At the end of the Lyceum Theatre, the film's unique vertical text reads:
Based on "Death of Shanghai" and "Shanghai" by Yokomitsu
These two novels are a long time apart, but they enjoy a high reputation in the Literary Circles of China, Japan and even the world.
The two original works were adapted by screenwriter Ma Yingli, and director Lou Ye used his unique film audiovisual language to show the audience the withering and struggle in the novel, as well as the drunken dream and death of the Shanghai Concession.
The film shined at the Toronto Film Festival and was also nominated for the Golden Lion Award in the main competition unit of the 2019 Venice Film Festival, making Lou Ye one of the few mainland directors to be nominated for the three major European film festivals.
Countless media, journalists and film critics have praised "Lyceum Theatre".
However, compared with the bustle abroad, the film meets (bei) cold (jin) in China and once again becomes one of Lou Ye's film collections.
"Lyceum Theatre" is derived from two original works:
They are the novel "Shanghai" by Japanese modern and contemporary writer Toshiichi Yokomitsu, and the representative work of contemporary British Chinese female writer Hongying, "The Death of Shanghai".
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="411" > original 1: Yokomitsu Toshiichi and Neosensitivity</h1>
The name Yokomitsu Toshiichi is less well known to Chinese readers than his contemporaries and contemporaries, the writer Yasunari Kawabata.
Toshiichi Yokomitsu and Yasunari Kawabata are representatives of the "New Feeling" literary movement in Japan at the beginning of the 20th century, and have an important place in the history of modern And contemporary Japanese literature.
Toshiichi Yokomitsu, Shanghai
In April 1928, Yokomitsu lived in Shanghai, living in Hongkou, where Japanese expatriates lived in the Shanghai Concession, to examine Shanghai, an "international enclave" under imperialist rule, from the perspective of a Japanese.
Set against the historical backdrop of the "May Thirtieth Movement" (also known as the "May Thirtieth Massacre") that took place in Shanghai, the novel witnesses the torrent of fate in this special area of Shanghai in that special era through the tragic experiences of several Japanese expatriates who stayed in Shanghai, mainly the dismissed bank clerk Sanmu.
Professor Peng Xiaoyan, Ph.D., from Harvard University's Department of Comparative Literature, argues in her essay on Shanghai:
Yokomitsu claims that the work was written during the most prosperous period of Japanese Marxism; taking the May Thirtieth Movement as an opportunity, he wanted to let the public know about the life of Japanese people living in Shanghai in the early days of Chiang Kai-shek's expansion of influence in East Asia. At the end of the preface, he hopes that at a time when the Sino-Japanese war is becoming white-hot, this novel set in this war will somewhat reflect the "fate of Greater East Asia.". ”
The "May Thirtieth Movement" is not much to mention, the most important form of struggle in this anti-imperialist movement was a general strike, and the direct trigger was the oppression of Chinese workers by the Japanese factory capitalists in Shanghai.
May Thirtieth Movement
In the novel, Yokomitsu arranges for Sammu to fall in love with fang Qiulan, a Chinese female worker, but later Discovers that Qiulan is a party member and the backbone of the workers' movement.
This is why in the movie "Lyceum Theatre", Tan Na and Yu Yan always mention lines such as "factory, strike parade" when rehearsing the play in the play, and the role played by Yu Wei in the film, Qiulan, is also derived from the original work of "Shanghai".
Since Japan later launched a war of aggression against China, and Toshiichi Yokomitsu and his works were also regarded as accomplices to the Japanese invasion, this man and his books were not popular in China.
The movie "Lyceum Theatre" does not involve much of the content of the novel "Shanghai", but only grafts some plots in the play-within-a-play part, and between them is more of a continuation of the context and artistic style.
Han Shuai's treatise on Lou Ye's film art directly uses "New Feeling Film" to summarize the aesthetic style and formal characteristics of Lou Ye's films, illustrating the relationship between this literary genre and Lou Ye's film creation.
The Neo-Sensation school was introduced to China by Japan in the late 1920s, and the main writers were Shi Jingcun, Liu Naou, Mu Shiying and others, which was the beginning of Chinese modernist literature and art.
