1960's black and white movie, the title makes me think there will be a lot of intense scenes, running or shooting things. In fact, even though there were running and shooting, I was a little sleepy. When I went back to read other people's film reviews, I found that it was not only that, but there were some scenes that I didn't understand at all, so I pressed the replay button to watch it again.
When Richard recalled that when he was still Epworth, he went to the concert manager for an interview, but there was no actual interview scene in the movie. He was the only one climbing the stairs, with the violin in the background playing increasingly emotional, intensified music. As he hesitates to turn the doorknob and instead decides to ring the doorbell, the camera gives a close-up of a finger approaching the doorbell. After a bell rang, a woman holding a violin case opened the door, and the camera kept moving with the woman. When the piano sounded, the woman stopped and the camera gradually zoomed out. The woman moved forward with one hand holding the piano case. , go to the front of the lens and then leave the screen at a right angle from the other end. Against the background of the tall buildings, the woman with the piano case was still walking, until her back entered the shadow at the exit. This section is really wonderful. Director François Truffaut expresses the plot from the perspective of a character that has nothing to do with the protagonist, but he is calm and has no emotional rendering. If such a method is used in Hong Kong films, it will become a grandstanding and exaggerated performance. For example, in Stephen Chow's films, the feeling of a third party is often used to express the protagonist's outstanding performance. The tumbling female critic in "The God of Cookery" is an example. If it is a German film, it is often introverted to make people nervous, but it also breaks the hearts of the audience, such as the performance of the listener in "Eavesdropping Storm". And Truffaut's trivial details, which are free from the plot, are all over the place in the movie.
The same goes for the characters' dialogue, which often appears to be personal and informal, with the kidnapper and kidnapper talking about women and toys quite well.
Maybe that's one of the reasons why I found the direction of the whole movie confusing when I watched it for the first time.
In the plot related to the main line, Richard's wife once compromised with the manager for her husband's future. For this reason, the previous manager's persuasion to understand Richard's complaint about his wife became bitter and ironic. He stopped doing Love Walter and became Richard, but he was still at the piano and couldn't leave. All that has been leaving is the woman beside him. When Lena died, Richard continued his piano playing with blank eyes.
As for Richard's younger brother escaping from the pursuit, he has become a gray rope that constantly leads to the appearance of various characters, and its suspense is becoming less and less important in the development of the film's plot, unlike Hitchcock's films. As for the part that borrows from American B-movies, the shootout is nothing new, but the dance in the pub is very interesting. The film shots are too characteristic of the director, novel and calm, and ingenious.
What impresses me about this movie seems to have nothing to do with the protagonist, and the two songs before and after the film are also very good. One is when Richard, who was playing the piano in the tavern, assisted his younger brother to escape, and a male singer came on stage to sing. The lyrics are about a drinker's attitude towards a young beer woman called Little Strawberry before and after breast augmentation. The rhythm was bright and fast, and it was so fast that I thought it was too late for the singer to sing the lyrics clearly. I don't know if this song is humorous or weird. There is also a song that is a lyrical song when Richard turns on the radio while Lena is driving. One of the lyrics is "When my love is only hatred, I will leave with a hat on." This is also a sentence Richard later said to Lena, who came back to find him. The sad thing is that the last person to leave turned out to be Lena. Although there are such indistinct echoes in the film, the whole story still makes people feel a little cold. Maybe Truffaut's movies are a little bit uncomfortable. So I gave up the idea of watching it a third time.
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