M就是凶手

http://axinlove.com/2010/04/m/

《M[凶手M]》表现主义
by @xinl.ve 100406

杰作，推荐一看，但不能理解为什么能位列Top 250: #56。

在艺术的表现力和电影理应具有的戏剧性与趣味性来看，《M[凶手M]》臻至极致。数十年后，Guy Ritchie的极具风格化的摄影、叙事等技法，本片导演Fritz Lang[弗里茨·朗]和拍摄《Sunrise：A Song Of Two Humans[日出：二人之歌]》的茂瑙早已为之，特别是Fritz Lang拍摄的本片，“没有”过分玄乎的宏大主题，《M》单凭表现主义的风格登上了荣誉之巅。

借一段文字：
表现主义电影折射了当时的德国，同时也超越了当时的德国。他们思考的驱动力来自于战败后德国破败的现实，工业社会的冷漠资本膨胀对人的异化塑造了他们思考的姿态——面向共同的人类精神世界发问。在表现暴力、谋杀和死亡的主题时，表现主义电影导演们无不倾向于在影片中制造出一种迷幻、扭曲和阴冷的世界。对于这样一个世界心怀恐惧是全人类的共性，在这样一个世界中逃亡出去寻找精神的安慰之地也是全人类的愿望。当时的德国中产阶级对现实不满，带有自由意志论的时代精神和社会反叛助长了表现主义的发展。参加表现主义运动的人，在政治信仰和哲学观点上存在着很大的差异。其中有无政府主义者、虚无主义者，也有社会主义者。因此，表现主义运动从来不是一个完全统一协调的运动，也很少有始终如一的“纯粹”的表现主义者。但他们也有一些共同的思想倾向和艺术特点，即不满社会现状，要求改革，要求“革命”。

按照上一段文字，《M》已经隐喻着因第一次世界大战的失败而陷入萧条的德国社会有迎来纳粹极权的可能，加上《Das weiße Band[白丝带]》的推波助澜，《M》的题旨好像真是如此。按照部分电影介绍的说法，柏林的警察历经数月抓不住诱拐小孩子并杀害之的罪犯，无奈的普通人（电影中实际是黑帮组织乞丐、小偷和混混等违法之徒，真实世界里少数演员还有被逮进去的情况发生）只好自己组织起来行使正义，“In the name of the law/people”。政府无能，老百姓有力，革命来改朝换代是可以的，《M》因此暗示了德国纳粹的登台。并且导演Fritz Lang为了警示这种危险，在最后结局时，让某个悲伤的母亲说，“看好自己的孩子！”为什么要看好自己的孩子？既怕被拐走（被杀），也是怕被诱骗（成为纳粹）。

过分的解读莫过于此，多少人真看出了晦涩的《Das weiße Band》背后幼年纳粹的成长，抱着自己创造的幻觉可能误读了《M》。

忽视警察为抓捕变态凶手M付出的努力，并把抓获罪犯的功劳归功于黑帮代表的普通人，从而强化“人民行使正义”的电影主题，一厢情愿地厉害。黑帮分子要找出凶手的动机是因为警察的扫荡和宵禁政策极大地影响了他们的生意，并不是真要为民伸张正义。独立于黑帮分子找寻线索的警察并非想象中无能，在嫌犯的住处搜寻到香烟、铅笔屑，并在其家中设伏等待其回家后抓住之。在黑帮分子抢先一步带走凶手后，两个警察一个白脸一个红脸地唬骗被落在办公室的倒霉蛋，从而获悉“普通人”一伙审判罪犯的场所。等等诸如此类，描写政府、警察一方的情节，说明他们的效率其实还是蛮高的，并非电影的反面人物或者参照物。

召集法庭并为嫌犯指定辩护律师的最后一场是电影的高潮。“民意汹汹”的“小偷小摸们”在地下世界一本正经地采用了世俗里的法官、辩护、控方和评审团的形式，要以师出有名的方式判处宣告嫌犯有罪。如此的安排，的确会让人误以为导演站在了人民的一边，然而联想表现主义电影中黑色、夸张、荒诞和颠覆性。正常的“形式”与风格化的电影格格不入，黑帮审判凶人的场景才是异常里的正常。

