Editor's note: The Chinese People's War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression began in 1931 with the "918 Incident" and ended with Japan's surrender in 1945, lasting for 14 years, becoming the new consensus of the Chinese people at present. Taking the beginning of the act of aggression as the beginning of this history of the whole people's indomitable resistance to the enemy, and linking the local war of resistance with the national war of resistance, it is undoubtedly more in line with history.
In the history of the development of Chinese cinema, works with the theme of the War of Resistance against Japanese Aggression are full of sweat and cattle, and they also present very different appearances in different historical periods, assuming that they have been calculated since 1931, the anti-war theme films have a history of nearly 90 years. During this period, from tortuous expression to frontal attack, from focusing on the rear of the enemy to full performance, it has even developed into a new attempt at commercial film and historical record writing. The development of anti-war theme films to this day has become one of the most cohesive film forms in China. In the newly released "Eight Hundred", this kind of effort, which is of considerable positive significance to the construction of China's film industry, has been brought into play, which once again proves that such themes still have deep potential for excavation at both the level of audience acceptance and the promotion of creation.
Just as the Chinese People's War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression is an important part of the World Anti-Fascist War, domestic anti-fascist films are also an important vein of world War II films, telling the story of the Chinese People's War of Resistance to the world.
Author: LoneLy Island Lord
"Wolf Mountain Blood", "Lianhua Symphony", "Children of the Storm"...
Left-wing films respond to the growing national difficulties with avant-garde creative consciousness
In the earliest domestic anti-war films, most of them were works that awakened the people and called for anti-Japanese salvation.
As early as two years after the Japanese occupation of Northeast China, in 1933, Shanghai Lianhua Company produced a silent film called "Tianming", written and directed by Sun Yu, starring Li Lili and Gao Zhanfei, telling the fate of cousins and siblings who were burned by the war in their hometown. In the same year, "Gadgets", also directed by Sun Yu, directly involved the ecology of the shantytowns destroyed during the "1.28" Songhu Anti-Japanese War, and the transformation of the film from toy tanks to reality tanks became the most direct reference to this war. In 1934, Sun Yu directed "The Great Road", which was regarded as a classic masterpiece by the mainstream film history of later generations, and in some sound attempts, showed the faces of military highway construction workers, and more directly showed the tragic scene caused by the bombing scene of enemy aircraft loaded with sound effects. The opening of "The Great Road" begins with a golden male body to refer to the healthy, optimistic and indomitable spirit of the Chinese, and the response to the bad situation can be said to be quite direct.
In fact, Lianhua was also the most obvious institution to express its will to resist the war on the screen at that time. Ruan Lingyu, Jin Yan, Li Lili, Chen Yanyan, Shang Guanwu and other Actors of Lianhua played the role of emerging movie stars in shaping the public trend of thought in the most personal way, which became the most effective and sharp propaganda in the early stage of the War of Resistance. The anti-war scenes in these films are more wrapped in the difficult ecological depiction of the people.
In 1935, the Communist Party of China issued the "Letter to All Compatriots for resisting Japan and Saving the Dead", after the rise of the "National Defense Film Movement" initiated by the left wing, Lianhua responded to the increasingly deep national difficulties with works such as "The Blood of Wolf Mountain" and "Lianhua Symphony", showing the dual meaning of the left side facing reality and the pursuit of the first tide of contemporary art. At least four of the eight short films of "Lianhua Symphony" are directly directed to national disasters through various innuendos, with different presentation methods and theme structures, especially Fei Mu's "Spring Girl Dream" is the most magnificent and fierce, through the German expressionist film style of the two women's nightmares about war, the fierce god evil devil played by Hong Weiling is undoubtedly the most able to refer to the collective recognition of the Japanese Kou by the Chinese people at that time. During this period, Dentsu's "Children of the Wind and Clouds" was also published as a direct response to the fate of young people after the "918 Incident", and the "March of the Volunteer Army" in the film also became a totem that was repeatedly written in Modern and Contemporary Chinese history. The film places emotional entanglements in the context of national disasters, presenting a symphony of fate in the torrent, which is a portrayal of Shanghai's rising modern civic culture at that time— film — tied to the most urgent national humiliation. The story of "Children of the Wind and Clouds" takes place after the "918 Incident", when the film was released in 1935, the iron hooves of the Japanese army had stepped on the Great Wall from north to south. With the release of the film, the "March of the Volunteers" quickly spread, "Rise! People who don't want to be slaves! As Wu Haiyong wrote in the book "Rise Up - Documentary of the Film Production of "Children of the Storm" and the Creation Process of the "March of the Volunteer Army"": the song sings the strongest voice of the times with a resolute and courageous attitude, tragic and majestic lyrics, and an exciting and fluent melody. This is the voice of the nation, this is the tune of the masses, this is the war song of the times. Many years later it became the national anthem of the People's Republic of China.
