瑟堡的雨伞

看本片完全是因為N多年前我在一雜誌上讀到本片的介紹心中湧起想看的渴望。這麽多年過去心願終於了了，才發現流逝的歲月導致的物是人非會是如此驚人，我不得不承認，我已經不是以前那個我了。想想當年如果有機會一睹本片的容顏會是怎樣的沈醉？那時外面的一切對於我都是美的，香的，我不做選擇的吸收，享受。現在我早已不是那種不做選擇的狀態了，而且自己的認知也不僅僅只會吸收，享受了。我要比較，然後分析，總結。這樣一來，本片對我的唯一價值 就只剩下圓夢了。有點遺憾，因為這個夢有點失落，但是這種失落建立在對更廣闊的世界的認知，理解和欣賞上。應該為它感到高興。

可能是因为自身感情的原因对这部片子情有独钟 真的是顶级影片 即便存在一些小的纰漏 但总觉得成功的影片在于整体氛围 细节也就忽略了 坐在资料馆的第二排 当主题音乐的弦乐一起 再加上阵阵小风一吹 身体直打哆嗦
影片开篇就富有情调的请出几把彩色的雨伞 用雨的第一视角看城市里的过客 可能是因为时代的原因 摄影机周边稀稀拉拉的雨点感觉有些不自然 整部影片采用歌舞的形势表达 刚开始可能有些不习惯 十分钟后就好了 很通俗的剧本能产生如此的效果 男女主人公起到很大作用 影片的音乐也功不可没 且影片音乐的主题极抓人心 高潮部分的大和弦 怎么听怎么过瘾 在画面上存在两处比较大的穿帮 一个是女主从狂欢节街道回到店里的时候 外面是彩带横飞 前一个镜头肩膀后背上还有 一进屋瞬间没了 还有最后一场戏女主加完油要离去的时候刚进车门前玻璃上还有积雪 下一个镜头要走的时候就瞬间倍儿干净 第二章节男主要去当兵带女友回家的路上有一段可能是为了抒发感情 两人动都不动的站上轨道平移 稍显不自然 要说这片子是女主的深情演绎 我更倾向男主的全方位出演 把男人的各个阶段表现的很到位
再说说影片的舞美与服装造型 印象最深的首当其冲地应属小店的布置 很是精致 整个影片色彩鲜艳从几处房屋内的壁纸上就能看出来 也学到一种审美 就是人与墙容为一体也很美 浅粉色毛衣配深粉壁纸 橘色风衣配橘色的咖啡墙 男性服装就更洋气了 很是复古绅士 他是个汽车修理工有件朴实的米色外套 到舞厅放衣服时 露出了内衬竟是巴博瑞的 在做广告的同时 又彰显人物品味 影片中也大量运用镜子做视觉效果 而且还永远没有穿帮
在资料观看的这片子 散场时听见有影迷闲聊说这片子到底是喜剧还是悲剧 我也茫然 只能弱弱的说他只演绎了人生 是雪化成雨水还是雨冷凝成雪 每个人都有不同的答案

2017.12.14 clit2007 term paper
刚交 做了一万年的research 熬了三天 睡了7小时
18年2月更新 这门课拿了A- 所以这篇essay好像写的还不错

How The Umbrellas of Cherbourg Juxtaposes Self-Reflexivity with Realism in the Context of the French New Wave

As a member of the “Left Bank” group, Jacques Demy might not make films that were as avant-garde as those of the Cahiers du cinema filmmakers. When the musical romance, The Umbrellas of Cherbourg came out in 1964, it was considered to hardly have any radical representation of the French New Wave due to its style and aesthetic approach. Yet its unorthodox entirely sung dialogues as well as the beautifully composed music undoubtedly drew a great amount of attention. Consisting of three parts, the film depicts a young couple hopelessly in love with each other, Geneviève and Guy, who are eventually broken apart by fate (mostly the Algerian War) to separate destinies. This essay argues that director Jacques Demy juxtaposes self-reflexive features with hints of realism in The Umbrellas of Cherbourg, endowing the film with an enchanting property that embraces the junction of the conventional French cinema and the emergence of the French New Wave. The idea of this essay was constructed on the premise of Robert Stam’s viewpoint on the interpenetrating coexistence of self-reflexivity and realism within the same cinematic text which challenges the Brechtian critique of realism (152).

