To see how music plays a role in a movie, try wearing headphones in the theater.
Once, watching the thriller "A Quiet Place," I couldn't stand the trepidation, so I plugged in noise-cancelling headphones and picked a cheerful pop song to cover the original sound of the film.
The effect of the intervention is immediate. The heroine is hiding in the bathtub to give birth, the murderous monster is approaching step by step, the speed of the timpani is getting faster and faster, the dissonance of the bass brass is advancing layer by layer, the air in the theater solidifies into a high wall, and all the audience dare not breathe. Only I can breathe.
In my world, the ugly minions of monsters reach out to women, accompanied by Jay Chou's "Sunshine Otaku" - the horror power has been cut by more than half, and there is a sense of joy. I almost laughed out loud.
Put on your headphones, isolate the soundtrack, and the effect of a movie is instantly changed—the term "movie soundtrack" is often used, as if the default image is the protagonist and the music is just a side dish to accompany a big meal, which now seems not to be the case.
In really excellent works, music is an inseparable part of the film, and like the script, performance, and photography, it is a language of film narrative.
To understand this, let’s put aside the stereotypical analytical lens and go into a movie purely through the music.
The Pianist directed by Polanski is a good choice.
This classic movie is just 20 years old this year. Based on the real experience of Polish pianist Spearman during World War II, it is based on the Jewish Holocaust and tells the story of a fugitive who brushes up against Auschwitz. Compared with "Schindler's List", "The Pianist" is more restrained, as the director Polanski himself said, "there is almost no trace of the director". As a result, some critics consider The Pianist to be one of the most accurate and objective war films in the world.
Perhaps in order to match the historical background of the story and the occupational attributes of the characters, the film uses a lot of classical music, most of which are Chopin's piano pieces.
Among the stars of classical music, why not choose Beethoven and Liszt in The Pianist, but Chopin?
With the heart of inquiry, watching the movie "The Pianist" again, you will find that under the surface of the film's restraint, there is a wider and turbulent ocean composed of musical notes.
nocturne
The Pianist's invocation of music is discreet, and it only rings out as the characters play.
For a long time, "The Pianist" had no soundtrack. After Spearman lost his job as a pianist, the music disappeared from the film, leaving only gunshots, yelling, and moans. That's why people think this film has a biting sense of documentary - when the music is stripped away, the world is left with nothing but noise and no fantasy.
This phased silence further illustrates the significance of music in film expression. In the war-torn world, every opportunity for a Jewish pianist to play is extremely rare. It is presented in the text of the film, how to play and what to play, has a deep meaning.
The first piece of music that appears in the whole film is Chopin's Nocturne in C-sharp minor played by the pianist Spearman on Polish radio.
Suddenly, artillery fire fell, shattering the glass of the recording studio and interrupting the sound of the piano. In just a minute and a half of the film's opening, the sound suddenly transitions from a quiet and beautiful nocturne to harsh sirens, screams and gunshots.
Strictly speaking, Chopin is not a classical composer in the narrow sense, he is a representative of romantic music. Classicism advocates rationality, emphasizes rhythm, and has a regular form, while romanticism is more free in musical form and more singing in melody.
A more intuitive way to tell the difference is that classical music sounds more calm, elegant and restrained, while romantic music sounds emotional and more "sentimental".
In romanticism, Chopin is particularly "sentimental", so that the music industry once despised this kind of "romance", and felt that the uncontrolled and exaggerated interpretation of Chopin's works by individual performers was a trend of vulgarization. Especially in the period immediately after Chopin's death, he was not taken seriously as a feminine salon poet and a superficial ward composer.
The reason why Chopin was so misunderstood at one time was in his score.
On the staff, there are not only notes indicating pitch and rhythm, but also various symbols to indicate the mood, strength and speed of the performance. It can be understood that the notes that look like small tadpoles constitute the basic melody, and the rest of the symbols are the specifications for the playing style.
The reason why Chopin was so misunderstood at one time was in his score.
Chopin is somewhat casual when it comes to the norms of music. He often marked "Rubato" in certain passages, which means that the player does not have to follow the prescribed rhythm, but can flexibly change the timing of the notes and flexibly change the speed.
"Rubato" is a space that Chopin gave to the performers, and it is also a subject thrown to them.
