What is psychological narrative?

First, the impressionist psychological narrative

French impressionism runs through the whole avant-garde film movement from 19 17 to 1928. This genre is also called "the first avant-garde" because it first embodied the creative intention of the avant-garde in film art. Louis, the central figure of this school; Delluc's appreciation of the majestic momentum of Griffith's films in American movies, the delicate feelings of Chaplin's films and the expression of nature in Swedish films inspired his enthusiasm for revitalizing French films. He once called for "French movies must be real movies, and French movies must be French movies" in the form of slogans on the front page of his film magazine. He often used the word "impressionism" in his discourse, and in i9 18, he created Spanish Festival (made into a film by Sherman and Drucker), which became the original representative work of impressionism school. Delluc discussed film aesthetics from two aspects: film theory and creation. In "On the Camera" (1920), he urged the photographer to work hard on the theme and skills of his works and find the theme and expression means that really suit the film. Film must get rid of drama and literature, and make itself truly an independent seventh art. "

Germain Dulac's Spanish Festival (19 19), a representative figure of impressionist psychological narrative, shows that two men are fascinated by a woman in a foreign background and finally kill each other to death. Drucker's other works are based on a simple story frame, highlighting the psychological state of the characters and conveying specific feelings and emotions with the help of visual structure, that is, showing the so-called poetic state of the works. The main features and contributions of Impressionism can be roughly divided into the following aspects:

1. Using themes to expand the performance of film psychological narrative: Impressionism school first chooses stories suitable for describing the psychological activities of characters from the themes of works, and reveals the ideology of characters as fully as possible, such as association, fantasy, dreams, etc. There is no precedent for the development of film history. We know that Lumiere was addicted to and limited to the original film invention, and confirmed that psychological narrative is a novel and drama, while the film only shows "nature was caught red-handed". Although Griffith changed the simple form of recording actions in movies, developed more complicated movie narratives and occasionally expressed some psychological activities or expressed some psychological logic in flashbacks, he only instinctively expressed the causal relationship in the narrative structure. Impressionism is different. They highlight the plot space of their works in the form of image space, and take the inner activities of the characters as the main narrative core of the film. Usually, a work is a flashback and a record of a dream. As for the impressionist theme, it was impossible to be controversial at that time because of its originality in content performance characteristics. For example, the tendency in these films is to express the emotional entanglements of individuals or a few people, rather than major social events or social problems. Because of this, some people think that works fail to keep up with the pulse of the times, which is a tendency to be divorced from reality and the times. At the same time, it is more strongly opposed to the film's departure from the narrative concept of traditional literature and drama, and to "find emotion and passion from action and volume" by means of pure film. In this regard, Germain Dulac once wrote in the article "Avant-garde Movies" (1932) that the activities of "Avant-garde" began, but at that time, the audience and most film entrepreneurs supported realism, and they opposed showing off their emotions and emotional factors widely and in isolation. According to their theory, movies should only be included in dramas composed of plots and events, and should not be included in these phenomena caused by mental or spiritual shocks. They opposed Impressionism-Expressionism, but did not take into account all the explorations and experiments carried out by modern innovators. After all, they expanded the field of pure action and emotion. "What's more interesting is that rene claire sharply criticized the impressionist film theme in 1923, but by 1950, he laughed at the mistake of his view at that time, and at the same time tolerated himself with an understandable attitude. The development of impressionist films in film psychological narration undoubtedly expands and enriches the performance field of silent film art and opens the way for modern film art to express the state of consciousness.

2. Pursuing the correspondence between natural images and characters' psychology and spirit: Impressionist film school's aesthetic proposition is influenced by its impressionist paintings, emphasizing the visual impression and subjective feeling given to artists according to the objective reality of rapidly changing natural scenery. Monet, an outstanding impressionist painter, once claimed that he "only has the merit of directly depicting nature". Delluc also pointed out in "On the Camera" that the beauty of works of art "is actually the most unpretentious" and "is the artistic atmosphere existing in daily life". He emphasized that films set off the natural environment and advocated the use of depth-of-field lenses. He shouted: "Let everything in the film behave more naturally!" From these thoughts of Drucker, we also feel the naturalistic tendency in French literature. Zola once advocated that "physiology studies human body structure, and writers study human feelings and their social environment". In the film works of Impressionism, the emotion and fate of characters, as well as the emotion and atmosphere of the film, are always intertwined with the natural and social environment of life. The family environment with dim light and gloomy atmosphere in Mrs. Budd with a Smile; The dancer's experience in Huang Jinguo was exposed to the Spanish hot sun, and the towering high wall symbolized her inescapable fate, which set off her helplessness and despair. Vagrant women in rocky wasteland and women in men's cold eyes in On the Wharf. The characters, environment and plot in the film are organically linked, and the correspondence between natural images and characters' psychology and spirit conveys different emotional atmosphere and potential thinking activities in the form of polysemous videos. As Drucker pointed out, "scenery, lighting, rhythm and actors are the formal factors of basic visual expression in movies, and film art mainly relies on these formal factors to express people's mental state and true feelings." Impressionism advocates nature and pursues the real feelings of real life, which makes the film really get rid of the limitations of the actor-centered drama stage and is not bound by the background and scene scheduling. The lens is cast into nature, and the characters are placed in the three-dimensional real space, not to explain the plot with expressions, but only as a part of the factors of visual expression. Their exploration broke away from the traditional mode and concept of plot and character expression in drama and literary narration, and created a unique visual language of film art.

