In 1982, based on the serial column of the same name, "Thirty Years of Detailed Talk from the Beginning" was released, and director Li Hanxiang boldly joked in the film about his secret anecdotes from the film for 30 years.
Li Hanxiang said: "Life is like a drama, everyone's drama has a time when applause rises and falls, and everyone's drama has a time to end."
As Lee Han-cheung's "curtain-closing" work at Shaw, the film recreates Shaw's golden age – although the sense of curiosity is far greater than the sense of history.
In the 1980s, with Li Hanxiang's farewell, the Shaw era was also coming to an end. As the Whampoa Military Academy in the Hong Kong film industry, the many directors and actors discovered by Shaw at its peak later became the introduction to Shaw's decline.
Hu Jinquan fled Taiwan, Zou Wenhuai He Guanchang established Jiahe Film, cultivating the most beautiful Bruce Lee, Jackie Chan, Maggie Cheung, Hong Jinbao, Chen Kexin and other top superstars and famous directors, Shaw's brilliance is gradually dimming.
The rise of Shaw's "Wind moon film" in the 1970s was not a turning point when Shaw began to move from peak to loneliness.
But looking back now, probably only the banned films of the Shaw era can be called "erotic but not pornographic, wind and not obscene", worthy of the word "wind and moon".
<h1 class="pgc-h-decimal" data-index="01" > the "wind moon" tide</h1>
Hong Kong's film classification system was not established until 1988. Since then, there has been the concept of the so-called "tertiary film" that people now commonly understand, including pornographic bloody violence.
Before that, as the predecessor of Hong Kong-made fragrant three-level films, Shaw's Wind and Moon Films had actually flourished for more than ten years.
The starting point of Shaw's wind and moon film trend was the wind moon comedy "The Great Warlord" released in 1972. The cooperation began in the early 1970s when li hanxiang and Shaw were in economic difficulties.
In 1963, Li Hanxiang left Taiwan to establish Guolian Pictures. He was about to show his ambitions, but he encountered lu Yuntao, the father of the gold lord (the owner of International Film Mao Industry Co., Ltd.), who was shipwrecked in Taichung Toyohara Kamoka.
Li Hanxiang, who lost his patron, later lost at the box office. In 1971, Li Hanxiang, who failed to start a business, returned to Hong Kong again and began to make money in small-cost movies on the theme of deception.
At that time, Shaw's life was not good. Because of the miserly division, Zou Wenhuai He Guanchang ran away with a group of Shao colleagues and set up Jiahe. After that, Run Run Shaw missed Bruce Lee again.
Soon, under the heavy blow of Jiahe's ace, Bruce Lee's kung fu film, Shaw began to suffer a serious existential crisis. In order to save Shaw in crisis, Shaw took the initiative to invite back Li Hanxiang, who was once a cash cow and created a generation of Huangmei tone movie boom.
And Li Hanxiang's Wind moon comedy "The Great Warlord", which lied to the water, is the first work after returning to Shaw. Drawing on many anecdotes and interesting histories during the Beiyang government, Li Hanxiang created a classic warlord and a huge tiger image, and also became popular with Hong Kong's most important comedian in the next 20 years- Hui Guanwen.
As one of the three major chinese-language films of that year, the success of "The Great Warlord" opened up the wave of Wind Moon films of Shaw and Hong Kong films, and also made Shaw firm in the new road of making money.
<h1 class="pgc-h-decimal" data-index="02" > the Shaw Wind Moon Era</h1>
Compared with Hu Jinquan, a famous director who is obsessed with the artistic standards of film, Li Hanxiang, who is also a "cultural" director, has grasped the balance between cultural connotation and market demand just right.
About the failure of entrepreneurship and the beating of the market, Li Hanxiang later made no secret of the commodity nature of the film: "The film itself is a commodity, not a painting, not a song. Paintings and songs can be non-selling products, but movies must have a market, everyone must come to see, we must seek art in business, and we must talk about business in art.
The success of "The Great Warlord" made Shaw start making up his mind to start making more pure wind and moon films to make money. Between art and the market, between making money and cost, Li Hanxiang and Run Run Shaw also reached a unified opinion: "Mr. Shao is actually good to me, I made money from making a few Wind and Moon films, and he let me shoot a big cost "Falling into the City"."