The Chinese New Sensations, represented by these three writers, mostly draw on the pathological life of semi-colonial metropolises, and show the emptiness of petty-bourgeois men and women by describing all kinds of people and things in metropolitan life.
This theme is fully reflected in Lou Ye's early film "Weekend Lover", although the times have changed, but the decadent energy is still there.
Stills from "Weekend Lover"
In the new sensational novels and Lou Ye films, we can neither see the slogan-like ideological expression, nor can we see any implicit value output, only the display of the real life side of the author's "feeling".
Lou Ye once said: "The description of the streets of Shanghai in the New Sensation novels, the description of the sound and color places, the description of avoidance of ideology, and the description of the attitude of staying away from politics are all of my interest. ”
His films do not promote anything, and stories with grand historical backgrounds such as "Lyceum Theatre" do not promote the main themes such as "World Anti-Fascist League", but only tell a woman and the final splendor of her fate.
In addition, the traditional novel requires the centralization, centralization and closure of the narrative, while the narrative mode of the new sensory sensibility does not pay attention to the vertical advancement of the narrative plot.
So when we watch Lou Ye's movies, we sometimes feel as if the story has no beginning and no end, and everything just happens and ends like this.
If you think that "Lyceum Theatre" is "scattered", it may be the aesthetic preparation caused by the vast majority of traditional spy war film and television. Traditional spy movies are basically clear enemies and clear tasks, and the protagonist has been moving towards the completion of the task.
Although "Lyceum Theatre" takes Yu Yan's acquisition of intelligence as the main line, it deliberately blurs the linear narrative of doing tasks with "intelligence" as the goal, and more from the subjective feelings of a woman with a complex identity about the chaotic world.
The much-talked about Lou Ye-style handheld photography is also fully used in "Lyceum Theatre" and has become the best auxiliary to express the subjective feelings of the characters.
Yu Yan is a female spy in the film, but she is not like the NPCs in the game, who complete the task according to the set story program, but a complex person.
If you use the new feeling movie to summarize the essence of the movie "Lyceum Theatre":
New sensations are the projection of subjective feelings onto objective things, thereby objectifying subjective sensations and constituting the so-called "new reality". In the film, Yu Yan is only an object, and she projects a feeling of the author about the fate of women.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="411" > Original 2: Rainbow Shadow and Hotel Novel</h1>
Even if Lou Ye's method of telling stories is different, movies always have to tell a story.
As far as the plot is concerned, the movie "Lyceum Theatre" is basically interpreted according to the story line of writer Hongying's novel "Death in Shanghai".
Moreover, the play in "The Death of Shanghai" is called "Foxtrot Shanghai", and there is also the opening quote "Shanghai" for Mu Shiying's new feeling novel "Shanghai Foxtrot Dance". A paradise built on hell! The citation can see the influence of the new feeling novel on Hongying's "Death in Shanghai".
The novel "Death in Shanghai" compares Yu Yan to a butterfly on a high-voltage power line, and the whole story takes place at the moment when the butterfly is electrocuted.
In addition, "The Death of Shanghai" is one of Hongying's "Shanghai Trilogy" and the author's self-proclaimed first Chinese "Hotel Novel".
The original author, Rainbow Shadow (fourth from the left), and the film's creator
Rainbow Shadow (left)
After reading the original work three times, Rainbow Shadow was exquisitely conceived, golden sentences frequently, and the language was flexible, and director Lou Ye also filmed the romanticism and faint sadness that were soaked in the original text.
In the words of the novel: "The novel is good, and the script will naturally not be bad." ”
Eliminate the details, first say the conclusion, and summarize the ins and outs of "The Death of Shanghai" in the shortest words in the order of the story:
※Remarks: The following are fictional plots of the novel "The Death of Shanghai" and are not historical facts
In his early years, Hubert, Yu's adoptive father, was persuaded by the American intelligence agencies to maintain the righteousness of world peace and equality, developed into a spy, and used his used bookstore in the Shanghai Concession as a cover to gradually become the intelligence center of the United States in the Far East.
