Economic Observer Wang Xiaolu/Text At present, entertainment films, as the main body of the film industry, are no longer a matter of debate. But in the 1980s, when Chen Haosu proposed the "entertainment subject theory" in 1987, he was questioned by creators and scholars in the film industry at that time. It is very interesting to look back at the phenomenon of entertainment films in the 1980s today. In the film history of the 1980s, director Zhou Xiaowen was once a banner of entertainment films. He was called "the number one (number one) in the Chinese entertainment film industry" in the late 1980s by Wu Tianming, director of Xi'an Film Studio. Perhaps his films may not be the highest in terms of box office, but he has played a huge role in promoting entertainment films.
In the 1980s, Zhou Xiaowen's most famous work was "The Crazy Price of ". This was an entertainment film, but it was also a film of great artistic value. It was so advanced that when it was screened abroad at the time, foreign Scholars will find it unbelievable. Was this taken by Chinese? They firmly believe that Zhou Xiaowen should at least be a Chinese director who has returned from studying abroad.
"The Price of Madness" is an iconic work of 1980s cinema. It broke the boundaries between entertainment films and art films - both refined and popular. If you want to understand this film, you must start with the first film directed by Zhou Xiaowen. His creation is a whole, and the fate of the three films is also causally related. These three films are: "They Are Young" (1986), "The Last Crazy " (1987) and "The Price of Madness" (1988).
"They Are Young" has not actually been released to the public, and only a few people have seen it. This film was not banned, but when it was asked to delete it later, Xi Film Studio suspended the project on its own. Today it can be said that it is an independent film with reflections on the war. It is also different from tradition in shaping the image of soldiers. Its cultural ideas have obviously been integrated with international war films.
's second film "The Last Madness" received great honors upon its debut. This is a crime film about police tracking a fugitive. Zhou Xiaowen regarded the two protagonists in the film as the same kind of people, and deliberately designed the fugitive and the policeman who were chasing him to have similar family, emotional and life experiences, making the two people seem to be split from one person. We can even regard this film as China's first noir film. One of the two male protagonists is a fugitive and the other is a criminal policeman. However, the director did not visually present the suspect's crime process. The audience will not think that he is a bad guy. Moreover, he looks brave and upright, and is affectionate and righteous to others. The audience is very satisfied. It's easy to identify with him. He later accidentally kills others and then escapes all the way, and the audience's eyes follow his footsteps and feel a certain destiny that is inevitably dark and inevitable towards death. In the end, the two of them died together and died together. There is clearly a real flavor of film noir in this.
"The Price of Madness" is the third film directed by Zhou Xiaowen in the 1980s. At the beginning of the film, there is a shot of a group of women taking a shower in a bathroom. Although it is blocked by frosted glass, the ups and downs of the body are still clearly visible. This bathing scene lasts two and a half minutes as the film's camera pans over each young body. At the time, this film was regarded as a model of entertainment films. It added many emotional elements of desire, but at the same time, it also had a reflection on desire. The rise of entertainment films in the 1980s has its own internal logic. For the entire society, this is an inevitable process of legitimizing individual desires. The reform and opening up in the 1980s slowly released people's desires. Due to the general repression in the 1960s and 1970s, people's physical bodies began to rebound violently. Pandora's box has been opened, and the tiger of desire is patrolling the streets. Zhou Xiaowen said that at that time, there were many pornographic books on the streets. This is an overkill, so The Price of Madness is a complex representation of desire.
Middle school girl Lan Lan was raped by a young man on her way home from school at night. Her sister Qing Qing decided to find the perpetrator. She went to the streets and bathing beaches and examined every face. She also took photos of pedestrians in the city with a camera.The beach is crowded with people and full of naked bodies. These bodies are stared at by the heroine of the movie one by one, so these people are regarded as potential criminals.
The video was shot in Qingdao, a coastal city in Shandong. The above scenes are shocking even when viewed today. In such an era, it seemed that people could no longer control themselves. In the face of the law of desire, almost everyone became a suspect. After the naked group bathing scene at the beginning of the film, it cuts to a scene of a young man peering through a telescope. This young man's name is Sun Dacheng, and he is the one who raped Lan Lan. His sight suddenly coincides with that of the audience, and the audience becomes a "voyeur" and the subject of desire. Such an exquisite design emphasizes the above meaning, and it reveals the isomorphic relationship between the audience and the criminal young man.
Therefore, compared with the films of the same period in the 1980s, we can find that this is not an ordinary crime film, nor a conventional narrative in which the police arrest criminals and eliminate harm for the people. The 1980s was a golden age for exploration films, but no crime film presented such a metaphysical atmosphere, such a light yet profound expression. Without using words, it only uses camera images to make such a profound connection and complex evaluation of human desires and the environment of the times.
