Moderator: Zhao Yaru
Guest: Dai Jinhua (Professor, Institute of Comparative Literature, Peking University, Director of Film and Culture Research Center, Peking University)
Wang Yan (Professor, Institute of Foreign Literature, Beijing University of Foreign Chinese)
Zhao Yaru: When it comes to translated films in the 1980s, many people, especially older people, have special feelings, and everyone is very keen to recall the "foreign films" they first saw in the 1980s. In the words of Teacher Dai, translation and production have become to some extent today's "memory myth". So what is the development context of translation and production entering China? What does it mean for the Chinese people?
Wang Yan: I always had the impression that foreign films poured into China in the 1980s, and the Chinese people saw a whole new external world. However, after reviewing the data, it was found that it was the internal reference film in the 70s that opened the precedent of translation in the 80s. Without talking about internal reference films, it is not clear about the influx of Western films after the reform and opening up. In other words, classic foreign translation production is not a unique landscape of the 80s. As early as the 1950s and 1960s, films from socialist countries were introduced to China, with north Korea, the Soviet Union, and Eastern Europe having the most films. In the 1950s, it was mainly imported Soviet films. In the 1960s, the "anti-repair and anti-repair" movement was launched, and the Soviet and Eastern Films became the target of criticism, although they continued to be introduced, but only for the reference and criticism of various units. By the 1970s, in addition to importing films from socialist countries, films from capitalist countries also began to be translated. I have read the memories of some old translators or teachers of foreign language colleges, when the central government often organized personnel to come to Beijing to participate in the translation and production of films, which was done as a political task. For example, in the early 1970s, Premier Zhou instructed that attention should be paid to the trend of the resurgence of Japanese militarism, so the central organization translated Japanese war films such as "Warlord", "Zero Fighter", "Ah, Military Song", "War and Man", and "Kamikaze". These films are different from the Japanese anti-war films at the end of World War II, mainly from the perspective of military politics, panoramic display of Japan's participation in the war and decision-making process, involving the wartime Japanese social background, military strength or equipment conditions, highlighting the samurai spirit of Japanese soldiers. Although the overall tone is still to criticize or reflect on the roots of war, the epic narrative and ambiguous character emotions have set off the grandeur of the war scenes in terms of effect, and met the consumer demand of war genre films. After these films were translated, they were screened in the courtyards of residents and the auditoriums of major units for internal reference and criticism. At the same time, the translation of American "World War II" films, such as "General Patton", "Battle of Midway", etc., as well as the Soviet "World War II" epic film "Liberation", etc., for a time the military theme film hot translation, beautiful name: for military research reference.
At that time, Chinese audiences showed their abilities, looking for various relationship channels to watch internal reference films, if they could get tickets for screenings inside a certain courtyard, they mastered a scarce resource, and the money and goods of that era were not as good as social interpersonal resources. When everyone is immersed in a kind of film theme at the same time, they gradually cultivate the aesthetic habits of war genre films, and to this day we still feel the afterglow of this preference.
In the 1970s, many non-military films were also introduced, including romance films, disaster films, and political films. The more famous ones are Jane Eyre (1972, translated), Red Lingyan (1970, translated), Cold Heart (1972, translated), The Count of Monte Cristo (1976, translated), Shipwreck on the Ice Sea (1972, translated), and Dove (this American youth inspirational film is Jiang Qing's favorite). As of 1976, 200 films had been translated. In the 1980s, the reform and opening up, internal reference films were converted into public films, and as a result, a large number of films translated and produced in the 70s became the imported film sources of the "new era", which directly affected the production of domestic films and also shaped the style of the fourth and fifth generation directors. Therefore, it was not in the 80s that the country's doors were opened, and there was an influx of foreign films, which opened the eyes of Chinese. The veins of the internal reference should not be overlooked.
Internal reference films create a unique film ecology, the high walls of the compound, the enclosed space of the unit, the viewing culture is divided into cultural ladders that refer to social identity, belonging to the courtyard or directly subordinate organs, which means that there is an opportunity to watch Western movies, and the cultural gap between inside and outside the walls is formed. Film is not a personal taste, but a group of cultural capital. There is a bridge section in the "Sunny Day" that everyone talks about today, the army compound screens "The Battle of Rome", and the children of the courtyard share the privilege of watching Western films with their parents. The special screening space of the compound and the organ auditorium has cast a veil of mystery over the translation and production of the 70s, allowing ordinary cultural products to be attached with Chinese elements such as "taboos", "privileges" and "peeping". Many of the widows of the compound still enjoy it when they recall the "Age of Innocence". In the 1980s, these "sacred" spaces declined rapidly, replaced by commercial theaters in society, and the "internal reference added value" of translated films was reduced to zero.