By coincidence, Hubert met the young Yu Yan, whose parents had been killed, and adopted her.
After Yu Yan grew up and entered the show business circle, she unexpectedly became popular and became one of the best stars in Shanghai and even the whole country. At the same time, Hubert also told his adopted daughter Yuyo the secret of his being an American spy.
At that time, when Japanese imperialism was expanding wildly in Asia, Hubert developed Yu Yan into a spy with the principles of world peace and reducing unnecessary sacrifices.
So the Shanghai celebrity suddenly left Shanghai to develop the Hong Kong entertainment industry, in fact, under the guise of acting career, he used his spare time to secretly receive Training as an American spy on an outlying island in Hong Kong.
During his training, Yu's flower name was Indigo (Blue Indigo), and after graduation, he was awarded the rank of lieutenant by the US military and was on standby in Hong Kong.
With the intensification of contradictions between Japan and the United States, a war in the Pacific was on the verge of breaking out. U.S. intelligence agencies found that the word Kabuki (Kabuki) appeared frequently in Japanese naval telegrams after the code was changed, a word that most likely represented the target of Japan's war, but could not be deciphered.
So Hubert was instructed by his superiors to recall Yu Yan, who had been secretly training in Hong Kong for three years, and approached the Japanese naval officer stationed in Shanghai to find out where Kabuki really represented.
In order to hide their true purpose of returning to Shanghai, Yu Wei and Hubert fired two smoke bombs:
The first smoke bomb, Yu Yan took the opportunity of the director of the Aiyi Troupe Tan Na to invite her to return to Shanghai to perform, and returned as an actor to rehearse the play.
The second smoke bomb, Yu Yan's ex-husband Ni Zeren was arrested by the Wang pseudo secret service "No. 76", and she returned with the purpose of saving her ex-husband.
In the end, at the celebration party after the premiere of "Foxtrot Shanghai", Yu Yan approached the invited Japanese Navy Shaosa Furutani Saburo, drugged him, and set out Kabuki intelligence.
To sum up, "The Death of Shanghai" tells the story of a Chinese orphan who was raised by the adoptive father of an American spy, used as an actor as a cover, trained by Americans in Hong Kong before the Pacific War, and then returned to Shanghai to obtain Japanese intelligence and help the United States predict the direction of the war.
Regarding the Japanese Navy's use of Pearl Harbor as the first target for the United States, both Shoshi and Noshi mentioned rumors about obtaining intelligence in advance. Some said that the intelligence was not sent, and some said that the intelligence reached Roosevelt, but he did not pay attention to or deliberately release water. Among these intelligences, it is rumored that Chiang Kai-shek also had a copy.
The plot of the novel "The Death of Shanghai" is built on such a historical legend, and one of the information about Pearl Harbor is recorded on the fictional character Yu Weitou.
No matter how hard the author Hongying tries to convince the reader of the truth of this matter in the novel "Afterword and Acknowledgement", fiction is fiction, Yu Yan is only a fictional character, how can she help the United States obtain information on Pearl Harbor in history.
Maybe there was really a spy or even a female spy who did it, but the information about pearl harbor that was learned in advance is still a historical case, and none of the evidence has been officially confirmed, and it is only to provide material for the fictional story.
The story synopsis of the movie "Lyceum Theatre" is faithful to the original, in which the play within a play, the way Yu Yan takes information, and the ending is different from the original.
Another reason why some comments on the Internet said that the film was made a bit scattered was because a two-hour movie could not carry so much information in the original book, discarding a lot of antecedents and consequences.
Coupled with the fact that director Lou Ye deliberately uses a lot of handheld photography, black and white grainy pictures, and some inaudible lines, creating a sense of fragmentation.
Maybe making a spy drama can more fully express the content of the novel.
Because the film is missing a lot of information, the following supplements are helpful to understand the film:
Or let's first conclude that all the main characters who appear in the original book and the movie are spies, all spies!
Although on the surface Yu Yan returned to Shanghai on the grounds of acting and relieving the two people and animals of her ex-husband, various agents heard the wind and gathered around Himo.
