Text/Zhu Anping
The great Chinese people's War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression was not only directly related to the life and death of the Chinese nation, but also closely linked to the fate of everyone and family. "Bitter Cauliflower", which was produced in 1965 by the Bayi Film Studio, set against the background of the complicated and cruel struggle in the anti-Japanese base area behind enemy lines, and through the transformation of the situation of a family in the rural areas of Jiaodong, profoundly lashed out at the ferocity and cruelty of the Japanese aggressors and the despicable shamelessness of the traitors and lackeys, enthusiastically praised the lofty spirit of the anti-Japanese army and people in going forward and succeeding and indomitable, and outlined from one side the process of the masses of the people gradually awakening and marching toward revolution under the guidance of the party and through the baptism of blood and fire. The film is thick in content, vivid in characters, deep in style, and has quite touching power.
"The Epitome of a Revolutionary Mother"
The movie "Bitter Cauliflower" is based on a novel of the same name by Feng Deying, a child of a poor peasant who became a famous military writer. Feng Deying was born in 1935 in the Kuncheng Mountains of Muping (now Rushan), Shandong, located on the Jiaodong Peninsula, where the struggle during the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression was extremely sharp, cruel and complex, his father was killed by the han traitor township chief, and his brother was forced to flee, leaving only his mother with three older sisters and him to live together. Feng Deying not only experienced the hardships of his family, but also witnessed his brothers and sisters participating in the revolution one after another, his mother had an inseparable relationship with the revolution, and he himself served as a children's regiment leader and a young pioneer, and was baptized by the revolutionary struggle. In 1949, Feng Deying joined the Chinese People's Liberation Army, entered the army communication school, and successively served as a radio operator, a radio station chief, and a radar command platoon leader. Just in the second year of enlistment, he happened to see the writer Ke Lan reflecting the anti-Japanese struggle novella "The Story of the Yang Iron Barrel", which aroused his memories of the anti-Japanese deeds of the people in his hometown, knowing that "his familiar life can also be used to write a book", so he began to write based on real life materials, and after 3 years of formal writing in between coastal defense tasks, after more than 3 years of spare time to write a book, he finally completed the creation of "Bitter Cauliflower", which was published by the People's Liberation Army Literary and Art Society in 1958.
Although "Bitter Cauliflower" is Feng Deying's debut work, in the long novel with the theme of the anti-Japanese struggle, it is an accomplished, distinctive and influential work. With passionate brushstrokes and gripping plots, it has created a series of rich and distinct character images, truly and profoundly showing the growth of consciousness and lofty qualities of the anti-Japanese people in the arduous struggle. The story takes place in a village called Wang Guanzhuang in the Kuncheng Mountains of the Jiaodong Peninsula, where the anti-Japanese guerrillas eliminated the traitor Wang Alone in one fell swoop and established an anti-Japanese regime, but the struggle was not over. Wang Zhu, The Only Son of Wang Zhu, defected to the puppet army as a squadron commander, and his uncle and brother Wang Kam zhi suddenly returned from outside to disguise progress by offering land and running a compulsory primary school, and penetrated into the anti-Japanese regime and engaged in espionage activities. The overt and covert collusion between the traitorous landlords and the Japanese aggressors made the struggle more complicated and fierce, and the brutal sweeping, frenzied massacres, sinister whistle-blowing, and shameless framing made the people of Wang Guanzhuang undergo extremely severe tests and pay a considerable price. But they did not give in and wavered, and quickly awakened and grew up under the leadership of the Party. Among them, there are not only the younger generation such as Juanzi and Deqiang, but also the women of the old era who have endured deep suffering and oppression like their mothers, and even Xingli's mother and Wang Changsuo, who once humiliated and lived and were once forced to be driven by the traitor king Kam Zhi, have finally realized that "being a good person dies, and the strong one lives like an inferior person." The Party's education and the tempering of the struggle have enabled them to understand the meaning of life and death. In the face of the rapid choice between the revolution and the individual, they were able to suppress great suffering and protect the interests of the Party and the revolution with their own lives, and the brilliance that burst out from them condensed into a huge ideological force.
◆ Famous military writer Feng Deying.