3. Establish new photography skills to adapt to the visual expression of characters' psychology and spirit;

Impressionism's new breakthrough in photography skills is mainly manifested in three aspects: subjective photography, mobile phone photography and technical photography. Subjective photography: In the film Huang Jinguo, in order to highlight the subjective feelings of the characters in the play, Lepir showed the image of Alhambra Palace under the sunlight from a fixed point of view, which is called the "painter's point of view" in the film and is widely used by impressionist films. In order to express the heroine's subjective feelings, the film "On the Dock" also uses an anti-angle lens, which depicts her environment, horrible psychological state and subjective feelings through viewpoint editing. Mobile photography: In France, in order to meet the requirements of film expression, a "portable" camera has been developed, which is more conducive to the mobile expression of the subjective views of the impressionists. In The Biography of Napoleon, Gunce tied a "portable" camera to a running horse, filmed the scene of chasing Napoleon and escaping on Corsica, and then put the camera in a diving box and threw it into the sea from a cliff to get the visual point of Napoleon when he jumped into the sea. The Ganges also created a "cannon ball viewpoint" for launching and a "snowball viewpoint" for throwing in the air. Jean Epstein also used a "portable" camera in Loyal Heart. He showed the emotional conflict between two young people through the mobile photography on the rotating game car, that is, the joy of the hero and the trance of the heroine. Form endows the film with more complicated psychological presentation and fuller emotional presentation. Trick photography: Impressionists began to use soft-focus photography, weak focal length and other special effects in films, creating effects similar to those in Impressionist paintings and showing the painter's subjective feelings. People or objective things are naturally and truly displayed in the changing state of light and shadow, just as people compare the visual impression of Alhambra Palace in Huang Jinguo with Monet's famous painting Rouen Monastery. Impressionist films also use the effect of overlapping, such as the girl's face in Wheels and Steam of the Train, and the girl's face in Loyalty and Dirty Water. Overprinting is undoubtedly a means of montage, which is widely used in pudovkin's films. In impressionist works, overprint highlights the mental state and psychological description of the characters. High-speed photography and low-speed photography in movies have also been applied here for the first time. In Smiling Budev, Mrs. Budd imagines the slow motion used by a young man when he comes to her: in Little Lily, the fast photography used when little Lily is chased in place, etc. All of them have created peculiar sports effects and emotional experiences in the movie Time and Space. The aesthetic pursuit of impressionism school constantly puts forward new requirements for film technology, and Ganges Sand is the most innovative in this respect. In addition to replacing the sense of motion of people or objects with cameras as mentioned above, he also conducted beneficial experiments on new optical lenses (such as the pan/tilt of a 75 mm telescope), multi-frame images and wide screen formats (three-frame screen) in Napoleon.

4. Emphasize the importance of visual rhythm expression and rhythm editing: Impressionist schools are inspired by the concept of rhythm in Griffith's films, especially by the emotional visual symphony formed by four stories alternately narrated in Let's Oppose Differences, so they attach great importance to the expression of visual rhythm and the application of rhythm editing in their own works. Delluc pointed out in the article "On the Camera" that the film "is different from other arts, it occasionally expresses life, ... which can be said to be fleeting", and the film "consists of many familiar decomposition actions".

Indeed, in the works of impressionism genre, the expression of consciousness fragments formed by the splicing of viewpoints, the use of emotional shots of light and shadow changes, and the handling of changing the speed of motion by special effects have all become unique forms of film rhythm. At the same time, as a film theorist and critic, Lionel Szinak further explored the theory of film rhythm. In his article about movie rhythm, he divided the rhythm into internal rhythm and external rhythm, that is, internal rhythm-the rhythm inside the lens; External rhythm-the rhythm of lens connection. He also pointed out: "The combination of various rhythms is not only the most basic element to arouse emotion, but also the author can decompose and concretize various components of emotion through rhythm, that is, draw a curve circle according to the unit time of music beat, so that the beat really becomes the spatial scope of recording rhythm." Sinak's theory had a far-reaching influence on the creation of Impressionism. In his works, Guns discovered "Music of Light". In Wheels, when a car collided, he reduced it from 13 frame to two frames of acceleration. Drucker emphasized in his works that "emotion is produced by the harmony of picture, light and shade, rhythm and facial expression", and implied the rhythm of "feeling" every moment with rhythm. Their pursuit of visual rhythm finally makes their films gain modeling and musicality while rejecting literariness and drama, creating more poetic visual effects for the expression of silent films. On the issue of film rhythm, in the next experiment, we will analyze the surrealism tendency of various film genres, and as the central topic of the film, we will conduct more in-depth exploration.

Inspired by Impressionist painting, Impressionists made active and fruitful explorations in the form of film aesthetics. They opened up and expanded the field of film art performance, and the practice of this school did not come to an end until the sound of film appeared.