In the 1980s, China's film industry ushered in a blowout after a decade of silence, giving birth to classic works such as "XiyingMen", "Shaolin Temple", "Wrangler" and other word-of-mouth and box office double harvests.
In the 1980s, a film with the theme of "murder" was particularly dazzling: since its release in 1980, the producer Shang film studio sold a total of 400 copies, and the box office revenue exceeded 100 million.
The film that won the box office champion that year was "405 Murder" directed by Shen Yaoting, with a Douban score of 8.4.
In the era when China's genre films were not yet mature, "405 Murder" as a detective film, can be said to play the suspense and thriller to the extreme, the storyline is full of suspense twists and turns, and the atmosphere of thrilling horror is also created just right, which makes the movie audience at that time shine.
01, suspenseful mysterious murder
On a dark and windy night, a woman walks alone in an empty street, and the rapid footsteps contrast with the silent night, which makes people frightened. From the very beginning, the film immerses the audience in the story.
This is Donghai City in 1979, a woman in a hurry named Bai Juan, she came to the home of her boyfriend Li Liang, and suddenly let out a scream: her boyfriend Li Liang had been leaning against the window for a long time.
After receiving the report, Chen Minghui, a police officer of the Donghai City Public Security Bureau, and others rushed to the scene of the crime to investigate.
After the on-site investigation and evidence collection, Chen Minghui and others analyzed and locked two criminal suspects named "A 0san", one was the gambler "A 0san" and the other was the TV cameraman Fang Mingshan.
According to the fingerprints on the teacup at the crime scene, Fang Mingshan was the most suspicious, and the police department quickly arrested Fang Mingshan.
The evidence is conclusive, the suspects have been arrested, and everything seems to be settled, but the truth is far from it.
According to the physical evidence at the scene, the feathers at Li Liang's wound came from the unique acacia bird in Huangshan, while Fang Mingshan had never been to Huangshan, and the gambler "Ah 0san" also confessed the truth at this time.
On the day of the crime, "Ah 0 San" went to Li Liang's home to steal, just when Li Liang and another man returned home, in a hurry he hid in the toilet, but heard Li Liang screaming bitterly, and when he came out of the toilet, the murderer had long disappeared.
Chen Minghui had a premonition that the murderer was someone else, so he went to Huangshan alone to investigate, and as the investigation deepened step by step, Chen Minghui found that the case was not a simple murder, but a planned and premeditated frame-up.
During a filming trip, Fang Mingshan found local privately made artillery and new weapons, and he decided to report this situation to the leadership, but was discovered by Li Liang, who was also traveling.
Li Liang forced Fang Mingshan to hand over the materials, but soon after Li Liang was killed by the driver Lin Fugen, Fang Mingshan, feeling dangerous, hid the evidence in a tree hole in Xiao qingshan.
The person behind the planning of all this is Chen Minghui's superior and director Xu Yibin.
The facts of the case gradually became clearer, and Chen Minghui's situation became more and more difficult, and he was constantly persecuted on the way to investigate the case, and just when the case was about to be revealed, Chen Minghui was kidnapped, and the gangsters destroyed the key evidence he had painstakingly collected in front of Lao Chen.
Chen Minghui and the gangsters launched a desperate struggle, and at the moment of the first attack, Qian Kai and others arrived in time to save Chen Minghui.
Later, in order to cover up the truth, the bureau chief wanted to send Chen Minghui to the farm for transformation and prepare to execute Fang Mingshan.
In a hurry, Chen Minghui no longer cared whether it was illegal or not, and took Fang Mingshan out of the detention center in the name of the director of the bureau, took out the materials and prepared to hand them over to a chief surnamed Zhao.
"Everything will pass, and only the truth will last forever." This sentence said by Chen Minghui when the two separated is still fresh in memory and makes people feel excited.
02, go deep into the police station to find story inspiration
The twisty and bizarre story of "405 Murder" is not fiction, but is based on real-life real-life cases.
The prototype of the story originated from a report published in the People's Daily, where a policeman in inner Mongolia found suspicious points in the process of executing three murderers and reported to his superiors, and after more than a year of review, he finally found out the origin of the matter, and finally the three were acquitted.
At that time, Shen Yaoting and Yu Benzheng were preparing to shoot a film reflecting a criminal case, and they were worried about not having a story theme, and when they accidentally saw this report, the two went to the criminal investigation team with a strong interest to experience life.
In the days when the criminal investigation team experienced life, the two felt that if they simply told the story of the police solving the case, it would seem too thin, in order to make the story more exciting, the two decided to add drama to the script.
The two screenwriters went through the criminal investigation team's case file and, after some painstaking searching, found a material in a file from many years ago.
A former leader of the Public Security Bureau, who was one of the underground party leaders of the Shanghai pseudo-prison before liberation, once saved the lives of many Communist Party members, but was later persecuted to death.
So based on this deed, the two conceived of the relationship between Chen Minghui and Fang Mingshan, and built the entire movie story with the relationship between the two characters.
With real events as the background, and then through post-editing and bold styling in photography, the whole film appears to be extremely textured, quite a bit of Hollywood film noir characteristics, leaving a deep impression on the film audience at that time.
03, the main actor has settled abroad, and someone has passed away
It has been 41 years since the film's release, and most of the actors in the film have retired, and some have left us.
Zhong Xinghuo, an old artist who plays Chen Minghui, played this majestic and highly righteous old policeman in the film, which won the praise of the audience.
As early as 1950, Zhong Xinghuo entered the show business circle with the movie "Farm Stay", and in 1962, he won the Best Supporting Actor Award of the Popular Film Hundred Flowers Award for the role of Sun Xiwang in "Li Shuangshuang", and has been familiar to the audience since then.
Since then, Zhong Xinghuo has been active in various film and television works, and in 2011, at the age of 88, he starred in the movie "Flying Over the Elderly Home".
In 2014, at the age of 91, Zhong Xinghuo passed away, and he will devote his life to the performance career he loves, accompanying generations of Chinese audiences with excellent works, and is a well-deserved artist.
The young police officer Qian Kai in the movie, played by Xu Min, became popular after the movie with his excellent acting skills and handsome appearance, and played an important role in many classic works.
For example, Zhao Zhenji in "Daming Dynasty 1566", Prince Yinrong in "Yongzheng Dynasty", and Daishan, the highly respected Prince li in "The Secret History of Xiaozhuang", are all played by him.
In addition, although Chen Ye, who plays a female policewoman in the film, does not have many roles, he also contributed a classic role after filming this film, that is, the gentle and kind Ci'an who played in the movie "Burning Yuanmingyuan" and "Hanging Curtains and Listening to the Government" co-starring with Liu Xiaoqing.
But after that, Chen Ye went to the United States to study, and after returning to China in 1988, he played Ci'an again in the film "A Generation of Demon Queens", and now the 66-year-old Chen Ye lives in the United States to spend his old age.
Although we can hardly see these excellent old artists today, the classic roles and works they have played have been tempered by time and have become more and more timeless. (Author: Pippi Shrimp)