The novel's greatest artistic success is the creation of an image of a complete revolutionary mother, in which the traditional virtues of simplicity, gentleness and kindness of Chinese working women are brought together and shine, and they are also representatives of the earlier enlightened women. When the revolutionary wave had just swept in, she was afraid and even a little afraid, but when she saw with her own eyes the devastating blow that the armed insurrection had brought to the landlord class, and then understood the true meaning of the revolution, that is, to replace it with enthusiasm and determination, and to contribute her great and deep maternal love without reservation. She resisted the pressure of traditional forces, supported her daughter to participate in the revolution, even when she needed the most care at home, did not drag her daughter's hind legs, showed generosity and simplicity; tortured to protect the machinery of the arsenal, and even sacrificed her 5-year-old daughter for this purpose, showing tenacity and fearlessness; in order to support the Juanzi Revolution, performing her duties as a mother on her behalf, helping to raise a 3-month-old baby, showing composure and selflessness; in order to pull out the enemy's last stronghold, she took the sick body and sneaked into the enemy to fight heroically. Finally dawn and victory. When shaping the image of the mother, the author has penetrated the brushstrokes deep into her heart, delicately revealing her rich spiritual world, and does not shy away from certain hesitations and excessive grief in the face of difficulties, life and death junctures and tragic parting, which fully shows the psychological contradictions and conflicts of the characters and their overcoming process, thus touchingly and profoundly showing the mother's great and lofty human nature and human feelings.
Because it was the first time in the literature of the time that such a glorious figure of a revolutionary mother appeared, it received great attention, and many commentators called it "the most lovely mother", "not only a mother who loves her children, but a mother who loves the children of the broad masses of working people, a mother who has contributed everything for the revolutionary cause", and believes that "the success of this character determines the success of this novel to a large extent". This evaluation is to the point of the actual work, from the beginning of the brewing to several degrees of revision, the title of the book is called "Mother", until the final draft, when the editor-in-chief of the People's Liberation Army Literary and Art Society proposed that There is already Gorky's novel called "Mother", hoping to change the name, Feng Deying considered for a few days, before taking the bitter cauliflower described in the work as the title of the book. When he expounded the motivation and purpose of his creation, he repeatedly confessed that he was "recording his mother's life and expressing his deep affection for his mother", admitting that "in fact, the prototype of Feng Daniang in "Bitter Cauliflower" is his mother. Rather, it is the epitome of many revolutionary mothers, including mothers. Later, when Premier Zhou Enlai met feng Deying, he said that the people of Shandong had made great contributions to the revolution during the war, and they had heard about it when they were in Yan'an, and they should write these things well. Deng Yingchao thanked Feng Deying on behalf of women across the country, saying that his works have written many excellent women's characters.
"Adapting into a movie is difficult"
Once the novel was published, it was widely praised, and was praised as "a fragrant flower", "a heroic flower, a revolutionary flower", praised it for "reproducing the suffering of the people in the past, writing about the cruelty, hardship and complexity of this struggle, showing the flesh-and-blood relationship between the military and the people and between the party and the masses, so that the broad masses, especially the youth, received a profound communist education", not only printed it again and again in a short time, but also quickly evolved into other art forms such as opera and quyi, and there were 3 troupes staged at the same time in the commentary. Among them, the China Critics Theater has performed hundreds of performances in a row, which can be described as popular.
In the adaptation of "Bitter Cauliflower", the most influential movies. After the novel was published, it was favored by the Bayi Factory, believing that it generally belonged to the category of military themes, the characters described, the details of life, local customs and other simple and true, especially in the description of the revolutionary war, paying special attention to highlighting the meaning of feelings, in the love of husband and wife, mother-daughter love and mother-in-law love, etc., have done a relatively full performance, put on the screen will have their own characteristics, so it was included in the shooting plan very early, because the novel is based on the author's rich life experience, Feng Deying has been transferred to the Air Political Department as a creator, It was decided that it would be adapted by him.
◆ Stills of "Bitter Cauliflower", mother and daughter Juanzi.
