The Artistic Features of Hou Xiaoxian's Films

When Hou Xiaoxian entered the film industry in1970s, it happened that romantic movies were very popular in Taiwan Province Province. In this type, telephoto lenses are widely used. Because the production cost is not high, most of them are real-life shooting, and the telephoto lens allows the camera to shoot the dialogue scenes of characters for a long time. Hou Xiaoxian's aesthetic style is the aesthetics of telephoto lens to a great extent. Hou Xiaoxian tends to shoot live scenes, choose amateur actors and pay close attention to trivial aspects of daily life, which makes him put the role and background, movements and environment on the same level. The composition of Hou Xiaoxian's lens often appears congested, but this is the result of his careful organization, so as to highlight the tiny details of characters' behavior or scenery, which will enrich the unfolding of his story. Hou Xiaoxian usually uses a telephoto lens of 75 mm-150 mm. Different from most eastern and western counterparts, he developed different functions of telephoto lens in the conflict between the sense of picture and drama.

This is reflected in his first three works, although these early films, such as "She is Wandering", "Kicking in the Wind" and "Grass by the River", are usually considered to be of little importance. One of the characteristics of telephoto lenses is the depth of the scene, even a slight movement may lead to defocus. By slightly changing the focal length, Hou Xiaoxian gradually formed the characteristics of guiding the audience to pay attention to the elements on the screen that are conducive to the development of the story. Hou Xiaoxian will also focus on many different stories in the same shot, such as the farewell scene of the station in Grass by the River, and then repeat it in Coffee Time.

A telephoto lens will flatten the space. Hou Xiaoxian used this feature to create a composition called "clothesline" by David Bordwell, that is, several actors formed a line perpendicular to the direction of the camera, which appeared many times in "She is Walking" and "The Wind Kicks". Similarly, the composition is characterized by the faces of several actors arranged in the diagonal direction of the picture. For example, in She's Walking, many people look back, turn around or look forward, resulting in layered expressions of various colors. Later, Flowers on the Sea and Millennium Mambo also have the same technique.

Because Hou Xiaoxian likes to convey a lot of information in one shot, he often uses panoramic shots. On the screen, sometimes he can't tell who is the protagonist and who is just a passerby, and even the details of the environment are highlighted. For example, in a scene in the zoo in She's Walking, the character is set off by an elephant in the background, occupying only a small space on the screen. In a shot overlooking the quadrangle, the screen is tilted. The tiles and bricks above are very eye-catching, but the father and son curled up in the center of the picture only occupy a small area, but it is these specially placed houses that convey the texture of daily life.

Because the telephoto lens has a narrow field of view, when shooting several moving people, people who pass through the foreground can easily block the objects in the background. This feature was skillfully used by Hou Xiaoxian, who concealed or revealed the key information on the screen in time and unobtrusively through the subtle position of the actor. This is the arrangement of a scene in which the survey team conflicts with the residents in "She is Walking".

Hou Xiaoxian's most concerned style is his use of long-range shooting. 158 minutes of "City of Sadness" has only 222 shots, which means that the average duration of each shot is about 43 seconds, and some shots are more than 3 minutes. Not only this film, but also most of his works have similar and consistent styles. For example, the average length of each shot in Love is 34 seconds. Hou Xiaoxian's long shots are undoubtedly inseparable from his realistic film view.

It may be influenced by squares in Japanese architecture, which Hou Hsiao-hsien likes to use in scene arrangement. In Winter Holiday and City of Sorrow, he repeatedly emphasized the geometric space in architecture. Another major feature is that Hou Xiaoxian frequently uses frames in frames to divide space, which is not uncommon in Winter Holiday, Love Dust and City of Sadness.

Hou Hsiao-hsien doesn't like to move the camera, and often takes a slow shake after a few minutes. Even "City of Sadness" rarely appears in the camera.