Yu Yan is a spy, Yu Yan's adoptive father Hubert is a spy, hotel manager Saul Shapiro is a spy, Bai Yuncao is a spy, Mo Zhiyin is a spy, Ni Zeren, who was locked up, also helped the military smuggling in the original work, and director Tan Na was accused of being an underground party or a left-wing literati.
In addition, the hidden traitor in the original work is Tan Na's assistant. The assistant does not even have a name in the book, but this most low-key character always keeps a cold eye on everyone, and after the Japanese army entered the concession, he immediately betrayed Tan Na and defected to the Japanese.
There is no role in this assistant in the movie "Lyceum Theatre", and the ending of each main character is different from the original.
1. Hubert and Yu Yan:
The adoptive father and daughter of Hubert and Yu Yan steal intelligence for the U.S. military, but the film and novel steal intelligence in different ways.
However, after obtaining information, there is such a plot, Yu First told Hubert that Kabuki represented Singapore, and later she said through a note that Kabuki actually represented Hawaii (that is, Pearl Harbor).
The reason why Yu Yan did this, the explanation given by the original book is that Yu Yan is still Chinese in the final analysis, and she has a particularly macro idea after obtaining this information related to the situation in the whole world.
She did not tell Hubert the main target of the Japanese sneak attack at the first time, because she knew that if the Japanese sneak attack on the United States was successful, it would drag the United States into the war, so that China would no longer have to resist Japan alone.
A note left to Hubert in the book about this reason reads:
Kabuki will be performed in Hawaii. I didn't tell you yesterday because I had to help China. Tell you now, because I can't fail you. Dear Fred, forgive me, as you have forgiven me every time before. Be careful yourself.
Love your J forever
But in the movie this reason is not explicitly stated.
Familiar with the history of World War II will know that when Japan launched the Pacific War, there were originally differences in the direction of the Army + Navy Headquarters "going south" and the combined fleet "going east" at the top level, and later the Japanese combined fleet attacked Pearl Harbor, and the army and navy cooperated to fight along the Malay Peninsula to Singapore.
History proves that the attack on Pearl Harbor was a greater blow to the strength and morale of the US Navy at that time, and Yu Yan chose to avoid the important and said Singapore first, which is an uncertain prophet for posterity to stand on a known angle.
In the movie, Yu Yan and Hubert have a different ending than the original book, in which the Japanese army enters the Shanghai public concession with the first gunshot of the attack on Pearl Harbor, and Hubert, who knows that the trend has gone, commits suicide by taking potassium cyanide, and Yu Yan also commits suicide by jumping from the top floor of the hotel in order not to be captured by the Japanese gendarmes who rushed to the hotel.
In the book, her death, like the death of the heroine in the play when she returns to Shanghai to rehearse, is a jumping off a building.
2. Mo Zhiyin and Baiyun Xie
In addition to the adoptive father and daughter of Hubert and Yu Wei, the main characters in the opposing camp are Mo Zhiyin and Bai Yunsheng.
However, the film has made a trivial treatment of the character of Mo Zhiyin in the novel.
Mo Zhiyin was originally an oil-headed, flour-faced, mercurial literati in the original work, but he was also the screenwriter of Yu Wei's return to perform dramas.
The identity of this screenwriter is also a cover, and Mo Zhiyin's real identity is that of the agent of the "No. 76" of the secret service agency of the Wang puppet regime.
"No. 76" was named after the Chen Tiaoyuan Mansion of Jisifei Road (now Wanhangdu Road) allocated by the Japanese gendarmes to Wang Pseudo, and the house number of the mansion was No. 76.
Mo Zhiyin in the book is mixed in the Shanghai Fengyue Field, often going to the director Tan Na, ostensibly to communicate in the literary and art circles, in fact, they know each other's identity is not so simple.
After Yu Yan returned, Mo Zhiyin tracked more frequently, in order to monitor and inquire into the true purpose of Yu and Tan Na.
The film does not mention that Mo Zhiyin is a literati, only retains the identity of a spy, and shows that this role is very obscene and incompetent throughout the whole process.
