Director said

Ayla 2022-02-19 08:01:59

This film was written by the German film master Fritz Lange in the 20th century and is an early work of film noir. As a German expressionist film director, Lange incorporated the German expressionist style into American Hollywood films: strong contrast between light and dark, unstable oblique composition, and dreams, fantasy, and symbols to express the dark side and fear of the characters in their hearts. Wait. Through a murder in a dream, this film shows the themes of reality and dreams, desire and depression, morality and depravity, good and evil, and expresses the power of reason through the visual presentation of the male protagonist’s mental crisis and fear. The doubts and moral criticism of the depravity of human nature.

Exploring the complex inner world of human beings, especially the blind and impulsive side, is a recurring theme in Lange's films. As early as 1931, he filmed the German film "M", which made a deep excavation and expression of human nature. The protagonist M is under the control of the inner devil, unable to extricate himself, and eventually falls into the quagmire of evil. Similarly, "Green Window" is also a manifestation of human unconscious instincts. In the film, we see the barbaric side of human nature, which can make people break away from the gentleness of daily life, act viciously and lawlessly, and pose a powerful challenge to human rationality.

In this film, the director shifted his focus from ordinary people to middle-class intellectuals. Professor Wan Li's academic status and social status indicate that he should be the executor of the middle-class moral code. He clearly knew the terrible consequences of his deviant behavior. However, Wanli still couldn't control his impulse and couldn't control his own destiny. Neither the power of reason nor the code of ethics helped him defeat the devil in his heart. He can only be at the mercy of his inner selfish desires, making mistakes again and again until they are destroyed. At the end of the film, everything is reduced to a dream, a nightmare that allows Wanli to experience how terrible it would be to give up moral restraint. This arrangement, on the surface, avoided the reality that Professor Wanli slipped into the abyss of corruption, but this was nothing but Hollywood-style self-comfort. Even if it is a dream, it is enough for us to see the strong desire hidden in Professor Wanli's heart. Although his depravity only exists in dreams, on the screen, the bloody smell emanating from the dream is enough to make the audience truly feel the terrible restlessness. The message Lange tried to convey was that such desires would also occur off the screen and exist in the minds of the viewers.

Another important theme of this film is to explore the roots of human fear. In Lange's films, the sense of fear always accompanies the dark side of human nature, manifested as a conflict between the self and the dark side of social morality. In other words, Lange extends the contest between good and evil in real life to the inner world of people, transforming it into a fierce collision between two opposites in human nature. The collision and confrontation of two psychological forces are often manifested through human fear. In this film, Wanli is tortured by conscience and morality due to manslaughter, and his sense of morality urges him to accept punishment. However, once the truth is exposed, his identity, status, reputation, family, etc. will all be destroyed, which in turn forces Wanli to choose to conceal it. If the murder is a defensive act of self-protection, then the destruction of evidence and the abandonment of the corpse woods are conscious and meticulous planning. For Wanli, the desire to defend his reputation directly conflicts with moral justice. And this irreconcilable conflict made him feel terrified, disturbed his heart, distorted his personality, and eventually led him to ruin, from a momentary miss to a deliberate murder. After the plan failed, Wanli was even more hopeless. Suicide became his only way to end his pain and free himself. And choosing suicide is actually avoiding the fact that everything will be lost after the incident is revealed. For Wanli, the uneasy conscience caused by a momentary error is far less acceptable than the fear of losing one's status. This ending reveals Lange's pessimistic outlook on life and reflects his distrust of saving human morality. At the end of the film, Wanli rejected the female sex in front of him. It was not so much a moral awakening of Wanli, as it was to avoid the psychological pain caused by fear.

The "femme beauty" is an important element of film noir, and the heroine Alice in this film becomes the representative of this image. According to feminist film theory, the "femme beauty" in film noir is a projection of male sexual fantasies and a means for men to get rid of castration anxiety. For this reason, "femme beauties" always appear as stunners. In this film, the heroine Alice makes her debut in the form of a portrait. In the shop window facing the street, Alice in the painting was half exposed, with a charming expression that attracted the attention of Professor Wan Li. He stayed in front of the painting with ambiguous eyes and subtle expressions. A few shots seem casual, but in fact they vividly explain the theoretical viewpoints of feminism. Here, Alice is the bearer of Wanli's gaze, welcoming and accusing the middle-aged professor's raging lust that has been suppressed for a long time. Later, when Alice walked out of the painting like a ghost and appeared in front of Wanli as a seducer, this desire was even more directly projected. Wanli fell into a fascination with Alice, and fell into a dangerous situation in the infatuation. But it needs to be pointed out that the image of "femme beauty" created in this film is relatively mild compared to similar images in other noir films, because Alice did not deliberately induce Wanli to commit crimes. But she is selfish, mysterious, sexy, and has a strong allure, which eventually led to Wanli's degeneration. From this point of view, Alice is enough to play the title of "femme beauty".

In terms of audiovisual, the most successful aspect of this film lies in its visual presentation of fear. As mentioned earlier, fear has always been a Lange theme. In his films, the protagonist is always caught in a strong sense of fear. This film presents the sense of fear to the audience in a vivid way. It makes the audience feel it, and impacts their hearts. Through the low-key lighting scene design, the suddenness of violent incidents and the use of mirroring, Lange completed the visual construction of fear.