In the eight years from the outbreak of the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression to victory, in response to changes in the situation, "Mulan From the Army" in "Lonely Island" Shanghai, "Lonely Island Paradise" filmed by Shanghai filmmakers in Hong Kong, etc., all made indirect or direct voices of resistance to the enemy, and in the turbulent years, the situation at that time was directly expressed through ancient irony and scene reproduction.
"One and Eight", "Yellow Land", "Red Sorghum"...
More innovations in the language of cinema are incorporated into the stories of child heroes
In the early days of the founding of New China, in the films on the theme of the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression, some quite specific and prominent images of invaders were created, such as Matsui played by FangHua in "Guerrilla on the Plains", and Okamura in "Railway Guerrilla", which penetrated into the minds of a generation of Chinese people. At the same time, Cui Wei's "Little Soldier Zhang Ga" attempts to complete the poetic possibility of a serious narrative with long shot scheduling. In general, the anti-war films of this period are generally more genre-oriented in form, such as the use of "Railway Guerrilla" for the adventure genre. The choice of perspectives is diverse, including the introduction of the battle behind the enemy lines in the form of teaching films such as "Tunnel Warfare" and "Mine Warfare", as well as the microscopic perspective of specific events or specific characters such as "The Five Heroes of Wolf's Tooth Mountain" and "Little Soldier Zhang Ga", which presents the history of the War of Resistance against Japanese Aggression from the microscopic perspective of specific events or specific characters, and makes breakthroughs in the uniform established narrative model of Chinese cinema itself, thus constituting a vein of anti-war films under the specific historical conditions of New China.
A major outstanding feature of the anti-war films of this period is that they highlight the people's view of history. Whether it is the "Little Eight Roads" that appear as individual heroes or the "Armed Workers Behind enemy lines" that appears in groups, they all show how ordinary people stand up in times of crisis and become brave people who can sing and cry about the heavy responsibility of history. The sentence at the end of "Guerrillas of the Plains" reads, "On the soil of China, you will never be allowed to run amok!" "The reason why it is deeply rooted in the hearts of the people is because it shows the unity of the people who Chinese took up arms to resist Japan and save their lives." This not only had a comprehensive impact on the creation of domestic war films after that, but also coincided with the micro perspective of focusing on ordinary individuals in the global vision to some extent.
In the 1980s, the revolutionary "fifth generation" of directors turned out to be a radical, and several of the works they produced were almost all related to the background of the War of Resistance, and none of them directly showed the scenes of the War of Resistance. Zhang Junzhao's "One and Eight" focuses on a group of "marginal people" who have been chased by the enemy, who have each rebelled with the body of injustice or guilt, writing civilian epics other than the mainstream anti-war heroes, the film's subversive audiovisual language and strong static picture composition, formally breaking through the tradition of Chinese films in the past to emphasize narrative integrity and audiovisual fluency logic, directly teaching the new wave of world cinema, and seeking a breakthrough in picture expression and individual value. Chen Kaige's "Yellow Land" is to place the whole story as the background of the Anti-Japanese War era, in fact, through the dialogue between the characters and the nature of the loess, to achieve the reflection on the personality of the Chinese for thousands of years, the film does not appear any direct battle scenes, but focuses on the people who are struggling to survive in this land, the idyllic meaning of love and the heavy nationality look back, becoming a more grand thinking text. In Zhang Yimou's debut work "Red Sorghum", with the help of the "pre-war" time constructed by Mo Yan's original work (according to the "fourteen-year war of resistance", it is actually within the scope of "history of the war of resistance"), showing the bold and warm love of "my grandfather" and "my grandmother" and the magnificent national spirit behind it like sorghum wine, the real anti-war scene occupies a small proportion in the film, as the climax of the whole film, and the main character of the male and female protagonists is established, and there is a certain distance from the historical scene as a "battlefield". Zhang Yimou's high sensitivity and creative use of color also makes this story of the children's heroes who can sing and cry in the anti-war era more into the process of innovation of film language. During this period, the focus on the audiovisual language revolution became an important feature of the films of the new directors of the "fifth generation", and in terms of narrative themes, these films invariably chose to relatively dilute the "battle" scenes or backgrounds, and instead thought about the national character of "Chinese" in the broad sense of the general situation and its historical origins, focusing on "tracing" rather than "showing". At the same time, as far as aesthetics are concerned, the excellent anti-war domestic films of this stage have also been placed in the same stream of world cinema.
In the 1980s, anti-war films produced considerable divisions not only in audiovisual aesthetics, but also in narrative form. For example, "Evening Bell" focuses on the Japanese army squad that refused to accept reality after Japan's surrender, and the perspective of reflecting on human nature is unprecedented, and the film was nominated for the Berlin Golden Bear Award, becoming a different color for Chinese films in the 1980s. Facing some aspects of the war that have not been fully explored and shown in domestic films before, it has become the entry point for this group of directors who span the "third generation" to the "fifth generation" and are active in the film industry in the 1980s.
