Liao Kang's
musical "Les Miserables" film broke the box office record, almost full of games. And almost at the end of the scene, the audience applauded the empty screen, which is rare in the history of film. Of course, the film only further popularized the musical, and the original drama itself is very popular with the public. Since its appearance in 1985, it has been performed in London for 27 consecutive years, and it is still unfailing today. He also performed on Broadway in New York for 16 consecutive years. After a three-year pause, it was rerun from 2006 to 2008. The success of the musical "Les Miserables" in the English-speaking world almost makes people forget that it was originally composed by the Frenchman Schoenberg (Claude-Michel Schönberg) and the light lyrics composed by Alain Boublil and Jean-Marc Natel. opera. But in France, the play came out in 1980 and only lasted three months. After the great success in Britain and the United States, the adapted work was staged again in Paris in 1991. The fate was still not good, and it ended after only a short period of time. This reminds me of the fate of Hugo, the original author. He was forced to go into exile due to his opposition to the dictatorship of Napoleon III. Since 1851, he lived on the British islands next to France for 19 years. The novel "Les Miserables" was completed during this period (1862). Of course, the reason for the cold reception of this operetta in France is by no means politics. It can't even be said that it has been coldly received. After all, it has played more than a hundred times, but it is not as successful as it was in the United Kingdom and the United States. This phenomenon of "scent outside the wall" should be attributed to the love of English-speaking people and the strength of English itself.
The French are more critical in art, and are especially sensitive to the adaptation of French classics. "Les Miserables" is a classic in French literary classics. No matter who adapts it, no matter what it is adapted into, it has been severely criticized and mercilessly ridiculed. Critics are not only disgusted by the reduction of the complex and simplified, but also especially angry at the destruction of the beauty of the language. But for those who read translation, all the readers who have talked to me agree that if half of this magnum opus is deleted, the literary value may be even higher. There are too many arguments and anecdotes outside the story in the novel. Regardless of the criticisms that smashed current affairs, the comments on historical events, or the scandals that alarmed Paris, the readers of the past looked lively, but they have nothing to do with the readers of future generations. Now what we care about is the fate of the characters in the novel. Apart from the scholars who study history, who cares about the old sesame seeds and rotten millet? And scholars who really study history have to go to the annals of history to find out. Novels are at best for reference. As for the beauty of language, Les Misérables is written in French after all. The beauty of it is difficult to fully reproduce in translation. The adaptation into a musical may make French literary critics dissatisfied. But for foreigners, anyway, we haven't fully grasped the beauty of the original text before, and we can definitely feel much less lack of the beauty of the text. What we admire is the novel's exposure and criticism of unjust society, the author's sympathy and care for the weak, the bishop's kindness inspiring force, the contradictions faced by Jean Valjean and his noble behavior, and it is the vivid portrayal of Hugo. The characters and the romantic stories he tells. All of this is vividly reproduced in the play and has a touching performance through music.
The French are also particularly curious and innovative in art. The word "avant-garde" comes from the French avant-garde. They are tired of artistic repetition, and even some approximations are unbearable. The main composer and lyricist of the musical "Les Miserables" had co-produced the rock opera "La Révolution Française" (La Révolution Française) as early as 1973, seven years before "Les Miserables". On a much larger scale, from the capture of the Bastille, the overthrow of the Bourbon dynasty, to the tyranny of Robespierre. The music is much more novel. Although there are also passages from traditional operettas, the main songs are very catchy rock music. The box office is also much better in France. Not only was it a smash hit in the 1970s, but also various versions of records have been released over the past 40 years, and they are still hot today. However, the rock opera "French Revolution" involved many historical events and characters in France, lacking personal encounters and ups and downs, and emotionally not touching enough, so it has never been translated into English, and few people know it in the English-speaking world. Although the musical "Les Miserables" is not about the French Revolution, the last barricade was the Paris uprising in June 1832, but its historical background is still very similar, and the music has returned to more traditional and slightly outdated operettas. With the style of grand opera, coupled with the French being picky about adapting their classical literature, it is not difficult to understand that this work has received relatively cold reception in France.
When the English musical "Les Miserables" was first staged, expert reviews were not optimistic. However, the majority of English-speaking audiences do not have such pickiness and scruples, nor do they have the familiar feeling and impression. Everyone passed the word of mouth, and the box office was surprisingly high. What we hear and see is the anger of those who have lost their dignity in prison, the sadness and grievances of humiliated women, the pitiful hope of innocent children, the angry roar of the oppressed in that cruel dynasty, and freedom The strong desire for equality, equality and fraternity are the most universal and fundamental aspirations of all mankind. When Fantine lost her job, she had to sell her hair, teeth, and body in order to raise her daughter, and was punished for resisting a little bit. When she sang the sad song "My Dream", even a stone-hearted would Shed tears for it. When the petite Cosette struggled to pick up the huge mop and wooden barrel, and when she sang the song of hope, "The Castle in the Clouds," even the stone-hearted would shed tears. When the bullet-picking boy fell under the gun of the suppressor, when he sang the heroic song "Children" in a childish voice, who wouldn't be excited about it? When those revolutionary youths erected barricades and stood on top of them to sing the passionate war hymn "Did You Hear the People's Song", who wouldn't be excited about it?
