On Cai Mingliang's Style Of Auteurism

Cai Mingliang, one of the most fruitful directors in the film industry of Taiwan and one of the most unique film authors in Taiwan and even in the world as well, has made great contributions to diversifying and renovating Chinese film forms by innovating film languages and exploring for film styles so as to further promote Chinese films into the world. Cai has been focusing on personalize creation and sticking to the theory of auteurism. This thesis, on a basis of the ideology of"author's film", probes into Cai's peculiar film style.The first part summarizes Cai's peculiar film time-space concept. The time in Cai's films, deeply influenced by post-modernism, is the stable"present tense", utilized as a tool to convey the sense and represent the reality. The space in Cai's films is more or less characterized by its theatricalism because Cai was engaged writing dramas in his early stage of creation. However, the utilization of sound and crossing of picture on the other hand represents the openness of time-space.The second part gives an account of the non-dramatic narrative structure in Cai's films. Cai, rejecting the Hollywood's classical narrative mode, canceling the contradiction and conflict and weakening the story plot, employs simple and parallelized montage method in making films, demonstrating a character of being economical and simple. Several humorous details, opening ending and ending part's echoing to the beginning part all represent the character of economy in film structure and peculiarity in construction.The third part deals with the utilization of long lens. The most frequently utilized method in CAI's films is depth of field, in which the non-zooming and characters'rich field of depth, and the"eye-on"field of depth is Cai's preference. Cai, different from HouXiaoxian,who prefers fixed long shot, more often employs the close shot of the characters, revealing their living condition. Comprehensive fluid long shot and montage combination of long shot are also Cai's creative attempt.The fourth part gives a description of the unique utilization of the sound elements. Simplification of dialogues, richness of sound effects and diversity of music styles become the unique and distinctive features of Cai's film styles.The fifth part gives an account of Cai's personalized application of high tone of light. As regards towards light, Fuji films of relatively cold color tone is utilized, focusing on the reality instead of beauty. While as for the color, the main color tone is the unsaturated plain colors, which demonstrate a dark film tone. At the same time, Cai might add a light color in a single shot or the whole film, forming Cai's unique method of color correction, achieving a variation of style in the main relationship between light and shadow.