With regard to identifying and characterizing a genre film, Rick Altman proposes the semantic/syntactic dual theory that categorizes genres along the historic development. He also justifies the three subgenres of the musical, namely the fairy tale musical, the show musical and the folk musical, and associates them with corresponding cultural backgrounds and other musical attributes. In accordance with Altman’s theory, The Umbrellas of Cherbourg nevertheless cannot be defined as a musical semantically, in a sense that there is no shift of ambience in between dialogues and singing and instead every line is presented in a recitative manner which is dubbed by pre-recorded soundtracks by professional singers. The film does not necessarily comply with any of the three subgenres to foreground a specific value which marriage in that particular socio-cultural context establishes. Yet it does pay homage to the classical Hollywood that contemporary New Wavers enamored by embracing the popular musical genre of the Golden Age of Hollywood while incorporating a French take on the story that comments on socio-political issues. A similar gesture of playing tribute to the historic development of the genre by incorporating the innovative can be found in the studio musical Moulin Rouge! (2001), which pointed out by Parfitt-Brown merges technology of the new era with nostalgia of the fin-de-siècle bohemianism to invoke an “artistic reinvention” (24). With the narrative setting evoking Hollywood classics like The Band Wagon (1953) and Singin’ in the Rain (1952), Moulin Rouge!’s show-within-a-film form is reminiscent of Altman’s show musical subgenre in a traditional sense. Feuer identifies that the parallelism between the show that characters in the film try to bring on and the relative reality within the film’s narrative space tends to emphasize the theme of eternal love over the “glorification of show business”, countering to the subject matter dealt with in most show-within-a-film Hollywood classics (61). But this parallelism ultimately addresses to the musical film’s self-reflexive nature, and draws attention to the prosthetic, highly unreal imagery constructed in the film’s fictional world.

If we consider the parallelism in Moulin Rouge! as an approach of reflexivity, then the recurrent postmodern pastiche and dense pop culture quotations further add a layer to the film’s fictional complexion. Acknowledging the director of Moulin Rouge!, Baz Luhrmann’s point of view, Parfitt-Brown notes that the intensive blending of historic artifacts and real-world contemporary cultures that exist outside the fictional entity fulfills the “sensory authenticity” that demands participatory spectatorship (22). In other words, the edgy, transhistorical fusion of cultural artifacts constantly and consciously reminds the spectators of the fictional nature of the film, with the film self-aware of its form. Whereas in The Umbrellas of Cherbourg, this self-consciousness of cinema is achieved through the use of multiple devices.

The most obvious device being the structure of the plot, constitutes of three parts, titled “The Departure”, “The Absence”, and “The Return” respectively. Between the plots of each two parts, there is a time gap indicated by a significant change in characters and the relations among characters over the passage of time. The discontinuity allows certain plots to be omitted from the linear progression, which is quite similar to the structure of a staged musical or play. This manner contributes to the musical’s self-conscious form, just as rising up and putting down the stage curtains do at the opening and the finale of Moulin Rouge!. Furthermore, recurrently breaking the fourth wall by having its actors directly address to the camera in The Umbrellas of Cherbourg is another discernible self-reflexive device that is also applied multiple times in Moulin Rouge!.

As pointed out by Hill, the subtle quasi-Brechtian mise-en-scène of the film might not be able to distract the audience away from the fictional space since the audience are so accustomed to the conventions of musical settings that they cannot be easily bothered by them, but the frequent appearance of mirrors and frames does elicit a taste of reflexivity (44). In the scene where Geneviève reveals her and Guy’s relationship to mother, the two have an argument over the couple’s decision of getting married. There comes along a medium shot of Geneviève alongside the camera positioning at a 45-degree angle to the right of the actress who is at first placed on the left half of the screen. The right half is a mirror on the wall which seemingly unintentionally reflects the image of the mother who is supposedly standing on the other side of the room, telling how astonished she is by their proposed marriage. This framing lasts briefly until the mother’s image walks out of the mirror, with the camera tracking along Geneviève’s forward motion. There we see a perfect two shot of the characters, with a medium close up of Geneviève remaining in the left portion at the same angle as earlier. As the mother walks toward the mirror, the staging of the two is reversed. The camera is still able to capture the mother’s facial expression from the reflection in the mirror although we are facing her back. There are many shots with mise-en-scène like this in the rest of the film where it tends to play with the audience’s visual experience by careful staging of the actors in a way that their faces can be captured simultaneously despite moving around. The smooth, flawless staging reinforces the fictional entity while without necessarily stripping away the fictional, the mirrored and framed images introduce a slight sense of reflexivity such that it calls attention to its process of making the fictional.