截两张图，顺便参考表现主义的特点：





1.影像：表现主义的导演注重具有象征意味的造型，倾向认为电影的影像应该成为平面艺术。在构图和布景上下足了功夫。往往在一个构图中用相似的形状并列而形成相当具有表现力的镜头。表现主义电影经常摒弃常规的影像形态，采用倾斜、颠倒的影像，采用常规电影很少使用的特殊拍摄角度，画面的明暗反差一般会很大。表现主义电影常用人物特写和富有象征意义的空镜头，使用特写可以看作是在“放大”表演，增强戏剧性；而对环境的渲染可以看作是对人物行为和灵魂的“解释”，力图揭示人物行为背后的社会诱因。此外，主观镜头也是表现主义常用的手法，表现主义艺术家轻视局限于客观的写实，强调表现“主观的现实”。

2.表演：表现主义的表演一般比较夸张，基本放弃了写实主义的表演方式取而代之的是展示迅速的变动、舞蹈般的动作、变形或扭曲的表情。

3.题材和类型：在表现主义的代表作品中，题材的特征是显而易见的，恐怖、灾难、犯罪题材是最常见的，表现主义电影艺术家们往往从被扭曲的、阴暗的世界中去寻找素材，在那似乎与现实隔绝的、封闭的世界中，去挖掘人物内心深处的孤独、残暴、恐怖、狂乱的精神状态。内容荒诞离奇，有时结构散乱，情节变化突兀，故事人物类型化，往往鬼魂与活人同时出现（《吸血鬼》等），生与死、梦幻与现实之间没有明确的界线。表现主义电影导演们关注畸形社会中的心理非常态，关注那些焦虑与紧张的情绪，力图透视那些狂乱行为背后的深层动机和原因，用主观化的影像风格来反证社会事实，作品因此具有社会意义和社会价值。

56的排位，有了些许答案。

M.1931.720p.BluRay.x264-SiNNERS

(写于2008-03-02 18:26:41)（图片转不过来。。。）

Fritz LANG 的《M,可诅咒的人》
是他的第一部有声电影（1931年），也是作为classic film的范本之一，电影的拍摄技巧以及所表达的电影语言是相当的精彩，
于是截取了几个小画面来和大家分享一下～～
 
镜头一：
1，（故事背景：由于儿童杀人犯的屡次犯案，柏林的人们都处在人心惶惶的状态中，大街上都贴满了捉拿“杀人犯Murderer”悬赏告示），镜头中一个小女孩拍着皮球来到告示前，接着将球拍打在贴有告示的柱子上，镜头随着球的运动停留在告示上，巧妙地带出重点，并且是由一个“小女孩”。）


 
2，观众在固定镜头地时间内阅读完了告示的内容，随着小女孩的皮球若隐若现，气氛中突然自发的有一种紧张感，似乎小女孩像猎物一般自己走到了虎口！
    果不其然，有个黑影出现，请注意黑影遮住的地方（没错！正是“Morder”德语的“杀人犯”）

 
3， 黑影问小女孩：“你的皮球真好看，你叫什么名字啊？”，当M（黑影）问你叫什么名字的时候弯下了腰，正好就把刚才遮住的 “杀人犯”显现了出来，就是无声中他也做了一番自我介绍～～

 
镜头二：
当小女孩落入虎口后，电影用了一组“空”镜头来表现孩子的死亡，例如母亲等待孩子回来吃饭的空盘子

 
精彩的橱窗镜头
镜头一：
1，巧妙的运用了橱窗的反光，制造出了mise en abime 的效果。（故事背景：Mr.M又在街上闲逛（善良无知的面孔），可是此时全城已经暗自组织起了捉拿他的“游击队伍”），反光中的展示的刀叉们，框框的把他“围”了起来，完全是foreshadowing的作用嘛～

