Aesthetic Changes in "Raise the Red Lantern" by Wells-Toland

In Yi-Mou Zhang's Raise the Red Lantern, the film is praised for its beauty and brilliant craftsmanship. However, if Orson Welles and Greg Toland had worked on the same film, it would have a different aesthetic. Welles' fondness for metaphorical visuals and long takes would be evident, along with Toland's expertise in deep space photography and dynamic framing.

Under the guidance of the Wells-Toland team, the film would undergo subtle but substantial changes right from the start. In the initial scene featuring Songolian and her stepmother, the camera would continue to center on a medium close up of Songolian; however, the previously invisible mother would now be faintly visible in the far background and margins of the shot.

By utilizing deep focus and coordinating her actions, the mother's role would still lack a visible face but appear more palpable, intensifying the sense of separation between her and her stepdaughter.

In the sequences involving Songolian's entrance into the house, a major difference can be seen.

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Zhang's original version shows Songolian entering with the inscription briefly shown on the back wall. The W-T revision, on the other hand, starts the entrance sequence with a medium close up of the inscription itself, slowly panning from left to right. The characters are recognizable but not readable. The importance of the inscription lies not in its content but in the characters themselves. In ancient Chinese societies, characters were created with arbitrary meanings assigned to them and only scholars and aristocrats could understand these meanings. The characters on the wall symbolize a society where male figures dominated and created meaning and tradition arbitrarily.

Zhang's filming style follows a series of shots capturing movement through the house, cutting from one side to the other, creating a sense of disorientation. The layout of the house remains ambiguous to the audience. In contrast, the W-T duo would have likely used long takes with tracking shots to film movements through the ground levels of the house. The shots would start from a rooftop level, tracking forward and down to follow a character's movement through the complex, highlighting the magnitude of the structure and emphasizing the established tradition, rather than focusing on the palace's physical 'discontinuity' as seen in Zhang's shots. This approach reinforces the feeling of a well-developed tradition and diminishes the significance of an individual woman.

In the story, a different type of movement is seen above roof level. The W-T team and Zhang have contrasting approaches to this kind of movement. Movement above roof level symbolizes freedom and escape. Welles would like the camera movement in roof scenes to convey this idea. Therefore, a character moving on the roof would be filmed in one continuous shot, probably a tracking shot that changes angle and distance constantly, possibly even breaking the 180 degree rule to give a bird's eye view. Another type of shot used above the roof would involve fixed frame shots with two or more characters at a distance; Toland would take advantage of this to showcase his expertise in deep focus, keeping both characters sharp while emphasizing the distance between them.

In the next scene, Songolian enters her house for the first time. Zhang utilized a long shot to depict her standing in the middle of the room, observing her new accommodations. The W-T team might have opted for a longer shot, potentially even an extremely long shot. As the lanterns are being lit, the central chandelier above the bed would likely have been filmed from a bird's eye view as it was being lowered, then a floor shot as it was being raised. The varying distances would emphasize Songolian's small stature in the vast room, a diminutive figure surrounded by numerous large red lanterns symbolizing family traditions.

When the husband is first shown in the film, W-T would film him as a faceless character, similar to Zhang's approach. The difference in technique would be W-T's use of a shot/reverse-shot sequence with the husband to highlight the distance between him and Songolian. This setup would showcase Toland's expertise in utilizing deep space. Filming the husband from a low angle just below shoulder level towards Songolian would visually represent the emotional gap between them.

In the film, there are often scenes showing the inner court-areas of different wives' houses with red lanterns glowing in the night. Zhang shoots these from a high angle with a fixed camera, while W-T would use a tracking shot to move from a high angle shot of a dark inner court with lit lanterns to panning across the compound, then moving to another high angle shot of the court. There are moments in the story when the husband leaves one house at night to go to another. The W-T team would film this by starting with a high angle shot of the lit inner-court as the lanterns are extinguished and then using a tracking shot to move along the compound to the house where the lanterns are being lit, with the camera panning back to reveal the dark compound.

In Zhang's version of the film, the dining room plays a central role, as it would in the W-T version. Songolian is introduced to the dining room during her house tour. The W-T version of this scene is similar to Zhang's, but with one key difference: the camera in the W-T version would focus on the portraits of the ancestors, offering a shot from Songolian's perspective. The establishing shot in the first dining scene remains the same as in the original, but takes on a new meaning under Wells-Toland's direction. The Spartan room, surrounded by portraits of past family patriarchs, is visible in the shot, but Toland's use of deep focus would bring the portraits into clearer perspective, emphasizing the influence of the ancestors in the scene.

In the scene, Zhang's original shot reverse-shot sequence would still be used, with the camera remaining above table level. The key difference between Zhang's shots and W-T's shots lies in the camera angle. W-T would lower the camera slightly and greatly increase the angle to capture the faces of the long deceased patriarchs in the same frames as the wives in close-ups and medium close-ups. This alteration, combined with deep focus, would change the thematic implications of these scenes by bringing the faces of these nameless men directly into the wives' world, giving the impression that they are literally looking over their shoulders.

The most significant change in the film would occur during the scene where Meishan is hung. Wells would aim to depict Songolian's fear and confusion, with Toland achieving this through a long take starting from when Songolian first notices the lanterns approaching through the archway. The camera then switches to a point-of-view shot as Songolian follows the men up to the rooftop. Upon reaching the rooftop, the camera rapidly moves forward to reveal a medium long shot of the men taking Meishan into the room, then spins around to rush back towards Songolian, capturing her expression of shock and fear. Ultimately, the camera would circle behind Songolian in an extensive reverse shot, showcasing Toland's skillful deep focus as the men leave the room after completing the act.