Apart from the mirrors and the purposeful framing, there are also several shots in which the camera movement is staged elegantly yet self-consciously that one can hardly fail to observe. One of these noticeable moments is when the competent suitor, Roland, recalls his past relationship with a girl named Lola. As he starts to sink into his memory leaning against the mirror on the wall (which again draws attention to its self-reflexive manner), the camera gracefully dollies towards him until it reaches a close-up scale of his face and subsequently cuts to a flashback POV shot. This camera movement seems abrupt and self- conscious considering the previous image that frames two characters having a casual conversation. It sufficiently places emphasis on Roland’s emotional transition at the moment and his innermost bitterness of being unable to win the person he used to love. Alexandre Astruc states in his 1948 manifesto which greatly influenced the French New Wave that the new cinema should realize the cinematic dynamics by utilizing camera movements to express feelings and emotions, and that such approach would overcome the underlying problem of the old French cinema, which is the incapability of expressing thoughts. His viewpoint figured prominently in the development of the auteur theory in the New Wave. In this regard, Demy’s stylistic, self-conscious and expressive use of camera in The Umbrellas of Cherbourg aligns himself with the contemporary New Wave fashions.

Equivalent to the reflexive function of pastiche in Moulin Rouge!, the intertextuality in The Umbrellas of Cherbourg is achieved through quoting and making references to other art works. At the beginning of the film, Guy’s colleague at the garage directly sings quotes from the famous opera Carmen. Interestingly enough, his other colleague comments afterwards that he prefers movies to operas because he cannot stand the constant singing, which nonetheless playfully reflects the all-singing nature of this movie. Hill suggests that this playfulness is “doubly reflexive” which makes an intertextual reference to another form of art and moreover, attracts attention to the film’s embodiment of such form (47). In addition to operatic reference, Hill pinpoints the intertextuality in this film of other artistic forms, such as many visual components evocative of multiple works by Demy’ favorite painter Jan Vermeer (46), the tendency of long takes and stylistic camera movements that pays explicit homage to films by Max Ophüls (45), as well as the reappearing Lola (1961) character Roland Cassard that references to Demy’s own film (44). All these intertextual references encompass a huge sense of self-reflexivity which, argued by Ott and Walter, “deliberately draws attention to [the film’s] fictional nature by commenting on its own activities” (438).

I have discussed so far how some major cinematic elements in The Umbrellas of Cherbourg contribute to the musical’s high self-reflexivity, which endows itself with a fictional, unreal entity. Before I continue with the observation of the film’s realist features which is something that fundamentally blends a taste of French-ness in this American genre, it is necessary to acknowledge Robert Stam’s outlook on whether reflexivity and realism can coexist within the same context. Although the cinema in the 1930s tends to associate “realist” with “bourgeois” and “reflexivity” with “revolutionary” which are antithetical in political terms, Stam uses Godard’s Numéro Deux (1975) and other examples to illustrate that realism and reflexivity can in fact not only coexist but also penetrate into each other to display the fictional construction of the reality (152). For Moulin Rouge! as a twenty-first century big- budgeted, highly reflexive Hollywood musical production, realism is nowhere to be found as the film aims to use cultural artifacts to construct a distant past of prosthetic authenticity. As a stylistic product of the French cinema’s tendency of emerging to the New Wave, The Umbrellas of Cherbourg nevertheless juggles with reflexivity and realism to manifest the French adaptation to the classical Hollywood genre.

There are three main aspects in this film that attribute to its social realism. Despite the colorful visual style and the apparently artificial lighting effects that might denote a studio production, the film was as a matter of fact entirely shot on location. Several establishing shots at different points throughout the film determinedly highlight the sense of realism, such as the panorama of the dock in the opening credits, a few establishing shots of the train station and the café in the departure scene, as well as the last shot in the film which is a wide shot of the gas station in the beautiful snow. Take the last shot as an example; the jib shot lasts for 50 seconds, which can definitely be considered as a long take. It starts with Guy joyfully greeting his family. He kisses his wife and then plays with his son in the snow. The camera gradually pulls away from the characters’ interaction as it goes on without being interrupted. When the characters enter inside, we can barely observe their activities yet the shot does not fade out from there but rather remains unchanged and uninterrupted for roughly 20 seconds. This continuity in acting and camera movement reinforces the realism in a sense that the audience are watching the characters’ activities in reality.

