Hu Jinquan, the founder of Chinese martial arts cinema, is known worldwide for his unique opera flavor and influence, and his narrative, mirror and composition techniques are still imitated by internationally renowned directors.
As early as the night of Chinese New Year's Eve in February 1953, Hu Jinquan and Li Hanxiang married a brother with a different surname in Kowloon, and the two have been living and dying together until death.
In 1963, the relationship between Li Hanxiang and Run Run Shaw deteriorated, and with the support of Lu Yuntao, president of International Film Mao Industry Co., Ltd., he left Shaw and formed the League of Nations Film Company - after launching films such as "Seven Fairies", "Xi Shi", "Xin Fourteen Niang", "Several Degrees of Sunset Red", "Proud Daughter of Heaven", and "Breaking Dawn", the League of Nations fell into financial crisis in the late 1960s.
In order to help Li Hanxiang tide over the difficulties, initiated by Li Hanxiang's two good friends Yang Qiao and Xie Jiaxiao, Hu Jinquan, together with Bai Jingrui and Li Xing, directed the movie "Joy and Sorrow" with Li Hanxiang.
The four of them took the words "joy", "anger", "mourning" and "happy" as the titles of the film, and each of them filmed four stories for their own affairs, forming a 144-minute film.
Among them, "Xi" directed by Bai Jingrui, "Lament" directed by Li Xing, and "Le" directed by Li Hanxiang can only find a version of the VCD; while Hu Jinquan's "Fury" has been released on a restored DVD, starring Cao Jian, Zhang Fugen, Xue Han, Chen Huilou, Hu Jin, Chen Baoliang, etc., and all cast members are zero-paid participation.
One
The story is based on the Peking Opera "Three Forks", also known as "Jiao Zan Fa Match", based on "Yang Jia General Yanyi", which is a traditional Peking Opera short martial arts play.
It tells the story of Yang Liulang's military general Ren Tanghui secretly protecting Jiao Zan, the three-pass general who was sent to Shamen Island, and when he stayed overnight at the Three Forks, Ren Tanghui rescued Jiao Zan at night and ran with the three passes.
The film begins outside guanwai during the Northern Song Dynasty, when Marshal Liu lang Yang Yanzhao (Cao Jian) receives a report from a spy, and General Jiao Zan (Xue Han) enters Beijing privately and clashes with the prime minister Wang Ruoqin over the burning of Tianbo Province, and accidentally kills Wang Ruoqin's son-in-law Xie Jinwu.
After Jiao Zan was arrested, he was originally sentenced to death, but Wang Libao, the Eight Sages, changed his sentence to Shamen Island.
Wang Ruoqin bribed the four messengers escorting Jiao Zan and wanted to murder Jiao Zan on the way, in order to save Jiao Zan's life, Yang Yanzhao ordered Ren Tanghui (Zhang Fugen) to secretly protect Jiao Zan's safety.
At this time, Jiao Zan and the four Xie Cha had already reached the third fork and stayed at the Yue Lai Ju Inn, which was actually a black shop.
The shopkeepers Liu Lihua and his wife (Chen Huilou and Hu Jin) are robbers on the underworld, doing murderous and cross-border business.
They led a group of outlaws who robbed and kidnapped passing merchants on the mountain road, and also turned over customers in the shop, not only to make money, but also to make human meat buns.
The four Xie Cha were all looking for an opportunity to take Jiao Zan's life along the way, but suffering from Jiao Zan's high martial arts skills, the four of them were too timid to attack.
After arriving at the inn, the four xiecha soon found out that it was a black shop, so they discussed a ghost idea and paid Liu Lihua and his wife to kill Jiao Zan.
However, the conspiracy of these six people had already been heard by Ren Tanghui, who was staying at the inn, and he secretly made preparations.
Liu Lihua and his wife privately discussed first solving the problem of ren Tanghui and then killing Jiao Zan.
After that, Liu Lihua quietly opened Ren Tanghui's door, raised the knife and slashed at the bed, but pounced, it turned out that Ren Tanghui was not in bed, and had already flashed aside.
