The Great Bright Cinema put a "Big Li Xiao Li and Old Li" directed by Xie Jin, the movie ticket "second light", upstairs and downstairs were full. Director Xie Jin's gesture is old and spicy, he has only directed the comedy "Big Li Xiao Li and Old Li", but since its premiere in 1962, it has been an outdated hit. The recent screening is more special, the audience sees the "Shanghainese original" version that has been separated from Shanghai for half a century, and the original Shanghainese dialect of Liu Xiasheng, Wen Binbin, and Fan Haha, the big names of the burlesque drama of the past, reappeared in the cinema.
Xie Jin has only made one comedy film in his lifetime, but it has three versions
During the Shanghai International Film Festival last year, the restored version of the new Shanghainese dubbing "Big Li Xiao Li and Old Li" caused a sensation, and in the boom of ticket grabbing, some film history experts and scholars spoke: "The Shanghai version is really good!" "Did this group of connoisseurs see a restored version of the new dubbing before the regular audience?" Not. This involves an old story - the release version of "Big Li Xiao Li and Old Li" is dubbed in Mandarin, but when the film was filmed, the actors performed in Shanghainese, and the original Shanghai audio track has always been there. At the same time that the old film restoration department of the Shanghai Film Festival invested in the "new match" version, the China Film Archive did a 2K restoration of the original version, which was put in the daily academic screening of the archive in 2017.
Due to the reason of copying, the original version of "Big Li Xiao Li and Old Li" does not have subtitles, returns to the province, and there is no viewing obstacle to the villagers born and raised in Shanghai, only adding a kind interest. More intriguing is the screening in Beijing at the end of 2017, when the northern audience did not complain about "not understanding", but felt that the dialect performance made up for the missing piece of the film's territory, especially many viewers who had seen the Mandarin version, after the screening of the archive, went to the film review social networking site to leave a message, the fans' long and short comments and film history experts' opinions were highly consistent: the Shanghai version is really good.
It is interesting to comb through the three versions of "Big Li Xiao Li and Old Li" – the Mandarin version released in 1962, the new Shanghainese dubbed version in 2018 and the Original Shanghainese version preserved as academic materials – the participation and influence of dialects on performance, and even the shaping of the entire film, the flow of language in time and the irreversibility and difficulty of copying these changes, these complex propositions are intuitively verified in Xie Jin's only comedy film.
Dialects are not gimmicks, they are part of life, shaping characters
Whether it is for the production cost of the film or for the sake of suitable promotion, the Mandarin dubbed "Big Li Xiao Li and Old Li" still has the texture of an excellent comedy, director Xie Jin's lens language is neat, the editing technique is handsome, his accurate sense of film is still a textbook existence, and the high-level elegant jokes and plays are more than enough to make contemporary comedians ashamed. But it must also be admitted that the jagged Shanghai dialect and Northern Jiangsu dialect in the workers' new villages have been changed to Mandarin with correct characters, the sense of life and vividness of the dramatic situation has become less complete, and the transformation of the language channel has added a layer of unclear stage sense to the original life-rich performance.
Dialect is not a literary or comedic gimmick, it is a part of the performance that cannot be cut. The infiltration of dialects in the film is a reality of life. How embarrassing would it be if Jia Zhangke asked the young people in Shanxi town in the movie to speak the standard Mandarin of metropolitan youth? If Gong Li repeatedly said the sentence in "Qiu Ju Fights the Lawsuit" in mandarin with straight words, "I don't obey, I just don't obey." "Who can believe that she is a peasant woman with no culture?" If the Suzhou cooks in "Little Moon Building" speak Mandarin, they are afraid that the famous Suzhou dish "Fuli Chicken" will change its taste.
Dialects silently shape the characters and also determine the atmosphere of the film. "Stock Madness" is considered to be a comedy masterpiece of Shanghai cinema in the 1990s, but in fact, the film describes some very sad things, the bankruptcy of the family, the separation of husband and wife, and the fire from the other side. But it always conveys a humorous atmosphere, bittersweet when happy and bitter, which is related to the details of the play, related to the actor's performance, and most importantly, it is maintained with the expressiveness of dialect dialogue. In the movie, the Shanghainese, Ningbo, Shaoxing, Suzhou, Subei and Cantonese dialects are interwoven with a fierce vitality of life, bicycles pass through the lanes of Jingaoli from the road, and the small people can't get the flowers and brocade, but still have to live with fire. Pan Hong is such a high goddess in "Distressed Laughter", and when she arrived in "Stock Madness", she made a big wave of hot and tacky, and broke out of Shanghainese as a ticket seller, which was really refreshing and vivid.
It is precisely because the dialect is too deeply involved in life that it should be used properly and pasted, and to a large extent, it has become the patent of the era drama. The contrast between the original and new dubbed versions of "Big Lee And Old Lee" is particularly obvious. It is not possible to arbitrarily comment on the new version of "no", but the language is changing, the deceased is like a si, the times have changed, the language and context of the workers' new village have passed, and half a century of time has become a gap that cannot be crossed. The re-dubbing is to let today's Shanghai dialect face the "period drama" of 50 years ago, compared with the original sound, showing its inadequacy. This can also partially explain why the Shanghai dialect in some film and television dramas always makes the audience respond, from the movie "Long Hate Song" to "The History of the Demise of Romanticism", which is not a question of whether the actor can speak standard Shanghainese, but the credibility of the dialect dialogue itself has a problem, and the situation stipulated by the drama and the texture of life are contrary to it, becoming a non-trivial "stage cavity".
In this regard, the original version of "Big Li Xiao Li and Old Li" made "Old Shanghai" excited, and it was really not only out of feelings. Liu Xiasheng, Wen Binbin, Fan Haha, these funny predecessors let the audience hear that the Shanghai dialect in the movie is not a mannerism with a tone, it is life, and it is also the temperature and thickness of this life, which adds to the charm of the movie.
Author: Liu Qing
Editor: Xu Yang
Editor-in-Charge: Xiaofang Xing
*Wenhui exclusive manuscript, please indicate the source when reprinting.