First of all, the dimly lit indoor scenes and a large number of night scenes make the film present a gloomy and depressing tone as a whole. The expressionist style of lighting and the use of shadows aggravated the sense of instability on top of this tone. The scene scheduling and the character's psychology echo each other and convey the theme of the film very well. Take the paragraph between Wanli drove away from Alice's house and the toll booth as an example. The first shot is a middle shot taken from the left outside of the car. Three-quarters of the picture in the frame is occupied by black, and the only light source comes from the street light on the right side of the car. The light projected in through the car window, forming a bright circle of light on Wanli's face. Under the bright light, Wanli's expression was distorted and looked extremely hideous. Subsequently, the camera was transferred to the inside of the car, a close-up shot taken from behind. In the small space inside the car, Wanli's back figure almost blends with the darkness, occupying most of the picture. The pure black color blocks and the squeezed composition make people feel depressed and panicked. Then the camera turned to the front of Wanli. In the close-up shot, Wanli's facial anxiety was completely exposed in front of the audience. In addition, the rain water on the windshield and the branches swaying in the wind and rain by the roadside cast shadows on Wanli's face at the same time. They kept shaking on Wanli's face, causing a strong sense of instability and highlighting Wanli's panic. In the passenger seat, the reflection of the moving car brush is visually like a pendulum swinging back and forth. Between the ticks, the uneasy atmosphere permeating the car was pushed to the highest point. Although it is only three short shots, because of the strong contrast of lighting, unstable composition, shadows and other expressionist elements, they naturally and accurately show the huge fear that presses on Wanli's heart, making the audience also Empathize.

Secondly, the true reproduction of the moment of violence is also an important way for Lange to present fear. Suddenness makes violence feel like a dream. As a result, in the plausible atmosphere, extreme emotions such as fear, trembling, and paranoia have been infinitely expanded, flooding the corners of the film, making the audience concerned about the fate of Wanli while also worrying about the depraved behavior that may happen to them. . It is the strong resonance caused by the violent action that makes the film complete the transformation from a terrorist act to a wake-up story.

Finally, the use of mirror images and glass images is also Lange's habitual way of expressing psychology. For example, Alice watched Wanli's departure passage through the glass windows of the aisle. Alice's worried face was reflected on the glass, washed away by the falling rain, and became a little distorted. Here, the unstable facial image is a reflection of Alice's inner activities, a visual expression of her worry, fear and other complex psychology. In the next shot, the car in the rain was blurred and distorted because of the occlusion of the glass. Coupled with the illumination of street lights, the reflective effect of rain, etc., the picture becomes chaotic and disordered. It should be said that these distorted and distorted pictures at this moment reflect the actual state of mind of Wanli and are also a hint of his fate. The message Lange tried to convey was that the car that started in the rain was a nightmare.

The heroes and heroines of the film are played by Edward Robinson and Joan Bennett. Edward Robinson is a powerful actor in early Hollywood movies. He won the best actor award at the Cannes Film Festival for his superb performance in "House of Strangers". In the 1940s and 1950s, he starred in a series of noir films, including "Double Compensation" and "The Hero of the World". The heroine Joan Bennett is Lange's queen actress. She is glamorous and charming, which fits the image of "femme beauty" commonly seen in film noir. It is worth mentioning that the two actors later starred in Lange's other noir film "Blood Red Street" (1945) at the same time, once again successfully interpreting the charm of women and the complicated inner world of men.

Compared with the noir films in the same period with investigating as the core of the narrative, this film pays more attention to the male protagonist's repressed inner desires, human fears, individual alienation, and the depravity of human nature. Through close narrative, ingenious detail settings, refined lens language and expressionist style of lighting and setting, Lange visualized the male protagonist’s unconscious desires, sense of fear, moral confusion and other psychological factors in front of the audience in a visual form . Lange constructed a nightmare-like world close to self-destruction. In this world, the male protagonist is squeezed by extreme emotions such as anxiety and fear, his individual identity is threatened, his humanity is alienated, and he eventually falls into depravity. Lange explores the psychological aspects of human beings through the genre of film noir, emphasizing the attention to the spiritual world of the individual. This undoubtedly expanded the scope of film noir expression, strengthened its moral criticism, and played an important role in promoting the further expansion of the type of film noir.

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Extended Reading
  • Adela 2022-03-26 09:01:12

    Prosecutors, doctors, professors, these middle-class old men with some money in their hands, smoke cigars, drink whiskey after get off work, and fantasize about female stars. Going to work tomorrow is the envy of other classes. Fritz Lang appears to have studied Freud's dream interpretation. There are both wish fulfillment (becoming a professor), metaphors of sex organs (the "pen" left in the "house") and subconscious distortions (the desire to kill turns into self-defense and a solution to the last resort).

  • Johnny 2022-03-22 09:02:39

    8/10, the plot is tense and exciting, Robertson's performance is convincing, and the actress's acting is a failure of the film. I really like this ending. Those middle-aged men who like to dream of romantic encounters should take a good look at this film. Those who didn't like the ending probably didn't understand the director's intentions at all.

The Woman in the Window quotes

  • [first lines]

    Richard Wanley: [lecturing] The Biblical injunction "Thou shalt not kill" is one that requires qualification in view of our broader knowledge of impulses behind homicide. The various legal categories such as first and second degree murder, the various degrees of homicide, manslaughter, are civilized recognitions of impulses of various degrees of culpability. The man who kills in self defense, for instance, must not be judged by the same standards applied to the man who kills for gain.

  • Dr. Michael Barkstane: We've decided she's our dream girl just from that picture.