Dai Jinhua: In my opinion, the translation and production of the turn of the 70s and 80s became a kind of memory myth related to two larger myths: one is the world imagination. At the turn of the 1970s and 1980s, we created a myth of China's isolation from the world in the 1950s and 1970s, which led to the narrative of "opening the door of the country and going to the world" in the new era, which was almost the strongest voice of the times at that time. Needless to say today, this world is not the other world. It was at the turn of the 1970s and 1980s that we locked the "world" imagination in Europe and the United States, the Western camp of the Cold War era, and at the same time closed the picture of the former socialist camp and Asia, Africa and Latin America as the "world". By the mid-1980s, our "world" was further locked in the United States. Correspondingly, the film began to gradually shrink from a world movie to a Hollywood. This process of cultural construction rewrites our memories, or we consciously reconstruct our own memories occasionally. The second is the construction of another myth, that is, the 50s and 70s were a pre-modern period that created historical pauses, a period of montage that had been cut for historical narratives; so that we forget that in the 50s and 70s, we experienced a historical period full of differences, and even the early, middle, and late periods of the "Cultural Revolution" decade were very different. This is accompanied by the fact that different world movies. This is the reason why I feel somewhat absurd every time I hear and read about the memory myths about translated films and internal reference films.
I roughly agree with Wang Yan's description of the historical context, but he also constantly compresses some time periods and details. I want to do a history that is definitely simplistic. When the founding of the People's Republic of China in 1949, the pattern of Chinese films was one-sidedly covered by Hollywood films, and the end of World War II in 1945 meant that Hollywood finally recovered the Chinese film market, at this time, there may be more than 2,000 Hollywood movies dumped in the Chinese market in a year. On the other hand, the sharp inflation in the country around 1947 caused sharp conflicts between theater owners and Hollywood film dealers, which triggered the revival of national films in the 1940s - which was also the norm for Republic of China films, and national films could only gain space and possibility between the cracks in the conflict of the big pattern. In fact, what coexists with the military duel between the Kuomintang and the Communist Party is the cultural struggle for the "battlefield" of the film.
After 1949, the new Chinese film industry was established on the basis of the former private films, Kuomintang party films, and Japanese pseudo-film industries, and Soviet films began to be introduced—in fact, in the 1930s. Here, a key point in time is 1955: the unions of the Shanghai film distribution and projection industry launched a boycott of Hollywood, and Hollywood has been expelled from the Chinese film market ever since. Soviet cinema and Soviet popular culture— or socialist popular culture— as an alternative, filled the void that emerged after Hollywood withdrew from China. This is even clearer in the book market (after the banning of all kinds of popular books). Of course, as the birthplace of film art and as a film power, the Soviet Union at that time had developed its own huge film industry and genre system. Today, when it comes to memories of Soviet cinema, people often refer to political themes or war films, but in the memory of my fathers, there were a large number of Soviet genre films introduced at that time: detective films, spy films, science fiction films and comedies. With the sino-Soviet confrontation, Soviet films soon faded out of the Chinese film market. However, films from the surrounding socialist countries were still partially introduced, while a small number of Italian neorealism and "progressive" films from the world, including post-war Japan, were introduced.
In the 1960s, after the "famine", China actually entered a period of cultural prosperity. During this period, film production increased, and the so-called "happy three years" of light comedy and "anti-special" films (spy films) in film history entered another climax. On the screen and on the drama stage, in fact, it has begun to enter the preparatory stage of the "Cultural Revolution". But it was also during this period that european and Russian classic plays: Molière, Gogol, Chekhov and others were staged in large quantities in the theater. The translation and publishing institutions formed around the Marxist translation introduction have also become large-scale. In the mid-1960s, Zhou Yang presided over the translation of the first batch of internal reference books (later known as the Yellow Book, the Gray Book, and the Blue Book), as a translation of the nature of the "enemy situation briefing", one of the focal points of which was the Soviet Union, as a "negative teaching material" criticizing Khrushchov's revisionism. In the same period, films that were talked about by posterity also entered in a similar way, and the literary and art circles screened films such as "A Man's Encounter", "Soldier's Song", and "Yan Nanfei" in order to organize criticism. Looking back at the past, it is clear that it is these film types that have shaped the artistic skyline of the fourth generation of films since then.
