An Antigone-like character
Although they are both the "musketeers" of the French film "New Wave", Francois Truffaut is different from Jean Luc Godard. The themes presented in his film sequences are not themes of rebellion against modern Western society; his themes are also about "existence", but his protagonist is not a Sartrean existential hero. Truffaut's characters are those "little people" who resented and struggled in the absurd living situation, but finally slowly perished in a kind of unwillingness to go with the flow. As the originator and practitioner of "auteur cinema", Truffaut's preferred plot style is the triangle "love". It is different from the clichéd love triangle in popular melodrama, nor is it a replica of two men and one woman dancing gracefully in American musicals; in Truffaut, the love triangle has become one of the modes to present the absurdity of life, becoming an embarrassment and helplessness. A dark and subtle gimmick; it is not so much a love story as it is a subversion, blasphemy and deconstruction of the classic discourse on love. Truffaut's love story is a "destructive retelling", his unique way of dissolving the sacred as a modernist. If the purpose of auteur films is not only to establish the central position of the film director in film art and to advocate the unity of director and director, but also to make film art break away from the Hollywood assembly line, become a personal art, and establish a director as a director. personal style; then, Truffaut’s style mark is an absurd, almost cruel sense of comedy. That was the moment in "Jules and Jim" when the remains in the corpse furnace were mechanically crushed. It was also the moment in "The Story of Adele Hugo" when Adele's point of view was very cruel to her. The scene was when, amid the sound of opera music, Ping Song walked up to the bedroom upstairs with another woman in his arms, followed by two cute little bulldogs, who were immediately kicked and rolled down the stairs by a cruel foot.
In a sense, "The Story of Adele Hugo" is a love story, but it is not a proof of love, but a cracking and counter-evidence of the words of love, "She "The story is an analysis of the character's inner passion"; we can also think of it as a triangular story, because Adele is always taking Pinson back from "the other woman". But just as the film shows a false love, it also presents a false "triangle": except in Adele's heart, she and Pinson have never established a one-on-one love relationship in any sense. Hiramatsu's relationships with many "other women" never constituted a competitor or counterpart with any emotional "capital". Even in Adele's case, her "Pinpine Love" is false: it is not another "Song of the Sad Cafe", it is not the Milky Way in the heart where the question between the lover and the beloved crosses. Rather than saying that she is madly and hopelessly in love with Pinsong himself, it is better to say that she is madly and hopelessly in love with her love for Pinsong; it is not so much that she bravely transcends her time ("A young girl, drifting across the ocean alone, From the old world to the new world, to unite with her lover - I will accomplish this difficult thing"), to love beyond class, etiquette, and gender regulations. It is better to say that what she loves is her own This transcendent feat. Hiramatsu just provided a suitable object, or even an excuse, for her to achieve this feat. Therefore, Truffaut clearly defined: "Adele is a person who assumes a false character." At the same time, it was Adele's story that provided Truffaut with an equally appropriate object and excuse, allowing him to Retell "Truffaut's story" again: the "black hole" of the human soul, the absurdity of existence, and the cruel comedy.
"The Story of Adele Hugo" is a true story. Because Adele did exist in history. She was the daughter of the literary master Victor Hugo. She created an extremely tragic and unusual experience for herself. She was alone and named Miss Hugo. Living to the age of eighty-five, she left behind several diaries written in code.
However, the film "The Story of Adele Hugo" is not a chivalrous "biopic", nor is it an "adaptation" of Adele's diary (although there is no doubt that Adele's diary is an important material for the film 1), Truffaut used this true story to present a "false character", making it a case study of the mysteries of the soul.