In addition, this epic novel also embodies the tragic tradition of ancient Greece, and it is a tragedy of conflict of ideas like Antigone, which Hegel respects as a model. The two contradictions in the play are not simply representatives of justice and evil, they represent different ideologies. Jean Valjean instinctively felt that the world was unfair. He should not be punished so cruelly and dehumanizingly by stealing a piece of bread and smashing a shop window. Javert firmly believed in the laws of the empire. He maintained the majesty of the law for the stability of the country, not for personal benefit. Neither of them are gangsters. Therefore, when Javert thought he had admitted the wrong person, he insisted on asking the Mayor of Madeleine to punish him. Therefore, when Jean Valjean had the opportunity to execute Javert, he let him go. Therefore, when Javert realized that there was a problem with his beliefs, and when he saw that "the justice of God is running counter to the justice of man," his spiritual world collapsed. Jean Valjean and Javert are not simply good and bad people, but like Hugo’s other novel "1993", the commander of the Communist Party of China, Govan, the leader of the royalist rebels, Rontenac, and the special representative Simurdan. That kind of honest people with different beliefs. They are capable of self-examination and self-sacrifice because of their incompatible principles and the humanitarian spirit that transcends their beliefs. Based on this, the musical movie added Javert's scenes of watching the dead in a barricade battle and a close-up of him seeing the corpse of the heroic boy. Let viewers who have not read the original book and do not know Javert’s psychological contradictions further understand why he committed suicide. Such conflicts and tragedies that transcend ideology and struggle for their own ideas seem to have never appeared in Chinese works. In the past, Chinese literature always portrayed enemies as morally corrupt gangsters, and always portrayed their actions as selfish and selfish behaviors. The root of this simplification lies in observing the world without prejudice. Hugo is not without prejudice, he despised and belittled people like the Thenardiers. They are like crows eating dead bodies, plundering the remains of fallen soldiers on the battlefield. They squeezed Fantine and Cosette for money, I think Hugo described them too much, too single. In this regard, the musical has made appropriate adjustments to make the couple more ridiculous, not so hateful. This obviously inherits the tradition of the British musical "Oliver!", in which the instigator Fagin (Fagin) received jokes, not ugly.
Some people blamed too many coincidences in Les Misérables: Thenardier killed Marius’ father on the battlefield of Waterloo; Javert came to the city where Jean Valjean pretended to run a factory in Madeleine and saw him. Carrying a carriage to save a person, so he was suspicious; Jean Valjean jumped into the monastery and just hit the man he saved; Thenardier's daughter Eponine also met and fell in love with Marius, and found Cosette for him. ; Jean Valjean escaped by drilling the underground waterway with Marius on his back, and met Thenardier at the exit, and so on. There are so many coincidences that may not be obvious in the five-volume long story, but in the adaptation of the three-hour musical, the plot seems very unreal. But I see "Les Miserables" not as a realistic novel, but as a romantic story. "Romance" is mistaken by many people for just love. In fact, in the history of Western literature, Romanticism is a literary movement that contrasts with neoclassicism, emphasizing feelings over reason, and describing common people. The characters in Les Misérables are the typical representatives of the oppressed and toiling masses, the typical representatives of kind Christians, the typical representatives of those who have been inspired to be good, the typical representatives of the faithful implementation of the dynasty's laws, and they are insulted. The typical representatives of thousands of women, the typical representatives of innocent children who endure the torment of fate, the typical representatives of the greedy and shameless scum, and the typical representatives of the bloody young revolutionaries. Their collision, communication, contradiction and fusion, their emotional interweaving and ideological conflict constitute a huge picture of history. This picture scroll does not reflect the real events of the moment, but the spirit of the times of the first half of the 19th century in France, which is a higher level of artistic reality. The adapted musical uses moving music and arias to further express the spirit and art of this era. Compared with the ten kinds of adaptations of "Les Miserables" I have seen, I think the choice of English musicals is the best, no more, no less, and the structure and rhythm of musical films are more compact, and they also give full play to the delicate performance. Movie specialty.
