On December 28, 1895, at the café bar in Paris, France, the Lumiere brothers kicked off the world cinema, and people could not tell with the naked eye whether the train in "Train Into the Station" actually drove into the screening room of the coffee bar, so that everyone ran out of the screening room in a panic.
Of course, this is just an anecdote after tea in film history, but it also confirms the two attributes of film from another perspective: consumption and reproduction.
Film art is very different from other art disciplines, and all films can only complete the final mission of the film through the audience's final viewing, otherwise the simple video materials cannot be called movies.
Reproducibility is one of the characteristics common to most art, but the reproducibility of the film can always immerse people in it, and the small dark room carries the audience's unlimited dreams. The flat space of the film creates a three-dimensional real space for us, and the material reality restoration and the immersion of imagination create a fantastic three-dimensional space for the audience.
In the 1980s, Hong Kong cinema took the lead in blowing up the storm of the New Wave, and although the New Wave of Hong Kong cinema was far less turbulent than the New Wave of French Cinema, it had a crucial impact on the development of Chinese-language films.
Since then, famous directors such as Xu Ke, Hou Xiaoxian, Zhang Yimou and other famous directors have emerged in the three places across the Taiwan Straits, and the new wave of Hong Kong films represented behind them, the new film movement in Taiwan and the fifth generation of the mainland have jointly supported the sky of Chinese films.
The development of the new wave of Hong Kong cinema has abandoned the four heads of the former film: "gimmicks, fists, pillows, ghost heads", with the development and prosperity of Hong Kong independent film institutions, more and more Hong Kong directors are trying to make more novel and creative films.
Director Yan Hao shot the film Curryine in 1978, which has since fired the first shot of the new wave of Hong Kong cinema. In 1979, Tsui ke released his film debut, Butterfly Change, which combined science fiction and martial arts into one, and called Hong Kong's "futuristic martial arts film".
Director Xu Anhua's film "Crazy Robbery" mixes suspense and reasoning styles, adapting a real murder case into a movie; Zhang Guoming's film "PointIng Soldiers" shows the scene of the police detective fighting with the criminal with realistic and natural light and shadow.
The three innovative works of the three directors marked the official birth of a new wave of Hong Kong cinema.
However, Wang Jing, who has always been known for commercial comedies at this time, and Wang Jing, who is known as the son of Wang Tianlin, the godfather of Hong Kong cinema, has not found her place in the New Wave movement.
In 1981, "A Thousand Kings Fighting a Thousand Masters" officially kicked off the prelude to Wang Jing's directorial career. Nonsense seems to be a common feature of most Hong Kong movies, and of course this is no exception for Wang Jing.
Just as film scholar David Baudelaire commented that Hong Kong films are "all overheated, all crazy", after the short-lived passion of the New Wave of Hong Kong films, Hollywood blockbusters swept the Southeast Asian film market, and the Local Film Market in Hong Kong fell into a withering, and the reason for this is not listed for the time being.
Director Wang Jing once again went out to the mountains to rescue the city, shooting a large number of commercial films to save the declining film market in Hong Kong, of course, since then, it has also been labeled as a bad film king.
Wang Jing herself once threatened: "Pornography and funny are a part of the movie, and if you don't like it, you can not watch it." "Hong Kong film is an important part of many film fans, it is not only a regional concept, but also a concept of film form.
Hong Kong, a land of bullets known as one of the "Four Asian Economic Tigers", has created too many miracles in the history of cinema, spawning stories that are closely related to this land.
Throughout the century-old history of Hong Kong cinema, Hong Kong cinema after the founding of the People's Republic of China began to produce the concept of three places, before which mainland cinema had a huge influence on Hong Kong cinema, until the 1960s and 1970s, Hong Kong cinema gradually formed its own local characteristics.
Looking back at the history of Hong Kong film, many lifelike characters are displayed in front of us.
Wuxia film is a magic weapon for Hong Kong to go to the world, after the maturity of Hong Kong cinema, hu Jinquan, Zhang Che, Chu Yuan, Bruce Lee, Xu Ke, Yuan Heping and others have created the peak of Hong Kong martial arts films, and the new film spectacle on the one hand writes the sorrow and confusion of Hong Kong people.
At the same time, it broadened the breadth and depth of Hong Kong films, and also laid the foundation for the kung fu comedy pioneered by Jackie Chan and others.
