In the history of film, there are not a few directors like Director Feng who are so excited to go to the stage from behind the guide tube to have a full play addiction, they rely on their unique understanding of the film and many years of filming experience, they do not shy away from any famous role in front of the camera, and even have a moment of inspiration from time to time, leaving many unforgettable classic roles.
At the 52nd Golden Horse Awards ceremony, the most powerful may be the famous director Feng Xiaogang who is not present, when the best actor is revealed, he is singing a song "The Price of Love" in the Beijing Workers' Stadium thousands of miles away. Knowing that he was honored as the Golden Horse Xinke Film Emperor with his interpretation of the "Sixth Master" in "Old Cannon", Feng Xiaogang's testimonial was "I will not act later", the reason was "sorry professional actors", the meaning of the words, afraid of robbing the actors of their jobs. In fact, before "Old Cannon", Feng Xiaogang had not participated in a film as a starring actor for 15 years, although he occasionally made a cameo appearance in "Kung Fu" and "Let the Bullets Fly", and most of the time he was still focused on his own directing career. However, the director who has been immersed in the industry for many years and does not leave the set all day long finally has a little advantage of about the source and the water building, and occasionally encounters a role that is particularly suitable for his spleen and stomach, and it is naturally a good hand to act. The reason why the "Sixth Master" was successful was precisely because Feng Xiaogang himself was the Beijing masters who were a little stubborn and did not lose their righteousness. He himself admitted that the reason why he happily agreed to director Guan Hu's request to star was also because he felt that everything in the play was an element that he was familiar with. In the history of film, there are not a few directors like Director Feng who are so excited to go to the stage from behind the guide tube to have a full play addiction, they rely on their unique understanding of the film and many years of filming experience, they do not shy away from any famous role in front of the camera, and even have a moment of inspiration from time to time, leaving many unforgettable classic roles.
Self-directed and self-acting comedy master
When it comes to the performance experience of directors, the first thing that comes to mind is self-directed and self-acting, which is the best channel for most directors with strong performance desire to release their passion. Several of the most accomplished comedy masters in the history of cinema, almost without exception, have reached the peak of their art in self-directed and self-acting works. Charlie Chaplin and Buster Keaton have long since become recognized as the "Twin Peaks" of the silent film era, both of whom starred in films by other directors in the early years of their acting careers, but most of those works have long been forgotten by history nearly a century later. After a short early career, both began directing their own films, first short films of 12-15 minutes, followed by masterpieces of feature films that have gone down in history. In the short film period, the two have established their own unique artistic style (both acting and directing) - Keaton often goes through a complex set of difficult and difficult action procedures to let the protagonist he plays defuse the crisis and complete the thrilling adventure; Chaplin uses the recurring role of the tramp Charlot to interpret the "sadness of comedy", and the kindness of Charlot's heart and the clumsiness of the action form a set of exaggerated and bizarre contrasts, after dramatic hilarity, Presents a unique effect of laughter with tears. Keaton set milestones in action comedy with films such as "The General", "Sherlock Holmes II" and "Seven Chances", and later a group of action comedy stars, including Jackie Chan, never used more bridges than Keaton had ever performed. Through the series of works such as "Finding a Son and a Fairy", "Gold Rush", "City Light", "Modern Times", "The Great Dictator" and "Monsieur Verdou", Chaplin gradually became a warm and kind laughing craftsman to a great humanitarian. Woody Allen and Jacques Tati both decided to be involved as both as lead actors when their directing careers were just starting out. For decades, Woody Allen has repeated himself in most of his films—a thin-faced, black-rimmed, untrimmed, perpetually tongue-in-cheek New York intellectual (after 2000, due to the energy problems of his age, he gradually gave up starring in his films). In his bullet-like lines, all the political, cultural, gender and even philosophical issues of contemporary society have been put on the table and deconstructed one by one, and the unique "talkative" dialogue has become his unchanging label for decades. The French comedy master Jacques Tati, who is relatively unknown to the Chinese, has regained the body performance style of the silent film period in the era of sound films, and he plays Mr. Hu Luo, who has always been in the same appearance - wearing a top hat, smoking a pipe, holding an umbrella, walking with a little funny, jumping and jumping as if he would fall at any time, and most importantly, never speaking. Tati insists on expressing his comedic philosophy with the purest movements, and in a world where the characters are speechless, the sound only comes from the surrounding environment. In addition to the occasional juggling action, Tati often uses some highly postmodern sets and buildings to highlight the embarrassing situation of the characters, and Mr. Yu Luo gracefully shuttles through these exquisite scenes, but his steps are staggering and crooked, so that many film critics think that Tati is the pioneer of modern comedy. Tati left only 6 feature films in his lifetime, of which "Monsieur Hulot's Holiday" and "Game Time" were selected by the Film Handbook as the 100 most beautiful films in the world. Because comedy is highly dependent on a unique performance style to present, so the above several of the best comedy masters in the history of cinema have chosen to star in their own starring roles, using this most reliable way to achieve their own artistic style, except for themselves, it is really difficult for outsiders to accurately grasp every detail conceived in their minds and the blueprint of the whole movie. At this point, the later Stephen Chow, like these predecessors, chose to stand behind the camera when he wanted to really have his own comedic style.
