Liu Jiang played Hu Hansan in "Shining Red Star"
preface
Hu Hansan, the head of the homecoming regiment, is simply a name that makes people fearful when they hear it.
"I'm Back!" This sound is like the howling of wolves in the night, making people hate and chill. I believe that in the hearts of many post-50s and post-60s, there is still a deep impression.
In 1974, as soon as the movie "Shining Red Star" was released, "Hu Hansan" became synonymous with the nationally known "big bad". Liu Jiang, the actor who plays Hu Hansan, plays a series of villains: bandits, secret agents, ghost captains, enemy chiefs of staff, Wang Ye, mountain devil kings, enemy commanders... Like a "villain professional".
In Liu Jiang's twilight years, people often invited him to the stage and some literary and artistic activities, but he no longer said the sentence that made people tremble when they heard it, "I Hu Hansan is back!" Instead, he said: "I Liu Jiang have returned, I wish everyone all the best and happiness for the family!" ”
Liu Jiang
How to play "Hu Hansan"? Liu Jiang looks for inspiration from life
To be a bad guy who is famous, bad enough to make people grit their teeth and hate to the bone, this is probably terrible? But not necessarily! Some people live a tasteful life, and tie their bodies for this glory.
For example, "Huang Shiren" and "Nan Batian", who almost made people shoot down, "Song Jin", the murderous and vicious devil brigade leader, "Xu Pengfei", who mutilated revolutionaries, and so on. These actors play many hateful bad guys, and the audience treats them as the embodiment of the "devil", simply ignoring that they still have their own names, which is the greatest glory of their lives.
Although "Shining Red Star" was filmed in the 1970s, it has influenced the growth of generations in China and become a very representative Chinese children's red film. The villain "Hu Hansan" played by Liu Jiang also remained in the audience's mind forever with his very characteristic image.
Because the image of the villain in this drama is too typical, since Liu Jiang created Hu Hansan, the leader of the landlord return group, whether in the theater or in the gymnasium, or in the streets and alleys, people can recognize him at a glance. Slowly, Hu Hansan actually replaced Liu Jiang's real name.
The reason why Liu Jiang has achieved great success in playing the role of villain is impressive precisely because he has two unique conditions: on the one hand, his very characteristic face shape, and on the other hand, his fat and flexible body born in the northern country. His eyes can fully show fierceness and cunning, and sometimes become as sluggish as a dead fish; his moody and expressive face is memorable; his character is sometimes as innocent as a child, sometimes as grumpy as a lion, which are the external advantages of his villain. But more importantly, we have to find the answer from the life course of Liu Jiang in the first half of his life.
It is often said that before playing a role, you must go deep into life to experience the character experience to complete the role well. So people can't help but wonder whether the reason why Liu Jiang succeeded in playing the role of a villain is also related to his personal experience? In real life, liu Jiang also played the role of "a villain who rides on the people's heads and acts as a mighty and blessed person"?
The fact is that this "big ring egg" that has been "running amok" on the screen for dozens of spring and autumn is actually a member of the suffering and suffering masses.
Liu Jiang was born in the old society, experienced that kind of suffering, witnessed all kinds of reactionary faces, and had a full hatred for ugly forces. Because he had participated in the Guangxi bandits, when he accepted the role task of "Hu Hansan", the unforgettable memories of the Guangxi bandits made it impossible for him to calm down.
At that time, they caught a big bully and learned that he had killed more than two dozen children, which was really outrageous. He also witnessed the scene of the enemy brutally killing the cadres and families of the peasant associations. These are the basis for his life to shape Hu Hansan. Hu Hansan is not the embodiment of a certain landlord, but a typical representative of a landlord class that is about to perish and is dying.
In order to portray the typical of this landlord class, he looked for more image materials from literary works, paintings and other historical materials, refined and selected, carried out artistic processing, and supplemented them to the character image to make the character image more typical.
When Hu Hansan said to the crowd in the midst of the storm: "I Hu Hansan have returned, you have taken what I have sent back, and what you have eaten me has spit out..." It really made people shudder.
In dealing with the final rounds of confrontation with Pan Dongzi, he is hot, calm, and imposing on the surface, but he can't hide his sinister, frightening, and chaotic inner world.
Look at the other types of negative characters he has created, such as Kuomintang warlords, Japanese pseudo-traitors, wang ye, bandits, etc., all of which are created in strict accordance with the laws of life, and they are all based on life, and are portrayed on the scale of whether they conform to the truth, rather than just approaching the characters from the outside, exaggerating the external characteristics of bad people, and doing some overheated performances.