Then came the outbreak of the Cultural Revolution, and in the first year there was a popular critique of "feudal films", including left-wing films, Soviet films, imported foreign films, and Chinese films throughout the 1950s and 1960s. The Red Guards and rebel groups at the time could tune into "poisonous weed movies" for critical use. Some people recalled the experience of watching the film at that time, while watching the movie, while shouting slogans, such as a warm scene, and someone next to them shouted: "Down with the evil landlord class, down with the bourgeois theory of human nature!" "Presumably it is a very peculiar experience of watching films, and after watching it, it is necessary to "verbally criticize and write".
What followed was a period of cultural desolation: the production of films stopped, cinemas were basically closed or converted into conference halls, all drama stages were suspended, only "Quotations of Chairman Mao", "Mao Xuan", and the publication and sales of Ma Enleth, and most of the literary and art circles were delegated to the "May Seventh Cadre School". However, this can also be regarded as an era of national cinema carnival: the memory of cinema at that time was all kinds of open-air screenings, and in every square and in the empty field — the organ, the factory compound or the commune yard — the repertoire was several of the cycles — Lenin in October, Lenin in 1918, Tunnel Warfare, Mine Warfare, The Southern Expedition to the North, Heroes and Children, and, of course, eight "stage documentaries" of model plays. In a country, the repetition rate of several films is so high, it should be the Guinness Book of Records. The plot and dialogue of each movie, men and women, young and old, are like a stream. It's not so much about going to the movies as it is about going to a public place to party and cool off. This is the scene in Sunny Days, under the screen, the audience reads the lines at the same time or before the screen vocal cords: "There will be bread, milk will have, everything will be"...
In the middle of the Cultural Revolution, at the turn of the 1960s and 1970s, cinemas began to resume screenings. Any new movie released, there are government units, schools to organize the viewing, but also the audience to buy tickets. The earliest were Vietnamese films and Albanian films. For example, "The Forest of the Lady Chen", "Footprints", "Coastal Wind and Thunder", "Brave People", "Underground Guerrilla", "Morning of Battle", "The Eighth is a Bronze Statue"... These Albanian films were popular in the crowd and talked about on the streets at the time. This was followed by North Korean films. The characters and lines in those movies have undoubtedly become an integral part of the daily life of a generation and their historical memory.
Wang Yan: As soon as we entered the 1970s, there were signs of a slight relaxation in literature and art, and the screening of Albanian, North Korean and Vietnamese films was a sign. Most of the Albanian films we import are war films from the sixties and seventies, and the content is about the struggle against Italian and German fascism. In fact, albanian feature films in this period were almost all "World War II" themes. Enver Hoxha demanded that the film be both far away from Western capitalism and resistant to Soviet revisionism, adhering to an independent literary and artistic line. Albanian filmmakers, who were mostly educated in the Soviet Union, resulted in low production of feature films, and newsreels documenting May Day marches or political conferences became mainstream. The feature film requirements not only highlight the leadership of the party in the war, but also combine with the mass line, "Rather die unyieldingly", "Ambush War", "The Eighth Is a Bronze Statue", "Underground Guerrilla" conform to socialist realism, which is highly consistent with our literary and artistic line at that time. Hoxha also emphasized the creation of socialist newcomers, and literature and art highlighted the iron will of the party, rather than the cult of personality. Films of the fifties and sixties promoted Hoxha's individual heroism in the war, and later, fictional heroes or ordinary party members in socialist construction replaced the leaders. "The Broad Horizon" (1968) explains what a socialist newcomer is, and if you compare it with the "Cultural Revolution" film "The Fiery Red Years" (1974), you will find many echoes, which is the reason for the introduction of Albanian films during the "Cultural Revolution".
