This article is written by Grand Duke Peter Pavlovsk of Habsburg
"Perverted director" Mou Dunfu after filming "Black Sun 731", followed by "Black Sun Nanjing Massacre".
Here to clarify a fact, the Black Sun series originally planned three movies, actually made into two, the third is rumored to be called "Black Sun Farewell to War", I don't know if there is a script, in short, it was not filmed. The two nominal Black Sun 731 series "Devil Force" and "Death Train" found on the Internet are followed by he Zhiqiang. They play black sun 731 series. And Mou Dunfu is the "Black Sun" series.
Among them, "Devil's Force" was co-produced by Changchun Film Studio, and Shiro Ishii was also played by Teacher Wang Gang, which has a certain continuity, and the copyright entanglement is unknown. "Death Train" is directly marked with the words of the black sun 731 ending on the title. It is explained that the "Black Sun 731" is operated as an overall IP.
Let's look back at Mou Dunfu's "Black Sun" series. 1995 was a special year, the 50th anniversary of the victory in World War II. It's been a full seven years. Mu Dunfu consulted a large number of materials and carefully prepared this heirloom production.
Let's talk first about the quality of the film.
As a well-known "perverted heavy taste cult director", the scale of "Black Sun Nanjing Massacre" is actually not high, and it is different from most people's brain supplements. The style of Black Sun 731 is also very different. "Black Sun 731" has a large section of static corpse ~ first display and dissection shots, but as long as you pay attention to avoidance (such as closing your eyes or fast-forwarding) when watching, the main plot is still normal. Most of the time the film reveals only the kind of systematic horror. Moreover, the display reproduction of the research base and various experiments is a bit of the meaning of introducing science popularization. The scene of the 731 base is actually introduced to the audience as the protagonist as the story, and the two together constitute the depiction of this hell on earth. The large sections of corpse display and dissection footage are indeed heavy mouths, but they are also necessary to show the brutality and coldness of Unit 731.
And then to "The Black Sun Nanjing Massacre". Realizing the problem, Mou Dunfu reduced the intensity of the film, and there is only one rather bloody scene in the whole film, that is, the bayonet picking the baby, which lasts for about half a second. It uses the form of a thriller, which is very different from the long-term fixed-shot static display of "Black Sun 731". All kinds of rape and violence scenes are also the same as the mainland movies at that time, and the meaning of the expression is over. There is a significant difference from the filming of the complete course in "Fighting The Snake" and the special display of nudity.
It can be clearly felt that director Mou Dunfu is seriously handling the camera, avoiding the exploitation of women's bodies, not letting obscenity take over the lord, and destroying the overall solemnity. "Black Sun 731" and "Black Sun Nanjing Massacre" two pieces of the opening credits do not have a soundtrack, with black curtains or historical images, after I visited the Nanjing Massacre Memorial Hall, I saw the "this place should be solemn, avoid noise" notice, I can better understand the director's state of mind.
In addition, in the plot, the script depth of "Black Sun 731" is very good, the emotional scene belongs to the strong link, and the audience can sublimate their feelings through the growth of the character. And "Black Sun Nanjing Massacre" is a group play, there is no fixed protagonist, and all the characters are weakly linked, and there is no hope that any story can be excavated in them, it can be said that the story of the movie is deliberately abandoned.
Honestly, it's hard. Because if the character's emotional drama cannot grow, the audience will have a sense of distance from the character and cannot feel the immersion. But Mou Dunfu did it anyway. The film begins with a pair of traitors and sons who are begging for a way to survive under a butcher's knife, and unveils the hellish scene of Nanjing after the fall. The story of each character is very weak, as a traitor father, the whole film has not seen him do anything evil, everyone's performance is also very restrained and introverted, except for the ending of the little boy's family has a little sensational element, the emotions of other characters have been suppressed to the minimum. It's all about the humble idea of "living."
It's one of the most powerful group scenes I've ever seen, and all the characters except a few Japanese war criminals don't seem to even have names, and they advance the plot like tool men, all in the service of the scene.
The scene, that is, the hellish Nanjing, the real hell on earth, is the biggest protagonist of the film. Everything is served to show it. Mu Dunfu seems that a single hell scene is enough to shock, to shape it well, to show it well, it is enough to shock the audience, there is no need to invent a character's emotional line, find a story of suffering to dilute the shock of the scene.
The film is interspersed with a large number of real historical shots, all of which are carefully subtitled with "real history". A large number of scenes in the film are carefully reproduced according to historical photos, such as taking a group photo under a stone sculpture with a head full of heads (this is also the second most terrifying shot in the film, but this is based on historical photos), and there are also photos and survivor testimonies to take the entire antecedents and consequences, such as the shooting of monks in the temple, and the montage that finally cuts into the real historical photos is quite shocking.