Apparently, at certain times, people have not been able to answer it very well: sometimes prolonging, sometimes accelerating, at will, playing an already emotional melody more and more provocatively, like "putting sugar into honey". This kind of performance makes Chopin's music, especially his nocturnes, hooked up with "gorgeous" and "kitsch". People are fascinated by the charming melody and ignore Chopin's harmony, genre and piano sound. Emmanuel, ignoring the more profound and moving aspects of Chopin's music.
Speaking of the Nocturne in C-sharp minor that appeared in the movie, it was composed in 1835 when Chopin was about to leave Poland. At the beginning of the 19th century, Russia annexed 9/10 of Poland's territory, and the tsar became the king of the "Kingdom of Poland", "Russification" culturally. After the rise of the Polish national liberation movement in 1830, Chopin was forced to stay in a foreign country. Before leaving, he wrote his worries and confusion into this soft nocturne.
The accompaniment sound pattern in the bass area is regular and steady, setting off a calm atmosphere, while the main melody phrase in the treble area is full of tension.
It would be perfect for the opening of a war movie. Whether it is the music itself or its creative background, Nocturne in C-sharp Minor is heralding a life of calm and crisis.
Then there's a "boom", and the nocturne is interrupted by artillery fire—the beginning of "The Pianist", the Nazi Germany blitzkrieg takes Poland, and the war begins.
Ballade
In a sense, Spearman, the protagonist of the movie "The Pianist", is like Chopin during World War II.
They are all Polish, good at the piano art, and experienced the war of the motherland.
In times of war, musicians are useless. At the beginning of the 19th century, Chopin experienced this deep powerlessness. He hated himself for "doing nothing with his bare hands, unable to kill even an enemy, but to play moaning, pain and despair on the piano".
A hundred years later, Spearman has the same pain.
Under the Nazi classification system of Jews, a prestigious pianist was less valuable than a blacksmith and a carpenter. Spearman's hands, which were originally used to strike black and white keyboards, were assigned to weigh iron, because he sat on the piano bench all the year round and was so thin that he couldn't do the same heavy work as others.
Stills of "The Pianist"
He can play the piano, but what's the use? Spearman couldn't protect his family, he couldn't save his companions, and he didn't have the courage and ability to join the Resistance. All he had to do was hide and survive until the end of the war, and there was nothing else he could do.
The untimely birth of an artist forms the emotional undertones of Chopin's music.
Some people misunderstood Chopin's grief as "forcing new words to express sorrow", but this is not the case. This sadness comes from his concern for his motherland, he loves Poland deeply, and always carries a handful of Polish soil by his side. But he himself was suffering from tuberculosis, pale and sickly, unable to do anything in the face of the colossal atrocity.
The composer only used the piano as a battle drum, and wrote his worries about the current situation and a majestic heart of struggle into the score.
Schumann, the composer of his time, understood the anger and said: "If the powerful dictatorship knew that in Chopin's composition, the simple melody of the Mazurka contained a great threat to him. If you do, he will definitely ban these music."
"Chopin's works are artillery hidden in the flowers." He metaphorically.
Later, the artillery that Chopin assembled with musical notes really became a weapon.
In the film, Spearman runs into a German officer in the ruins of the Jewish quarter. Knowing he was a pianist, the officer asked him to play a piece on a worn-out piano, then let him go, providing him with food, winter clothes and a place to hide. This rescue beyond the standpoint of war has become the splendor of the whole film.
At a crucial moment, Spearman played Chopin's Ballade No. 1 in G minor.
People will hear in the sound of the violin that Chopin is not only a patient, but also a helpless artist, a patriot and a hero.
This is a battle song, the roughest and most intense of all Chopin's works.
"Ballet No. 1 in G minor" is based on a narrative poem about the struggle of the Lithuanians against the Germanic warrior order in the 14th century. When writing this piece, Chopin heard the news of the failure of the Warsaw Uprising and was deeply saddened. So, he used a set of arpeggiated unison that went up to three octaves from the bass area as an introduction, and called the additional chords and chords that were more tense in auditory effect, and the fast and dense small notes were like a storm on the keys. Swipe down.