Albanian films have their own style, the picture is very rough, the sense of movement is strong, and it often appears to jump. The editing is also somewhat abrupt and incoherent, but the sense of power is strong and the visual impact is large. They have their own storytelling logic, which will create suspense and manipulate the audience's emotions; but they are too blunt and disdainful of rendering, often making Chinese audiences look "confused", so there are rumors that "North Korean movies cry and laugh, Vietnamese movies aircraft cannons, Albanian movies are inexplicable." At that time, there were only a few model plays, North Korean and Albanian films, turned over and over, and the audience still preferred Albanian films, because their entertainment and artistic level were above our "Cultural Revolution" films. Today, there is no Albanian place in the history of world cinema, and it is difficult to find a film history that mentions it in the socialist period. But in the minds of old Chinese audiences, it has a very special status.
Dai Jinhua: In the 1970s, kissinger and Nixon visited China, and the publication of the Sino-US Joint Communiqué actually became a reversal of the cold war pattern in China and the world; and I think that 1973 was undoubtedly a turning point in China's political and cultural history, not only because at this time the Chinese government had begun to import equipment and technology from the United States on a large scale, but also began to rebuild order culturally: a considerable number of literary and art magazines resumed publication, publishing houses resumed publication, and a large number of training courses for the creation of workers, peasants, and soldiers were established. Subsequently, these writers began to publish their works. It is quite interesting that it is these training courses that have cultivated and prepared talents for the writing of "scar literature" in the near future. It was also the year that feature films resumed production after seven years of cessation. The release of each new film has become a public holiday, such as "Sunny Days", "Qingsongling", "The Age of Fire", people are extremely excited, young people are full of high fever similar to chasing stars, and countless audiences are in love with Zhang Lianwen, Wang Xingang, Tang Guoqiang, Liu Xiaoqing... At the same time, a considerable number of Romanian films, North Korean films, and Yugoslav films were released. At that time, Romania's commercial "megafiles" "Waves of the Danube", "Ziprian Polonbescu", "Grand Duke Stefan" were stunning, while the Yugoslav films "Bridge" and "Walter Defending Sarajevo" were all the rage. In fact, Yugoslavia has developed its own genre/action system, and many of the bridges and routines of Hollywood action movies are "borrowed" from Yugoslav films. At that time, North Korean films were also widely loved, in addition to the "new socialist countryside" stories such as "When the Apple Was Picked" and "The Village with Flowers Blooming", the more popular were the "anti-special" series - "The Invisible Front", "The Original Form", etc., as well as the bitter love scenes of North Korea - "The Flower Girl", "The Fate of Kim Ji and Yin Ji", which undoubtedly left a memory mark on a generation. When "The Flower Girl" was released, it could almost be called an empty alley and everyone was arguing. According to the director of the hit series "Lurking", the show was inspired by the North Korean TV series "Unsung Heroes", which was broadcast at the turn of the 1970s and 1980s as an "underground worker". Today's film fans may have a hard time imagining the warm situation at that time, which was the common memory of parents and children, generations of young and old, and it was also the real cultural ecology and film ecology of China at that time.
It is also in this cultural ecology that there are internal reference films as a peculiar subculture. Completely according to my personal memory, there are two opportunities for internal reference films to occur in Beijing, Shanghai and other large cities: First, Antonioni's "China" constitutes an international diplomatic event, and in my impression, this is the first large-scale viewing and criticism of the central units in the middle of the "Cultural Revolution", and it is also the first film that I successfully "mixed" into the auditorium to watch. The second opportunity, as Wang Yan said, was to organize a large number of internal reference films in the form of internal observation by the central organs in order to guard against the revival of Japanese militarism in accordance with the instructions of Premier Zhou Enlai: "Ah, Navy", "Yamamoto Fifty-Six", "Battle of Midway", "General Patton", "Liberation". Taking this as an opportunity, the central authorities in Beijing began to regard "observing internal reference films" as a kind of privileged routine cultural activity, with more and more content, more and more complex, and gradually became a special cultural life content. At this time, it was the late stage of the "Cultural Revolution", known as criticism and "negative teaching materials", and people flocked to it, relishing it, and full of movie-watching pleasure. In 1973 and 1975, the internal reference book translation project was launched for the second time from 1973 to 1975: one is the well-known blue book, gray book, and yellow book of the 60s, which can only be obtained by cadres above the administrative level 16, but also circulate through various channels; the other is the relatively new social science works abroad, which in fact enter the book distribution system, and according to different natures, can be purchased in special bookstores or ordinary Xinhua bookstores with work permits.