 
2，接着他Mr.M在橱窗的镜子中发现了“猎物”（也被刀叉围住，danger!!），于是他的“毒瘾”又要发作了。接着镜头退到他身后，请注意橱窗上显示出的他的映像，代表着他的双重人格在此刻的显现“Mr.M～～变身！！”

 
3，天真的小女孩走过另一个橱窗，她完全不知道后面有只大灰狼～～，橱窗中有个不断上下动的“火箭”，直直的朝她插了下来，DANGER！！！，右边有个自己忽悠的转盘，小心你已成为目标，小心被大灰狼“忽悠”了～～～

 
镜头三：
1，（故事背景： Mr.M终于找到了今晚的猎物，“忽悠”正在进行中，对付小孩子要来软的，于是他们在琳琅满目的橱窗前逛，跟踪他的人已经借机很巧妙的在他的背上作了记号（开头那只手），以便“游击队员”跟踪。）请注意，导演有给我们一个小惊喜，在橱窗里的玩具的腿正好在运动中显现了个M字型，并且远处的墙上也有个M字，演员的走位也正处在玩具腿的正下方，预示着双重危险的到来。后来当M透过橱窗的镜子发现自己肩上的M字印时，他的噩运就开始了（演员硕大的眼睛也是影片的亮点啊）。

 
其实这个Mr.M是一个精神病患者，对于他的犯案许多情况下他自己都没有意识，最后当市民私自而未通过公正司法想处死Mr.M时他也是一个受害者。剧本在对于这个人物的处理手法上也相当讲究，影片的前半部，当他是犯罪人的时候几乎没有Mr.M的清晰画面，无非是他的声音，影子，背影。而当后半部，他成为受害者的时候影片重点给与了他镜头，这当中的暗喻意义是相当重要的。
 
31年的片子能有这样的技巧和思想深度，Fritz LANG 不愧是被现代电影工作者模仿最多的先行者啊～～看到最后的人真是太有耐心了～～55

        Fritz Lang, one of the most celebrated auteurs of Germany's national cinema, lays out a chilling crime story in M(1931). In this provocative motion picture, a search for the cruel child murderer, Beckert, drives the whole city to turmoil. As all members in the city become involved in the search for the criminal, two different forms of human abnormality lurked in the city are exposed: the criminal mentality as well as the conflict between the institutional authority and the general public of which it is in charge. While the search continues, both forms of human abnormality keep growing unchecked; yet, eventually, the citizens identified with such abnormality have to face the catastrophic consequences of their behavior. Through innovative use of sound and provocative editing techniques, Lang points to the city as the foster home of both forms of human abnormality. Furthermore, he invites the audience to question the unforeseen detriments of a city in modernity that all its members eventually have to confront.

        As Lang's first film with sound, Lang ingeniously manipulates this new technology to portray the city as an adoptive home of human abnormality. At the very beginning of the film, before any image appears on screen, the audience first hears a child singing a familiar tune: “Wait, wait just a little while/ then the black man will come after you/ with his little chopper/ he will make mince meat out of you.” According to Todd Herzog, this tune is a homage to the “Haarmann song” that tells the chilling crimes of the notorious serial killer Fritz Haarmann. Herzog believes that this song serves to, “locate M in a specific historical context, the world of the Weimar Republic at the time of the film's release, and to place it in dialogue with that world”(Herzog, “Fritz Lang's M(1931), An Open Case”, P232). Nevertheless, Fritz's use of this song to begin the film allows a different interpretation. As the film begins with the dark screen and the nursery rhyme, an image soon appears in a few seconds. A medium shot locates the source of the sound in the yard of a mietskascerne, where a group of kids are playing and singing. By placing the source of the cruel tune in the mouth of a naïve child, Lang further implies that the modern city has become a sink of iniquity, even for the innocent who have yet to understand the city in which they are situated. The victim of today is just as likely to become the perpetrator in the future.

