire/thief identity).Of course, such an association is unavoidably disappointing. Lubitsch did not point out that there is actually a rotten atmosphere under all kinds of customs. In fact, this episode only shows some unexpected interest.After watching his movies, one would naturally think of what Wilde said in "Lady Windermere's Fan", "It is really absurd to divide people into good and bad. People are only interesting and boring." (Lubitsch once directed in 1925 this silent film).

The next scene where the male thief Gaston and the female thief Lily met for the first time, almost everyone who watched it had to chew on it again and again, and a "literary idol" like Mike had to re-interpret it again.At the beginning of the film, everyone thought it was a scene where a certain baron and a certain countess had an affair. The man was polite, but the woman refused to return the favor, and even the moon was reflected in the champagne.And the theft next door is inserted into this perfect dinner from time to time.The theme of this dinner dialogue is: the secret tryst in the upper class, the irresistible love between men and women, the exposure and contest of identity theft.Lubitsch marvelously blends these three distinct atmospheres, tones, and moods into an unbelievably pleasant flavor.In the end, professional admiration and appreciation turned into lust, and after the couple embraced each other, there was only an empty sofa on the screen.This is the standard way of expressing "sex" that Hollywood has adopted and has continued to this day. After hugging and kissing, men and women must fade out or fade to black, or directly "Theend", and the rest is left to the audience's imagination.Before Lubitsch, the (Griffith-style) love affairs were all righteous and strict.From this picture, we can understand Jean Renoir's claim that "Modern Hollywood cinema was created by Lubitsch" from a certain aspect.

2. In terms of narrative, Lubitsch is flexible, concise and compact.Transition from the first paragraph to the second paragraph—Ms. Colette’s life as a rich woman only uses a small advertisement, and then quickly edits together the space she moves in, the characters she contacts, and the communication she is passionate about. Mrs. Colette's personality, habits, emotional status, and economic status are clearly explained. In addition to her wit and shrewdness, she is quite poetic.After this passage, the passage in which Gaston moved into Colette's house and became his wife's secretary echoed each other from a distance, using almost identical editing to achieve the audio-visual experience of "confrontation".It's wild to think that Lubitsch's father was a successful seamstress, and that the tailor's son was a top-notch cutler for film.

Lubitsch's "cosmopolitan comedies" are almost always set abroad: A Question of Paradise is set in Paris, A Question of Life and Death is set in Warsaw, The Corner Shop is set in Budapest, and so on.But Lubitsch did not shoot exotic and urban scenes. Exotic places are just some kind of game means for him. The focus of his films is always on people's most subtle emotions, manners, and expressions.Although it is still transplanted from the exquisite technique of mime, it is not exaggerated.And the best subject that can show subtle changes in mood, manner, and expression is "sex".The unique "frivolity" and the ridiculous "elegance" are mixed and fermented to produce a slightly intoxicating atmosphere.Another catalyst for "metropolitan comedy" is language. "Problems in Paradise" inserts Italian, Russian, German, and Spanish from time to time, and the audience can get a laugh from the deliberately strengthened tone if they don't understand it.

"A Problem in Paradise" has a passage that seems ordinary now, but it belongs to the kind of passage that Orson Welles praised Lubitsch's "talent and originality to scare people".The camera is always facing an alarm clock, using the changes in the position of the pointer, the brightness and darkness of the light, and the off-screen dialogue to tell the changes in the emotion and relationship between Mrs. Colette and Secretary Gaston overnight.Lubitsch captures what might otherwise be a cliché passage, a passage that might otherwise be tedious, with a single still shot, cleverly and vigorously.And his recognition and transformation of off-screen time and space is breathtaking.In fact, maybe it was this Lubitsch-like passage that influenced many directors, such as Billy Wilder, such as Yasujiro Ozu.Lubitsch's "Returning Marriage" (1924) except for two moving shots, all the rest are fixed shots, not even pan shots. This technique was "reproduced" by Ozu as his first urban comedy work "Marriage Studies" A Primer (1930).When Lubitsch photographed the relationship between men and women, he was able to show the emotions of the characters in a simple, clear and interesting way only through the changes of the characters' sights between shots (editing) and the movement of the characters' positions (scheduling).

