Chu Yuan won the Lifetime Achievement Award at the Hong Kong Film Awards. Visual China figure
This year's Hong Kong Film Awards, from the moment the nomination list was announced, it seemed a bit sad, after the award ceremony, although Xu Anhua, who won the best director for six times, broke the record of winning the Academy Award, but did not win too many topics, social media relished, one is that Gu Tianle, who has been running for many years, finally won the film emperor, and the other is Chu Yuan, who won the Lifetime Achievement Award, his brilliant acceptance speech.
The Lifetime Achievement Award is not a regular award of the Academy Awards, although the number of nominees for the award is only one person per year, but it needs to be unanimously approved by the organizing committee to obtain it, so it can also be seen that since the establishment of the Lifetime Achievement Award, there have been several years when the position of the award is vacant.
A few years ago, when Xiao Fangfang won the Academy Awards Lifetime Achievement Award, in order to match her deaf hearing, when she walked into the venue, the audience was silent, no one applauded, and instead the audience raised their hands to signal to her, and Xiao Fangfang responded by signing language. When Chu Yuan won the award this year, when he walked slowly on the stage with the support of his wife Nanhong and his little granddaughter, the response he received was the most simple one - the whole audience stood up with thunderous applause, until he began to give the award speech, saying "please sit", the audience gradually quieted down. These two moments can be called a glimpse of the Academy Awards ceremony.
In the memories of post-80s and post-90s audiences, Chu Yuan's identity is not a film director, but a senior green leaf actor of TVB. He is the father of the mileage peak of "Sister of the Gun Master", the owner of the Six Arts Hall in "Four Talents in Gold", and he is mostly shown in the series with amiable, witty and humorous images, which is not much different from him at the award ceremony today, but now it is more vicissitudes and solemnity.
Chu Yuan played Shen Zhou, the owner of the Six Arts Guild Hall, in "Four Talents in Gold Costume".
In "Journey to the West", he played The Buddha.
In "Police Story", he played the big drug lord Zhu Tao.
Chu Yuan's significance to the Hong Kong film industry is not just a simple creator or artist, Chu Yuan's film experience is almost half of the "living history of Hong Kong films", from the films he directed, you can observe the wind direction of the Chinese film industry at that time.
Poster of "Grass by the Lake".
Chu Yuan's literary skills are solid and he is involved in a wealth of film genres, although the heyday of his directing period was the period when he was shooting martial arts films in Shaw in the 1970s, but when he first entered the industry, he mainly made drama films. In the 1950s, popular market movies adapted from "Sky Novels" (that is, novel versions of radio dramas) aimed at filming the life of small citizens with a full taste of Guangdong and Hong Kong, Chu Yuan's representative works "Lakeside Grass" and "Poor Parents' Hearts in the World" were among the best, and released in 1973, "Seventy-two Tenants", which brought together popular stars such as Yue Hua, Jing Li and Shen Dianxia, beat Bruce Lee's "Dragon Fight tiger fight" to become the box office champion of the year and became one of the most classic Cantonese market love films.
Poster of "Seventy-Two Tenants".
Chu's original name was Zhang Baojian, his father Zhang Huoyou was a film actor, because of the influence of his father from childhood in the set, he decided to become a film practitioner in the future. After studying in the Department of Chemistry of Sun Yat-sen University in Guangzhou for three years, he followed his father to the Hong Kong film industry to develop, and debuted as a screenwriter, with the pen name "Qin Yu". It was 1956, and he had not yet met his wife, Nanhong, who was a fledgling Little Hua Dan who filmed his debut film "Seven Heavens" at Guangyi Film Company. Two years later, Chu Yuan independently directed his first film "Lakeside Grass" in Guangyi, and Nan Hong was one of the heroines, and the two became acquainted and walked together for more than half a century.
Because of his studiousness, diligence, intelligence, and exposure to the shooting scene from a young age, Chu Yuan's growth in the film circle can be described as quite fast. At the Academy Awards ceremony, the acceptance speech of the Lifetime Achievement Award, which was praised by netizens, was handy, and famous sentences such as "Linjiang Immortal" and "How Steel is Made" were hand-picked, with elegant and concise words, "Manage thousands of things in the world, idle to laugh two or three times", "Manage its joys and sorrows, manage its grievances and hatreds, all be a bodhi and mirror", although it is a self-created sentence style, but the battle is neat and clear, and such a condensed literary style is polished over the years.
When he was young, Chu Yuan's literary skills not only allowed him to successfully enter the film circle as a screenwriter, but also when he followed Qin Jian as an apprentice to learn choreography, his profound literary skills made his writing efficiency higher than that of all his peers, so he won the favor of Qin Jian. According to some online materials, Chu Yuan's directorial debut is "Blood Stained Acacia Valley", in fact, this film is signed and co-directed with Qin Jian, and the first film independently directed by Chu Yuan is "Lakeside Grass" that met his wife Nanhong.