In the film "The Story of Adele Hugo", Truffaut portrayed Adele as a woman with Antigone (Antigone, also translated as Antigon, ancient A character in Greek legend, she is the eldest daughter of Oedipus and the heroine in Sophocles' tragedy of the same name. (For the translation of the tragedy, see "Selected Works of Ancient Greek and Roman Literature" edited by Luo Niansheng, Beijing Press). As the contemporary American female writer Joyce Carol Oates said: "Antigone reminds people that tragedy is caused by persistence in a particular way of life or a kind of essence. Antigone" The tragedy of Tigone is that she is herself, not someone else. I am inspired: this may be the essence of tragedy - although it is simple, this kind of person is not convinced that things are artificial, or at least should strive to do so. It is possible to understand this. This is the tragedy of existence - the universal embarrassment." This is a redundant statement she made for her novel "In the Iceberg", but it can also be an explanation of Adele. In a sense, the film "The Story of Adele Hugo" does not provide any new themes. This Antigone-like story is nothing more than a retelling of Thomas Hardy's famous saying: "Character is destiny" . However, what is unique about Truffaut's Adele is that her tragedy is a tragedy of character, and her character is a "false" character. Unlike Hardy, a realist, as a modernist artist, for Truffaut, character is not a hard-to-change "fixed number" formed by nature and upbringing, heredity and environment, but it is entirely possible. A fiction. Rather than saying that Adele's character caused an irreparable tragedy, it is better to say that she created a tragedy for herself to confirm and shape a character; Adele's tragedy is not that "she is herself, not "Others", but lies in her belief that only by achieving a tragedy by herself can she become herself and not others, not the "others" with the meaning given by other people's names. The latter is the common and almost inescapable fate of women in Adele's time: they can only be their father's daughter (especially when she has a famous father), their husband's wife; the luckiest among them. , are also those women who create in the name of men: you know George Sand, or George Eliot. Adele's tragedy lies in her persistence in her tragic fate. This is not fate or destiny, but Adele's conscious wish: she will use her entire life to create a great, immortal story that belongs only to herself; and in her opinion, only a tragedy can Meet a great narrative. Therefore, it is not the inescapability of tragic fate, but Adele's deliberate creation and capture of tragic opportunities. It is in this sense that she became an Antigone-like character: she was not killed because she could not adapt to society and reality, but because she refused to compromise and adapt; she was not on the verge of madness because she could not distinguish between reality and imagination, But it lies in her tenacity and stubbornness in living in the world created by her heart. Therefore, "she fights on a losing battlefield." This will lead her directly to the tragedy she longs for, and this tragedy will give her a name - make her immortal as herself.
Escape and capture
As an Antigone-like character, Truffaut created the story of Adele Hugo as one composed of multiple escapes and captures. The strange circle.
Adele's tragedy is due to the fact that she was lucky enough to be born into an extraordinary family and was born as the daughter of a great man. As a result, her life was destined to be hidden in the shadow cast by her father, Victor Hugo. She would be known as Mademoiselle Hugo, and as Miss Hugo she would enter into a respectable, perhaps happy, marriage, and her husband would be the husband of the Hugo family in terms of family background and talent. When Adele is no longer Miss Hugo, she will still be famous: she will be Madame XX.
It wasn't until complete hopelessness and despair came that she frantically scribbled the following sentences, which were a true confession of the soul: "Two newlyweds were buried together, and even death could not separate them... The dead young bride The dress is on display at her parents’ home…but it’s also my home! The bride’s gown seems like a souvenir to all visitors. But what can I do?”
Adele's tragedy lies in her escape and capture. She tried to defeat her father in his father's way (writing), and to defeat Lebolde in Lebolde's way (unusual love), which meant that she put herself in the position of a deviant, which meant that As she devotes all her body and soul to a battle that is destined to be lost. From escaping with confidence to trying to complete the escape in a way of being arrested, Adele went from hiding her identity as Miss Hugo to using this identity by any means necessary. She forced her father to issue documents granting her permission to marry on her own, to borrowing her name in exchange for the "help" of a charlatan - it was an interesting scene: Adele was backstage at the circus, using her slender, gloved legs to His fingers wrote the name Victor Hugo on a dirty, dusty mirror and then erased it. Until she realized that Miss Hugo's identity as Victor Hugo's daughter was her entire and only bit of dignity and value. Her last words to the kind-hearted Mrs. Sanders were: "You are wrong, Mrs. Sanders. I am the one who refuses to marry. I think marriage is a degradation for women, especially a woman like me. My job The need for celibacy was my father's idea. I will never give up the title Miss Hugo." The only moments in the film where she is recognized are when people recognize her identity. Whether it was Mr. Whistler in the bookstore, her doctor, or the kind black woman who saved her life in the end.
Adele was finally caught. She spanned a century anonymously as Miss Hugo and died in obscurity. She never escaped—from giving her name its own unique meaning. But Adele finally escaped again. That is because of the tragedy she "achieved" herself, because of the letters and coded diaries she left behind.
One hundred years after she starred in her own tragedy, in 1968, American writer Francis Vino Gale published her biography. In 1975, the famous Truffaut film we are talking about came out. Adele Hugo is not only a unique name, but also synonymous with an era, a character, and a destiny. Therefore, Truffaut declared: "In contemporary times, characters like Adele still exist, are active, and even create."