At that time, Shao's wind and moon themes were mostly based on traditional Chinese classical literary themes such as folk music, historical court, and "Golden Plum Bottle". Based on the innate heritage of the elderly artists in sinology, their works are always full of strong traditional customs.
In his works, whether it is the historical films of Yangchun White Snow such as "Burning the Yuanmingyuan" and "Hanging Curtains to Listen to the Government", or the Huangmei tone film "Liang Shanbo and Zhu Film Circle" of the Xialiba people, and even the eye-catching Wind and Moon films "Golden Bottle Double Yan" and "Wind moon Qitan" after that, they all have a strong oriental classical aesthetic.
In Shaw's peak era of wind and moon, in order to be close to the charm of the oriental classical style, Li Hanxiang flexibly integrated traditional Chinese folklore, old customs, city charm and the ethical spirit behind it into the film works.
For example, in "Golden Bottle Double Beauty", the entire set props character costumes are in line with the background of the Yuan and Ming Dynasties of the original novel. The watermill hut of Huajiayi in "Ghost Calling Spring" and the Ximen mansion in the carved column painting building in "Affair" are full of classical beauty like Chinese paintings.
Through the pursuit of scene details, Li Hanxiang sets off the atmosphere to create a sense of reality, and reproduces the classical artistic conception in traditional stories. The personalities of the characters in the story are reshaped to be closer to the ethical concepts of the audience in the 70s and 80s.
For example, in "Golden Bottle and Double Beauty", Li Hanxiang deliberately downplays the negative image of women, omits some of the vulgar language in the original work, strengthens their tragic fate and pursuit of love, and retains the sense of admonition of the work itself.
<h1 class="pgc-h-decimal" data-index="03" > Shaw's box office aphrodisiac</h1>
In the 1970s, when Shaw's fengyue films flourished, it was also the rise of "sexual liberation" consciousness in the West, and Hong Kong films began to transform from "focusing on social teachings" to "pursuing sensory stimulation".
In the 1970s, when a new generation of kung fu films represented by Bruce Lee, Hong Jinbao, Jackie Chan, etc. sprung up like mushrooms, the popularity of Shaw's wind and moon films saved the shabby shaw movies that were in turmoil.
The cooperation between Li Hanxiang and Shaw lasted for 12 years, producing more than 30 films, of which more than 20 are wind and moon films, including the classic "Wind moon strange tan", "Northland Rouge", "Affair affair", "Golden Bottle Double Yan" and so on.
In addition to Li Hanxiang, Chu Yuan's "AiNu" in that year, Fang Lingzheng's "Tang Dynasty Extravagant Girl" in the later period, and Chen Anqi's "Flower Sister Era" are all high-quality works with the theme of Shao's wind and moon.
But as Shaw began to retire from film management, Shaw's successors increasingly lacked a long-term vision and focused on short-term interests. Just like the "Thirty Years of Detailed Talk from the Beginning" filmed, the same studio and the same street, three movies at the same time to shoot each other's cars, a street is eager to shoot 20 times, how can there be no bad movies?
Using "Wind Moon" and eye-catching gimmicks as a box office aphrodisiac will sooner or later be hollowed out like the overindulged Ximen Qing.
Since then, in the 1980s, Hong Kong-made tertiary films began to completely abandon cultural connotations and pursue eye-catching and erotic gimmicks. Xiangyan tertiary films are getting farther and farther away from the word "wind and moon", paying more and more attention to the sensory stimulation of single-edge direct penetration, and becoming more and more golden.
So much so that Li Hanxiang, as the representative of the "Wind Moon Film", had to come out and say:
"The real writing of sex is in the bones, and everyone is not sexy when they strip naked." Countries with open sex such as Germany, France, and Japan have a lot of live-action performances, and everyone is not surprised. On the contrary, the tighter the collection, the more curious people are. Therefore, the first time filming wind and moon is subtle."
However, after all, the theme of "Wind Moon" is difficult to climb in the traditional ethical view, and it sounds a bit contrary to the cultural feelings of "Wind Moon Film" to talk about. Moreover, in that commercial society, Hong Kong is full of lights, and it is difficult to have a cultural mission for a movie.
The era of Shao's wind and moon films, which has affection and sex, is exquisite and beautiful, after all, it is coming to an end.
- THE END -