The Paper's reporter Wang Yi
Mr. Zheng Xuelai, a famous film theorist, Stanislavsky research expert and translator, member of the Seventh and Eighth National Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference, former head of the Institute of Foreign Literature and Art of the China Academy of Arts, and researcher of the Film and Television Research Institute of the China Academy of Arts, died of illness in Beijing at 12:18 on July 19, 2020 at the age of 95.
Zheng Xuelai. The pictures in this article are from the public account of the Film and Television Institute of the China Academy of Arts.
Zheng Xuelai, born in 1925, is a native of Changle, Fujian. Department of Foreign Languages, Jinan University. During World War II, he served as an interpreter in the US 475th Infantry Regiment in the Indo-Burma Theater, participated in the war against Japan, and later engaged in English teaching and compilation. After the founding of the People's Republic of China, he entered the film industry and engaged in the translation, editing and publishing of film theory and the "Stanley" system. After the "Cultural Revolution", he joined the China Academy of Arts, presided over the work of the Foreign Literature and Art Research Institute, and successively served as a member of the Seventh and Eighth National Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference, a director of the China Filmmakers Association, and the vice president of the China World Film Society. He has published more than 30 books, translations and compilations, including "Problems in Film Aesthetics", "The Complete Works of Stanislavsky", and "Chinese Academic Classics of the 20th Century".
At noon on July 19, Ishikawa, vice chairman of the Shanghai Filmmakers Association and professor of the Shanghai Theater Academy, posted a tribute on his personal social media platform, "Teacher Zheng Xuelai was the soul of the Chinese film theory circle in the 1980s, he made great contributions to the modernization of film concepts, Bazin film aesthetics and other theoretical discussions. He was one of my guides on the path of cinema! Teacher Zheng Xuelai rested in peace! A few days ago, Ishikawa was interviewed by the surging news reporter and recalled his "respected division commander".
【Dialogue·】
The Paper: Can you first introduce how Zheng Xuelai entered the research work of film theory after the founding of New China?
Ishikawa: In the early days of the founding of the People's Republic of China, in order to cooperate with the "learning from the Soviet Union", the compilation team of the Research Office of the Art Committee of the Central Film Bureau published some compilation materials and distributed the internal journal "Film Art Translation Series". My teacher, Mr. Cheng Jihua, was in charge of the compilation team at that time, and he took a fancy to Zheng Xuelai, who was recruited to enter the compilation group. In fact, among the older generation of scholars, many of them entered the film academic circles through social recruitment, including Zhou Chuanji, a representative figure of the Beijing Film Academy, who was in charge of radio communications in the army before, also engaged in music, listened particularly well, and was recruited into the editorial department of the "Film Art Translation Series" magazine as a translator and editor, and later also engaged in film recording work and teaching. In 1956, the China Film Publishing House was established, and Zheng Xuelai has been working in the publishing house.
After the founding of New China, the film system basically copied the Soviet Union. After the "First Five-Year Plan" began, many Filmmakers from the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe also came to help us make film planning, which involved a lot of translation and introduction work, and Zheng Xuelai's group of scholars threw themselves into it. His fame in the 1980s can be said to be inseparable from the first thirty years of new China, where he immersed himself in learning and accumulated and translated a large number of translations. Zheng Xuelai was a self-taught Russian scholar who studied English, and many of the seniors of the China Academy of Arts at that time were proficient in at least two foreign languages.
Cover of The Complete Works of Stanislavsky
The Paper: Referring to Zheng Xuelai's academic achievements, the Complete Works of Stanislavsky (all 6 volumes, 2012 edition of the Central Compilation and Publishing House) translated by him is an inextricable monument, can you introduce the situation in this regard?
Ishikawa: Yes, since the 1970s, before the end of the Cultural Revolution, Zheng Xuelai has been engaged in the translation, teaching and research of Stanislavsky's acting system. A complete and comprehensive translation of the Stanley acting system can be said to be the dream of Chinese filmmakers for a century. In the 1930s, director Zheng Junli and other left-wing filmmakers began to translate Stanley's writings, the first translation into China, is the later appeared in Stephen Chow's film "The King of Comedy" in the "Actor's Self-Cultivation", but at that time Steiner's books were all fragmented translations, more in order to directly direct the practice of stage performance, there was no full picture of the presentation. This work was done by Zheng Xuelai, who did it for more than 20 years, and it was probably not over until the 90s.
The Paper: In the 1980s, Zheng Xuelai shifted the focus of his research work to film theory, film aesthetics and foreign film trends, and I heard that he also participated in some academic debates.