The film has a very shocking big scene, such as the scene of pouring gasoline and burning the corpse after the massacre on the riverbank, the grand and full of thought, I don't know whether it was the use of technical means during filming or the color adjustment of the film later, the gasoline burned rapidly, and the line of fire was rapidly advancing in the corpse. The use of the film's mirror is also very elaborate, especially the ending, two children meet in the fork, but confused to go in different directions, under the ruins and walls is worth people's thinking.
Overall, the most attractive thing about the film is that it chooses between story and scene, unlike "Slaughter City Blood Certificate" and "Nanjing 1937", deliberately abandoning the entire story line, all to create a hell scene is very avant-garde, and the final effect is very good.
In 2009, when "Rabe's Diary" was released, there was a hot topic in China, saying that the real murderer of the Nanjing Massacre, Chao Xianggong Hatohiko, was discovered, in fact, as early as the "Black Sun Nanjing Massacre", Mou Dunfu had already shown this view. The structure of "Black Sun Nanjing Massacre" is actually more similar to Lu Chuan's "Nanjing Nanjing", but Lu Chuan still used several complete fictional stories to support a emotional thread, and has not yet played well. After reading it, everyone will wonder why Fan Wei was confused by such a publicized execution. In fact, what Lu Chuan wanted to express was the brutality of the Japanese, who did not care who was the revolutionary party at all, and it was better to arrest individuals and close the case and execute them. But the confusion of the audience is that after watching so many scenes that randomly kill people, they feel uncomfortable with "randomly arresting individuals and taking the procedure with great fanfare execution".
In contrast, the death of the traitor in "The Black Sun Nanjing Massacre" that only wants to make a living is also a manifestation of the theme of "not caring about human life", using a smaller length to achieve several orders of magnitude stronger effects, among which, the role of subtraction is self-evident, Mu Dao did not even deliberately arrange the ugly scene of the traitor at the plot level, but portrayed their father and son as ordinary refugees, the scene is pitiful, but also did not provoke the contradiction of hatred, so in the end, the death of the traitor's father is very pure, Without the interference of too many other complicated emotions, and there will be no such lamentations as "deserved", the brutality of the Japanese army and the assumption of not caring for human life have been fully consolidated.
Under this kind of sentient beings, whether it is refugees or traitors, they are all depictions of victims in hell, so that all the Chinese in the film, regardless of the class, jointly add footnotes to the suffering of this hell, and the portrayal of the Japanese in the film has a distinct class attribute, of which the left revolutionary trend is very strong, the most impressive is two scenes, one is a debate between a Japanese ronin and the Japanese commander Nakajima Imago, from the beginning of the appearance of one side supporting the massacre and the other opposing the massacre. It was not until later in the debate that it was discovered that both sides were bloody invaders, which was very clever, similar to the Japanese commander-in-chief Matsui Ishigen's condemnation of the massacre, and there would be a change in attitude, revealing the ugliness of the upper organs of the Japanese army. For the lower levels, through the scene where the soldiers receive the letter from home, at first they see the sadness and indignation of the cruel life in their hometown, and then emphasize the trophies, further burn and loot the hints, and the handling is very clever, the amount of information in these two scenes is huge, the content of the expression is many and profound, and it is the largest source of ideological embodiment in this film.
"Black Sun Nanjing Massacre" is the most profound and unique nanjing massacre I have ever seen, it was not released in the mainland that year, according to Mou Dunfu himself, it was for Wu Ziniu's "Nanjing Massacre" concession, and even received the authorities to ask for a change in the title of the film. However, Mu Dunfu did not change his name, I don't know, anyway, it was not released, and Wu Ziniu's play was changed to "Nanjing 1937" in Hong Kong and Taiwan. This Rene Liu version at that time gathered Hong Kong and Taiwan stars Such as Qin Han, etc., is a proper big production, but I was a child in the school to watch, more than twenty years ago the impression has been blurred, resources have not found a high-definition version, can not comment on the advantages and disadvantages.
The Black Sun series ends here, and the legendary third part does not know whether there is a script or not. Looking back at the director Mou Dunfu, his patriotism is beyond doubt. In my personal opinion, in fact, one of his exploitative films, "Fighting Snakes", the "Black Sun" series, especially the "Black Sun Nanjing Massacre", has been restrained to the extreme, the traces of exploitation are not serious, and their inclusion in the "perverted system" is completely a group of keyboard heroes who have not seen the film. In fact, so far, most of his "perverted director" names are still from "Black Sun 731".
If there is no Li Huayue looking for him to shoot "Blood Love". At that time, this matter was wildly hyped by the newspapers, and it was said that the name of The "pervert" of The Mu Director was confirmed.
"Blood Love" should actually be discussed separately, because it has been Li Huayue's own project from beginning to end.
The Douban links of the two "Blood Love" have disappeared, and I have not found out which one Mu Dao is involved in on Baidu Encyclopedia? Wikipedia also does not have an entry. But I guess it should be the first part, because from an ideological point of view, the plot of the first part has a bit of a leftist flavor.
Okay, that's it.