In that era when funds, resources, and technology were extremely limited, film practitioners could not freely choose the subject matter of shooting, and could only follow the trend. At the end of the 1950s, the well-known filmmaker Huang Zhuohan founded Lingguang Film Company, because of the rise of Cantonese films, Huang Zhuohan, who had previously focused on Chinese films, turned the focus of Lingguang's creation to Cantonese films. However, due to limited funds, Lingguang could not make exquisite props, costumes or painstakingly build a studio like Shaw Company, so it mainly made small character comedies. Huang Zhuohan invited Chu Yuan to join Lingguang because he admired his talent, and Chu Principle lived up to his expectations to shoot a series of works such as "The Diary of a Big Husband" and "Love Heaven Disaster". "The Diary of a Big Husband" was remade in the late 1980s, starring Zhou Runfa, Ye Qianwen and Wang Zuxian, still directed by Chu Yuan, and swept tens of millions of box office, which was also a big hit in that year.
Poster of The Diary of a Big Husband.
In the late 1960s, when Cantonese films deteriorated, Chu Yuan threw himself into Cathay Pacific Films to make Chinese films, and then to Shaw's martial arts films, ushering in the peak of his career. In the 1970s, there was a saying that Zhang Che, Chu Yuan, and Hu Jinquan were the troika of Hong Kong martial arts films, but the martial arts films directed by Chu Yuan were still obviously different from the other two. To make a less accurate analogy, Zhang Che and Hu Jinquan's status in the Chinese film industry at that time was equivalent to today's Jackie Chan or Zhen Zidan, who can directly equate with the labels of kung fu, martial arts, and masculinity, and the Chu principle is equivalent to today's Ang Lee, refuting miscellaneous and delicate, valuing literary drama more than paying attention to martial arts. Ang Lee has filmed "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon", but also filmed "Broken Arm Mountain" and "Color | Ring", Chu Yuan has filmed Jin Yong and Gu Long, and also filmed "Ainu".
Poster of "Ainu".
Poster of "Chu Liuxiang".
Poster of "White Jade Tiger".
Poster of "The Sword of the Three Young Masters".
During the period of mainly attacking martial arts films, Chu Yuan's literary skills once again established his recognition. Since the mid-1970s, Chu Yuan has put on the screen such ancient dragon novels as "Tianya Mingyue Dao", "Chu Liuxiang", "White Jade Tiger", "Full Moon Curved Knife", and "The Sword of the Three Young Masters", and praised many actors such as Red Dillon and Er Dongsheng. Gulong novel imaging difficulty is very high, because too floating too broken too jumpy, Gulong novels that seem to be flowing but actually have the suspicion of cheating on the cost of the "moon, very full moon" and other scene descriptions, if you let the director who has no imagination to shoot, I am afraid that it is hanging a fake moon as big as a burnt cake in the studio, and the close-up shot stays for a few seconds, even if it is finished.
Poster of "Tianya Mingyue Knife".
Chu Yuan let the ethereal ancient dragon catch up with the earth qi, and did not lose the ethereal and dashing temperament in the original work. If you have read the original novel of "Tianya Mingyue Dao", you will probably remember the unclear question at the beginning of the novel, and Chu Yuan's movie deleted that question, and instead, Fu Hongxue was chanting poems while gradually emerging from the darkness: "Tianya Road, night returns to people, people should break their souls when they reach the end of the world, and they will always break their souls at the end of the world." This text was written by Chu Yuan, but gu long's original work is not, and it is not difficult to understand why he would make such a poem as "Take care of all the things in the world, idle and laugh two or three times".
Chu Yuan won the Best Action Film Director at the Asia Pacific Film Festival in 1979 with "Peacock Dynasty", which is adapted from Gu Long's novel "The History of Wulin Waishi", starring Jiang David and Yu An'an, but after this film, Chu Yuan's directing career has signs of decline. At the end of the 1970s, coinciding with the rise of the New Wave in Hong Kong, the themes and genres of Hong Kong films became more and more diverse, and the audience had more choices, Shaw's martial arts films were affected to a certain extent, Chu Yuan made several comedy films in the late 1980s, and then devoted himself to TVB as an actor, so he had a white-haired old man on the screen later.
Stills of Chu Yuan.
From the shadow for more than half a century, but received only a few awards, compared to Li Hanxiang and Hu Jinquan, Chu Yuan's luck is not too good. As he said in his acceptance speech: "The two words of life are composed of four words: joy and tears. No matter how beautiful you were yesterday, no matter how frustrated you were yesterday, when you get up tomorrow, you must be a person, live, tomorrow is better than yesterday, this is life. Don't say don't know, the original life and playing mahjong, there are southeast and northwest winds, when you hit the north wind, it is another life. ”
The rise and fall of Chu Yuan's experience from film is accompanied by the rise and fall of Hong Kong films for more than half a century. When Sky Novel became popular, Chu Yuan made a name for himself with his debut novel; after the rise and decline of Cantonese films, Chinese the rise of martial arts films, Chu Yuan made the highest-grossing martial arts movie of The Shaw Company; in the 1980s, nonsense comedy films were all the rage, chu yuan also added icing on the cake; since the 1990s, the descendants who used to work with him have begun to become the mainstay, and he has hidden his skills and fame in TVB to run dragon sets. For example, he quoted "How Steel is Made" in his acceptance speech: "When you look back on the past, you do not regret because of inaction, and you are not ashamed of wasting your years", and you still laugh at the vicissitudes of the past, and show your heroic nature.