To turn a novel of 400,000 words into a film that has been screened for less than two hours, it is not only limited by the length and length, but more importantly, it must adapt to the needs of film performance and carry out artistic re-creation, not to expand complex character relationships and describe rich plot entanglements like the original work, but to simplify the character relationship and concentrate on plot scenes to form a dramatic conflict. This trade-off and change was influenced and restricted by the political and cultural environment at that time, so it took several years from the preliminary preparation to the actual shooting. As Feng Deying later recalled with deep emotion: "The novel "Bitter Cauliflower" itself is because I am young, and a lot of what is written in it is the original things of life, plus the author's feelings, so my structure is incomplete. ...... It's very difficult to adapt it into a movie, its plot, its story, it follows the characters... So it took a long time to change, put down the change, changed it and put it down, and the director also changed several times. The script is my own, I didn't want to change it, and the adaptation itself meant giving up. Because the artistic atmosphere and artistic environment at that time were not good, there were more 'left' things and more restrictions. ”
The entry angle and theme expression of the adaptation reflect the change of refinement and sublimation. Although both the novel and the film are based on the heroic struggle of our anti-Japanese soldiers and civilians against the enemy and the hypocrites in the Kuncheng Mountains of Shandong Province, the former takes the peasant rebellion in Wangguanzhuang, the three "sweeps" of the devils, and the anti-Japanese army and people attacking Daoshuicheng as the main line, and the latter is a concentrated reflection of the process of an ordinary working woman living at the bottom of her life gradually growing into a brave, strong, and revolutionary mother who is not afraid of sacrifice, thus integrating the confrontation with the Japanese army, the struggle against the reactionary landlords, and the contest with the hidden traitors and secret agents. It is more concentrated in how the people of Chinese, under the leadership of the Communist Party, defeated the barbaric aggression of Japanese imperialism through arduous and heroic struggle, thus effectively revealing that if the working people want to be liberated, they can only follow the Communist Party and take up guns to wage armed struggle against the enemy.
According to this, all the character relationships and storylines in the original novel are changed according to the shaping of the mother's image and the theme performance in the film. The most significant thing is that in the original work, the mother's husband Renyi was forced away by the landlord, and later returned, in the movie, Renyi was killed by the landlord, and it was the eldest son Degang who was forced to run away, and Degang changed from the mother's younger son in the original work to the eldest son in the movie, that is, the fiancé of Zhao Xingmei, the leader of the District Women's Rescue Association, and Ji Tiegong, who worked in the Eighth Route Army Arsenal. Feng Deying once explained: "In the novel, Zhao Xingmei, the president of the District Women's Rescue Committee, and her fiancé Ji Tiegong play an important role in the growth of their mother. In particular, Ji Tiegong's sacrifice and Xingmei's generosity greatly improved her mother's revolutionary thinking. However, because the mother has no flesh-and-blood connection with them, Pingshui meets, and in the novel, the images of Tiegong and Xingmei can be described through narration, so that their sacrifice has a strong force. But in the movie, there is no space to write too much about them, and simply retain their sacrifices, the impact on the mother will not be great. For this reason, it was conceived that if Xingmei's fiancé was the son of her mother, the brutality of the old society linked their fates, and the torrent of revolution poured them onto a front. Ji Tiegong's sacrifice is that the mother has lost her own son, and she is also a heroic warrior, the flesh and blood of motherhood, the class love for revolutionary fighters, and the power generated by these two noble emotions will be even stronger. This is not only a story of a mother who has been tested in the face of the misfortune of losing her son, but also a celebration of the steadfastness of revolutionary mothers. ”
Compared with the original work, the most changed is related to emotional processing, the novel "Bitter Cauliflower" is different from other red classics at that time, in that while showing fierce class struggle and praising the heroic image, accompanied by a lot of rich and delicate emotional descriptions, such as Deqiang and Xingli Qingmei Bamboo Horse-style juvenile hazy love, Xingli's mother and Changgong Wang Changsuo from mutual sympathy to each other's life, Juanzi's deep love for Jiang Yongquan, shyness and unspeakable, etc., which is also what attracted a large number of readers in that era. But it is also an important reason for controversy and even criticism. At that time, the specific political environment of the film adaptation coincided with the rejection and denial of human nature, human feelings, and humanitarianism, and these depictions had to be diluted, avoided, or even deleted. In particular, the relationship between Xingli's mother and Wang Changsuo accounts for a large proportion in the original work, because it involves complex factors such as birth and status, it cannot appear in the film, and their illegitimate daughter Xingli has lost its basis of existence, but the plot development is indispensable to such a character, so it is changed to Pingli, becoming the granddaughter of the Wang family's servant, although what Xingli did in the novel, but its class origin has undergone major changes, and the report on the landlord and the traitor Wang Kamzhi also has a fuller reason, more class hatred components.