3. Du Du once said that the men and women in "A Problem in Paradise" talk about money and interests on the surface, but they are still talking about love in their bones, because money and love are two in one-this is a typical metropolitan spirit.Lubitsch's "Love in the Metropolis" has various entanglements and transformations, which are finally resolved due to differences in identity and occupation.Gaston's identity as a thief disguised as a secretary is the key to the plot deduction. The closer the exposure is, the closer the drama will be to its climax.On the last night, Lubitsch used two doors, two windows and two rooms to intensely rehearse the struggle of a love triangle between a man and a woman.In the end, the thief will still be a thief, and the rich woman will still be a rich woman.The male thief Gaston and the female thief Lily embarked on the road of escape smoothly. According to the situation they first met, they showed their professional skills on each other, and once again replaced flirting with stealing-both are related to the body.As for the "Lubitsch touch" "about the body", Lubitsch himself said: "Even if such a thing exists, I don't know what it is. It only exists in everyone's mind. If I wake up to its existence, I'm afraid it will will disappear."

If you have to ask why "A Question of Paradise" became a classic just because of the connection between stealing and flirting, then what Wilde said in "Vera the Nihilist" may come in handy. He said, "Life is too important. So you can't talk about it seriously." Renoir's Black Poetry: Dressed Beasts, 1938 Labetehumaine is the second adaptation of Zola's works by "Cinema Citizen" Jean Renoir (the first one was "Nana" with huge investment in 1926), and it describes "human nature". Jacques Lantier, the train driver of the alcoholic family, a schizophrenic who thought he was a bad breed, was finally destroyed under the wheel under the double torment of love and murder.This masterpiece reveals the instinctive desires of lust, jealousy, greed, and revenge in human nature in the external environment of trains and railway stations full of mechanical flavors.In terms of style, it is not only the "poetic realism" that Renoir himself firmly believed in, but also the so-called "black realism" by Bazin.

The five-minute train from Paris to Le Havre, in Renoir's mind, a pile of steel locomotives turned into a flying carpet in an oriental story. He said, "Zola is in his grave." Deep" supports this approach.Locomotives, stop lines, and steam constitute the poetry in Zola's novels.And the montage composed of the speeding train and the facial expressions of the characters strengthened the terrible crime.In the film, the decadent and brutal hero Jacques, the beautiful and ruthless heroine Savilina, and the plot structure of the two murders all undoubtedly have the characteristics of film noir.

The film was so austere in technique that it was condemned as technically obsolete even at the time.However, the long-focus shooting method of explaining the characters and the environment, as well as the systematic development of traditional film grammar, were later regarded as providing great possibilities for future technological development. Kane was many years earlier (Sadour's History of World Cinema). For Jean Renoir, the poetry of Zola that he never forgets is that Jacques once dated Savilina, and she said to him, "Don't look at me like that, you will spoil your eyes."How dark is this poetry.

Loneliness is the quality of a great man: The Young Lincoln, 1939 In 1939, John Ford made the handed down work "Guanshan Feidu". Relatively speaking, his two films in the same year: the "too serious" "Young Mr. Lincoln" (Young Mr. Lincoln) and the "colorful" "Mr. Drums Along the Mohawk (Drums Along the Mohawk), considered an unimportant work.That may be the case.But this does not mean that it is not worth seeing. For "Youth Lincoln", it can be seen that Ford took the film with great respect.Strictly speaking, this film should probably be called a "court film" rather than a "biographical film".The main event is that the young Lincoln made a beautiful defense for a pair of innocent brothers when he was a lawyer (there was a passage in which Lincoln protected the suspect from illegal infringement, which was later reproduced in "To Kill a Mockingbird" ). The story is a combination of two historical cases, half-truths and half-truths: one is that Lincoln used the lunar calendar as evidence to expose the lie of the prosecution witness who claimed to have seen the murder process under the moonlight; the other is that a mother Seeing one of the two sons murder without refusing to identify who—it really had nothing to do with Lincoln (see Justice in Images, by Paul Bergman and Michael Esmer).John Ford is a master of narration. Truffaut once wrote in his commemorative article that Ford’s films “except for following the characters, there are very few camera movements, and most of them are fixed shots, and they are basically kept in the The same distance. This style creates a sense of softness and fluidity similar to Maupassant or Turgenev", he is an artist who "never mentions the word 'art' lightly 'The Poet".In "Young Lincoln", of course, it can be seen that Ford manipulates the narrative smoothly, and sometimes cuts into poetic scenes. Henry Fonda and Ford have collaborated on eight films, "Young Lincoln" is the first.In this movie, he created a charming image of Lincoln with his tall body, thin face, and deep eyes.Ford fashioned this young Lincoln with the concept of a future great president.As a man deeply admired by future generations, his wit, erudition, integrity, courage, strength, calm, pride and affection all appear in the film.In my opinion, Ford knows how to place Lincoln's back at the end of the screen at the right time, or make him turn his back to others, or appear in a silhouette, which makes Lincoln look a bit lonely-and loneliness is also a great man One of the most important properties that should be possessed.