1. Preface
If Taiwanese movies are a multi-angle portrayal of Taiwanese urban life, then Hou Hsiao-hsien, as a leading figure in Taiwanese movies, can be said to be an impressively independent one in this big garden. Tree plantain. If John Woo's film is the best representative of the lucrative aesthetics in the world film circle, then Hou Hsiao-hsien's local literary film is a completely different alternative attempt.
Hou Hsiao-hsien, an iconic figure in Taiwanese cinema, emerged from the New Wave of Taiwanese cinema in the 1980s and quickly established himself as the leader of Taiwanese cinema. The movie "Little Bi's Story", which he participated in the screenwriting and investment, and "The Son's Big Doll", which he participated in directing, have become important works of new Taiwanese films. He later directed "The Man from the Wind Cabinet" (1983) and "Holiday in Winter" (1984), which successively won the Best Film Award at the Three Continents Film Festival in Nantes, France, and Hou Hsiao-hsien began to emerge in the international film circle. In 1989, "City of Sadness" won the Golden Lion Award for Best Film at the 46th Venice International Film Festival. Hou Hsiao-hsien became the first director in Taiwan's film history to receive this honor, and the first among the four major film festivals in the world. The Chinese who won this highest award. "City of Sadness" also became famous with this award, attracted countless fans, and became the highest-grossing film in Taiwan that year, with a total box office of more than 70 million. And the trend of "City of Sadness" did not fade with the passage of time. Today, 20 years later, it is still talked about by many film critics and ordinary audiences as a great literary film. The film business model that it created to be released after the award has also been frequently used by later filmmakers, but no film has been as successful as "City of Sadness", which has been recognized by international film critics and attracted ordinary audiences. great viewing enthusiasm.
2.
Many people know how successful "City of Sadness" has been, but they don't know that "City of Sadness" was only constructed as a prequel to another movie, just like "Star Wars Prequel". It's just that this prequel has become an eternal classic, while the original feature film has become a distant dream.
At the end of 1985, when Hou Hsiao-hsien was faced with the difficult decision of whether to consider the market or his creative intentions, producer Zhang Huakun made a strange move for Hou Hsiao-hsien. Chow Yun-fat and Yang Lihua, two people who are completely out of touch in reality, were forcibly dragged together. That year's "Minsheng Daily" published the news in the headline of the photo page, "Chow Yun-fat and Yang Lihua, this time the flower encounters a hair, and there is an immediate chemical change".
Soon the story came out. Yang Lihua was the head of a local restaurant in Taiwan, and Chow Yun-fat was a Hong Kong visitor who secretly inspected a group of smuggled goods that were swallowed. After a series of events, the two gradually moved from hostility to acquaintance, and developed subtle feelings. In the story, Yang Lihua's name is A Xue, which is A Xue, the daughter of Wenxiong, the boss of the Lin family in "City of Sadness".
When expanding the story, in order to establish A Xue's solid net worth background, her parents, siblings and grandfather were born one by one. Before she knew it, a large number of characters were drawn, and a big local family in Taiwan was about to emerge. In the end, the story of Ah Fa and Ah Hua was not completed, but it became Ah Hua's family. A prequel was just this way. It became the "City of Sadness" in the future.
As an important part of the film, the script has always been valued by everyone. A good script will add a lot to a movie. The script co-written by Nianzhen and Zhu Tianwen divides the whole play into 88 scenes, plus the beginning of the prelude, a total of 89 scenes. It tells the history of the rise and fall of a large native Taiwanese family after the victory of the Anti-Japanese War until the Kuomintang retreated to Taiwan in 1949.
