From the gossip of the film industry to the anecdotes of the jianghu, see how Li Hanxiang elaborates on the thirty years of film industry

One morning in August 1980, director Li Hanxiang was woken up by a phone call: "Hanxiang, tell you a bad news, Lao Yan is dead." ”

"Which old Yan?" Li Hanxiang did not react for a moment.

"Yan Jun! Died in New York at five o'clock on August 18. ”

Li Hanxiang felt a pang of confusion, Yan Jun, formerly known as Yan Zongqi, is Li Hanxiang's long-time friend and a famous director of Shaw Film Company. As early as 7 years ago, Yan Jun had quit the film industry and moved overseas. Li Hanxiang and he had not seen each other for many years, and when they heard the news again, the other party and himself were separated from each other.

The second phone rang, this time by Shaw's producer Wang Xiaosong.

"Han Xiang! Old Yan died, in the United States. ”

Li Hanxiang pretended to be surprised and said "Oh", but the other party had not finished speaking.

"I heard that I was angry after watching your "Detailed Talk from the Beginning"!"

For the Hong Kong film industry in the 1980s, the publication of Thirty Years from scratch was a major event. The reason not only comes from the author Li Hanxiang's position in the Chinese film industry, but also because of its unobstructed and exquisite narrative rhythm, so that the content of nearly a thousand and one million words of articles covers his experience and miscellaneous feelings from the film industry for thirty years, the palm of the film circles on both sides of the strait and the three places, and the five elements and eight works of the folk culture of old Beijing, which is enough to feast the eyes of the most senior film fans. Only audiences who have seen Li Hanxiang's writings can understand how this director can control such a mixed slang between the north and the south and the city style in his film works.

Li Hanxiang's ancestral home was Fengtian (Liaoning), and after the September 18 Incident, his family immigrated to Beiping. At the end of 1948, Li Hanxiang, who aspired to be in the film industry, went to Hong Kong with a letter of introduction from the playwright Shen Fu. Ten years later, this black-faced young man who grew up in the north won five awards at the Fifth Asian Film Festival with the Huangmei-toned film "Sable Cicada" starring Lin Dai and Zhao Lei, establishing his position in the Hong Kong film industry. In the more than 30 years since then, Li Hanxiang has almost single-handedly opened up huangmei tone films, epic films, deception films, wind moon films and other genres for Hong Kong films.

The memoir was originally serialized in the supplement of the Oriental Daily between 1979 and 1982. In 1983, Li Hanxiang began to return to Chinese mainland to shoot "Burning the Yuanmingyuan" and "Hanging Curtains to Listen to the Government", and the column has since been shelved. In the same year, Hong Kong Tiandi Books published the columns of the past three years into four volumes.

In fact, as early as 1977, Li Hanxiang had already published an eleven-day reminiscence article "Me and Lin Dai" in the most widely sold daily newspaper in Hong Kong and Kowloon. Lin Dai was a popular actor in Hong Kong in the 1960s, known as "the star of the stars", and her marriage to Long Shengxun, the fifth son of Long Yun, the chairman of Yunnan Province during the National Government era, was even more envied by the younger generations in the film and television industry. In 1964, the 30-year-old film diva committed suicide by taking sleeping pills at home. More than a decade later, Zhou Shi, editor-in-chief of Oriental Daily, invited Li Hanxiang to recall his cooperation with Lin Dai. Although the series was a hit after publication, Lee himself saw it as a game, and once he stopped writing, he plunged into the work on the film set.

Two years later, after repeated persuasion by daily reporters, Li Hanxiang decided to open a column in the supplement of the Oriental Daily under the name of "Thirty Years of Detailed Talking from the Beginning", counting the thirty years since he entered the film industry in 1948. The big director has no scruples under the pen, and the former portraits or anecdotal scandals of the hong Kong film queens have once again become the talk of the Hong Kong market in the 1980s through The interpolated depiction of Lee Han-cheung.

At the beginning of the establishment of the column, Xie Jiaxiao, a daily reporter who undertook editorial work, once sweated for such a grand headline: If director Li lost interest after writing for a few days, how could the column justify itself? In the following years, Xie Jiaxiao urged Li Hanxiang to deadline on time like a nanny, and whenever a new film was filmed and filmed, Xie Jiaxiao would call the director in advance and get a number of spare manuscripts in advance. Even when Li Hanxiang went to the United States at the end of 1980, he once maintained the column in the form of oral memoirs by transoceanic telephone. All kinds of twists and turns are difficult for today's readers to imagine.

Li Hanxiang told the past, a major feature is that he was happy and his mouth was not covered. When readers read their memories, they can often only be stunned or red-faced. Mentioning the anecdote that an early star openly cheated on the set with an actress, Li Hanxiang's mouth was hanging in the river, and even the details would be rendered more. And Li Hanxiang's ridicule of his friends is even more commonplace, and even interesting talks such as "Jiang Yi second" that are close to yellow literature have also been shaken out. When talking about the boss Run Run Shaw who refused to accompany the wine at the dinner party and was poured with wine by the mother of a big star, Li Hanxiang was completely in a state of "schadenfreude":

"When I look at Mr. Six again, I can't help but be admirable, I didn't even shrink my head, my face was still smiling and squinting, probably his English name was laughed out, otherwise how could it be called 'Run Run Shaw'?"

Li Hanxiang is accustomed to previewing the next issue at the end of each column, so that celebrities can often automatically enter the seat, and it is not uncommon for Li Hanxiang to receive calls from various movies and be asked to "put a horse". Fortunately, at this time, Li Hanxiang is already a well-known director on both sides of the strait and in the three places, and after a call of appeasement, although his name will be hidden, the anecdotes that should be said are still merciless, and careful readers can often restore the information of the parties according to Tu Suoji.