Mo Zhiyin's superior was Bai Yunsheng.
Bai Yunsheng is also very different from the image in the original work, but Huang Xiangli, who is mainly active in the drama stage, has a stunning performance in the movie. It has the characteristics of the characters in the book that are loose on the outside and tight on the inside, shrewd and alert, and on the surface they do not lose the figure of a modern girl in Shanghai, and try to integrate into the spy intelligence of Yu Yan's life.
The novel "The Death of Shanghai" defines Mo Zhiyin and Bai Yunsheng:
Then, Mo Zhiyin should be a second-class slave of No. 76, and Bai Yunsheng directly serves the Japanese, a first-class slave.
Bai Yunsheng and Mo Zhiyin were superior and subordinate units, and Bai directly served the "Plum Organ", a secret service established by Japan in Shanghai.
The duty of the Mei organ is to support, monitor, dock, and guide the Wang puppet regime, especially the work of secret agents.
At the end of the novel, Mo Zhiyin and Bai Yun went to Yu Yan's room to search.
Mo Zhiyin tried to have sex with Bai, and as a result, he was cut off by a knife hidden in a comb by Bai, but he did not die on the spot.
Bai Yunsheng thought that Mo Zhiyin was dead, to the effect that she was killed by Mo, and as a result, both of them died in the top floor room of the international hotel hidden before Yu Yan, and the end of the movie basically restored this process.
3. Saburo Furuya
The film gives more scenes to the Japanese naval officer Saburo Furutani, played by the famous Japanese actor Oda, and also arranges a clash in which his wife is killed.
In fact, in the original novel, Furutani Saburo was only a tool for Yu Yan to obtain information.
Near the end of the novel, Saburo Furutani participates in the celebration of the success of the premiere of Foxtrot Shanghai as the representative of the Japanese Navy in Shanghai.
The reason why Yu Yan wanted to hold this celebration and invited many People from Japanese military circles to participate was to seize the rare opportunity for contact with naval officers.
At the celebration meeting, Yu Violet evaded The White Cloud's surveillance, approached Saburo Furutani and drugged him, successfully obtaining kabuki's intelligence on behalf of Hawaii.
4. Saul Shapiro and TanNa
Hubert, Yu Yan and Mo Zhiyin and Bai Yunsheng directly confronted each other, and the other two characters, Sol Shapiro and Tan Na, were also the tools of the whole field, one was responsible for running errands, and the other was responsible for engaging in ambiguity with Yu Yan.
Hubert was the head of the spy team, but he was inconvenient to make frequent appearances, relying on the exposed hotel manager Saul Shapiro to do specific things.
Saul Shapiro was responsible for the operations of Yuyo, ensuring that she stayed on the top floor of the hotel undisturbed, as well as the secret radio station hidden in the hotel.
The book's character for Saul Shapiro is very reliable and gives an irrefutable reason. He was a Jew who had fled from Austria to Shanghai, and his family had been taken to concentration camps, so he had a feud with Germany and fascism, and was a staunch enforcer of Hubert's intelligence group.
Finally, about Tan Na, whether it is the role played by Zhao Youting in the movie or the character in the book, it seems that it has no effect on engaging in intelligence work, but only engaging in a lover relationship with Yu Yan.
Tan Na's apparent identity is the director of the Aiyi Troupe, and he is eventually betrayed by his assistants, identifying him as an underground party or a leftist.
In the book, Tan Na sees the body of Saul Shapiro, who has been killed by the agents, before his execution, and the whole text ends.
At the end of the movie "Lyceum Theatre", director Lou Ye arranged a surreal ending:
Tan Na and Yu Yan sat in the corner of the café on the set of the theater, waiting for the Japanese troops who came to arrest them.
As the camera slowly rotates, the sound of jazz replacing the soldier's hooves and shouts drifts again, and the scene is still playing...
This ending is obviously more romantic than the ending of the novel.
To sum up, the "adaptation based on the death of Hongying "Shanghai" and "Shanghai" by Yokomitsu Toshiichi" that began to appear in "Lyceum Theatre" is not simply a statement.