        Beckert's whistle is a repetition in the film which symbolizes his criminal mentality. Each time when he begins to whistle, the audience witnesses the awakening of the monstrous murderer within him. Thus far, Lang constantly shifts the source of the whistle from on-screen to off-screen; such manipulation of the sound source sheds light on the unlikelihood to locate the specific origin of human abnormality in a modern milieu. In a scene when Beckert stands on the street and looks into a shop-window, the sequence is accompanied with no diegetic sound. All what the audience can see is that Beckert dramatically changes his facial expression when he sees a little girl in the reflection of the shop-window. As the girl walks away, the camera moves out of the shop to the street and captures Beckert staring in the direction that the girl is walking. The audience then hears the diegetic sound of the street traffic, and Beckert's whistle simultaneously joins in as he starts following the girl and walks out of the frame. In the next medium-long shot, the camera tracks the little girl as she walks on the street. The whistle continues in the background; however, Beckert no longer appears on-screen in this tracking shot. While the audience has been led to believe that the whistle comes from Beckert by the previous shot; Lang purposefully leaves the established sound source off-screen in the following shot, which leads the audience to question whether Beckert himself is the source of his abnormality, or if the city is that with which has fostered his brutal crimes.

        Lang further manipulates sound to create off-screen space that contrasts the on-screen image in order to depict another form of human abnormality: the revolt against the political authority. The conflict between the underworld business and the police points to a divergence between the authority and the public, which is previously kept in disguise by a seemingly stable social order. However, as Beckert's crimes disturb the social order and alarm the police, they immediately assume that the criminal must be someone from the underworld, and decide to break the ostensible peace and raid their gathering spots. One night, the police secretly surround one of the underworld's gathering place; in which the entire process is accompanied with no sound. The camera soon moves downstairs into the basement where people in the underworld business gather. As a woman shouts out that the police is here, everyone begins rushing towards the exit to leave the basement. In a medium shot, the camera awaits at the top of the stairs and looks slightly down as everyone starts running towards the camera. Among the frenzied noises, the audience first clearly hears a woman's scream as the policemen yell back at her; yet the entire action takes place upstairs in off-screen space while the shot remains still, featuring the panicking crowds. Soon, the police enter from the lower frame and gradually push the crowds back into the basement for investigation. The image on-screen contrasts the actions taken place in off-screen space; such contrast allows the audience to look beyond the images shown on-screen and picture the entire city, where its underlying instability and human abnormality are close to outbreak due to the police's disruption of a public order that does not solve social problems, but merely hides them unseen.

        Throughout the film, Long constructs several montage sequences which implicitly build cause-and-effect relationships between the modern city and human abnormality. In the beginning of the film, when Elsie's mother becomes worried about Elsie for having not returned home, a medium shot shows Elsie's mother walking towards the window and looking out. When she begins calling out “Elsie”, the image cuts to an aisle shot of the stairwell in the Mietskaserne. As the mother's cry echoes down the stairs, the audience then follows the camera to an empty space where people in the neighbourhood hang their laundry; Elsie is still absent on-screen. The sequence continues as it cuts to a close-up on the lunch table, where Elsie's seat remains empty. The grieving howl of the mother has now ended, yet the sequence did not until the audience are shown with two more shots: Elsie's ball rolling on the grass, and the ballon that the criminal Beckerd bought for Elsie entangled in the electric wires on the city street. In this sequence, Lang juxtaposes the mother's continuous calling for Elsie with discontinuity editing of on-screen images. The audience follows the mother as she searches for Elsie in all public spaces in the city where Elsie can possibly be; yet Elsie's ball and ballon at the end of the sequence tell audience that Elsie must have already been slaughtered by the murderer Beckerd. In this sequence, Lang associates the befalling of Elsie's tragic death with the city itself: the development of the modern metropolis not only enlarges the public space, but also catalyses crime and threat among the citizens.

