The day before yesterday was a day of grief for the film industry.
Two film giants died on the same day.
One is the fourth generation of Chinese directors, Huang Shuqin.
The other is the well-known French director and actor, Jacques Behan.
The news once appeared on Weibo's hot search, and fans left messages to express regret.
Huang Shuqin has directed and directed classic films such as "Long Live Youth", "Man Ghost Love", and "Painting the Soul".
Among them, his representative work "Man, Ghost, Love" has been praised as "China's first female film".
He has also filmed acclaimed TV series such as "Siege of the City", "Evil Debt", and "Shanghai Vicissitudes".
"Man, Ghost, Love"
Jacques Behan, although French, can also be said to be an old friend of the Chinese audience.
He has participated in the performance and production of many films, which are loved by Chinese film fans.
He has also been to China many times and was the first honorary international consultant hired by the CCTV documentary channel.
Among his unfinished works is the large-scale epic 3D documentary "Beijing, China" with James Cameron.
As we all know, Jacques Behan has filmed many classic nature documentaries with environmental themes, such as "Bird Migration" and "Ocean".
On this occasion, Uncle Yu also wants to commemorate this film master with everyone -
Jacques Behan
Jacques Perrin
Most people's first impressions of Jacques Behan himself come mainly from two films.
"Cinema Paradiso" and "Spring in the Cattle Herding Class".
They have been ranked in the Top 50 Douban movies for many years, and the number of ratings of the latter is as high as more than 1 million.
This shows its position in the hearts of Chinese film fans.
In Cinema Paradiso, Jacques plays the adult Dodo.
Duoduo grew up watching movies and developed a relationship with a film projectionist.
After growing up, Duoduo also became a film director as he wished.
This is similar to Jacques's childhood experience.
Jacques's dad was the stage supervisor of the National Theatre of France, and his mom was an actress.
When he was a child, his parents often took him backstage to the theater in order to facilitate his care.
The seeds of drama were thus planted in the heart.
However, the happy times did not last long, and at the age of 6, Jacques was sent to a boarding school by his parents.
In his later film "Spring of the Cattle Herding Class", he can also see the shadow of this part of the experience.
During this period, he was also selected by the director to participate in the classic French film "Night Gate".
In "Spring in the Cattle Herding Class", Jacques's youngest son also participated in the performance
As a teenager, Jacques's academic performance was not ideal.
After leaving school at the age of 14, he tried a variety of jobs as a typist and grocer.
But after a lot of going, at the age of 20, he was admitted to the École Des Hautes des Dramatés in Paris and became a drama actor.
He starred in a play that had been performed 400 times in a row, and the scene was full.
And in this way, he was favored by famous film directors and stepped onto the big screen.
In 1966, at the age of 25, he won the Best Actor Award at the Venice International Film Festival for his film "Half a Man", becoming one of the youngest film emperors in history.
The youthful temperament, handsome face, coupled with a slightly childish smile, have made countless European girls crazy.
With his beautiful face, Jacques successively starred in many roles in the genre of love saints, becoming a top idol with Alain Deron at that time.
The Dream Sailor in Willow (1967)
Prince Charming in Donkey Skin Princess (1970)
Surprisingly, Jacques, who is in the limelight, did not go all the way down the actor's road.
In 1968, he transformed himself into a producer and made the political satire Z.
Won two Oscar awards for Best Foreign Language Film and Best Editing.
Since then, he has successively produced successful feature films such as "Special Zone" and "Victory Song".
Jacques, 27, at the Oscars
However, from the 1990s onwards, he made another transition and began producing nature documentaries.
Later works, we are already very familiar with.
Including the famous "Heaven, Earth, Man" trilogy - "Microscopic World", "Himalayas", "Migrating Birds".
There's also 2011's Oceans.
Ocean was critically acclaimed worldwide, becoming "the highest-grossing documentary of all time".
When it was released in China, it broke the box office record of domestic nature documentaries.
It was a huge success both commercially and artistically.
Documentary "Ocean"
Prior to this, most of the nature documentaries people saw were biased towards the nature of popular science.