Ren Tanghui chased Liu Lihua from the room to the hall, Liu's wife used copper money to extinguish the oil lamp, and the two fought together in the dark. Ren Tanghui's martial arts were far above Liu Lihua's, and although he had the help of Liu's wife, Liu Lihua could only barely block Ren Tanghui's attack.
The four Xie Cha saw that they also joined the battle group, but they were mistakenly killed by Liu Lihua and knew that Cha Xiao Du was understood.
There were two guys in the shop who were sleeping, they were awakened by the movement of the fight, they got up and rushed to the hall, and before they could figure it out, they were killed by three wrong hands.
Both sides injured each other, but they were all manslaughter, and the remaining three xie had to discuss countermeasures with Liu Lihua and his wife. After some haggling, they decided to join forces to kill Ren Tanghui first.
At this time, Jiao Zan, who had already slept in the room, was also awakened, and he walked out of the door and touched the dark and connected his head with Ren Tanghui.
The two generals joined forces, and Liu Lihua and his wife plus three xie were not their opponents. Liu Lihua had no choice but to go out and move the rescue troops, and gathered all his robbers in the inn to join the battle group.
But Ren Tanghui and Jiao Zan were not afraid at all, and they used the tables and chairs in the inn as a cover to use the terrain to flash around and move, and finally killed a bloody road.
Liu Lihua was mistakenly killed by Liu's wife's flying knife, and the three Xie Cha and Liu wives all fell into the hands of Ren Tanghui and Jiao Zan, and finally they escorted these people to the three passes.
Two
The film follows the plot setting of the traditional Peking Opera repertoire, and the shopkeepers Liu Lihua and Liu's wife are both negative characters.
But the Peking Opera "Three Forks" that we see now, these two people are jianghu heroes, they do their best to save Jiao Zan who was escorted, but there is a little misunderstanding with Ren Tanghui. In the end, Liu's wife rescued Jiao Zan, and after meeting with Ren Tanghui, the four of them ran together for three passes.
This change was made in 1951 by the Chinese Peking Opera Troupe, which made Liu Lihua, a rather comedic and popular character, a positive character, and met the audience's emotional needs.
But Hu Jinquan obviously built the film script according to the original Peking Opera story, which can also show his rigorous and serious attitude.
The biggest difference between Hu Jinquan and Zhang Che is that Zhang Che is good at portraying masculine male characters, while Hu Jinquan is good at creating heroic female characters, such as Jin Yanzi in "The Drunken Man", Zhu Hui in "Dragon Gate Inn", and Yang Huizhen in "Chivalrous Woman", all of which are classic female heroine images in Hong Kong martial arts movies.
In this film, Hu Jin's wife Liu is also very brilliant, and her charming and moving appearance, slightly market temperament, and scheming personality characteristics are impressive.
This character image obviously influenced the image shaping of Jin Zhiyu played by Maggie Cheung in the "New Dragon Gate Inn" that Xu Ke and Li Huimin later cooperated with.
This is the first film in which Hu Jin participated, Hu Jin, who came from opera, is not very familiar with the way movies are performed, and under the careful guidance of Hu Jinquan, she quickly entered the state, which made Hu Jinquan very satisfied and added a role for her.
Later, Hu Jin became a permanent female general under Li Hanxiang, and the two had cooperated 19 times.
In 1973, Hu Jin and Hu Jinquan collaborated on "The Storm of Yingchun Pavilion", which gathered four beautiful women, Li Lihua, Xu Feng, Hu Jin, Mao Ying and Shangguan Yan'er, and Hu Jin's performance was not inferior in front of the royal actress Xu Feng.
The inn fight scene is Hu Jinquan's true love, and in "The Drunken Man", Jin Yanzi has stunned the entire Hong Kong film circle with a wonderful martial arts scene of one enemy crowd;
In this film, Ren Tanghui and Jiao Zan join forces to fight the bandits, and with a bit of masculine temperament, realistic sword duels, accompanied by Peking Opera Allegro and gong and drum soundtracks, highlighting the characteristics of Hu Jinquan's style.