The skin and flesh of the film is "The Death of Shanghai", and the soul is the "new feeling film" aesthetic that Lou Ye has always implemented.
The interpretation of the two original works may help to understand and appreciate the artistic charm of the movie "Lyceum Theatre".
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="411" > Appendix: Chronicles of the Lyceum Theatre and some prototype speculations of Yu</h1> Yan
The title of the film is named after the Lyceum Theatre, the most famous and internationally influential theater in old Shanghai.
This theater is not only the core scene of the story of "Death in Shanghai", but also a place with a high rate of appearance in countless film and television dramas set in old Shanghai, and it seems to be a city card of old Shanghai.
The Lyceum Theatre in the old photo
Lou Ye came from a drama family, and has been influenced by theaters and theaters since he was a child, and has a strong complex for the Lyceum Grand Theater.
Lou Ye set the main stage in the Lyceum Theater this time, which is also an expression of this complex in his heart.
In the original book "The Death of Shanghai", there is a brief introduction to the theater:
There is no drama, the Lyceum Theater usually just plays films with cultural taste; the name Lyceum comes from the Latin Lyceum, which was originally the academy of the Roman orator Cicero, and the common name used by many theaters in Europe, "Larion Orchid Heart", Chinese can be described as a wonderful translation.
This passage only introduces the origin of the name of the Lyceum Theatre, but does not explain how its C position in the old Shanghai cultural circle came about.
So why can the Lyceum Theatre become a typical cultural symbol that reflects "old Shanghai"?
Reference the collection of essays "Shanghai Concession and Lyceum Theatre" briefly introduces the past and present lives of Lyceum Theatre.
As we all know, modern China has been characterized as a "semi-colonial and semi-feudal country", and the most typical representative of this "double-half society" is Shanghai after the opening of the port.
In 1845, the British began to set up a concession in Shanghai, and as the number of foreigners in the concession (mainly British at first) increased, it naturally brought a Western entertainment lifestyle.
The senior classes and employees of foreign companies, as well as foreigners from all walks of life, also have entertainment and leisure after work and holidays, but they cannot always watch Chinese opera.
Therefore, at that time, many clubs for social, sports and entertainment purposes were established in the Shanghai British, including two amateur drama clubs established in 1850, named "Prodigal Son" and "Good Man".
In the beginning, the "Prodigal Son" and "Good Man" theater companies did not have a fixed rehearsal and performance venue, but only set up a temporary stage in the warehouse warehouse.
In 1866, the two amateur drama clubs merged to form the "WesternErn Love American Drama Society", known in English as Amateur Dramatic Club, abbreviated as A.D.C.
This drama club was originally a ticket-playing group for some British expatriates and their families, but because it was the only influential Western drama club in Shanghai at that time, it was supported by the British colonial high-level, and its influence gradually expanded.
Shanghai Concession Area Expansion Map
In 1867, the Aimei Drama Society built a wooden theater on the former Museum Road (Museum Road), now known as Tiger Hill Road.
The expatriates brought the name of their home country, the famous British theatre Lyceum Theatre, and named the first Western-style theatre built in Shanghai.
It is said that the translation of "Lyceum" into "Lyceum" is Wang Tao, the first generation of bourgeois thinkers in Chinese history, implying that art is as elegant and pure as an orchid, and it is also one of the origins of magnolia as a flower in Shanghai.
In 1871, the Wooden Lyceum Theater, which had been built for about five years, was destroyed by a fire.
In 1874, with the financial support of the Shanghai Public Concession Taxpayers' Conference, the highest representative body of the Shanghai Concession, a new brick theater, the "Second Generation" Lyceum Theater, was rebuilt on the original site at the intersection of the current Tiger Hill Road, Hong Kong Road and Yuanmingyuan Road.
The second generation of the Lyceum Theatre with its masonry structure
The relative location of the second generation Lyceum Theatre
The second generation of Lyceum Theatre was not only fully upgraded, close to the British consulate and official residence, with the support of the colonial high-level, the B grid was gradually upgraded, becoming a high-end theater mainly for foreign high society performances in Shanghai.