Any prejudice against Chopin's music will be washed away by this Ballade No. 1 in G minor.
People will hear in the sound of the violin that Chopin is not only a patient, but also a helpless artist, a patriot and a hero.
Like Chopin, Spearman put his own thoughts into music.
Some critics disliked Spearman, thinking that as the protagonist of an anti-war film and television work, he was just a cowardly fugitive from beginning to end, lacking a spirit of resistance, and was too mediocre. Others interpret Spearman's piece for German officers as: In war, art is a bridge of communication that transcends the divide between friend and foe.
These are all misunderstandings, because misunderstandings arise from not knowing music.
What Spearman played was a tune that couldn't be more nationalistic. At this moment, he chose to fight in the way he was good at, and used the sound of the piano to express his anger as a Pole and a Jew with the spirit of the last song of his life.
Express
However, in reality, the historical prototype pianist of the script of "The Pianist" was not playing "Ballet No. 1 in G minor" when he bumped into a German officer, but Chopin's "Nocturne in C-sharp minor" - the song that Warsaw fell. The piece he performed on Polish radio that day.
Director Roman Polanski
The real Spearman wrote in his autobiography that at the time, he had not played the piano for two and a half years. The fingers are stiff and covered with a thick layer of dirty mud, and the nails have not been cut for a long time. And the piano, in the shattered building, was exposed to the wind and the sun, and the keys were particularly hard to press. "Nocturne in C sharp minor", concise, gentle, not very technically difficult, is the level that this extremely hungry and nervous pianist can control.
His choice may be interpreted as a kind of psychological repair of the traumatic experience.
After several years of ups and downs and struggling to survive, perhaps, the real Spearman subconsciously wanted to continue the tune that was interrupted in the past. How much I hope that these years of suffering are just a dream. If the nocturne of the year was not forced to be interrupted, would the peaceful days come back?
It was the decision of the film director Polanski to replace the Nocturne in C-sharp Minor with the Ballade No. 1 in G minor.
This is somewhat unusual.
You know, director Polanski once said that he hoped to restore the real and objective history through "The Pianist". In the film, he restrained almost everywhere, but in such an important fact, he involved his personal artistic choice in the film.
Director Polanski is a Holocaust survivor himself. At the age of five, his father used pliers to cut through the barbed wire, allowing him to escape from the ghetto and be transported to Auschwitz—like the pianist Spearman.
The octave chromatic scale is reversed in unison, and the shabby piano makes a sound of mountains and tsunamis.
In 1993, Spielberg wanted to let him shoot Schindler's List, but Polanski refused. He felt that "Schindler's List" was too dramatic, and in the Nazi persecution he experienced, there was no savior like Schindler. The reason why he survived by chance is just a random fate.
Nine years after refusing to direct Schindler's List, Polanski wrote The Pianist.
The director doesn't seem to want to play up hatred or some kind of heroism in the Holocaust theme, and he shoots with extreme restraint, as if there is no emotion. Some people say that even if there is no scandal of sexually assaulting young girls, "The Pianist" is enough to prove that Polanski is a lunatic and a monster. A witness to the Nazi persecution, so calmly told this history, "almost cold".
In fact, Polanski is more qualified than anyone to stand on the moral high ground and make a film condemning the crimes of the Nazis.
His mother died in the gas chambers of the Auschwitz concentration camp, and his father was tortured to the point of being inhuman, and the disaster left his family devastated as a child.
Is he really as calm as the film narrative and the language of the camera show, without any strong self-expression?
Perhaps, Polanski just hid what he wanted to say in the replaced piano piece.
Ballad No. 1 in G minor.
Twenty years later, today, when people mention "The Pianist", the first and most impressive fragment that people think of is still these 5 minutes. The ragged Spearman played the piano in the cold moonlight, while the German in military uniform sat and listened quietly.
No lines, no performances, the camera almost freezes.
In these 5 minutes, "Ballet No. 1 in G minor" is the absolute protagonist, and music is the only language.
"Gorgeous" composer Chopin, "cowardly" film and television character Spearman, "Grim" director Polanski, three Polish artists put their deeper thoughts that they can't explain to people .
The octave chromatic scale is reversed in unison, and the shabby piano makes a sound of mountains and tsunamis.
The song is over.
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