Although the length of the film is only 40 minutes, there are not many characters who appear, but they all have distinct personality characteristics.
The thick and thin Jiao Zan, the resourceful Ren Tanghui, the sinister and cunning Liu Lihua, and the self-made clever four solvers are all unforgettable.
Three
In addition to this story, Bai Jingrui's "Xi", Li Xing's "Lament", and Li Hanxiang's "Music" also have their own characteristics, representing the image styles of the three directors in their heyday.
The whole film of "Hi" is only 30 minutes, 0 dialogues, and all rely on images to promote the plot.
It is said that a student who reads at night with a cantilever picked up a lamp has to repay the favor of a female ghost in the grave because he saved a deserted grave dug by tomb robbers. But after the bookish color heart rose and the female ghost rained overnight, the female ghost drifted away.
The next day, the scholar did the same, but he summoned an ugly ghost, which made him miserable.
Bai Jingrui adopts a modern perspective to reconstruct and satirize the stories of the bookish female ghosts in "Liaozhai".
As a collection of literary novels that have been highly praised, such as "Nie Xiaoqian", "Ah Bao", "Baby Ning", and "Lian Xiang", those famous articles are nothing more than masculine obscenities.
Li Xing's "Lamentations" explores human obsessions.
In the film, the protagonist Wei Ugly's entire family was slaughtered by lan surname traitors many years ago, and they forcibly occupied their homes, and Wei Ugly was also unjustly imprisoned. When he was released after completing his sentence, Wei Ugly went straight to the old mansion to take revenge and vent his hatred, only to find that the Lan family had also been destroyed by retribution.
A beautiful woman appeared out of thin air in the old mansion, wanting to make a promise to each other and use tenderness to dissolve the hatred in Wei Ugly's heart.
Wei Ugly could not let go of his hatred, and when he finally found the tomb of the Lan family, he wanted to crush the bones of his enemies to ashes.
At the time of digging the grave, The Wings also disappeared in front of one of the tombs, and the words "Blue Wings" were written on the tombstone. Wei Ugly felt regret at this time, because of his obsession, revenge with his own hands was unattainable, and even the love that was close at hand was finally missed.
Li Hanxiang's "Le" is directly based on the "Wang Liulang" in "Liaozhai", which tells the story of the water ghost Wang Liulang and the fisherman surnamed Xu.
A person and a ghost formed a wine friend because of their common love for wine, Wang Liulang secretly helped Xu Weng fish, and Xu Weng thanked Wang Liulang with wine, and they got along for a long time and eventually became friends of life and death.
It is said that according to the original plan, the four directors all intercepted a story in "Liaozhai" and adapted it into a movie, but in the end, only Li Hanxiang's story was selected from "Liaozhai", and the other three were free to play.
But all four were at the peak of their creative years, so the film represented the highest level of Chinese directing at the time.
Four
Hu Jinquan's filming has always been known for being "slow", but the shooting cycle of this film is very short.
Because Li Hanxiang really can't come up with a lot of funds to shoot, Hu Jinquan believes that the shorter the shooting cycle, the more he can save money. Although it was rushed to work, the quality of the film was not affected in the slightest, and when it was released in Hong Kong, the audience also liked it very much.
In the 1970s, Hong Kong films were generally short-term, and "Joys and Sorrows" was released on September 10, 1970, and after only 2 weeks of screening, it received a box office of 960,000 Hong Kong dollars, ranking 13th in the total box office list of that year, and the results were quite satisfactory.
Even from today's perspective, these four stories are very interesting. It's just a pity that those old film sources have been handed down to the present, and the picture quality is not very good, even if the "Fury" that has been repaired, the color is still very gray. The other three stories have not yet been able to find a source for restoration, and Brother Egg sincerely hopes that they will also be able to see the light of day.
(Rotten Tomatoes Movie Editorial Department: Blood Dan Heart)