If you mention Cheng Yanqiu and Cheng School art, in addition to "Lock Linsac", "Barren Mountain Tears" is also a work that cannot be ignored. People who like it say that this play is very artistic and ideological, and those who don't like it say that it is lengthy, and the chanting is mainly drowsy to watch in the theater. What do you think? Regardless of the evaluation of others, "Barren Mountain Tears" is still a drama that has been highly praised and is often performed by Cheng Pai heirs today.
Chi Xiaoqiu
"Barren Mountain Tears" is the only film and television material left by Cheng Yanqiu, and there is an interesting story about the filming of the movie. In 1954, the famous director Wu Zuguang visited Premier Zhou's house and mentioned that he was preparing for the filming of "Mei Lanfang's Stage Art". The premier said: "It's a pity", Wu Zuguang was puzzled, and the premier added: "It's a pity that Cheng Yanqiu can't make movies." "Because Cheng Yanqiu" is so fat, how can he make a movie? Wu Zuguang, as a professional, naturally has a way, and proposed that if the sets are made bigger, then Cheng Yanqiu can look petite and delicate.
Judging from later movies, Cheng Yanqiu is still rich, but as Xin Yanqiu said, as long as he sings, the audience ignores his body shape and is only addicted to his body and singing voice.
Cheng Yanqiu
If Cheng School opera fans want to attack an actor, they will say that she will only play "Lock Linsang", "Spring Dream" and "Barren Mountain Tears" three times, which shows the importance of "Barren Mountain Tears" in Cheng School dramas. Not only for actors, but also for theater fans, if you listen to Cheng's drama "Barren Mountain Tears" is a classic that cannot be missed. Even for today's people, this is still a "perfect" tragedy, and people don't have to remind themselves over and over again that "this is an ancient setting" to easily enter the play. Cheng Yanqiu is very pursuing the epochality of opera, and I believe that he should be happy to know that people still love to listen to this play today.
Compared with other old dramas, "Barren Mountain Tears" is actually quite new. On the whole, from the creation to the premiere, and even to the many performances since then, it was during the period of years of warlords during the Republic of China. In 1929, Cheng Yanqiu found an old partner, screenwriter Jin Zhongsun said that he wanted to write a play about the war, so there was this "Barren Mountain Tears", in some places can be seen in the screenwriter column are Jin Zhongsun and Cheng Yanqiu two people, but in the creation of this part of the information is less, how the two communicated, division of labor we do not know. Here, we pull back the clock, in 1927, the "Suncheon Times" rated the four famous dan, some summarized the respective audience groups of the four of them at that time, Mei Lanfang was a traditional literati and aristocratic scholar, Shang Xiaoyun was a citizen businessman, Xun Huisheng was mostly a student and woman, and Cheng was an intellectual. From this, we can also see why Cheng Yanqiu wants a realistic script. In 1931, the play officially appeared on the stage to meet the audience, and once it was on stage, it was recognized by the theater fans.
Whether it is an ordinary performance or a movie, in fact, there is not much difference in the plot, the story begins with a scene where a family of 5 wishes for the birthday of the elderly, and it can be seen from the clothes and dialogue that this is a very ordinary but hard-working family, which is considered to be the middle and lower classes. When he was celebrating his birthday, the news of the tax came, so the husband and father-in-law had to go to the deep mountains where tigers were infested to collect herbs, and the heroine Zhang Huizhu kept vigil until dawn, but finally waited for the news that her husband and father-in-law were buried in the mouth of the tiger. The plot took a sharp turn for the worse, his son was robbed to join the army, and his mother-in-law died of illness, even so, the military mission did not forget to collect the new taxes, and said the following inhuman words: "There are five people you need to pay 5 hangs, and now you only have one person to save 4 hangs." In the end, Huizhu went insane and followed her husband's vision to the tiger-infested Wangwu Mountain, but when she finally became conscious, she chose to kill herself for peace. In fact, it can be seen that this play is a proper tragedy.
The most talked about thing in "Barren Mountain Tears" should be "Night Weaving", and so is me. Perhaps because Peking Opera is a freehand art, those plays that can bring me into situations through performance can attract me more. In the movie version, the set is very simple, three walls, a loom, a window, a table, a lantern, a tool son, at this time, the performers need to have enough sense of faith and enough Peking Opera skills to be able to act real and beautiful. Although it is joked that the son is a tool son, his role is very large, and like the sound of drums, it sets off the "quietness" of the environment. It is in this stillness that Huizhu is the only movement, is Huizhu moving? No, it's her heart moving. When he looked upstairs, he quickly retracted his gaze, listened carefully to the sound of the drums, and was worried, and then the middle section was left blank, and the ink-colored exterior scene was presented in front of everyone and Huizhu, it was dark outside, and the drums sounded in his ears, but his relatives had not yet returned home. I had to concentrate and think carefully, and when walking back and forth, Huizhu's heart was lighter and chaotic than her steps.