At the same time, the film focusing on the extremely tragic history of the anti-Japanese war also broke through the usual mode of operation, and made it public in the mode of history + type of business, such as "Black Sun 731", filmed in Harbin, directly showing the story plot depicting the atrocities of the Japanese Kwantung Army's 731 unit producing bacteria in Harbin, Heilongjiang Province, deploying germ warfare, and recreating the situation of human experiments by the Japanese army in a documentary way. Wu Ziniu's 1996 "Nanjing Massacre" (that is, "Nanjing 1937") cuts into the historical scene of the Nanjing Massacre from the perspective of a Japanese person, presenting a national disaster.
"Tokyo Trial", "Nanjing! nanking! "Twenty-two"...
Enhance the theme and aesthetic pattern in the process of continuously reconstructing the historical site
After the new century, especially in the process of the gradual prosperity of the Chinese film market, the forms of anti-war films have become increasingly diverse, including works that simply express the heroes of the War of Resistance in the traditional sense, as well as efforts to incorporate war narratives into folk narrative traditions or absurd theatrical expressions, the former is represented by He Qun's "Guns on the Plains" directed by He Qun, and the latter is typical of "Bullfighting" and "Railway Flying Tiger". Almost all of the heavyweight works on the Chinese film screen during this period incorporate the history of the War of Resistance into the director's own authorial expression and the establishment of a more nuanced microscopic perspective.
Also showing the history of the fall of Nanjing, Lu Chuan's "Nanjing! nanking! Focuses on the ecology and reactions of people from all walks of life in this process (including Japanese accompanying the army), and strives to explore the choices of specific individual characters when facing catastrophe in black and white images, and has a variety of perspectives in the style of Rashomon. Zhang Yimou's "Jinling Thirteen Chao" takes the fate of "Thirteen Chao" as the main line, and even dissolves some stereotypes of the past serious narrative in some scenes that are regarded as "over-beautified", and places the fate of the characters above the course of the war. Gao Qunshu's "Tokyo Trial" shows a panoramic view of the trial of Japanese war criminals after the war, and enters history through group portrait display and other methods. Dong Yachun's "Ballet in the Fire of War" cooperated with Russian director Nikita Mikhalkov set the time after Japan's surrender, telling the "final battle" between China and the Soviet Union against the stubborn anti-Japanese Kou, and presenting the significance of the War of Resistance to the World Anti-Fascist Alliance on the screen. In addition, Wei Lian, Shen Dong, and Chen Jian co-directed "On the Taihang Mountain" set its sights on the Battlefield of Shanxi, showing the process of the Ping-type Guan Dajie, and marking the maturity of similar domestic films in the grammar of war genre films. Feng Xiaogang's "Nineteen Forty-Two" takes the background of the drought in Henan during the stalemate stage of war, explores the internal mechanism of the development of people and things in the purgatory of national suffering at that time, and the core is almost the same as the discussion of nationality in the early days of the "fifth generation".
It can be said that since the new century, China's anti-Japanese war theme films have excavated more aspects of the war from different angles, including the writing of some historical facts at the end of the war, showing a more rational creative mentality, and also having a more objective examination of history itself.
In 2015, Guo Ke's documentary "Twenty-Two", a film focusing on the survivors of the comfort women during the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression, further triggered thinking about the boundaries of the record of the object of record. The newly released "Eight Hundred", in which the war performance has aroused many questioning voices on the Internet, these voices often focus on very specific military history issues, and analyze the specific operation of the film from a professional point of view, which seems to have never been seen in similar domestic films in the past. These all show the more professional level of contemporary audiences when watching movies, and the repercussions of such themes at the level of audience acceptance show a very obvious all-round view from the passive acceptance of genre films to the quality of the film itself, and also have a considerable independent opinion and thinking on the history presented by the film. It is difficult to say how the improvement of the audience's viewing level and the industrial level and aesthetic awareness of such films themselves complement each other, but it is undoubtedly of considerable positive significance to promote the Chinese film industry to a more mature industrialization system and market construction.
Looking at the history of the development of Chinese anti-war films over the past 80 years, it is not difficult to see that anti-war films have in fact been condensed into a microcosm of the development process of Chinese film aesthetics. Through such films, the audience most intuitively perceives the historical discourse shaped by the creators of the films, and the creators have also formed a pattern in the sense of historiography and aesthetics in the process of constantly reconstructing the historical scene to enhance their awareness and put it into practice. The anti-war films of different periods have undoubtedly had positive significance for the process of genre and industrialization of Chinese films. Through the development of anti-war theme films, it can also be seen that for a real history, the image presentation of different moments is inevitably affected by technical standards and cognitive concepts, so combing the anti-war films is also a re-understanding of the history of China since the war of resistance.
(The author is a doctor of theater and film and television studies, film critic)