The second aspect is the film’s attitude toward the contemporary social issues. Avoiding explicitly presenting the Algerian war image, the film comments on the negative post-war phenomenon like veteran soldiers’ alienation from the society and the failed human relations. It also addresses the generational debates of values in post-war French families, with the materialism and social hierarchy among elder generation versus the younger generation’s utopianism that love transcends everything. A similar value discourse can also be found in Moulin Rouge!.

Lastly, the majority of the cast hardly had any recognition prior to the production of the film. The fact that the audience at the time were seeing fresh faces instead of glamorous stars on the screen somewhat made them feel less detached from the fictional world. Film Reference points out that the femininity portrayed in traditional French cinéma de papa which the New Wave resists is mostly associated with sophisticated maturity. The way that Geneviève is portrayed as a simple and innocent girl next door naturally sides this film against the “Tradition of Quality”. All in all, the three attributes mentioned above are in alliance with three of the eight characteristics of New Wave cinema raised by Michel Marie in terms of the location-shooting, addressing contemporary social/cultural issues, and the new-face actors (70).

In conclusion, with the juxtaposition of the high self-reflexivity of the musical genre and a sense of realism regarding the contemporary French cinema, The Umbrellas of Cherbourg is Jacques Demy’s uttermost homage to the classical Hollywood. The coexisting reflexive nature and realism do not necessarily get in each other’s ways, but rather becomes Demy’s stylistic syntax in this French-accented art piece of an American genre. Released during the active period of the French New Wave, although the film does not entirely identify as radical New Wave representation, it adopts certain characteristics that comply with the New Wave aesthetics. Its uniqueness and avant-garde production approach makes it one of the most celebrated and influential original musicals of the twentieth century.


Works Cited

Altman, Rick. “A Semantic/Syntactic Approach to Film Genre.” Cinema Journal, vol. 23, no. 6, Spring 1984, pp. 6-18.

Altman, Rick. “The Musical.” The Oxford History of World Cinema. Ed. Geoffrey Nowell-Smith. Oxford: OUP, 1996. 294-303.

Astruc, Alexandre. “The Birth of a New Avant-Garde: La Caméra-Stylo.” Trans. Peter Graham. The French New Wave: Critical Landmarks. Ed. Peter Graham and Ginette Vincendeau. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009. 31-38.

Feuer, Jane. “The International Art Musical: Defining and Periodising Post-1980s Musicals.” The Sound of Musicals. Ed. Steven Cohan. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010. 54-63.

Hill, Rodney. “The New Wave Meets the Tradition of Quality: Jacques Demy’s The Umbrellas of Cherbourg.” Cinema Journal, vol. 48, no. 1, Fall 2008, pp. 27-50.

“Legacy and Regeneration: 1944 to 1959.” Film Reference, http://www.filmreference.com/encyclopedia/Criticism-Ideology/France-LEGACY-AND-REGENERATION-1944-TO-1959.html

Marie, Michel. “The New Wave’s Aesthetic.” Trans. Richard Neupert. The French New Wave: An Artistic School. Paris: Blackwell Publishing, 2003. 70-71.

Ott, Brian, and Cameron Walter. “Intertextuality: Interpretive Practice and Textual Strategy.” Critical Studies in Media Communication, vol. 17, no. 4, December 2000, pp. 429-446.

Parfitt-Brown, Clare. “An Australian In Paris: Techno-Choreographic Bohemianism in Moulin Rouge!.” The Oxford Handbook of Dance and the Popular Screen. Ed. Melissa Blanco Borelli. New York, NY: OUP, 2014. 21-40.

Stam, Robert. “The Politics of Reflexivity.” Film Theory: An Introduction. Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2000. 151-153.

影史上最美的片头之一，当属《瑟堡的雨伞》。在一个固定的俯拍镜头下，打着五颜六色雨伞的路人，按对角线相向而行擦肩而过的自行车，按照导演的精确调度来回走动穿插，仿佛乐谱上跳动的音符。

然而，在片头即将结束的时候，却出现了格格不入的一幕——六把黑色雨伞排成一线横穿过画面中央，仿佛预示着剧中六位主要人物，将共同谱写一首命运与爱情的挽歌。

女主角德纳芙饰演瑟堡一家雨伞店老板娘的女儿。可以看到，片中男女主角在一起的戏份并不多：起初的街边对唱表示两人的恩爱，紧接着就是男主角接到征兵通知，两人面临分别，而在这分别之后，两人没有再见过面，直到影片最后一场戏，才有了短暂的重逢。

在这分开的两年中，怀着男主角的孩子的德纳芙在母亲的劝说下，嫁给了另一个深爱她、愿意接受她的全部的珠宝商；男主角服完兵役回来后得知女主角嫁人，在心灰意冷之际转向长期侍奉男主角教母的孤女玛德琳。