Wu Yusen, the master of violent aesthetics, has opened up a different brotherhood in Hong Kong films, and under the cloak of violence, it is more to explore how to love oneself, how to love others, the love between people, the relationship between people and the times, and the confusion and confusion of individuals about this society.
Before there was Zhang Che, then there was Liu Weiqiang, violent martial arts films were carried forward in Hong Kong, on the one hand, it wrote the pride and righteousness of Hong Kong people, on the other hand, it also let people appreciate how Hong Kong people live optimistically and tenaciously in the chaotic period.
Family comedies are also a major feature of Hong Kong films, which also shows the main characteristics of Hong Kong films - optimism, self-confidence, self-entertainment, in the early stage, mainly with the Hui humor of the two brothers Hui Guanwen Hui Guanjie opened the door to Hong Kong film comedies, and then into the 90s, more nonsensical comedies dominated by star masters dominated the Hong Kong film screen.
Before and after the return of Hong Kong 97 to the great limit, a large wave of young film art talents began to learn to reflect on society and find new ways to develop art films in the wave of entertainment-based commercial films, including Chen Guo, Xu Anhua, Xu Ke, Yan Hao, fang Yupingren.
Most of these directors were not born and raised in Hong Kong, and have extremely complex migration and growth experiences, so they can always look at the changes in Hong Kong society with a sharper eye.
The commercial entertainment model of Hong Kong films has opened the door for Hong Kong films to go to the world, and Hong Kong films are more of a reflection of Hong Kong's social life, not talking about politics, not talking about life, not talking about social misery, only talking about entertainment.
Hong Kong filmmakers have turned these social unbearable into their films with a tenacious and optimistic spirit, the core of entertainment, and the mode of social reading.
American film scientist David Podwell in the book "The Secret of Hong Kong Cinema" used the eight words of "all overheated, all crazy" to evaluate Hong Kong movies, tenacious optimism is the spirit of Hong Kong people, but also the theme of Hong Kong movies, even if they encounter more disappointments, hope is still looming...
Unlimited copy of blockbuster movies has finally ushered in a great negative effect in the 21st century, and the 5 million box office of "Que Sheng" and the 3 million box office of "Future Police" are not the same as 15 years ago. This made everyone start to sigh whether Wang Jing could still make a good film.
Sure enough, Wang Jing, who lived up to expectations, made the movie "Chasing the Dragon" in 17 years, and the double harvest of word of mouth and box office made Wang Jing appear in the public's vision again.
As mentioned in "Chasing the Dragon": In this world, I can't master birth, and I can't master death, but the road between life and death, I can choose. Nothing can be taken away, but sins are carried with them.
These two lines are from the 2017 new film "Chasing the Dragon" directed by Wang Jing, the film production is full of sincerity, the form is still the routine of the traditional Hong Kong-style action film, the spirit is still the brotherhood of the Hong Kong-style hero film, and the long-shot passages interspersed in the middle have a strong sense of beauty.
With a strong sense of ornamentation and appeal, it brings a strong sense of excitement to the audience, which is also the most respectable film after Wang Jing went north to shoot the film, and it is also Wang Jing's agitated echo and deep remembrance of the past glory years.
Chasing a dragon, in Cantonese, is a slang term that means to describe putting drugs on tin foil and lighting a fire underneath to heat them, forming a green smoke of drugs, like a dragon.
And this dragon, let the addict scramble to chase, so the dragon chase hence the name. There was a slogan in the anti-drug campaign in Hong Kong: "Live Dragons and Tigers Mo Chase Dragons", which can be known as the term "Chasing Dragons", which is quite commonly used.
The release of "Chasing the Dragon" has made the film return to the public again. Gangster films are a sub-branch of The Gangster Films of Hong Kong cinema, which refers to the quasi-character biopics that appeared in the early 1990s and are based on several big detectives and triad leaders in Hong Kong at the turn of the 1960s and 1970s.
However, in this film, the protagonist is neither the famous drug lord Lame Hao, nor the chief Chinese detective Leiluo of Hong Kong, the film is trying to render the emotional atmosphere and the background environment of the times at that time, thus attributing the fortunes of the two to the times, the so-called heroes of the times, by depicting the hardships of the growth of the two to show the turmoil of an era.
Therefore, in the "era of success and defeat", the film does not focus on how lame Hao and Leiluo got involved in black and became bad step by step; but focuses on that special era.