The story begins on August 15, 1945, when the Japanese Emperor Broadcasting announced the unconditional surrender. At this time, a woman outside the Wu family's eldest son Wenxiong gave birth to a son named "Guangming" for him. Not long after, the Yidan Room of Lin's father Lin Alu's family reopened to welcome guests and named it "Little Shanghai Restaurant" (I think it's ironic, it was the people from Greater Shanghai who ruined the family's life in Little Shanghai.) The second son was originally a doctor. He was forcibly recruited by the Japanese to Southeast Asia during World War II. Since then, there has been no news, only the second sister-in-law is still waiting. The third son of the Lin family, Wenliang, was brought to Shanghai by the Japanese as an interpreter during the Japanese drama era. After the victory of the Anti-Japanese War, he returned to Taiwan, but he was already unconscious. Wen Qing, the fourth son of the Lin family, fell from a tree when he was eight years old and became deaf and mute. He opened his own photo studio. The joy of the Lin family did not last long. Soon, the third son Wenliang woke up amidst the singing of "September 18" and the thunderstorm. Unfortunate things followed. The red monkey died violently, and the third child formed a relationship with the local gang. The third child was involved in the smuggling activities of the Shanghai Gang and was discovered and stopped by the boss, so he was accused of being a traitor by the Shanghai Gang. The eldest Wenxiong's brother-in-law fights with local hooligans in order to seek justice for Wenliang and is stabbed. Wen Xiong's former hatred and current hatred were added together, and he had a fight with a local gang, and was finally shot and killed by the Shanghai Gang. After the "February 28 Incident" broke out, Taiwan was under martial law, and Chen Yi used force to suppress and severely crack down on progressive intellectuals. The old fourth Wenqing was arrested for being on good terms with the intellectual, Teacher Lin, and was eventually released. Wen Qing's good friend Kuan Rong is an ambitious young man who has many dissatisfaction with the social reality. After the "228 Incident", he has thoroughly seen the corruption of the authorities and the darkness of politics. The elements fled into the mountains and continued to carry out revolutionary activities in secret. In the end, due to the betrayal of the traitor, the secret base was suppressed and Kuan Rong was killed. Wen Qing married Kuan Rong's younger sister Kuan Mei and gave birth to a child named "A Pu". During this period, Wenqing had been in contact with Tolerance in the mountains, and from time to time helped Kuanrong and others in their revolutionary activities. Because of this, after the secret activities of Tolerance and others were discovered, Wenqing was also arrested, and there was no news of him. Only wide and babbling children remain. In 1949, the mainland was easy to defend, the famous party of the country retreated to Taiwan, and in small Shanghai, "time and yin and yang were intertwined, and it was indistinguishable, and life continued to happen."
3. Following
"City of Sadness" is the tenth film directed by Hou Hsiao-hsien. In the Chinese concept, ten is an auspicious number, ten represents completion, represents perfection, represents the end of one stage and the beginning of another. "City of Sadness" is exactly what Hou Hsiao-hsien means to Hou Hsiao-hsien. It brings honor, recognition, attention, and another wider world.
"City of Sadness" can be said to be the best embodiment of Hou Hsiao-hsien's film spirit, and it can also be understood as a peak of Hou Hsiao-hsien's film creation. In this film, Hou Hsiao-hsien fully presents his life experience and life experience accumulated over the decades in his own film language. A large number of long lenses, deep focal lengths, fixed lenses are used for shooting, and emotional time and space combination methods are used, and the rhythm editing method is used to create the effect of film montage. In this way, although there are still pictures and long-lens pictures, it will not make the audience feel too boring, but will roam in the deep tranquility of the Taiwanese countryside. Although there is nowhere to go, but the heart is longing. The use of fixed-lens shooting and deep focal length shows more the daily life of the characters in the film, and presents the audience with pictures of the ordinary and peaceful life of ordinary people. Regarding Wen Qing's arrest and imprisonment, and saying goodbye to two inmates in the cell, Hou Hsiao-hsien only used one long shot to show it. The shot lasted 2 minutes and 36 seconds, showing the "228 Incident" from the front. The whole shot starts from black and ends in black, and the middle picture becomes bright. During this process, it always changes with the light and shade of the light, which also implies the struggle between the two forces of light and darkness, and finally returns to darkness, which also indicates the revolutionaries. A tragic fate that was brutally suppressed.
In the film "Sorrowful City", there are many scenes of fighting and death: the red monkey was secretly killed, Wen Lianghe's fight, Wen Xiong's death, the "228 Incident" in the Taiwanese to foreigners The beatings and finally the brutality of the authorities against Tolerance et al. Hou Hsiao-hsien used a very subtle way to present, always standing in the position of a bystander and watching calmly, without any emotion, no love or hatred, and no sympathy. This is what a lot of directors are missing these days. According to Zhu Tianwen later in his book, the reason why Hou Hsiao-hsien's films have such a narrative attitude of "looking at life and death with a cold eye" is that Hou Hsiao-hsien was very confused when he was preparing for the filming of "The Man from the Wind Cabinet", so, Zhu Tianwen gave Hou Hsiao-hsien a book, which is "Shen Congwen's Collected Works". "Hou Hsiao-hsien later recalled that after reading this book, he didn't pay attention to what was said in it, but he liked the author's writing point of view, because Shen Congwen did not dive into the dark side of life subjectively like some writers, but rather objectively Write some time so that you can feel that these events are progressing in the sun, so people feel that these things are very bright." Later, the objective test became Hou Hsiao-hsien's routine and law-abiding in viewing things around the world and creating film art.