这是命运的玩弄吗？比起许多大起大落的爱情史诗来说，片中恋人的命运元素不过是一场需要分别两年的征兵——只有两年，简直算不得命运。在两年的分别中德纳芙没有选择苦守，在得知爱人成家后男主角也几乎没有片刻等待，甚至惯常的误报的阵亡通知也没有出现，使得被命运玩弄的迫不得已的无奈感大打折扣。更让人难以忍受的是，过上各自别样人生的男女主角不但没有变得不幸，反而过上了美满的生活，还带给了另一半（珠宝商和孤女玛德琳）幸福的人生。

经历过这一切的男女主角会对人生懂得更多吗？德纳芙会像她母亲当年劝慰她一样，面带微笑、满怀宽容和过来人的小心掩藏起的不屑，继续劝慰她的女儿：“我也爱过，但是……”。更懂人生也许意味着不再追求绝对，而宁取安全，在不确定的百分之百和唾手可得的百分之八十中，大多数人总会选择后者。

那么是的，他们的确更懂人生了。但一个人对人生懂得越多，就对爱情懂得越少。当他开始对爱情怀着机敏和嘲讽侃侃而谈，将其纳入人生的诸多变动之中时，无论他的言辞有多聪明，他已经远离爱情了，即使他不取笑自己往日的激情，爱却还要狠狠嘲笑他、鄙视他。

爱情不是人生的一部分，爱情与人生是针锋相对、非此即彼的。爱就意味着放弃人生，放弃安全，放弃权衡——纯粹的爱不会开出条件“如果有百万分之一的可能，他接受了我的孩子，那我如果不嫁给他，我就太蠢太没良心了”。爱是无药可救的纯洁，是百分之百，少一分都落入人生。爱是不妥协，是冒险，是非他不可以命相搏的毒誓，是孤注一掷不问输赢的赌博。爱没有选择，否则便没有爱。

当片尾两人在瑟堡的雪夜意外相遇时，这对往昔的恋人显出了人生与爱情对质时深刻的尴尬。德纳芙没话找话问男主角，圣诞树真漂亮，是你布置的吗？男主角立刻回答说，是我妻子布置的，但主要是为了孩子们开心。短短十来个字就迅速地用自己目前的生活抵挡了海誓山盟的过去、抵挡了一切可能发生的未来，在当下的一个照面中，爱情落荒而逃。

他们没有再多说什么，德纳芙开车戴着女儿离开，男主角的老婆孩子也回家来和他拥抱。镜头慢慢往上攀爬，给出这个风雪之夜的全景，配合着一浪高过一浪的催人泪下的主题歌，仿佛是命运本身在哀悼着这对渺小的有着各自幸福人生的主角。主角对自身的“命运”并没有不满，他们或者把这视为一段陈年往事，一段证明自己爱过的谈资，或者已经不在乎，甚至想离它远远的；不满的是观众、悲哀的是观众、痛哭的也是观众，他们在并无命运的故事中，死命勾勒着命运的图景，紧抓着一个远不充分的理由，好使自己合理地为这对恋人唏嘘。

如果我们把视线放得更远些会看到什么呢？默默等待着少主人的女佣——这是《青木瓜之味》？爱上一个不爱自己的人，默默等她回心转意的珠宝商——《曼哈顿》的反转版？在另一个故事、另一个视角、另一段命运中，我们又会同情起另一些人——我们总是希望那些摄影机更长时间对准的人能完成自己命中的使命，希望主角代替自己去排除万难，我们总是更关注荧幕上的主角，就像我们总是更关注爱中的自己。

如果一个苦恋的人成为主角，我们会要求别人发现、理解、珍惜他的心意，而如果我们成为被苦恋的人，事情就变得微妙起来——成就对方的不妥协，意味着自身的妥协。

命运只存在于叙述之中，存在于广阔的上帝视角中，存在于激昂或煽情的配乐中。现实中并无命运，我们在等待的同时被等待、在阻碍的同时被阻碍、在错过一些人的同时被另一些人错过。我们如何在这流动的角色中寻找具有最高排他性的爱情？

绝对的激情即是绝对的冷漠。《瑟堡的雨伞》中没有冷漠，冷漠的是感到一切无可挽回的观众，它用主角的泰然讽刺着观众的冷漠与自恋，那更大的哀伤正是来源于那句老话——“人生总要继续”。