According to common sense, such an unscrupulous revelation should have been attacked by the film industry, only because Li Hanxiang's joking personality has long been known, and he himself is by no means a short-sighted self-concealment, when his feelings with his first girlfriend Zhou Xiaohua were not smooth, he went to the dormitory to peep at Ms. Zhou's defecation, Li Hanxiang still and pan out (Li Hanxiang later said that the small mirror was actually made up by others).

Even this disgraceful deed still has the significance of film history in Li Hanxiang's mouth - a few days later, Li Hanxiang painted a poster on the set of the Great Wall Film Company, and two old gentlemen who looked almost exactly the same came to greet Li Hanxiang, and even the way he spoke was the same:

"Li Hanxiang! Who doesn't know. Did you bring a small mirror today? ”

These two old gentlemen are the originators of Chinese art films, Wan Gu Toad and Wan Liming, who are twin brothers who were working as set designers and directors of the art department of the Great Wall Company at that time. In 1941, the Wan brothers completed China's first featured cartoon, The Iron Fan Princess. Shortly after meeting the young Li Hanxiang, the Wan brothers returned to Shanghai, joined the Shanghai Fine Arts Film Studio, and finally completed the art film "The Haunting of the Heavenly Palace" that influenced generations in 1964.

In the mountains of literature stacked by thousands of memories, Zhou Xuan, Zhao Dan, Zhang Shankun, Run Run Shaw, Hu Jinquan, Zhang Che... With the intricate history of Hong Kong cinema unfolding like a scroll in front of readers, Lee Han-cheung brings decades of past events to life with his remarkable memories, while being happy to share his insights into the art of cinema and extracting sections of his works for dissection at any time.

In the column series, Li Hanxiang's favorite teaser is Yan Jun. Yan Jun came from a film family, and his uncle Yan Hua, nicknamed "Prince Peach Blossom", was Zhou Xuan's first husband. Yan Jun entered the film industry at about the same time as Li Hanxiang, which made the two form a close relationship at work. This also makes Li Hanxiang extremely lively when recalling Yan Jun, from the titles of "The Story of Yan Jun's Appearance", "Yan Jun's Rich and Thick Body", "Yan Jun Suddenly Changed mongolians", it is difficult to believe that just one page ago, Li Hanxiang was still sad about the death of his friend. However, this is Li Hanxiang's character.

For the death of actress Lin Dai, Li Hanxiang was difficult to let go for a long time. In his writing, he repeatedly recalled his interactions with Lin Dai.

Lin Dai had a relationship with a good friend of Li Hanxiang, and later married the Fifth Prince of Long like lightning, so Li Hanxiang couldn't help but question Lin Dai:

"You know! Lin Dai, in my eyes you should be more virtuous than Joan of Arc, so when I hear others say that you have prostituted someone's son, my heart is not a good taste. I think this sentence not only insults you, but also insults me, and even insults the entire film industry. ”

Lin Dai's answer surprised the big director:

"Well, I don't want to be a prostitute, I'd rather be a la traviata!" I wish someone had spilled shredded bills on my head and smashed them in my face! However, that was only my delusion, and I, the Traviata, did not meet Amang, Han Xiang, you know, I wanted to marry Armang wholeheartedly. ”

After a full of laughter and angry scolding, Li Hanxiang still reserved romantic room for these unfortunate deceased.

Li Hanxiang's column was only written until 1982, after which he went to the Longtan Tiger Cave in the north with full ambitions, leaving behind several huge works, and was tired by the times, and ended up being banned and returned to Hong Kong. Years later, when the ban was lifted and the mainland again issued an invitation to prepare for the large-scale TV series "Burning Appang Palace", fate was no longer willing to provide a stage for the seventy-year-old filmmaker, and at the end of 1996, Li Hanxiang died of a sudden heart attack in Beijing, and "Burning Appang Palace" was destroyed.

Among the directors of the same era, those who can compete with Li Hanxiang can often only cite Hu Jinquan and Zhang Che, and after this generation of filmmakers have traveled, Hu Jinquan's "Chivalrous Woman", "Dragon Gate Inn", Zhang Che's "Thirteen Taibao" and "Thorn Horse" still leave countless tribute themes to the film industry, but Li Hanxiang's films seem to be gradually walking into loneliness.

In February 2017, Beijing United Publishing Company took advantage of the 90th anniversary of Li Hanxiang's birth and the 20th anniversary of his death to re-add and sort out the "Thirty Years of Details from the Beginning" to Chinese mainland readers, which was the first time that this set of memoirs was published in the mainland.

Throughout Lee's life, he entered Hong Kong three times, went north twice, and spent seven years in Taiwan, and his experience cannot be described as bumpy. And he started from the major studios as a short-term worker, trained into a film technology decathlon, and developed hundreds of film and television works in various genres, from Huang Mei to Fengyue films, which is not a small contribution to Hong Kong films.

Pierre Rissient, a film research scholar who recommended Li Hanxiang's works "The Ghost of Qiannu" and "Yang Guifei" to the Cannes Film Festival in the 1960s, commented: "Li Hanxiang's life's works are wanton, although there are also huge and complicated suspicions, but if the film is used to flash the spark of thousand-year-old Chinese culture, no one can stand out." In particular, most of these works have been completed in uprooted places. "Whether it is "The Great Warlord" or "The Strange Tan of the Wind and Moon", it is mostly based on the rumors that Li Hanxiang heard in the north in his early years. Looking at the film creations made by mainland directors such as Jiang Wen and Cheng Er in recent years, we know that Li Hanxiang's path should also be carried forward.