Genres are important for every film
and their productions, but concepts must not be forgotten and ignored by film
makers too. There are several types of concept that had been used throughout
the history of filming, or even until now. The examples of the filming concepts
are German Expressionism, Surrealism, French Impressionism and other else. In
today’s journal, I would like to focus more on French Impressionist Cinema,
which is one of the famous and majorly used concepts on many well-known movies
since year 1919.
:::FRENCH IMPRESSIONISM:::
In
French Impressionism, it shows more psychological causes and give narration
considerable psychological depth. The psychological messages are shown by
revealing play of characters’ consciousness, concern mental states, dreams and
fantasies. It also shows a lot of flashbacks and manipulates plot time and
subjectivity. As for the visual depiction, the uses of irises and
superimpositions indicate one character’s thoughts and feelings. The
point-of-view editing and rhythmic editing also shows characters’ experiences.
Smooth camera movements are used and brought by frame mobility, with cameras
tied to cars, wheels, cases etc. Visuals on the entire movie are also
distorted, filtered and full with vertiginous camera movement, in order to show
dizziness and drunkenness. However, French Impressionist Cinema is soon be
triggered off due to lack of interests by the mass audiences and the rise of
production costs. Film scholars also find it difficult in defining this
movement or whether to consider it as one of the movements or not. To give an
example of showing French Impressionist Cinema concept, the movie In the Mood
for Love shows a lot of the main requirements of this concept. In the Mood for Love is a 2000 Hong Kong
film, which is written, produced and directed by Wong Kar-Wai.
In the
beginning of the story, Mr. Chow and Ms. Chan rented rooms in the same
apartment, and they became next-door neighbors. Both of them have spouses who
always work and leave them for over-shifts. Their spouses went to Japan for
shifts, while in the same time, Mr. Chow and Ms. Chan just realized that their
spouses are seeing on each other’s spouse. To cure their loneliness and
sadness, they began to re-enact and imagined how their spouses met each other. Later
on, Chow rented a hotel room away from the apartment with Ms. Chan in order to
end the gossips from the neighbors in that apartment, in terms of cooperation
in martial arts serial papers. The love given by Chow to Ms. Chan was born, yet
the love story did not begin. In the end, Chow went to Angkor Wat and whisper
his secret in a hole of the wall in the temple, and he buried it with mud.
:::RECAPPED SCENES:::
There
are scenes and hidden meaning that can tell the appliance of French
Impressionism in In the Mood for Love. One
of the scenes will be where Mr. Chow and Ms. Chan re-enact the scenes where Mr.
Chow and Ms. Chan rehearsed the scene how their spouses showed affair. After
realizing their spouses had been betrayed them and met with each other’s spouse
without letting them know, they tend to act out the scene for trying to imagine
the process. Besides of the storyline in this scene, the smooth camera movements
in shooting the scene is also one of the visual depictions for French
Impressionism concept. To show smooth camera movements, it is usually brought
by frame mobility, with camera tied to cars, cases or wheels. The lighting in
the scene is also hollow by showing few shots of brightness to show the effect
of the lonely alley.
Another
than that, the love progress of Mr. Chow and Ms. Chan is also showing the
psychological depth from French Impressionism. In the beginning, they started
off knowing each other’s presence and get to know each other. It was occupied with
loneliness (such as spend their personal time in their own room, called their
spouses on the phone, having meal in the noodles stall alone etc.) until they
discovered the hidden affair between their spouses. They re-enact the scene how
their spouses met up with each other. Even though they are tending to build up
the presences of their spouses to each other, it is still hurting to know the
fact of being betrayed by their love ones. Soon, Chow invited Mr. Chan to write
on the martial arts serial of papers. As the day goes on, the “rehearsal” is no
longer being said as rehearsing, instead, they are slowly showing interests
towards other one. In the movie, Mr. Chow is already showing small acts towards
Ms. Chan, while Ms. Chan declined everything as she was still immersed in the disappointment
of the betrayal of her spouse. As Ms. Chan said, “We will never be like them”,
it shows the bitterness of Ms. Chan’s feeling. However it shows psychology acts
as they may had just waiting for the other to show more act.
:::CONCLUSION:::
“It is a restless moment. She has
kept her head lowered… to give him a chance to come closer. But he could not,
for lack of courage. She turns and walks away." As a conclusion, this sad
romance movie do show a lot of psychology depth by using many types of angles
and camera shots that show the story and meaning of the movie to the audiences.
The mise-en scene are also on point to show the classical effect, such as the
actors’ costumes and make-overs, settings, lightings and the most important:
the actors’ movements and facial expressions. The color effects are also
represents the overall loneliness of the storyline, which it mostly show grey,
brown, red and other greyish-based colors. To summarize the whole story, it
shows the hardness of showing love to each other while one person is still
bounding in the betrayal of their marriage.
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