"City of Sadness" also spent a lot of effort in shaping the characters in the play. Although there are not many lines in the play, the actors' performances are very accurate, especially the rude behavior of the three brothers of the Lin family and the eldest actor Chen Songyong and charity. His eyes show the image of a rogue big brother, but it is still the love of a father and brother. And the third actor, Gao Jie, although not many scenes, is enough to steal the spotlight. The first actor Liang Chaowei's lines in the play are completely absent, this is to make up for the defect that he does not know Hakka dialect. But it is precisely because of his deafness that we can appreciate the darkness of politics in the background era of the story and the repression of the people's hearts. Such an unintentional act of inserting willows is a highlight of the film. The characters in the play are complex, and the dialects are even more diverse. Cantonese, Hakka, Shanghainese, Mandarin, and Japanese are intricate and intertwined to form a big fusion situation. This great integration also reflects the helplessness of ordinary people in Taiwan. As Teacher Lin said, Taiwanese feel more like being kicked around, like a child without a mother, no one loves or loves anyone.
In "Sad City", the Japanese girl Shizuko Ogawa should have left a deep impression on many people. The unspeakable love between Shizuko and Kanei has only been a secret buried in the bottom of my heart ever since the Japanese were sent home. Before she left, Shizuko gave her kimono to Kanmi, and Shizuko taught children to sing the Japanese nursery rhyme "Red Dragonfly" in the classroom, which subverted the traditional Chinese view of the Japanese, and what we see is no longer vicious. The image of the aggressor and murderer, but the image of a real and kind young girl. She is beautiful, quiet, kind, and possesses all the virtues that a human being should possess. Such a character misses his love and ideal life because of national issues. I had no choice but to leave Taiwan and return to my motherland, Japan, which I have long been unfamiliar with.
4. In the end,
Hou Hsiao-hsien and his films created a world that not everyone can understand. Some people think that literary films are French, while others think that literary films are boring. Some people may even think that literary films are just some pretending tricks by young literary and artistic young people. I think these people must have never really seen a literary film. They may just be confused by some critics, or they may just be unwilling to put their hearts into it and experience it with the director's guidance.
I see a theory that Hou Hsiao-hsien's films, the use of long takes has flooded, his films have become too personal and completely disconnected from the audience. Some people even say that Hou Hsiao-hsien has abandoned Taiwanese films and has had a bad influence on many Taiwanese film directors. In fact, they just don't understand that Hou Hsiao-hsien's charm lies in this. If one day he shoots some meaningless commercial films in order to cater to the public's fast food culture consumption consciousness, then he is not the one who used to be worshipped. Hou Hsiao-hsien is gone, then Hou Hsiao-hsien and Hou Hsiao-hsien's unique movie style will be completely dead. As for the influence of Hou Hsiao-hsien's departure from Taiwanese films and going to the world to make more personalized films on later film practitioners, we can't just see the drawbacks and blindly praise those directors who went out and returned to China immediately. We can't Blindly promote such practices. From the transformation of returnees to turtles, we can see that only those who cannot survive abroad will choose to return to China immediately after going out. Of course, we have to admit that there are people who are determined to serve the country, but there are more than one in ten million. Most film directors, as soon as they become famous, go abroad to seek more fame and fortune. As for the final defeat and return to China, it is not out of patriotism, but out of self-interest. It's all lost with the bear's paw, what is there to show off?
Hou Hsiao-hsien's status in Taiwan's film history is self-evident, and his influence on the entire Chinese film industry is also a matter of opinion. But what is undeniable is the commercial and artistic success brought by "City of Sadness". It will surely be handed down to future generations as a great work of art in the 20th century, and of course it will be judged by itself.
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