At 3:16 a.m. on March 4, the famous performance artist Huang Wanqiu died of illness in Guilin at the age of 80.
Huang Wanqiu was born in Guilin, Guangxi in January 1943 and began to perform Gui Opera at the age of 13. In 1960, Huang Wanqiu was selected as the heroine of the movie "Liu Sanjie", which was her first appearance in a movie. The film was released nationwide in 1961, and the reputation of "Song Immortal" Liu Sanjie resounded throughout the country, and Huang Wanqiu also became a well-known movie star in the country.
Since then, 17-year-old Huang Wanqiu has been the third sister Liu in people's minds, an eternal Zhuangxiang singer.
In fact, Huang Wanqiu was not the original choice for the role of Liu Sanjie, and the beautiful singing she sang in the movie was not the original soundtrack. The behind-the-scenes story of "Liu Sanjie" also starts with a literary and art performance.
Liu Sanjie is a Zhuang singer in folklore, and her related records were first found in the ninety-eighth volume of "Sanmei Mountain" written by Wang Xiangzhi of the Southern Song Dynasty. According to legend, she lived during the reign of Emperor Zhongzong of the Tang Dynasty, and her singing voice was beautiful and intelligent, which earned her reputation as a song immortal.
In 1959, the Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region held a "Liu Sanjie" stage play performance, and hundreds of art groups gathered in Nanning. After several months of performances, experts and writers worked together to integrate and adapt the plots of many stage plays to create the script of the song and dance drama "Liu Sanjie".
Then, the top performers from each group were selected to form a luxurious lineup, and in 1960 they entered Beijing to perform the song and dance drama "Liu Sanjie". The success of the stage play gave Guangxi's cultural leaders the idea of creating films.
Playwright Qiao Yu was collecting style in Guangxi at that time and received the task of creating the script of the film "Liu Sanjie". Qiao Yu then invited Su Li, the director of Changchun Film Studio, and the two adapted the story of the song and dance drama. Qiao Yu is responsible for the film literary script, and Su Li is responsible for the split-shot script.
The movie "Liu Sanjie" is co-produced by Changchun Film Studio and Guangxi Film Studio, and the main actors are selected from the song and dance drama "Liu Sanjie", and Liu Sanjie's first choice is Fu Jinhua. However, after the film was filmed for a period of trial film, the main creators all felt that Fu Jinhua's face was slightly longer, which was not very in line with people's imagination of Liu Sanjie's sweet and round image, so they considered changing roles.
Huang Wanqiu originally played the role of Zhou Mei in the film, and her lively and flexible image is more suitable for Liu Sanjie in the movie. Director Su Li assessed Huang Wanqiu, and after she performed a few singing segments, Su Li asked on the spot: "How about letting you play Liu Sanjie?" ”
At the beginning, when Huang Wanqiu heard the news of the change of role, her heart was rejected. Because she felt that the film had already started, it was not appropriate for her to replace others. The director advised her to act at ease, and they coordinated the rest of the work. In the end, Huang Wanqiu agreed to play Liu Sanjie. Fu Jinhua also accepted the decision to change the role calmly, but her singing voice was recognized as first-class, and the crew asked her to sing for Huang Wanqiu, and she gladly agreed.
Huang Wanqiu was not suitable for film shooting at first, and her solid stage performance skills were not fully utilized. With the help and guidance of the director and other staff, she constantly improved her acting methods, gradually developing natural and vivid acting skills in front of the camera.
As an actor of Gui Opera, Huang Wanqiu can accurately grasp the charm, temperament and action essentials of the role of Liu Sanjie. The joy, anger and sorrow of this character are conveyed through singing, Fu Jinhua integrates the emotions of the characters when singing, and Huang Wanqiu can always properly express the emotions of the characters with expressions and movements. This cooperation between the two in front of and behind the scenes is seamless.
After the release of "Liu Sanjie", it was not only very popular in Chinese mainland, but also released to Hong Kong and Macao, China, as well as Singapore, Malaysia and other places, and was a very influential Chinese film at that time.
In 1963, at the second Popular Film Hundred Flowers Awards, Huang Wanqiu won the Best Actress Award for "Liu Sanjie". The Hundred Flowers Award is an audience voting award, which shows Huang Wanqiu's popularity.
During the ten years of turmoil, the movie "Liu Sanjie" was criticized, and Huang Wanqiu was persecuted. It was not until the early 1980s that Huang Wanqiu gradually resumed work, but at this time she had entered middle age and missed the best period of actress. She turned her focus to the background.
Since then, Huang Wanqiu has successively served as the deputy director of the Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region Song and Dance Troupe (1983) and the deputy director of the Guilin Municipal Bureau of Culture (1991), and has been committed to promoting the cultural image of "Liu Sanjie" to the whole country and the world.
On January 27, 2017, at the Guilin branch of CCTV's Spring Festival Gala, Huang Wanqiu, Zhang Xinzhe and Deng Ziqi sang "Song from the Li River" together, once again showing the beauty of song and dance in Zhuangxiang for Chinese people around the world.
Today, "Liu Sanjie" has become a cultural business card in Guangxi and the starting point for many people to contact and understand Guangxi. Although the legend of Liu Sanjie has been born for thousands of years, Huang Wanqiu's vivid shaping of Liu Sanjie's image in the movie has played a great role in the spread of this character.
Huang Wanqiu later said in an interview with the special program "Movie Legend": ""Liu Sanjie" condensed my youth. "This film brought her applause and glory, and also made her go through the ordeal. However, looking back on this work, she is still full of pride and gratification. This is a masterpiece of her artistic career and a classic in the history of Chinese film.
【Text/Cui Ting】