The scenery is only for the real thing - the exterior of the movie "Leofoo Inn"

Film shooting base

"Leofoo Inn

" is a 1958 biographical film produced by Twentieth Century Fox , and from its Chinese-style name , one can guess that the film has a great connection with China. The film tells the story of a British maid, Gelatti, who overcomes many difficulties to reach Yangcheng County in the southeastern tip of Shanxi, China, and opens the Leofoo Inn as a missionary base and participates in the management of local social affairs. When the war of the Japanese army invading China spread to Yangcheng, Gelati led more than 100 orphans to climb mountains and wade through the water, eat and sleep in the wind, go through hardships, walk for more than a month, and finally moved to Xi'an, a large rear thousands of miles away, completing a feat that was considered impossible by ordinary people.

The script of "Leofoo Inn" is derived from the true story, Grotis Eweed, who lived in Yangcheng for 9 years, wrote her autobiography "My Heart in China" after returning to The Uk in 1941, and the famous writer Alan Birsch wrote a novel "Little Women" based on her story, which swept the world after publication, inspiring countless Americans and Europeans to volunteer to go to China to help the Chinese people resist the war, including many pilots of the Flying Tigers.

Directed by Mark Robinson and played by ingrid Bergman, an international film star known as the "First Lady of Hollywood" at the time, the film was launched because China and the United States were in a state of hostility, and it was impossible to shoot deep into China, and the plan to shoot in Taiwan was rejected by Chiang Kai-shek. In desperation, the film crew spent a lot of money to build a temporary location in London.

It is extremely difficult to restore an ancient county town in the mountains of England Chinese mainland and its nearby villages. More importantly, Yangcheng is not an obscure hometown, and was once listed as a culturally developed place in the heyday of the Qing Dynasty along with Hancheng in Shaanxi and Tongcheng in Anhui. Among the five counties under the jurisdiction of Zezhou Prefecture, it is known as "ranking three cities and five genus with high winds". Before the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression, all kinds of buildings in Yangcheng were still relatively intact, which also brought greater challenges to the work of building landscapes. To make this film well, you have to build a cottage version of Yangcheng. Of course, a large number of Chinese people had to be invited to be extras.

I believe that those who have watched the film, if they do not know the shooting tidbits, do not know the situation behind the scenes, most of them will think that this film is filmed in China. The winding and thick city walls, tall and tall city gates, solemn mansions, stages, pavilions and lofts with flying eaves, simple and elegant stone arches, slate paved streets and alleys, rows of houses and shops, and broken temple inns all reflect China's unique architectural elements and all present the cultural heritage of the ancient Orient. In particular, the carved doors and windows, splendid screens, and colorful murals in the county government can be described by the word exquisite, as well as Chinese furniture, kitchen cabinets, tables, stools, chairs, incense burner pen holders and brick ponds, and a pair of exquisitely carved stone lions at the entrance of the county government. In addition, there are signboards, porches, columns, courtyard walls, patios, fire pits, wood stoves, etc. of the inn, stupas, small temples, tombstones, and brick and wood houses in the countryside, showing Chinese style everywhere and living Chinese scenery.

In order to reproduce the Yangcheng style, the producer can be described as a dove worker, racking his brains, and sparing no expense. It is precisely because of this that after the film was officially released, it received rave reviews and won the 16th American Film Golden Globe Awards for "the most promoting international understanding".