It should be pointed out that during the specific period of the "Cultural Revolution", the top level of the regime never interrupted its contact with the Western world, and there was no time difference with the global frontier information. For example, the "rumors" that entered Cui Jian's new work "Blue Bones": Lin Liguo was extremely obsessed with rock and roll, or Jiang Qing watched new Hollywood films from time to time (so there are memories of Shanghai translation and production creators: suddenly transferred back from the "May Seventh Cadre School" and even "Cowshed", dubbed for some Hollywood movies, and then criticized and reviewed after the end, thinking that it was "disinfected").
Wang Yan: Later, when people recalled this period of history, "internal reference" appeared in a double meaning, on the one hand, referring to closure and repression, and on the other hand, boasting of the privilege of prophetic foresight. In the memories of various articles, the "children" have rare records in society and eavesdrop on Bach and Beethoven at home. Or a small circle of friends in the compound, pulling up the curtains at home to jump rumba and tango, and "Sunny Day" also shows this aspect. With banned books, blue books, and gray books that can be bragged about, the film Balzac and the Little Tailor (2002) tells that the suitcase of Zhiqing hides European 19th-century realist novels, and the voyeur benefits from becoming a cultural "prophet" and enlightening the blind people around him. This is the "Cinderella" fairy tale of the post-socialist era, which is both suffering from humiliation and suffering, and complacent for the only way to wake up, and both feelings are gained, and the combination is both beautiful, and it is the most favored by mass culture.
Dai Jinhua: By 1975-1976, Chinese society was once again plunged into movement and turmoil, and films were once again politicized by reality. During this time, foreign films basically stopped being screened. In addition to the screening and production of realpolitik films such as "Break" and "Strike Back", what impressed me quite deeply was that in 1976, my middle school organized the viewing of "Jubilant Little Lianghe", in which the negative character shapes have clearly and clearly pointed to Zhou Enlai, Deng Xiaoping, and the indispensable positive leadership image - short-haired woman - as the embodiment of Jiang Qing. For the first and only time in my life, after we entered the theater, the auditorium was locked and we were not allowed to leave without leaving. We, the middle school students, were in the theater making noises, cheers, and loud noises in protest.
And in 1977 and 1978, we entered a strange era of film carnival. During this period, films from different historical periods and different contexts were once again released in theaters. There are left-wing black-and-white films of the 40s, such as "A River of Spring Water Flows East", "The Crow and the Sparrow", "72 Tenants", there are Italian realist films introduced in the 50s, there are Soviet films from the 30s and 50s, there are old Hollywood films of the Golden Age, and some previous internal reference films have also begun to be released in theaters, such as the screening of "Jane Eyre" in 1979. At the same time, genre films from Western Europe such as "Notre Dame de Paris", "Sin in the Sun", and "Murder on the Orient Express" were also screened. During this period, films from third world countries continued to be introduced, such as Pakistan's "The World of Man" and "Eternal Love", Egypt's "Towards the Abyss", India's "Nuri", "Caravan", "Wanderer", Mexico's "Yesenia", and so on. Of course, there are more and more new films. Cinema movies are very complex and extremely rich, and everyone has a choice, and they are extremely enthusiastic. Different historical periods and different values come together in theaters – much like that era. But overall, the films screened at this time can still gain legitimacy within socialist ideology. This particular period of cinema lasted about a year or two.
It was also at the turn of the 1970s and 1980s that another kind of cinema appeared: Foreign Film Week. As far as I understand it, the holding of film weeks is a political and cultural exchange at the national level. The first time I watched American Film Week, it was a shocking movie-going experience in my life, when most of the Oscar-winning films were released. What I still remember to this day is "Guess Who's Coming for Dinner", "Black Colt"... It was a long time before I learned that "Guess Who's Coming to Dinner," which appeared during the height of the black civil rights movement in the United States, was a typical politically conservative film, but at the time, I was only excited that the black youth and white girls who fell in love finally defeated their parents, as if for the first time recognizing the victory of youth and love. However, what does not often appear in people's memories is that there were also North Korean, Mexican, Japanese, French, and Italian film weeks, and unlike the American Film Week, which showed the mainstream value of its mainstream society, the Italian and French film weeks accounted for a relatively high proportion of "political films", and the film was mainly based on exposing political shady scenes, political corruption, and violence in the police agency. It can be said that the value and ideology of cinema at this time are extremely juxtaposed, just like the crossroads of historical choices we are facing. This is a rough vein.