Foreword: In the 1950s and 1960s, a feminist movement arose abroad, and women's theme works in movies surged up and down. For China, in fact, as early as the 1930s, when people tended to be open-minded and left-wing ideas emerged, the trend of gender equality quickly entered people's vision, the number of women's works on women's themes in the film industry was increasing, and the discussion of women's liberation was gradually deepening. As a result, the content of "new women" gradually became the topic of people's tea and dinner at that time.
Director Sun Yu
At that time, there was a sensational film work, which was "Sports Queen". It was a female-dominated film that was considered a very successful sports film at the time, and its protagonists only depicted women. The film's director is Sun Yu, who is himself a supporter and member of the left-wing movement. Therefore, the depiction of women is very much in line with the direction of the development of the times, which resonates with people, which is also one of the important reasons for the success of the film. In addition to the storyline that conforms to the trend of the times, this film also unfolds the "body" of the "new woman" from a unique perspective, highlighting the performance and appeal of body language in the body, so as to vividly express the beauty of the new woman's body, so that the audience can feel the charm of the movie in the surprising female beauty.
"Queen of Sports"
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Competition is the core content of the law of the forest, and since ancient times, there has been competition in human society. In ancient times, competition mostly occurred in power struggles, while in modern times and modern times, it has appeared widely in various industries. Because with competition, the cause can be better developed, so competition is a plus option for the group to promote the progress of the times, rather than a stepping stone to hinder the progress of the times. Of course, where there is competition, there will be winners, and there will be losers. Successful people make the best progress, while losers often have to endure a certain amount of pain. The people who compete, whether they ultimately succeed or fail, they are warriors.
The new female figure in "The Queen of Sports"
Competition was a widespread phenomenon in the sports industry, and at the beginning of the last century, it was no exception. The film "Sports Queen" reflected the common phenomenon in the sports industry at that time, and gave high respect to the sports athletes who participated in the competition. Thus, at the beginning of the film, the meaning of reverence is read out with large subtitles: "Dedicated to the soldiers who work for the true spirit of sports." The film uses warriors to describe athletes who compete in sports, indicating the purpose of pursuing sportsmanship. At that time, China was full of wars and turmoil, and the traditional society began to transform and was entering the modern society.
At this time, people of insight are looking for change, in order to make the people of the country more united, and ultimately to make the country rich and the people strong as the goal, and to work hard in this way. At this time, competition becomes the driving force of development, and competition in solidarity is the new rule, which is related to success and failure. For the sports market, it has evolved into one of the directional indicators of social development. Sport has become one of the important contents of enhancing the physical fitness of the Chinese people and thus making the country stronger. As a film that promotes and encourages this mission, the "sports theme" film works show a momentum of vigorous development. "The Queen of Sports" not only embodies this demand, but also conforms to the left-wing trend of thought, so it has the background conditions for success.
A showcase of new women
The story content of this film revolves around the heroine Lin Ying. She is the representative of a new woman, a sports athlete. The male protagonist Yunpeng is a "good man" around her. The film repeated the sports content again through the male protagonist Yunpeng's speech to the female students, he said: "The true spirit of sports is to develop people's physical fitness in competition, and ultimately to achieve a strong physique for everyone in society." Therefore, the purpose of competition is not to create a few heroes, but to make the whole society universal! "
In order to strengthen this point of view, the director described a plot at the end of the film: the heroine Lin Ying finally gave up participating in the final and said: "Everything who wants to be a queen and wants to hold the queen will one day be buried!" Yunpeng, who was standing next to her, added: "All non-unreasonable aristocratic individual events will be abandoned in the new era!" In order to realize the true spirit of sports, we must continue to struggle! Keep moving forward! From the beginning to the end of the film, the director wants to express the core content, that is, to popularize sports, so as to comprehensively enhance the physical fitness of the nation, ending the so-called "sick man of East Asia", and for individualism, it is completely abandoned. Competition is the means, not the result, to that end. This is the "true spirit of sportsmanship" that the film wants to describe.
Promoting the health of the whole people is the purpose of the film
There are many left-wing films of the same era as this film, but none of them are as deep as the theme and ideas of "The Queen of Sports". "Sports Queen" is even more advanced. However, similar to the expressive approach of other films, this film still relies mainly on the display of the "new woman's" body to present its purpose. The main theme of the film is "sports to save the country", and the main way to express this theme is through the display of the body of the "new woman" after being disciplined.
There is a plot that fully illustrates this situation, that is, at the beginning of the film, the father goes to the port to pick up his daughter, only to see his daughter climbing into the ship's big chimney. His daughter attended the Shanghai Sports College. Outdoors, she is lively and playful, while in the classroom, she earnestly learns about relevant knowledge and sportsmanship. Such an image is obviously very different from the traditional Chinese woman of the ancient song type. This section of the film implies that sports to save the country includes women, not just men.
