In many ways Scandinavian film and television is a global cultural brand, connected with and exporting some of the cultural and social values connected to a liberal and progressive welfare society. This course deals with the social, institutional and cultural background of film and television in Scandinavia and in a broader European and global context.
4.1: Lars von Trier: The Early Years, by Associate Professor Peter Schepelern
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来自 University of Copenhagen 的课程
北欧电影和电视
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从本节课中
Ingmar Bergman and Lars von Trier
'The Seventh Seal', 'Persona' and 'Cries and Whispers' are just some of the famous films by the acclaimed Swedish director Ingmar Bergman. The third lesson focuses on issues of influences, themes and style in his films as well as on Bergman's importance for the modern art cinema. The fourth lesson deals with the internationally renowned ideas and films by the Danish director Lars von Trier: 'The Europa-trilogy'; The TV series 'Riget'/'The Kingdom'; 'Breaking the Waves'; 'Dancer in the Dark' and 'Dogville'; The Dogma 95 Manifesto; 'Antichrist', 'Melancholia' and 'Nymphomaniac' ...
与讲师见面
Eva Novrup RedvallAssociate Professor
Department of Media, Cognition and Communication
[SOUND] Contemporary Danish cinema enjoys
considerable international attention,
much more than the yearly output of typically 20 feature films and
five to ten documentaries can explain.
Directors such as Susanne Bier, Lone Scherfig, Billie August,
Nikolaj Arcel, and Thomas Vinterberg have received
prestigious prizes and won general recognition abroad.
But undoubtedly, the leading Danish filmmaker is Lars von Trier.
He is the most widely admired Danish filmmaker since Karl Theodor Trier.
And he stands out as a controversial auteur who persists
in serving up surprising artistic provocations,
distinguished by intellectual acuity, satirical bite and
a pinch of perversion, along with an always fearless desire
to discover new possible expressions in cinematic language and narratives.
This lecture will be about his early work.
My name is Peter Schepelern, Associate Professor at the University
of Copenhagen where Trier was my student 35 years ago.
Lars Trier, who was born in 1956 and
invented his fun as a sarcasm in his early use,
is the most innovative and most controversial filmmaker of Danish cinema,
constantly challenging the forms and potentials of the film narrative.
After studies at the university,
he continued his education at the Danish Film School.
His graduation film, Liberation Pictures from 1982,
is set during the last days of the Nazi German occupation of Denmark,
where a German soldier finds his martyrdom and literally goes to heaven.
Here, we already have significant Lars von Trier characteristics,
a controversial theme and a stunning visual style.
>> [FOREIGN]
>> His first feature,
The Element of Crime, which was presented in the main competition in
the Cannes Film Festival in 1984 constitutes, together with the two
following films Epidemic and Europa, Trier's so called Europe Trilogy.
A triptych that offers a sinister and haunting interpretation of
Europe set in the future, in the present, and in the past.
The films, in English as most of his work is, dealt with the great issues of
European identity, guilt, and idealism as seen through a mirror darkly.
At the same time, the films offered groundbreaking investigations
in the possibilities of cinematic styles and expressions.
The stories focus on the idealist man who enters the dark and threatening world,
and despite all good intentions, ends as an involuntary instrument of evil.
In the Element of Crime, police detective Fisher is called in from his
Egyptian exile to solve a series of murders in a small borough.
In the process, he gradually comes to realize that he must follow
in the footsteps of the assumed murderer,
finally completing the murderous pattern himself.
In Epidemic, the doctor who fights the new disease is also the one who spreads it.
And in Europa, the young man returns to Germany right after
World War II to help the devastated fatherland, only to find
that he has been trapped in a fatal maze of intrigue and conspiracy.
All the three films have a demonstrative style.
The yellowish hue made with sodium light,
gives the element of crime a hellish and post apocalyptic shine.
>> Mister Fisher where are you?
>> Europe.
It must be.
[MUSIC]
>> Do you wish to continue?
>> I have to.
>> How do you picture a Hagler?
>> How do you picture a man, who's killing little girls and
cutting them up with broken bottles?
>> 25, 26.
>> But it doesn't help.
>> 33, 34, 35,
36, 37, 38,
39, 40, 41.
>> In Epidemic, there's a contrast between scenes made
with primitive self service camera set ups and
scenes with refined cinematography made by Henning Benson,
who worked on Trier's later films.
And, Europa mixes black and white with color, and occasionally,
a black and white shot where a single element is red,
much like Spielberg did a few years later in Schindler's List.
With the Europe trilogy,
Trier established his international position as art film auteur.
The films were typical art films with connections to the contemporary
postmodernist trend, but also will reference to film noir and
auteurs like Fritz Lang, Orson Welles, Bernardo Bertolucci, and Andre Tarkovsky.
They were not exactly box office hits.
In a manifesto accompanying Epidemic, Trier had said
a film shall be like a stone in your shoe, and
that kind of films has never enjoyed too much popularity.
But the films were shown at many festivals, receiving prizes and
attention from critics and from other filmmakers.
After the Europe trilogy and the made for TV version of the classical Greek drama
Media, Trier's career took an important turn in the mid 90s.
In the trilogy, where technical control and perfectionism was dominating,
Trier had shown his formalistic powers in creating intellectual art cinema.
Now with the TV miniseries The Kingdom,
Trier managed to attract and entertain a huge audience.
The first four episodes, each about one hour, were aired
in 1994, followed by four more in 1997.
The series was rich in emotions and humor,
mixing ghost story, satirical comedy, and hospital soap.
However, the experimental approach was intact.
>> [FOREIGN]
>> [FOREIGN]
>> [FOREIGN]
>> [FOREIGN]
>> [FOREIGN]
>> [FOREIGN]
>> Trier had left the perfectionist
controlled style in favor of a loose seemingly improvised style
with hand held camera and deliberately imperfect pictures.
It was the experiences from the making of The Kingdom that led Trier to
the concept of Dogma 95 that would find great response internationally and
create a whole new interest in Danish cinema.
I shall discuss Dogma in another lecture.
Trier's next film was not a Dogma film,
though it shows some of the Dogma characteristics.
Breaking the Waves, which came out in 1996,
was Trier's international breakthrough.
It won 43 prizes, including Grand Prize in Cannes.
And he found a huge audience for
this highly emotional melodrama about a young woman who,
in a mysterious deal with God, lets herself be sexually humiliated and
abused, in an attempt to rescue her invalid husband.
Breaking the Waves was received as mainstream cinema, but
in reality it was a kind of high budget experimental film.
It had elaborated the chapter shots and used handheld camera
in a sketchy raw style that followed the actors closely.
The British actress Emily Watson gave an intense performance
as the heroine Bess, and was nominated for an Academy Award.
>> Nothing else matters.
I just want Yon home again.
I pray to you, please, won't you send him home?
Are you sure that's what you want?
>> Breaking the Waves marked an important change in focus.
In the early films, the protagonist is a man, typically a disillusioned
idealist whose downfall is furthered by a deceitful, fatal woman.
Now, beginning with Breaking the Waves, the protagonist is a woman,
emotional and naive, and this continues in the following films,
with the exception of the comedy, The Boss of It All,
all Trier's subsequent films have a female protagonist.
Breaking the Waves controversially connects religion with eroticism.
The film focuses on sexual perversity and female martyrdom,
issues that will continue in Trier's later work.
And issues that have challenged critics and commentators,
who see the self-sacrificing submissive heroine as basically a misogynist cliche.
[MUSIC]