Acting and excellent directing
After a long period of acting experience, some actors are no longer satisfied with just acting as "dramas" that interpret the ideas of others, but intentionally complete the identity transformation in creation and come to the background. Some people stop acting after transformation, but there are always some people whose addictions will occur from time to time. At the age of eighty, Clint Eastwood is now a two-time Oscar-winning director, and due to his health, he has appeared less and less on the screen in the past 10 years. But people will not forget that the original Eastwood became the most famous cowboy spokesperson after John Wayne with his handsome body, and the Western master Sergio Leone's "Dart Trilogy" of the 1960s made the penniless Eastwood climb to the superstar throne, and the hot detective played in the "Dirty Harry" series has completely established his new American tough guy status. It's hard to say whether Eastwood, as an actor or director, is better. As the former, he is an icon symbol that has swept the world; as the latter, he is a master of navigating various genres and genres and even innovating (his first Oscar for Best Picture, "Unforgivable", is considered to be an epoch-making work that revolutionized westerns). In "Unforgivable" and "Million Dollars", which represent the pinnacle of his art, he has both directed and starred in both roles, and these two films have undoubtedly become the best epitome of Eastwood's artistic career. The famous Italian neorealist film master Vittorio de Sica is recognized as one of the most important directors in the history of cinema for his pioneering masterpieces such as "Shoe Shine Boy", "Bicycle Thief", "Tears of the Wind Candle", "The Miracle of Milan" and so on. Most people admire de Sica as a director, but few people know that the young master is actually a popular Italian stage actor and singer. It was precisely because de Sica's later achievements as a director were so remarkable that people consciously or unconsciously brushed aside that experience when looking back on his artistic achievements. De Sica became a famous director, but still left a classic screen image worth remembering. In his equally famous neorealist general Roberto Rossellini's General Robire, de Sica portrays a charlatan who claims to be a general who was bribed by the Nazis to infiltrate the Italian rebels in concentration camps to gather intelligence, only to die generously for his country. De Sika precisely interprets the complexity and evolution of this character's personality, so that a shameful liar truly has the arrogance of a Resistance general. In another famous director, Max Oberfields, in The Earrings of the Countess, he made a cameo appearance as the mercurial Baron Donati, whose graceful demeanor and skilful waltz made a hautetrical affair elegant to the extreme. Another director whose career has been far more brilliant than his own as an actor is the Polish-French director Romain Polanski. After graduating from high school, he entered Łódź Film Academy, Poland's premier film school, and met his most important mentor, Poland's greatest director of the time, Andrey Vajda. Vajda is preparing to shoot the famous "War Trilogy" (Generation, Sewers, Ashes and Diamonds), reflecting the need for actors at the Lodz Film School for generations of wartime underground resistance, and Polanski stands out from hundreds of candidates. Polanski played a small supporting role in "A Generation", but the cooperation with Vaida allowed him to truly enter the world of cinema. He began conceiving his own film until 1962's "Water Knife" became a hit. Later, Polanski filmed such masterpieces as "Chinatown" and "The Pianist" to be among the greatest films, and starred in his own directors of "The Master Catches the Demon" and "The Strange Lodger". In addition to his busy directorial work, he occasionally returns to his old job as an actor. In 1974 he starred in an Italian B-movie, Devil's Blood, with whom he was played by de Sica, who was no longer young. In 1994, he played with the French film emperor Gerald de Padio in the Italian director Giuseppe Tornadore's "Station of the Hidden Country", and most of the nearly two-hour film was only played by two people, compared to Depardieu. Many people marveled that the old and spicy Polanski turned out to be such a good actor. Somewhat similar to Polanski's electrocution experience