In a word, Liu Jiang used living "people" to conquer the audience. Therefore, these characters have different habits and personalities, and get rid of the formulaic and conceptual traps to the greatest extent.
When he was young, he fought with Lin Biao's troops, and Liu Jiang was both a warrior and an actor
On February 25, 1925, Liu Jiang was born in the beautiful city of Harbin in the northern country, with his ancestral home in Liaoyang County.
Liu Jiang's original name was Liu Chunxu, when he was young, his family was poor, there were eight brothers and sisters, he was the second oldest, and dozens of people in a family lived on the meager salary of his father, who was a messenger in the court, and the difficulty of life could be imagined. In particular, the three eastern provinces that fell into the colonies of Japanese imperialism, which were called "Manchuria" at that time, were even more ruined and the people were not happy. As a result, the heavy burden of family life naturally falls on the children's heads.
13-year-old Liu Jiang naturally could not escape such a fate. After finishing his high school studies, he went to the automobile factory to work as a child laborer, working more than ten hours a day, and was often reprimanded and beaten by the foreman. In winter, even this chore is gone. Auto factories entered the off-season and workers were laid off. Liu Jiang only got one post office to work as a postman. In the face of fierce storms, no matter how cold or hot, 15-year-old Liu Jiang runs the streets of Harbin every day, delivering letters and parcels, and using the little income he gets to supplement his family.
When Liu Jiang was 19 years old, he went to the physical examination according to the puppet Manchu system, and those who passed were incorporated into the puppet Manchu army, and those who failed to pass were appointed as laborers.
After being elected as the "Jiang Shang Army", Liu Jiang suffered four months of humiliation and destruction in the troops ruled by the Japanese military state. In 1945, due to the victory of the Soviet Red Army, the red flag was planted over Harbin, and Liu Jiang returned to the post office where he worked.
Liu Jiang has loved literature and art since he was a child, and the progressive films of that time, such as "Fisherman's Song", "Lost Lamb", and "The Great Road", attracted him. In addition to delivering letters, he always had to find a way to see the movies.
The dramas "Thunderstorm", "Sunrise" and "Wilderness" also fascinated him. His landlord's surname is Sun, and he is an actor who plays the villain of a professional theater troupe, and Liu Jiang is extremely envious and admired by him and is quite influenced by him.
In 1941, when Liu Jiang was 16 years old, he joined the "Beidou" amateur theater troupe, delivering letters at a fast pace during the day, and rushing to the troupe at night to nail the set, pull the curtain, and sometimes play a little role. Liu Jiang enjoyed himself and did a good job.
In 1942, the "Beidou" amateur theater troupe performed "The Sorrow of Youth" in Hulan County, which angered the puppet Manchu government at that time, and was banned from performing, the set was smashed, and the actors were humiliated. This incident provoked Liu Jiang's incomparable hatred of the authorities. In 14 years of colonial life, he was full of pain and bitterness, providing him with a rich foundation for life and sufficient inner basis for him to create a negative character in the future.
After the liberation of Harbin, this postman could no longer hold back his passion for artistic creation, and longed to become a drama actor all day long. He and his theater-loving partners organized the Xinhua Amateur Theater Troupe, the Sanmin Amateur Theater Troupe, and the Traveling Amateur Theater Troupe. He first played a little rogue in the play "Sin", which was his first attempt to play a negative role, but unexpectedly succeeded. Later, he played the extortion maid in "The Sorrow of Youth", played the police chief in "One Letter of 100,000 Yuan", and also participated in plays such as "The Eve of the Incident", "The Parting of Youth" and Lao She's "Opening the Market".
In July 1946, Liu Jiang joined the Cultural and Labor Corps of the Political Department of the Songjiang Military Region under the Northeast Democratic United Army, with Lin Biao as commander-in-chief, and fulfilled his wishes for many years. He earnestly learned from some veteran actors of the Struggle Drama Society, such as Wu Xue, Wang Jiayi, Deng Zhiyi, and others, playing Huang Shiren in the drama "The White-Haired Girl", playing a soldier in "Mutual Assistance Between the Army and the People", playing the squad leader in "Harvest", playing a company commander in "Niu Yonggui's Wounded", and also performing operas such as "Returning the Land to the Home", "Qian JiaFu", and "Her Surname Fighting for Glory".
Later, the Songjiang Military Region's Cultural and Labor Corps was incorporated into the Propaganda Corps of the Political Department of the Forty-ninth Army, and he went with the army to fight in the north and south.