Representative films are mainly "Lame Hao", "The Biography of Inspector Leiluo", "The Legend of the New Brother of the Casino Tycoon", and "The Four Detective Chiefs", most of which are based on the real stories of real people, depicting the criminal acts of these gangsters and the corruption of the early police force before the establishment of the Icicab Commission Against Corruption, and more autobiographical.
"Chasing the Dragon" is not enough to describe two legendary figures in Hong Kong history with two hours of time, coupled with a long time span, so when showing the two legendary figures, it is only through a few simple money picture shots to show the history of the two people's fortunes, so it is slightly monotonous.
However, the focus of the film is obviously not on this, so the clue of the film is still a bit messy, the complex social background in the general environment, the history of the struggle of the black and white gangsters, and the struggle between Hong Kong people and managers.
At the same time, it also penetrates the lame family feelings, so in general, the director wants to show a large pattern in his heart, but subject to various conditions, the final version is more fragmented in content.
In the last century, the living environment of the Hong Kong people was chaotic, especially in the Hong Kong underworld after the 1960s and 1970s, and the corruption of the police force was relatively serious, so the gangs and the police force colluded to create a dark life in Hong Kong in the later period.
"Chasing the Dragon" combines the historical Inspector Leiluo and the big drug dealer Lame Hao, and the genre belongs to the gangster film, which belongs to a sub-genre of gangster films, based on the legendary characters in history.
Coupled with the influence of the historical environment, the film still has more elements of autobiographical significance in terms of content, but in the end it belongs to the large historical environment.
The three temperaments of the film are fully displayed in this movie. The first is the epic spirit, the film time span is large, from the character's fortune to the peak to the final decay, with a magnificent view of history, the pattern is grand.
The second is the interpretation of history: Hong Kong people's concern for history seems to be less stringent than that of the mainland, and history is interpreted, so the history films of Hong Kong films are not so boring.
The most important thing is the criminal mentality: this is the most important factor in the fire of the gangster film, and the audience likes to watch these people's step-by-step seizure of money and political power.
Infinite amplification of the psychology of personal greed. More is also the step-by-step socialization process of Di Si's counterattack, so that the audience has a psychological pleasure, and everyone has a criminal psychology, only to see if they dare to do it.
In the film, you can see what it feels like for others to become bigger and stronger, so the unique criminal psychology mechanism leads to the fire of the film.
Of course, the film once created a new type of Hong Kong film, but unfortunately, the subject matter that can be excavated is relatively scarce, so this boom lasted only two years, and after 1993, it changed course. With the passage of time, the release of "Chasing the Dragon" has once again ignited the young people's yearning for martial arts brotherhood to break into the world.
If Wang Jing's "Chasing the Dragon" is a sincere work, then "Black and White Forest" in 2003 and "Money Empire" in 2009 are Wang Jing's test works for the film of Wuxiong, and they are also two very successful transformation works.
The movie "Black and White Forest" is the "freak" of Wang Jing's film, no comedy, no nonsense, although a bit of parody of the taste of "Infernal Affairs", but also full of tragic sublime sense, telling the fate of a gangster vendetta, Xie Xian, Wu Zhenyu, Chen Xiaochun and other actors of the older generation have joined to add a lot of sense of tragedy, which is very rare in the works of director Wang Jing.
Since then, Wang Jing has begun to find her own piece of the sky in the movie gangster story, and although the three "Macau Storm" have a mediocre reputation, the 2.5 billion film box office has put a deep commercial label on Wang Jing's film.
The emergence of "Money Empire" laid the foundation for the next "Chasing Dragon". The tone of the onlookers' narration opened the curtain for the audience to eat black in the Hong Kong police circles.
The audience may be a little curious, the once funny King Fat Man is gone, more serious and cold, money and beauty, power and desire intertwined, the scale is so large, so that the audience is shocked.
The extremely realistic lens portrays the undulating life of Inspector Le Ge vividly, from the initial inability to the end of the hasty escape, life is like a drama, can't help but sigh.
Le Ge, who was a lifelong gangster, eventually escaped from Hong Kong, but in "Chasing the Dragon 2", the gangster Long Zhiqiang finally failed to escape the legal net, and the joint pursuit of the hong Kong and mainland police could not be captured without tying his hands.
Once the bills were flying all over the sky, beautiful luxury cars with champagne, and Hawaii could only be a bubble. Brother Long's failure also brought Wang Jingxiong's film to a successful end.
Whether Wang Jing after "Chasing the Dragon 2" can still divide the world and become a real movie tyrant, we are still looking forward to it.