The most fundamental change in the adaptation is to take the mother's growth in the revolutionary struggle as the main object of expression, the original character portrayal starts from the two characteristics of loving heart and revolutionary will, the film focuses on the latter, the storyline is correspondingly concentrated and adjusted, so that it can withstand the severe tests such as the sacrifice of relatives, the fall of the enemy, and the torture of poison, and finally face to face with the hidden traitor Wang Kam Zhi, replacing the original mother and Juanzi to go deep into DaoshuiCheng to annihilate the enemy, and the struggle is carried out from beginning to end in Wang Guanzhuang. It also focuses on the change of mother's fate and the progress of consciousness. In this process, not only by reinforcing the depiction of the "gun" in the original work, from the first mother to see Juanzi try the old shotgun and was shocked, leading to her husband Renyi holding a gun before dying to ask for "revenge", and then the mother took the initiative to learn to shoot, until she was not afraid to raise a gun to kill the enemy, so that it became a clue to the growth of the character, but also directly gave the mother a lot of strong fighting actions, such as helping the militia to build a wall arsenal machine, fighting with the traitor Lü Xi lead, leading the enemy into the minefield, angrily slapping the traitor Wang Zhu. Finally, he took up a weapon and killed the secret agent Wang Kam Zhi, etc., which is not found in the original work, thus more clearly highlighting the image of the revolutionary hero who is tenacious and stubborn and has a clear love and hatred, and at the same time explains the idea that the people are armed to resist oppression and the gun is out of power, which is the spirit of the times advocated when the filming was adapted.
"The First Lady on the Screen"
Filming officially began in 1964, and the final director was Li Ang, a young and powerful director of Bayi Factory. He has experienced the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression and the War of Liberation, is no stranger to the content expressed in the film, and has a wealth of filming experience, having served as an assistant director and co-director of films such as "Battle shanghai" and "Breakthrough in Wujiang", and has independently directed "Young Tanker". The film crew that followed was mainly composed of Bayi Factory, supplemented by external invitations. The photography is Wei Linyue, who successfully filmed the first feature film "Serf" in the Tibetan plateau, and the main characters are the mother, Xingmei, Jiang Yongquan, and the enemy's Wang Zhu, Wang Wei, Qing Shui, etc., all played by Qu Yun, Yuan Xia, Wang Zhigang, Xie Wanhe, Liu Jiang, Meng Qingfang, etc. of the Bayi Factory Actors Troupe, and the actors of Juanzi and Wang Kamzhi are borrowed from Yang Yaqin of the Jinan Military Region Avant-garde Drama Troupe and Gu Lan of the Air Politics Drama Troupe, who played Tian Sister-in-law in "Mine Warfare". In order to reflect the unique Jiaodong style from the music, specially found the Shangying Tianma Factory, which had filmed the "Red Sun" with the theme of the military and civilian self-defense counterattack in the Liberated Areas of Shandong, invited Xiao Heng, one of the authors of "Who Doesn't Say That My Hometown Is Good" and also a Shandong Muping person, to make a cameo in this film, and created a theme group song "Bitter Cauliflower Fragrance" for it, the same tune appeared repeatedly, the lyrics changed according to the prescribed situation, or sadness or depth or high pitched or joyful, and sung by Wang Yinxuan of the Shandong Song and Dance Troupe who sang the original song of "Red Sun". Commissioned the Shanghai Film Orchestra to play and record, which is very infectious and local, adding a lot of color to the film.