The actor who played the rapist Sun Dacheng was Chang Rong, a movie boy who was handsome and in good shape at the time. The director urged him to constantly show his youthful body in the film. He hid in an attic to exercise and read popular pornographic magazines at the time. He had a bad temper and seemed helpless about his energetic body. Here he seems to be treated as the embodiment of desire in the eighties. When Qing Qing finally met Sun Dacheng, what was very strange was that Qing Qing did not show any angry expression, her eyes were even full of affection, and she stared at him without any resentment. When arranging this scene, the director said this: "You should show the emotional state between Romeo and Juliet, hoping to be together, but not being tolerated by the world."
This is indeed a very unique scene. The 1980s was a time full of exploration and experimentation, but many explorations were unsuccessful. Although these two films directed by Zhou Xiaowen are entertainment films, they are also very exploratory, and these explorations have been relatively self-consistent and maintained a certain level.
|Dialogue|
Wang: In "The Price of Madness", there is a very strong female perspective, which was very novel at the time. Have you been influenced by other books or movies for this kind of movie design?
week: "Resurrection" had a great impact on me. I watched it when I was a teenager, and I was full of sympathy and even love for the female characters in it. There is also "Little Hotel" written by Zola, which also had a profound impact on me. I was able to read these books because I was a soldier. I started in elementary school, studied in a foreign language school, and joined the army at the age of fifteen. At that time, our troops were in Xuanhua, Hebei Province. There was a college nearby with a library. Later, the college was abandoned due to sports. A group of us Beijing soldiers sneaked into the library in the dark night and the wind was high. We didn't dare to turn on the lights or flashlights. Each of us carried two or three satchels on our backs and loaded them hard. Rise book. I couldn't see the name of the book either, so I just stuffed it into a book and went there a few times. Later, wooden bars were added to the windows of the library, which proved that our behavior of stealing books was discovered and we did not dare to go there again.
We took a lot of books and read them interchangeably. There are many rural soldiers in the army. If they knew about stealing books, they would definitely report it. The troops all had large dormitories. At night, we covered ourselves tightly with quilts, propped up the middle with sticks, and then read under the quilts with flashlights. It was particularly difficult.
There are two books that I never transferred after they were rotated into my hands. They were books about artistic expression methods in film. I read them many times. Later, when I was admitted to the Beijing Film Academy, I was admitted with first place. After arriving at school, I learned that those two books were compiled from all the four-year undergraduate textbooks at Beijing Film Academy. It was such an accident.
王: The films you shot in the 1980s were very advanced, and your ideology was much higher than that of ordinary directors. You graduated from the Beijing Film Academy, but unlike Zhang Yimou and Chen Kaige, they were all graduated in 1978. You In the early to mid-1980s, I was already an old employee of Xi'an Film Factory. How did you learn and acquire your own aesthetic ideas at that time?
Zhou: In Xi'an, I didn't live a life of feasting and entertainment. I didn't go to karaoke. I only studied in the library. Although Xiying Studio is not big, the library has a large collection of books. The most valuable books are mainly read by two people, one is me, and the other is the later screenwriter Lu Wei. These are all the things I am very lucky about. What is even more fortunate is that I met the two factory directors Wu Tianming and Ma Jilong.
Wang: You studied photography at Beijing Film Academy. How did you become a director later?
Zhou: It was around the Spring Festival of 1986. The staff of the director’s room of Xiying Film Studio came to me and told me that the studio had obtained a place to study abroad. Wu Tianming gave this spot to the director's room, and the director thought it would be more appropriate for me to go. They checked the files again and found out that I went to Beijing Foreign Languages School in elementary school and had a basic English foundation.
I thought quickly at that time, and I had nothing to do anyway, so I just went for it. A few days later, I went to Xi'an International Studies University to register. Students came from various units, mainly medical students, and most of them were going abroad soon. They came here for urgent tutoring. I was just "joining in for the fun". Although my English foundation was not zero, it was close to zero. They were all top students from universities, some of whom had master's degrees. After entering, I couldn't keep up with the pace of learning there. After studying for two months, I was unexpectedly preparing to film "They Are Young". When I left, they gave me a nickname - "Foreign Illiterate". My vocabulary is the smallest of all, but my speaking is the best of all. While
was studying, Wu Tianming issued an order at Xiying Studio. At that time, it was the era of planned economy. Xi Film Studio had three film targets, and many directors in the factory wanted them. Wu Tianming said, let’s have a fair competition. The participants will first send the script to the 13 factory leaders, who will read it over. Then each participant will be given fifteen minutes to talk about their own shooting ideas. Finally, the leaders will Decide which three to shoot specifically.