Ishikawa: In the 1980s, cultural scholar Li Tuo and his wife Zhang Nunxin published articles such as "On the Modernization of Film Language", calling on the film industry to rectify the chaos, break free from the aesthetic shackles of "false, large, and empty", and introduce advanced film concepts and theories from the West. The introduction or translation first, Zheng Xuelai and other generations of scholars once again stood up at the moment of introducing Western film concepts and theories. Zheng Xuelai, including Shao Mujun, Zhou Chuanji and other old gentlemen have a more Geng Jie personality, and usually like to argue. Among them, director Zhang Junxiang of Shanghai Film Studio is older than them, and he studied at the Yale University Theater Research Institute in that year. His view is more classic, believing that "film is literature" and "literature completed by film means" is his core view, but a group of emerging scholars in Beijing at that time did not think so, believing that "film should get rid of the vassal status of literature" and then "have its own independent aesthetic character". Their respective views are not so different from each other today, but at that time, they stood on their own positions, and in the final analysis, they were still logically related to the genus, emphasizing commonality on the one hand and differences on the other. Such controversies have played a great role in promoting the thinking of the ideological and theoretical circles.
Academic controversies about theoretical issues such as Bazin's film aesthetics are similar to this, Shao Mujun's view is that Bazan should be the original, and Zheng Xuelai believes that Bazan's theory is a means of serving The return of Chinese cinema to realism. Their disagreement, I think, is mainly in revealing the social and cultural function of aesthetics.
Later, Zheng Xuelai had a debate with my mentor, Mr. Li Shaobai, about whether there was a film theory in China in the 1930s. Li Shaobai believes that although left-wing filmmakers in the 30s borrowed from Soviet film theory and montages, they actually played a major role in their bones with the literary and artistic spirit of traditional Chinese scholars, and translated Soviet theories mainly as a means of realizing anti-imperialism and anti-feudalism. Zheng Xuelai believes that the left-wing Filmmakers in China in the 30s had no theory and used foreign things, so the two sides were inseparable.
Speaking of which, these old gentlemen have personal friendships with each other, but when they encounter problems, they are really noisy to the point of blushing and thick necks, and they do not give in to each other, which is very cute. Mr. Shao Mujun is particularly romantic, as soon as he spoke, the mantra was "Hey, so-and-so, my point of view is exactly the opposite of yours." At a seminar, Li Shaobai deliberately teased him, repeating the original version of what he had spoken twenty minutes ago, and Shao Mujun stood up and said, "Hey, Shaobai, my point of view is exactly the opposite of yours." This caused the crowd to burst into laughter. Among our small characters, we later privately called Mr. Shao "the exact opposite." The academic atmosphere of the 80s was unprecedentedly active, and everyone may only pay attention to different aspects for the sake of "truth", but they dare to argue.
Book cover of the Appreciation Dictionary of World Cinema
The Paper: In 1989, Zheng Xuelai began to edit the large-scale academic project "World Film Appreciation Dictionary". This four-volume dictionary contains more than 800 classic films widely recognized by the international film industry around the world, including masterpieces in the history of world cinema and works that have had an important impact or caused widespread controversy in contemporary cinema. Can you tell us about it?
Ishikawa: I can give you an example of the controversial work, "The Last Temptation of Christ", directed by Martin Scorsese, the film shows the secular side of Christ, and after its release in 1988, it caused great controversy in the United States and even in Western society as a whole. Zheng Xuelai still includes this film in the dictionary. At that time, it was not an Internet society, and film fans did not have such convenient means today, on Douban, search Baidu can find a certain film, this set of dictionaries is published for the public, that is simply a "treasure guide" for everyone to find a film. People like my generation, who dared to call themselves movie fans in the 1990s, no one dared to say that they didn't know this dictionary. When I watched "Piano Lessons" that year, I didn't think I understood much, and I also turned the dictionary to find information about director Jane Campion. In the late 1990s, BBS began to appear, and after the film forums such as "New Youth Film Night Sailing Ship" and "Xici Hutong", it slowly replaced the function of the film dictionary, or the search function of the dictionary was moved to the Internet. Zheng Xuelai's "World Film Appreciation Dictionary" has produced four volumes before and after, and different versions have been revised, and the film list has been enriched. A large part of Zheng Xuelai's energy in his later years was put into popularizing movies to the public, which can be said to benefit generations of film fans.
Editor-in-charge: Cheng Yu