Since the mother has been promoted to the first protagonist, whether or not to act well is related to the success or failure of the film, the choice of actors has aroused great concern from all parties, and bayi factory and the film crew are very cautious. At that time, there were many famous actors who had already influenced the audience among the candidates, but it was later confirmed that qu yun, who was not yet very famous, was confirmed to play. She heard that the factory was going to shoot "Bitter Cauliflower", and after finding a novel to read, she took the initiative to find the director and proposed, "Let me try it, let me act when it is appropriate." The reason is also a Shandong Muping people, whose hometown is not far from the place where the story takes place, and most of the things in the novel have been experienced.
◆ The image of the old lady played by Qu Yun on the stage and screen, simple and thick, strong and soft, rich in local atmosphere, won the reputation of "the first old lady on the screen".
In view of the fact that Qu Yun also grew up in the Jiaodong Peninsula, accumulated a relatively rich life material and character archetypes, has a strong willingness to play the role, although there is an age gap with it, but the experience is similar to a certain extent, and has been playing the old lady on the stage and screen, the factory finally decided that she would play the key figure of the mother. After Qu Yun undertook the role task, he knew that familiarity with life did not mean that he could shape the character well, repeatedly read the novel and script, put into rehearsal without sleeping, and was very serious and hard in filming, treating each scene carefully. In order to feel the thoughts and feelings of her mother luring the enemy to step on the thunder, she ran up the hill on the location alone, and turned her back on her hands over and over again, pondering the reaction performance of being bound by the enemy and forcing her to lead the way, thinking about how to deal with it, and looking for a mine mark. After Degang's sacrifice, the mother-in-law and daughter-in-law successively expressed their grief and resentment with weaving cloth, and the director asked her mother to weave cloth to be more skilled than Xingmei, she began to prepare in advance, regardless of the fatigue of filming during the day, taking advantage of the night gap, risking the danger of the wolves in the Kunming Mountains, running for several miles at night to rush to her hometown to learn weaving. In this way, after hard work and perseverance, Qu Yun successfully completed the shaping of the mother's image, and presented the growth process of transforming her from an ordinary woman in rural China to a conscious revolutionary fighter, which was true, accurate and delicate, forming a simple and pure, rigid and soft performance characteristics, rich in local atmosphere, and won the reputation of "the first old lady on the screen". She once humbly said: "The heroic deeds of the revolutionary mother have educated the vast audience, and the vast audience likes their revolutionary behavior very much, so the audience loves me, and it is I who have dipped the light of the heroic mother." And I am sincerely grateful to director Li Ang and photographer Wei Linyue, who made her get rid of the tense, rigid, and embarrassing situation during the shooting, eliminate interference in the noisy shooting scene and enter the role, and perform realistically under various hypothetical conditions.
After the filming was completed, it was selected for the "Film Exhibition Commemorating the 20th Anniversary of the Victory of the Great War of Resistance Against Japan" organized by the Ministry of Culture, and was released nationwide in August 1965, and was widely praised. When the film premiered in Hong Kong, it coincided with the simultaneous release of Run Run Shaw's entertainment film "Four King Kongs", and "Bitter Cauliflower" was far ahead at the box office. The film was also screened at the China Film Week organized by the UAE, and Qu Yun attended as a member of the Chinese film delegation. Soon after the "Cultural Revolution" began, because Feng Deying's novel "YingchunHua", which reflected the struggle life during the Liberation War, which was created after "Bitter Cauliflower", was adapted into a drama, Jiang Qing was not satisfied with it and ordered to revise it, Feng Deying only verbally accepted but did not change, was falsely accused of being a "black writer" who "opposed the standard-bearer of the literary and artistic revolution", and his novel became a "big poisonous weed" that preached the bourgeois theory of human nature, the theory of class struggle reconciliation, the pacifism of the horrors of revolutionary war, the supremacy of love and the yellow poison, "Bitter Cauliflower" The film was also banned, but privately it was designated as a reference film for revolutionary model plays, because Jiang Qing believed that "acting well and having a life" did not reappear until after the "Cultural Revolution". In the past few years, the novel "Bitter Cauliflower" has been re-adapted into a Lu opera and a TV series, and the creation and rehearsal are all based on the film as a reference, confirming that its unique fragrance is still charming.
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