In addition to the original amateur Aimei Drama Club, there are many high-level theater troupes, performers and important plays in Shanghai who use this place as a stage.
For example, the famous Irish dramatist George Bernard Shaw's play "The Devil's Disciple" premiered in China, at the Lyceum Theatre.
In 1907, Chunyang She, the first drama troupe in China, leased the Lyceum Grand Theater as a venue, and staged the first drama performed by Chinese in China, "Black Slave Calling Heavenly Record".
This performance, which was performed in Japan by the Chunyanagi Society earlier in the same year, is regarded as the beginning of the history of Chinese drama.
As a result, the Lyceum Theater became the center of Chinese and foreign literature and art in Shanghai at that time.
The Lyceum Theater on Tiger Hill Road has been in operation for more than half a century (55 years) and was sold in 1929 due to problems such as old buildings.
Subsequently, the Aimei Drama Company used the funds from the sale of the second-generation theater, as well as some social donations and loans, to build the third-generation Lyceum Theater on the corner of Pushi Road and Myer Xi'ai Road (now Changle Road and Maoming South Road) in the former French Concession, which has always existed today.
Lyceum Theatre in the 1930s
Now the Lyceum Theatre in the streetscape
The newly built Lyceum Theatre was still deeply supported by the concession, and on February 5, 1931, the then British Consul General in Shanghai made an opening ceremony and delivered a speech for the new site of the theater.
After the completion of the new theater, the Aimei Drama Society, the Gongbu Bureau Band and the Shanghai Russian Ballet were resident performance teams, of which the Gongbu Bureau Band was regarded as a symbol of Western culture in Shanghai, so it has been performing routinely.
The theater also let go of films for a period of time to make up for the deficit.
The main story line about the original film "The Death of Shanghai", that is, the fictional Shanghai celebrity Yu Yanhui Shanghai performance, in the history of performance at the Lyceum Theatre and the history of Chinese drama, there are also archetypes to follow, mainly related to the modern Chinese dramatist Tang Huaiqiu and his daughter Tang Ruoqing.
Tang Huaiqiu studied in France in his early years, specializing in very cutting-edge aviation machinery. However, he was impressed by the traveling troupe in France, and then gave up the science and engineering to serve the country, imitating the French establishment of the Chinese traveling troupe in Shanghai, named "China Traveling Theatre Company".
This troupe is china's first professional drama troupe, specializing in acting and selling tickets for a living, and Tang Huaiqiu's eldest daughter Tang Ruoqing is the heroine of the troupe.
Photo of Tang Ruo when he was young
Tang Ruoqing played the grandmother in Shao's version of "The Ghost of Qiannu"
In 1937, when Japan invaded China in an all-round way, Tang Huaiqiu and his "Chinese Traveling Theater Troupe" traveled all over China, performing while walking, and finally fled to Hong Kong for refuge.
In 1939, the drama society, which was trapped in the isolated island of Shanghai, invited Tang Ruoqing, who was hiding from the war in Hong Kong, to shanghai to serve as the heroine of "The Last Hate of the Ming Dynasty".
This drama has been performed 64 times in a row, sensationalizing Shanghai during the isolated island period.
But then Tang Ruoqing clashed with other actors when he performed other plays.
The Tang father and daughter, who had lost their credibility, found the screenwriter Wei Ruyi to write a new drama "Hong Xuanjiao", and then hired film director Fei Mu as a drama director, and spent a lot of money to rent the Lyceum Grand Theater, and also held a press conference to publicize it.
In the end, "Hong Xuanjiao" was staged at the Lyceum Grand Theatre for 9 days, and obtained a considerable income, which was rare in the isolated island period.
It can be seen that the famous actresses who came from Hong Kong to perform in Shanghai chose the high-standard Lyceum Theatre, as well as the new plays that sensationalized Shanghai...
The legendary experience of Tang Ruoqing's father and daughter provided creative materials and inspiration for the novel "The Death of Shanghai".
The examination of the Lyceum Theatre and the true prototype of the Viola helps to understand the original book and the film on the other hand.
If there are errors and omissions in the above information and historical facts, we hope to correct it
-END-