Let experts and scholars study Hugo's original "Les Miserables". Let the public enjoy the adaptation of the simplified version. I have read the original book twice, 30 years apart, I guess I won’t read it again in this life. But I still watch musicals and movies that have been adapted countless times. In the theater, I believe that many audiences, like me, appreciate more vocal art. Although the sound and some arias of the movie are not as effective as the theater, it gives full play to the advantages of close-up shots, and shows delicate emotions that cannot be seen clearly on the stage; for example, Fantine sang the same tragic part before his death. Weeping mourning, the twitching corners of her mouth, the flashing humiliation, resentment, despair and anger in her eyes. It may be because seeing clearly in the movie also helps to understand the lyrics. Not only me, but several of my friends also find it easier to understand lyrics in the cinema than in the cinema. The film also takes advantage of the convenience of scene conversion, showing scenes that cannot be reproduced by text descriptions and stage art; for example, the very creative shot of pulling the boat at the beginning. It not only shows the hard labor of those prisoners, but also metaphors that the restored France is as irreparable as the leaning broken ship.
The success of the musical is also thanks to Herbert Kretzmer's free translation of French lyrics into catchy English; thanks to English being the most powerful and international language in the world, the musical "Les Miserables" is not only in the UK It has achieved great success with the United States, and is popular in Canada, Australia and many other English-speaking countries, and has been translated into 21 languages and performed in 42 countries in different forms. With the success of the film, I believe that there will be more audiences who want to watch musicals. Just as online literature promotes the publication of paper media, the relationship between movies and musicals will change from the previously feared competition to mutual promotion. After seeing the shadow of the plane, some friends' interest was aroused, and they also hope to see real people's performances. There are also some friends and myself, even though I have already watched musicals, I still want to see how the movies are performed, and I also want to see the performances of different teams. Dramatic art has this kind of charm; someone can watch a play hundreds of times, but few people read a novel ten times.
If you pay attention to the artistic form of musicals, you will notice that "Les Miserables" is different from most musicals: there is no light song and dance, the music and arias are either stormy, or tragic; there is no talk, there is a gap between the songs. It is connected with recitatives like the Grand Opera, but it does not have the difficult arias of the Grand Opera; there are no glorious scenes and bright costumes, every scene is dim, almost everyone is in tattered clothes; There is no gag, even when the Thenardiers play, they are funny and ironic, not jokes or humor. In a word, in addition to music, all aspects of this play are closer to the big opera. But unlike the big operas with high songs and few songs, this musical is very popular with the public. After all, I have to thank Hugo. The French missed the opportunity to make their own literary classics shine in the world. In fact, they can't blame them, but because French is declining, but English is declining.
If you pay special attention to musicals, you will also think that, in a sense, "Les Miserables" is the same as the first real musical "Showboat" in the United States. Showboat literally means "showboat", I translated "showboat" because that musical is really about the careers of several artists who make boats their homes. The similarity is that that work also expresses suffering to a considerable extent. As soon as it opened, the audience saw a group of black stevedores on the dock sing angrily on the American stage: "Whites wander around all day, and blacks are busy at work all day. Sweat fell into Mississippi and was busy until the end." Theatre owner and producer Florence Ziegfeld (Florence Ziegfeld) on the night of the 1927 premiere, when the audience watched quietly and silently, he thought that he would be defeated if he was noble. But the shocking art of "The Performing Arts Boatman" won the audience's appreciation and performed 572 shows for a year and a half. This was considered a great success at the time and earned the name of musical for this art form, turning this adjective into a noun. After 60 years, "Les Miserables" premiered on Broadway. On the American stage, musicals went from cheerful singing and dancing back to heavy singing, from banter back to solemnity, and from relaxed back to serious. The success of the musical "Les Miserables" shows that this art form has greater expressiveness and possibilities.
The follow-up work "Miss Saigon" by the composer Schoenberg and the lyricist Burberry is proof. This is also a serious work, which can be called "Madame Butterfly" in English, and it is the tragedy of Vietnam's Joe Qiaosang. The success of the musical "Les Miserables" in Britain and the United States allowed the lyrics writer to directly create "Miss Saigon" in English. A total of 4264 performances were performed in London from 1989 to 1999, breaking the record of the longest musical performance at the Royal Opera House on Trulli Street, which was previously held by "Fair Lady". "Miss Saigon" also performed 4092 shows on Broadway in New York from 1991 to 2001, and it will also be made into a movie. The success of the musical film "Les Miserables" will surely promote the early stage of "Miss Saigon" and further popularize this work. English has long become the most important language of communication in all other fields. The success of the musicals "Les Miserables" and "Miss Saigon" and the phenomenon of "Scent Outside the Wall" more clearly indicate that English is also dominant in literature and art.
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