In the War of Liberation, Liu Jiang participated in a series of battles such as attacking Dehui, fighting Siping, Ke Changchun, liberating Shenyang, and capturing Taiyuan and Tianjin, and it can be said that he fought with Lin Biao for many years. On the battlefield full of artillery fire, during the arduous years of "tug-of-war" between the enemy and ourselves, Liu Jiang, while striving to do a good job in literary and artistic work, also actively participated in combat work. Carrying stretchers, escorting the wounded, educating prisoners, and writing field march tabloids, he did everything well, and directed and performed "White Haired Girl", "Blood and Tears Vengeance", "Liu Hulan", "Growing up in Battle", "Flesh and Bones" and other plays.
In the propaganda team, he successively served as a propagandist, a chief and deputy squad leader, and a deputy captain of the propaganda team.
In January 1949, on the eve of the Battle of Tianjin, Liu Jiang gloriously joined the Communist Party of China. Later, he went south with the troops and participated in the struggle against bandits in Guangxi. Under the leadership of the Party and during the cruel war years, he always unswervingly contributed his strength to the cause of the liberation of the Chinese people.
Who wouldn't want to be a saffron? But it's harder to make green leaves!
In 1953, Liu Jiang was transferred to the Central South Army Art Theater (later guangzhou soldiers' repertory theatre). From then on, he began his life as a professional drama actor. In the meantime of 6 years, his acting skills have been further improved here, laying a good foundation for him to enter the ranks of film actors.
In 1958, Liu Jiang was transferred to the Bayi Film Studio Actors Troupe, and successively played the bandit in the film "Heroic Tiger Guts", the director of the special agent major general in "The Eternal Radio Wave", captain Li who played the Kuomintang warship "Zhongzheng" in "Sea Eagle", the commander of the enemy fortress in "The Huimin Detachment", the section chief in "Sea and Sky", the enemy chief of staff in "Breakthrough Wujiang", the Wang Ye in "Ordos Storm", the pseudo-bureau chief in "Bitter Cauliflower", the traitor Tang Commander in "Tunnel Warfare", and the "Long Road" Played by Mr. Mo.
In a series of films, Liu Jiang has always played the villain, and his hated characters have indeed left too many and too deep impressions on the audience.
For many fans after the 50s and 60s, from childhood to adulthood, I have watched a lot of movies, and almost all the bad guys I see in the film are mostly this "villain professional", as long as it is a "bad guy pile", it is inevitable that there will be him, and even later when I see other bad people in the movie, I always feel that there is no "brother" who has appeared in the game.
In fact, Liu Jiang in life is a very gentle and kind person. The bumpy road of life, long-term combat experience, and highly respected artistic career have made him full of humanity for life and people. Never climb the dragon and attach to the phoenix, do not rely on the old and sell the old, silently like an old man for others, for the young people to make wedding clothes.
However, the heavens did not go according to people's wishes, such an old artist with both virtue and art, but in his later years, he suffered from stomach cancer, liver cancer, and prostate cancer. 2015 is the Year of the Sheep, in a talk show, the humorous and optimistic Liu Jiang also joked: "Others are 'three sheep Kaitai', they are 'three cancers Kaitai'." ”
"The Hu Hansan I played was fiercer and fiercer than anyone else!" Liu Jiang commented on this in an interview with reporters.
In his later years, Liu Jiang once said this when referring to the many villain roles he had played: "Who doesn't want to be a red flower? The vast number of audiences have a yearning and reverence for safflower, who wants to be a villain? Performing arts is different from other industries, it and fame and fortune are very tightly combined, playing safflower is easy to become famous, win awards and even promotions, but it is more difficult to do green leaves! ”
Regarding acting, Liu Jiang is extremely diligent. Although he has been practicing art for many years, his attitude towards art is serious and serious, and he is willing to accept any small role. On the shooting scene, he was always the first to stay there for others, whether there was a scene or not, and he was never picky about the food and accommodation of the crew, never made difficulties, and overshadowed some young actors who were called "stars". He is indeed one of the representatives of an old actor who makes young actors unable to finish learning.
Many years ago, at a literary and artistic event held by CCTV, Liu Jiang showed his image with a kind smile to the audience for the first time. The audience applauded him, a good man who was almost a rare man and had played a bad guy all his life!
Although Liu Jiang has never won an award in his life, is this applause not the highest reward given to his half-century artistic career?
On May 1, 2020, liu Jiang, an old artist who is both virtuous and artistic, died in his sleep at the age of 95.