I immediately came back from Xi'an International Studies University and asked the factory director if this happened? He replied yes and asked me what I had in mind and if I had a script? Of course I said I had a script, and then I hurried to find Hao Jucai, the director of the Literature Department, and asked him for the script. Minister Hao picked up an envelope from the table, which had not been opened at the time, and said that it contained a magazine and there was a script in the magazine.
I got the envelope back, opened it and saw that the script was called "If You Are Young Too". I especially don’t like the word “fake”. Most movies at that time were already fake, but the first word in the name of this script was still “fake”. Without looking at the specific content, I just wanted to change the name to "They Are Young". This script tells the story of the front line. It describes the life of a group of young people in Maoerdong. The entire ideological tendency is to fight for the motherland, the motherland is in my heart, etc. This is its theme. After reading
, I thought to myself, it’s really not my cup of tea, but it’s a script that can’t be delayed without delay. There is no second life-saving straw, this is it.
Wu Tianming calls competitive speeches "fighting in the arena." It is said that no one can finish talking within 20 minutes, but I didn’t even use up 15 minutes. I only talked about how I wanted to shoot. Surprisingly, I finally got this opportunity. I was in constant panic and didn't know what to do because it was so unexpected. Wu Tianming and I made particularly excessive demands to experience life. How to experience it? Go to the front lines. How many people are going? I asked twenty-six people to attend. Wu Tianming was shocked. I almost put the entire film crew on the list to experience life, including director, photography, art, costume, makeup, props, production, etc., and finally it was approved. This This is an unprecedented event for Xi Film Studio, and it may also be the first time in Chinese film history.
King: You told me that you learned a lot about things in the border area, and then you revised the script based on what you learned from the interviews, and finally finished filming it. This film has strong ideological traces from the 1980s and is full of reflection. This kind of reflection was particularly advanced at the time. Among the films about war reflection that could be seen at that time, the more famous one is " Yan Nan Fei " (Soviet Union) " Apocalypse Now " (United States), etc., have you seen these before?
week: I have not seen "The Flying Geese" (1957), but I have watched "Apocalypse Now" (1979) seriously, and it had a very strong impact on me. It can be said that I am extremely impressed, and I also admire Director Coppola extremely. I think he has a kind of coolness, and he shoots a huge war theme as if it is a joke, but at the same time it is very reflective. So it's really admirable. There is no doubt that it has an impact on me, but this impact is not specific. It should be the unrestrained energy that attracts me. For war-themed movies, I think I should also be unrestrained in filming. some.
King: It is said that everyone who saw the movie at the time thought it was very good, including people from the film bureau at the time. But why wasn't the film eventually released?
Zhou: After the film was finished, I was called by Director Shi Fangyu of the Film Bureau. The review at that time was conducted face-to-face, not back-to-back. In other words, the director was sitting next to me, watching and chatting, and the atmosphere was very friendly. After watching it, Director Shi stood up and applauded me, and said: "It's great. We have never had a military-themed movie like this one. I've been waiting for it, and now it's finally here."
I was particularly touched at the time. Such an enlightened person! successfully passed. This is December 31, 1986. On January 1st, I returned to the factory. Wu Tianming was busy filming his own film "老jing" and was not in Xi'an at all. The rest of the people held a meeting to study. The assistant to director Wu was named Bai Hugo. He said: "This year is 1987, which is the 60th anniversary of the founding of the army. We will release it on August 1 as a gift." Everyone cheered.
html In March, a national conference was held. Some people said: "We have meetings during the day and rest in the hotel at night. Can you send us a few movies?" Because my movie was praised by the director, the Film Bureau sent it over. . Unexpectedly, many people raised their opinions, and the Film Bureau issued a document for Xi Film Studio to revise. After Wu Tianming read it, he decided to wait and see it again. I didn't dare to say another word.Not long after, in March 1987, Wu Tianming called me over. He said: "I am now taking the blame for you. Those people are watching my jokes and your jokes, and they are all scolding me." The promoted director is not good, and the movie he makes promotes the cruelty of war, so you can make a profitable movie for me and shut the mouths of those people."
Wang: Wu Tianming said that you would make it. A profitable movie, what did this sentence mean at the time? Isn’t it true that everyone doesn’t like making such profitable movies?
zhou: Yes, yes! In 1984, Chen Kaige's "Yellow Earth " won a reputation in Europe, and Zhang Junzhao's "One and Eight" also had a great influence. The term "fifth generation movies" appeared in China. Zhang Yimou was actively preparing for " Red Sorghum ", and Wu Tianming himself also made movies like "Old Well", so commercial movies at that time were looked down upon. I think Wu Tianming, the director of the film, is very powerful. He didn’t just say that the director was bad and stop making movies because my movie failed to be released. Instead, he asked me to continue making movies, so "The Last Madness" was born. It can be said that "The Last Madness" was not what I wanted to shoot, but there was no way not to shoot it.