"The Queen of Sports" shows the sports theme that the "new woman" body endures and shows its surprising feminine aesthetic. Even today, this continues to exist in people's minds. So, how exactly does the film show it?
Showcasing the beauty of the new woman's body
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Film can traditional human psychic energy and convey language information in the visual. "Sports Queen" produced by director Sun Yu has increased visual innovation and expressed a stronger language connotation. Through effective innovation, the audience felt the infinite charm of sports from the physical aspect of the "new woman", so that this visual language reached the realm of carnival in enjoyment.
Sun Yu attaches great importance to sports cameras in her shooting techniques, so as to make the actors' performances more vivid. For the shooting of "Sports Queen", he made a lot of use of the shooting of the location, in the changing viewpoints and the movement of the actors, so that the film's vision is wider and more imageful, forming an innovative visual style, which makes the "new woman's" body show beauty more dimensionally.
For example, when the film depicts the final sprint scene of female athletes in the arena, a series of shots shots looking up at the shooting connect the beauty of the female body with the vast blue sky, so that the female body stretches freely, and its aesthetic expression reaches a level that cannot be forgotten. In another set of scenes, the female students on the court play basketball, and also use the overhead shooting technique, so that the camera is close from far and near, so that movement and static are combined with each other, so that the beauty of women is expressed more thoroughly. In another shot, Lin Ying and Yunpeng are running in the wilderness, and the director lets the camera measure the shift, push forward, retreat, pose, multi-dimensional and comprehensive, so that the beauty of the female body is fully displayed in the movement, such a scene, how can not let the audience revel? There are many similar scenes in the film, which is one of the most important elements of the film's success.
Present from multiple perspectives
The film also uses all its energy to depict the time and space of the story. For the same storyline or different time and space in different plots, many editing techniques or lens expression methods are used. There is a narrative technique of "fading in and out" and separating the story with a "dash" line. These techniques, together with the editing techniques, allow the space to be switched in the rhythm of the film's story, allowing the audience to feel the jumping touch. In this process, the new woman's body thus has more opportunities to show, and the performance process of the female body becomes more compact and full.
In the film, the director repeatedly let the parts of the female body appear on the screen in the form of close-up magnification, and boldly let the female athletes' athletic individual and female collective forms continue to be presented in the picture. This performance of the new woman's body made the audience revel in. For their dress, the "new women" did not wear the traditional clothing that was popular at that time, that is, the cheongsam, and did not let them learn the so-called modern women who were twisting and disgusting at that time, but let them wear sports tops and short sweatpants to show the healthy beauty of the new women. For the heroine Lin Ying, she boldly shows the health and sexiness of her body, and all this display is healthy in itself, and does not contain any content that can make people feel pornographic.
Stills from "The Queen of Sports"
Of course, in "The Queen of Sports", the depiction of the "new woman's" body is not only the depiction of Lin Ying. In the film's ever-changing vision, female sports students show their thighs and boldly display their partial bodies, which is a scene that can often be seen. This group of women is also the representative image of the "new women". In addition, for this group of new women, there are meticulous body displays on many occasions, such as their morning exercises in bed, the shaking of their bodies when washing or brushing their teeth, and even the scene of bathing naked parts of the body, and such shots bring the audience into the relatively private space of women, and the director uses jumping shots to show the beauty of the body of the "new women" group healthily and subtly. These contents naturally make the audience more carnival.
A variety of shooting methods are combined to make the audience revel in
Conclusion: Left-wing films gradually flourished in China in the 1930s, and sports films became popular out of the concept of sports to save the country. After the combination of the two, the image of the "new woman" of the sports genre is more likely to cause a sensation. The emergence and development of this historical phenomenon has a complex epochal background and many cultural contexts at various levels. The left forces of the 1930s were not simply political groups, but a group of people with multiple cultural markers. At that time, the Chinese film market was influenced by the commercialization of Hollywood, which promoted the development of films depicting women's bodies. Under the influence of the left-wing people of insight to save the country through education and sports, the "new women" used body language to perform the historical reality, ideological concepts and human aesthetics of this period, so it became a sign of the progress of the times.
I think "The Queen of Sports" is a very healthy film, which is not mixed with any pornography, it is set in the 30s as the background, depicting the pace of historical progress, even today, it does not lose its reference and educational significance.
The influence is great
Resources:
CHEN Bo. The Left-Wing Film Movement in China
LU Hongshi. A History of Chinese Cinema: Narratives and Memories of Early Chinese Cinema from 1905 to 1949
XIN Ping. "Discovering History from Shanghai, Shanghai and Its Social Life in the Process of Modernization"
Guo Hua's "Old Film"
ZHONG Dafeng,SHU Xiaoming. History of Chinese Cinema
LI Suyuan,HU Jubin. A History of Chinese Silent Cinema