brought out the fourth-generation with his own hands. The fourth-generation combined the world's film theories on the basis of the predecessors and gave new thinking to the film itself. The academic school of Chinese film began to rise. Most of the fourth-generation filmmakers
, represented by Wu Tianming, graduated from the Beijing Film Academy before the Cultural Revolution. They were the first batch of Chinese filmmakers formally received academy education. They worked as assistants to old directors in film studios for a long time, and it was not until the 1980s after the end of the Cultural Revolution that they had the opportunity to start directing their own films.
Their careers are mixed with a long blank period, so the debut time of the fourth generation can be said to be very short. The pioneering work "One and Eight" by the fifth-generation director who graduated in 1982 came out in 1984, but at this time the fourth-generation creation was actually just getting started. The fourth-generation directors of
are good at using long lenses and emphasizing the classical aesthetic film concept of realism. They agree with and use the theory of French theorist André Bazin for film creation. Therefore, in terms of film form and language, they are new pioneers and founders of the combination of theory and practice.
They still continue to work under the film studio system, but due to reform and opening up and other reasons, the creative environment has begun to have a relatively open environment, and they can boldly apply some of their ideas to movies.
What is an art film? Is the shooting technique small and fresh or is it the stream of consciousness? No, so-called art films must at least be innovative in lens language. The movie "Little Flower" is like that.
, directed by Zhang Zheng, deputy director Huang Jianzhong, and co-starred by Chen Chong, Liu Xiaoqing, and Tang Guoqiang, made the Chinese film scene a whole new look. This is a comprehensive attempt on the language of the film, the film uses black and white and color to interweave to transform. Time and space, in the history of Chinese film, is the object of study for many later films. This is also the first time that no-skill cutting has been used in a Chinese movie, and a large number of sports lenses have been used to shoot scenes such as wars.
These lens language innovations were not covered by the previous generation of Chinese filmmakers. At the same time, the previous generation of filmmakers was unable to discuss the film itself due to ideological and ideological limitations, and was afraid to use too formal lens language because of concerns about the audience.
Since this movie in 1979, Chinese movies began to focus on the development of formalization. The types of stories are limited, and what is new is how to tell stories. "Little Flower" is an advanced discussion on the expansion of Chinese films in terms of audiovisual language.
"Old Things in the South" is the work of director Wu Yigong. The uniqueness of this film lies in his attempts to film structure. The director uses emotional and psychological cues to integrate the plot structure of the film, and uses different tones as the film. Important structural factors. The film
is also one of the masterpieces of Chinese poetry films. From "Goddess" to "Spring in a Small Town", from "Lin's Shop" to "Early Spring in February", it can be said that the directors of Chinese poetry films in every generation There has always been a continuation in the middle. Directors such as Sun Yu, Fei Mu, Wu Yonggang, Shui Hua, Xie Tieli have made their own contributions to the development of Chinese poetry films. The
film has four repeated but different descriptions of the scene after school. Although they are all described with the same camera position and scene, the scene of the same scene at different times, as well as the changes in climate and atmosphere in the picture frame. This calm and objective lens use method does not directly describe the intense conflict, but uses the scene in the painting to show the slow passage of time, and at the same time, it also highlights the psychology of different characters after the passage of time.
Zhang Nuanxin’s masterpiece "Sand Gull" mainly tells the story of a female volleyball player whose career and family suffered a double blow to regain confidence. Director Zhang Nuanxin once worked as assistants for Sang Hu and Xie Jin at the Shanghai Film Studio. It is with this much practical experience that she can start from the overall style of the film and outline the film with a realistic approach. This film can be said to be a profound portrayal of the image of people in that era. At that time, national honor was much more important than personal self-consciousness.
Of course, there is no lack of personal awakening at the end of the film, which shows the young people of that era's self-thinking of personal meaning. At the same time, the lens language used in the film to express the hallucinations and emotions of the characters is also very helpful to the theme of the film.
"Old Well" is also one of the representative works of the fourth generation in China. Its director is Wu Tianming. What needs to be mentioned is that Wu Tianming’s support for the fifth-generation director is very important. The leading actor of "Old Well" was later the fifth-generation director Zhang Yimou. Later, the debut of the fifth-generation director was also greatly influenced by him. Encouragement and help. The spirit of drilling wells described by Wu Tianming in "Old Wells" is considered by many to reflect the national spirit of China at that time. It may be ignorant and backward, but it is still tough and unyielding.
Zhang Yimou's male protagonist Sun Wangquan in the film has a huge difference in the two things of marriage and digging wells, which is another kind of unimaginable tearing and contradiction. In marriage, he endured humiliation and resigned to the arrangement that fate gave him. But he can't rely on this to confirm that he is such a person, because he has persistence and stubbornness that others can't understand in the face of digging a well.
Sun Wangquan’s contradiction may actually be the epitome of most Chinese people at that time. In the film "Old Well", the characters in the film and television works are no longer the flat conceptual characters of the past, but complex, living, and realistic people. They have their own humiliation, but they also have their own unyielding.
Director Xie Fei’s "Bental Year" has the unique temperament of film noir. The film was shot at a low angle, dim light, bars and alleys. The protagonist died in the year of his 24th birthday. Just like American noir films, the character's innate sense of loneliness and the ultimate sense of fatalism have always enveloped the film. It seems that it is also a rare film in Chinese film history that is full of "mourning" temperament from beginning to end.
This film is based on Liu Heng's novel "Black Snow" and won the Silver Bear Award at the 1990 Berlin Film Festival. At the same time, we can clearly see the living conditions of the little people under the background of that era, the setting of bars and Jiang Wen's business of reselling foreign goods in the film all have a distinct background in the era of reform and opening up. Director Xie Fei has been teaching at Beijing Film Academy and has made great contributions to the education of Chinese film.
Huang Shuqin is also a very good director in the fourth generation of filmmakers. Her father is Huang Zuolin who has directed "Fake Phoenix Virtual Phoenix". Huang Zuolin once studied under the British drama master Bernard Shaw, and later studied Shakespeare at the Royal College of Cambridge University. In 1947, Huang Zuolin co-founded Wenhua Film Company in Shanghai. In just two years, he created excellent films such as "Fake Phoenix and Virtual Phoenix", "Long Live Wife," "Spring in a Small Town" and "Missing the Middle Age". The main creative forces are Huang Zuolin and Sang Hu.
"Human·Ghost·Love" directed by Huang Shuqin is a representative of the fourth-generation filmmakers. Many people compare this film with "Farewell My Concubine", "Human·Ghost·Love" is a woman Sing Wusheng, "Farewell My Concubine" is a man singing Tsing Yi. In the context of the great age, everyone chooses to lie to protect themselves from harm, but in the movie, even though the actors act as others on stage, in reality they still insist on telling the truth. Perhaps it is precisely because of the hybridity between the stage and reality that the persistence and choices made by the so-called opera singers became more precious in that era.
It is worth mentioning that Huang Shuqin's son is Zheng Dasheng, the director of "Village Opera". From Huang Zuolin to Huang Shuqin, and from Huang Shuqin to Zheng Dasheng, the people in this family who are engaged in the film industry can be said to have witnessed more than half of the history of Chinese film. In the attitude of taking film art creation seriously, this kind of inter-generational communication has also delivered a steady stream of power to Chinese films. The fourth-generation directors of
are far less active in the film industry than their previous generations and continue to be high-profile, because soon the fifth-generation directors will shine on the international and domestic stages. But we still cannot deny the special contribution of the fourth-generation directors to the Chinese film scene.
