How to express abstract emotions, estranged relationships? Antonio uses an eight-minute montage to tell you that you don't need tears, just look at the street where he and her smile and meet at eight o'clock. No matter how far the camera goes, no one will come.
1962's "Love Across Thousands of Mountains", from the Italian director Antonio, the film tells the indifference and alienation of urbanites. The heroine Victoria separated from her boyfriend in the early morning, experienced inner hesitation, and got along with her mother in a strange way. Separated from the hero Piero. Antonio, while inheriting part of the tradition of Neorealism, pursued his evolution radically.
If you are looking forward to a complete story, then this "Love Across Thousands of Mountains" is definitely not the movie you are looking for. He is more like intercepting fragments of emotional states and presenting them in a scattered manner. With such a demonstration, emotions become the focus of watching the movie. After watching this film, the audience will have a series of thoughts about the inner nature of people, the relationship between people, and the connection between people and the times. The emptiness in people's hearts after the war, their greed for material things, and their confusion about their own needs must be the issues that this film wants to reflect.
Although this film does not have an amazing story, it must be a film that pursues beauty. Even beauty has become a way of narrative, complex emotions do not need language to carry, Antonio uses the composition of space, vague images to express the heart. The element "wind" is used many times in the film. At the beginning of the film, there are many books and decorations in the room, and neither Victoria nor her boyfriend spoke. The moving objects, except for the two big living people, were the electric fan shaking his head from side to side, and Victoria's hair that was blown by the wind from time to time. This scene is actually rather dull, the two are speechless, the actor scene dispatches Victoria pacing back and forth, she wants to separate from her boyfriend, and the two are talking irrelevant things. The invisible wind swayed when it hit the hair of the two actors, and with the actors' dodging eyes, it expressed the two people's heart-fluttering emotions. people. Also in the last part, after Piero and Victoria separated, Piero's inner frenzied emotions were suppressed like a document blown by the wind behind him.
In the relationship between Victoria and Piero, the element of "wind" is used more widely. When the two are speechless or say innocuous words, the wind will blow, and the actor's hair will be blown by the wind. And the corners of the clothes, the babbling flagpoles, bring out the real mood swings. Victoria often has medium shots or close-up shots. While showing her beauty, her hair blown by the wind and indifference on her face have more tension in the contrast between movement and stillness. Antonio used a clever way to express the inner heart of urbanites under the cold exterior. People are dressed in shells and pretending to be hypocritical, but the real inner may have been turned upside down.
In addition to "wind", the contrast of the environment is also a way for the film to express the relationship gap. There are many details in the film that show that Victoria yearns for nature. When she is in the woods and on the deserted road, she will show a faint smile. She is very interested in the decoration of Kenya at a friend's house. Coupled with a few over-the-shoulder shots of Kenyan landscape paintings There is a medium shot of Victoria groping in the decoration, plus a rather absurd African dance, all showing Victoria's preference for being close to nature.
In contrast, Piero's stock exchange has experienced multiple changes in sentiment.
Here, the film uses multiple medium shots to focus on the expressions of the stock brokers. In the panoramic shots, layers of people fill the frame, adding exaggerated expressions to oppress the anxiety of the audience, and people are crazy about the stock price. ;Victoria came to her mother, but her mother paid no attention to the stock. She touched Victoria's chin in a tough and embarrassing way to show intimacy, but her mother's house was filled with a thick layer of gray Victoria's room, and her mother was dull The expression says it all. Then there was a dramatic scene, a loud bell interrupted the noise, someone announced the death of a stockbroker, and everyone mourned for a minute. An interesting scene happened. In the distant view, the crowd stood quietly and seemed to be in silence, but in the background, the phone was ringing loudly, echoing in the stock exchange, letting everyone's reluctance restless; in the medium shot of Pierre and his colleagues, the boss was Within three seconds, an impatient look was made, only one minute, but he couldn't hold back; then Piero made an impatient sarcasm at Victoria through the pillar, and then jumped to the middle shot, the two of them were separated from each other. The column, this composition also shows that the two are destined to be separated in the end. In the last few seconds of a minute, there are people moving uneasy, their hands and feet uncomfortable from standing for a long time, and the restless newspapers are in contrast to other silent people. After one minute is over, people jump for joy, from mourning for the loss of human life to cheering for the surge in numbers, a one-second transition is exactly what the film wants to express, the ridiculousness of the cold and warm hearts.
The multiple emotions, of course, include love, and the movie also depicts the different aspects of the inner world of the two. Victoria is a beauty who pursues true inner satisfaction. She is responsible for the role of new needs and new actions in people's hearts after the war. She is on the edge of material and lust. The male characters in the film do not know what she wants. Marriage and happiness are both. It was not what she wanted, and even Victoria always avoided their courtship. She often kissed first, and then broke away from the eyes that repeatedly confirmed each other. Piero is played by Alain Delon, who is more handsome in black and white movies; a pair of beautiful people always fall in love in inappropriate places, and the crowd is dilapidated and empty for the stock exchange with hysterical numbers. The streets, the sparse and dry lawns, the ancient rooms, such arrangements all want to express the emptiness and detachment of this relationship, the simple surface attraction cannot reach the hearts of the two, pursue the inner Victoria, and the eyebrows are all romantic Piero, destined to be just a whim. Piero's sports car that was driven away by the drunk was finally picked up in the lake with the car and the dead drunk. One hand of the dead drunk was hanging down weakly. Then there was a close-up of Victoria's astonishment. Piero was concerned about the sports car and money. Victoria has suggested many times that he didn't hear the overtones.
In the scene between Victoria and Piero on the corner of the street, Victoria refused Piero's closeness, and Piero did not catch up after walking a few steps away. The two went home respectively. Piero switched between emotions and reality very freely. He made calls one after another with a spring breeze. Because Victoria couldn't make a call, she rarely showed the loss and struggle that penetrated from her heart to her face. At this moment, the distance of this relationship is getting farther and farther.
The entire film is two hours long, and a lot of pen and ink are placed on the expressions of the characters and the setting of the scene. This is the real life scene and the pursuit of aesthetics pursued by the Italian neorealism. On this basis, Antonio further enhances the ambiguity of aesthetics and narrative. Zooming in, makes the inner level of the person become the focus of concentration. "Love Across Thousands of Mountains" is actually a big challenge to the audience's patience in today's diverse entertainment methods. A lot of empty shots and montages make people feel very boring and boring. The last eight-minute montage consisted of unfinished unfinished buildings, white lines drawn by planes in the sky, tree shadows and streets, and people returning home in the setting sun. I think the images are always because they cannot express the complex emotions in their hearts. And there is, the last abstract element of the film, probably the fragmented thoughts of that era, people's confusion about self and others, which prompted the hesitation of the era.
Antonio's "Love is separated by thousands of mountains", my ability is limited, I have reservations and dare not rashly follow the trend and tout him to the altar for a while, but the film reflects the anxiety of exploring people's hearts, and I did receive it. At the end of the film, the morning turns to dusk, the day goes by, and the next day, the sun rises as usual, just as before.
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