        In another scene when the minister condemns the police chief on the phone for the police department's incompetence in finding the killer, Lang edits a flashback as the chief explains their difficulty. The editing of this flashback again connotes the unforeseen detriments of a city in modernity. When the chief tells the minister about a white paper bag that they found behind the hedge, a close-up on the paper bag gives the audience a clue that it is a candy wrapper, and the store's name was on the wrapper. Then, the image cuts to a close-up of a map of the city, in which circles and circles are drawn with a pair of compasses in increasing radius. While the search widens, the police interrogates owners of candy stores all over the city. However, all owners shake their heads and cannot remember who had bought the candy for little Elsie. As population increases, the city provides perpetrators the opportunity to disguise their abnormality and let it grow unchecked. The editing of this sequence connects the failure to identify the abnormal with the city itself.

        Lang further implies a cause-and-effect relationship between the city and another form of human abnormality, namely, the public and the institutional authority's revolt against each other. As both the leads of the underworld and the chiefs of the political institutions gather for two separate meetings to discuss their objectives on the case of Beckert, Lang uses cross-cutting to juxtapose both meetings. The heads of the underworld complain about the consistent police raids' harm to their business and decide to find the killer by themselves in order to resurrect their business. As the underworld head waves his hand, the shot cuts to the head of police's same action. The police simultaneously decides to continue their search for Beckert without the help of the public, by organizing more police raids and search among public spaces. While the underworld condemns the police for interfering the underworld's business, the police chief Lohmann also refuses to ask the public for help as he states, “Don't talk to me about the public helping, it disgusts me.” The cross-cutting technique invites the audience to contrast the underworld and the police's conflicting attitudes against each other. Such social conflict is another form of human abnormality that is against the democratic ideal of the Weimar republic.

        As the underworld collaborates with the beggars and has seized Beckerd from the building, together they leave the scene in a hurry. Lang then presents the audience with a montage sequence in which he rewinds the crimes that the underworld has just committed. The audience follows the camera into the room where both watchmen have been knocked out and tied up. Then, the sequence continues with still shots of the forcefully broken office door, the compartment's broken fences, and ends with the hole they have dug on the floor in order to make the crime scene look like a result of burglary. This montage sequence is shown with no sound, leaving the audience in contemplation of the underworld's motive and the destructions their abnormal behaviors have caused. The heads of the underworld are provoked to capture Beckerd not because that they find Beckerd's behavior immoral, but because the underworld's business is interrupted by the police's consistent raids. In turn, they decide to look for Beckerd without collaboration with the police, and purposefully commit a series of crimes in order to achieve their goal. The lack of stability in the city's social order has fostered the formation of the underworld, and the underworld's distrust with the political authority. Yet, their abnormal behaviors will lead them to their final conviction.

        The film ends with the final conviction of both the underworld and the child murderer. The audience should not forget that it is the underworld, despite their unrighteous motives, who has asked for help from the beggars and successfully seized Beckert. Nevertheless, both parties have to eventually face the catastrophic consequences of their abnormal behaviors. The first being the underworld's imprudent disruption of the public order for their own economic benefits, and the second being the brutal crimes that Beckert has committed. Throughout the film, Lang manipulates the sound effects and the editing of the sequences to point to the modern city itself as the very cause of all forms of human abnormality preeminent in it. The diegetic world in the film, which is the Weimar Republic in the 1920s, still echoes the modern milieu in which we live. However we try to trace any form of abnormality that hinders the public order, we are always led back to the society as the cause, without identifying the specific origin. Perhaps, the only way of prevention lies in the hands of the people who make up the society, with self-awareness of their behaviors, and positive objectives to make changes.
 
 
                                      Works Cited
 
Herzog, Todd. "Fritz Lang's M(1931): An Open Case." An Essential Guide to Classic Films of the Era Weimar Cinema. Ed. Noah Isenberg. New York: Columbia University Press, 2009. 291-309. Print.
 
M. Dir. Fritz Lang. Perf. Peter Lorre, Ellen Widmann, Inge Landgut. Criterion Collection, 2004, DVD.