Zhang Huoding
"Think far away from the lonely lamp", if it is put in a TV series, how to act? A lookout demeanor plus a "far away" real scene can be done, but the performance of Peking Opera is not, it is virtual, you have to think far away, but you can only look down at your feet, if you really go to the window and look up from afar, you will lose its implicit beauty. Paying attention to the eye part in this scene, I saw a very good comment, saying "can't condense, can't fight far, empty can't take back, Zhang Huizhu's heart is scattered." If the characters' emotions can't hold on, the play will break, and the night will not be silent and long, and there will be no feeling of 'staying up'. ”
Unlike other reunion books, such as "Dou E'e", Zhang Huizhu does not have a father or husband who goes to the exam, which is destined to be a complete tragedy. So the Allegro of the Escape Mountain fold has become a classic among the classics:
"Others are like my husband
Why don't you turn around and say a word
Look near and far
Suddenly lagging behind, suddenly ahead
My husband quickly turned the door around
There are people in the family who are begging for tax money
The eyes are confused and invisible
I will seek you until the side of the royal house."
Zhang Huizhu's madness is different from Hu's madness in "Qiankun Fushou Mirror", which is the foreshadowing of the possibility of healing after a major setback and will surely usher in the final joy; It is also different from Zhao Yanrong's pretending to be crazy under the ingenious scheme in "Cosmic Front". Zhang Huizhu's madness carries a sense of mission to warn the so-called "rational man," which may be brief but represents a powerful reprimand, close to the status of madness in religion:
"Oh my Lord, you like to be a disgrace in the eyes of the Jews, madness in the eyes of the pagans."
"His apostles sometimes looked up to him as if they were looking up to a man of thunder and rage, and he gave them this impression in order to prove that he had endured all our sickness and suffering, in order to teach them and us to have sympathy for those who fell into these misfortunes."
Zhang Huizhu experienced war, harsh government, and bereavement in her last days on earth, almost all the pain that the world could bear at that time, at this time, she was bound to go crazy, she wanted to show the world how these sufferings can be more "inhuman", how can the maximum slide to the edge of reason, so Zhang Huizhu in this crazy moment is infinitely close to God, infinitely arousing the sympathy of followers. But this is still not enough, bestiality takes over rationality is not the style of the Cheng school, so Zhang Huizhu wants to return to sobriety and rationality, and become a person who is beyond the current story, but it is still not enough to run away, she needs to become a martyr. She wanted to use the name of an orphan girl to break apart and crush her suffering with the world. The background of her madness and reason is a whole era of war, bestiality and absurdity. Zhang Huizhu is crazy, and the audience can see the madness of the times. Zhang Huizhu soberly killed herself, so that the audience could see the irrationality and shamelessness of the executioner of the times.
Li Haiyan
Moreover, as a female audience, when watching the play, you often feel "stabbed", take "Flame Horse", its words say "the young lady is amorous and resists the father", it seems that this should be a very avant-garde drama, that is, anti-patriarchy, the pursuit of marriage freedom, but what happened in the end, the protagonist Huang Guiying said: "The blade shines fiercely, and swears to return with the husband." Although the "martyrdom" here actually indicates that she is different from her father, and also has her own adherence to justice, but in the end it is also "sworn to return with her husband", and her core is still her "husband", not herself. Such "advanced" dramas actually have a shelf life.
But Zhang Huizhu's self-killing is different, and she recognized the world she was in before killing herself:
"I saw that nine of the ten chambers were like hanging rocks, and I saw that half of the county was dead in soldiers;
Seeing a good village turn to ashes, the eyes are full of the rest of the tiger's mouth. ”
So she said:
"I might as well fight to the death and pray to heaven, heaven for God! May the world be at peace forever."
Zhang Huizhu's tragedy stems from the powerlessness of ordinary people in the face of a harsh social environment, and her self-sacrifice as a martyr represents the "valuable destruction" of the spiritual power of justice, health and goodness, rather than to preserve the way of wife, woman, and mother. She is a completely free person.
Finally, why do I think Cheng Yanqiu's personal characteristics are very important for the production of "Barren Mountain Tears", in fact, from his name change to strike, you can see that he has his own ideas about the outside world, especially politics, maybe related to the era in which he lives, maybe related to his "sold" and wandering life since he was a child, maybe related to the ups and downs of his life after his first experience of collapse, in any case, the last Cheng Yanqiu is a very "WTO entry" person, and he has always had a lot to say about society, And never stopped speaking himself.
Cheng Yanqiu
"Dafan, a person who can be called a screenwriter, is by no means like a god, sitting in a deep cave mansion where no one has been found, and he picks up a pen to write on a whim. He must have seen a lot of unfair things in the sea of people, and he couldn't beat people in his heart, and he didn't even dare to scold, so he hid under the sign of the drama to make some satirical or regular scripts, hoping that the audience could see the present and learn from the past.
Therefore, every drama should always have its meaning, and the calculation of the general account is that all dramas must aim to improve human life. It's not for fun, it's not for fun.
What about our plays, why do we act to make people happy? Why do you want to play something to make people happy? Maybe some people say that it is to eat and dress, but do we have no way to eat and dress except for acting things to have fun at home?
We can't be so unambitious, we can't be so lowly to the bones, we have to be like the workers, we must be like the peasants. It is not denied that they rely on their profession to eat and dress without forgetting their responsibilities to society, and workers and peasants, in addition to relying on labor in exchange for living expenses, also have the responsibility to society to produce goods.
In addition to relying on acting in exchange for living expenses, we also have the responsibility to the society to persuade good and punish evil, so we should understand the meaning of acting in a drama, and the total account is that any drama must contain the meaning of demanding the improvement of human life goals. If the drama we perform does not have such a noble meaning, we would rather find another person to eat and dress than rely on acting to make others happy. (Cheng Yanqiu, "My View of Drama", "Cheng Yanqiu's Drama Anthology")