It shows the survival of the fittest in nature, reproduction and predation, etc., like a Darwinian biology textbook.
Jacques's work is very different.
In his own words, his work is less like a documentary and more of a nature story.
Popular science is cold, but the story has a temperature.
During the shooting, Jacques would even write the script in advance, draw the storyboard, and then find different animals and scenes to shoot.
Animals are like movie actors, except that they have scales or feathers
Some of them are guided in a dramatic way.
Others use montages to clip footage together to produce unexpected chemistry.
For example, the chicks under the harvester in "The Migration of Birds" make people look straight to their hearts.
But most importantly, he has been pursuing the "Eye of God" shooting perspective.
That is, not to look at the environment, to see the trees, to see the birds from a human point of view.
Instead, from a free dimension of space and time, to observe and shoot.
He leads the team to spend as much time as possible, mingling with the animals and then letting them show their nature freely.
When filming Migratory Birds, the aircraft could only sit two people, the pilot and the photographer.
After the shoot, everyone gathered around the photographer and asked how it felt to fly with the birds for the first time.
The photographer could not say a word, and tears fell like rain.
Jacques firmly believes that this kind of most primitive emotion after human beings come into contact with nature can be conveyed to the audience through the big screen.
The audience has a natural ability to perceive, to be able to experience the shock of nature, as well as the joy of life.
Jacques Behan once said in an interview:
"Life is the enjoyment of freedom"
I only have one life, so I want to keep doing things that excite me.
Indeed, Jacques Behan was free.
He never set limits on who he was.
After gaining recognition for his performance, he did not take it seriously.
Because he often feels that his favorite subject matter has not been made into a movie, purely as an actor is too passive.
So at the age of 29, he decisively transformed into a director.
Later, he found that fictional filmmaking was difficult to satisfy with natural and true expression.
He switched to nature documentaries and became a staunch conservationist.
From actor, director, to producer, he always follows the inner free transformation.
At the same time, he never sets limits on his own creations.
In the documentary "Ocean", the picture of marine garbage is artificially created, and the Extinct Animal Museum is also built.
In order to show the killing of marine animals by humans, the fishing net killing is a drama performance; the shark whose shark's fin is cut off is a prop; and some scenes even use animated special effects.
Many have questioned that this method of production goes against the true nature of documentary requirements.
But Jacques Behan and his old partner disagreed.
Although the movie picture is fake, it is the same as the scene in real life.
At the same time, it can prevent the animals from being injured to the greatest extent possible.
"If there's one word we hate the most, it's the rule
As the film is filmed, it will make its own demands
Jacques Behan never stood still, he always opened his doors to the unknown."
But at the same time, Jacques Behan was also determined.
In fact, his film path didn't want to seem so smooth on the surface, and almost every shoot was very difficult.
When he was preparing to make his first film, Z, in 1968, he was opposed by most people.
It was a time of social sensitivity, and political satire was clearly not a good choice.
In the end, it took a while to bring in a familiar producer to cooperate and complete the work.
At the beginning of the transition to "Microcosm" in the 1990s, he was once again questioned by his peers.
Filming "Ocean", he was even more worried about tens of millions of euros of funds.
He meets investors everywhere and deals with major banks.
"I insisted on convincing them with the greatest enthusiasm, to meet 20 investors, the first 19 shook their heads, maybe the 20th nodded?" 」
And once the goal was confirmed, Jacques did what he wanted to do to the extreme.
When filming "The Migration of Birds", he specially hatched a batch of birds artificially.
The first year was also basically not filmed, but just followed the birds around to familiarize themselves with the existence of machines.
Immediately after, he led the team to spend 2 years renovating the photographic equipment.
All available aircraft, gliders, hot air balloons, helicopters, etc. were used.
He confessed that I had no experience, but I had faith.
When someone says it's impossible, say yes, and we'll make it possible.
Jacques Behan was a calm adventurer, a pragmatic idealist, and a free and determined master of cinema.
The dead are gone.
May his soul, like Toto, return to the Cinema Paradiso.
Like a fish, return to the magnificent ocean.
Like a bird, it flies over the earth, over the mountains, and into the distance of freedom.