is the Japanese director Takeshi Kitano, a Japanese "cross-talk" actor who entered the film industry because of Nagisa Oshima's "Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence", and later directed "Violent Man", "Sonata", "That Summer, Quiet Sea", which began to receive great attention at home and abroad. Takeshi Kitano starred in most of the films he directed, including the most famous "Hanabi", "Gangster", "Humpback City" and so on, in addition, he often starred in other directors' films, it seems that whenever Japanese directors need a tough role with no expression and ruthlessness, kitano Takeshi will think of Takeshi Kitano. In films such as Nagisa Oshima's "Odamu", Shinji Fukasaku's "Battle Royale", Choi Yoichi's "Blood and Bone", and Takashi Miike's "Izo", Takeshi Kitano adds a lot to the film with his unique acting skills. In the contemporary Japanese film industry, Takeshi Kitano is not only the best director, but also the most outstanding actor. With the increasing size of the film industry in various countries in the world, it is becoming easier for well-known actors with a considerable industry base to sit in the director's chair. Excellent actors including Robert de Niro, Al Pacino, Mel Gibson, Kevin Spacey, Ralph Fiens, Jiang Wen and others have tried to direct and self-direct films of good quality. Acting and excellent guidance have become an unstoppable trend of the times.
Directed and excellent
Compared with the increasingly common acting and excellent direction, there are far fewer directors who act in the opposite way. Even if the big director appears in one or two films, he will at most play soy sauce-style friendship cameos — Martin Scorsese flew from the United States to Japan to play Van Gogh for a day in his idol Akira Kurosawa's "Dream"; Fritz Lang was willing to play a cool one in "Contempt" that admired his descendant Godard; Otto Preminger, known for his arbitrary dictatorship on the set, played a brutal bald Nazi officer in Billy Wilder's "Soul of the Battlefield Army". Almost no one will be like Hitchcock, who has been insisting on making a cameo appearance in each of his films for decades as a passer-by with only one frame, and only a very few people can be like John Huston in "Chinatown", with only a few minutes of final appearance, the momentum and limelight have completely overwhelmed the old drama bones like Jack Nicholson. Most directors are not too willing to invest too much energy in starring in a movie (especially other people's films), so Feng Xiaogang's performance in "Old Cannon" is particularly difficult. But there have never been absolutes. An interesting phenomenon is that Quentin Tarantino, who has never played by convention, has only made a cameo appearance in his own films in his more than two decades of film career, but is willing to play the lead role in his good buddy Robert Rodriguez's film "Breaking Dawn". Moreover, whether it is the protagonist or the dragon runner, Quentin always likes to let himself be killed in a particularly obscene and tragic way in the movie, as if completing an invisible self-discipline on the screen. There are also some directors who have to act as a last resort after their careers are going downhill. Eric von Strausgen, who had shot masterpieces such as Greed in the silent film era, was instrumental in promoting the arrival of sound films because of his highly detail-oriented directorial style. But the irony is that after the popularity of sound films, Stroophen himself did not have the ability to control this new thing, and the only sound film directed in 1932, Broadway Avenue, was also shelved by the company, from the former director to the brink of near unemployment, and once had to return from Hollywood to his hometown in Europe. French director Jean Renoir's The Great Mirage gave Strausgen a chance to prove himself again, playing a German officer who did not lose his aristocratic temperament. The Great Mirage has been hailed as one of the best and earliest anti-war films in film history, and this spectacular performance allowed Ströhen to play the stereotypical German officer many times in many years that followed. In 1950's Sunset Boulevard, the former silent film director played the old housekeeper of the old silent film actress Norma Desmond (Gloria Swanson), who can see at a glance that both Swanson and Strawhen are playing themselves, a pair of tragic characters who are obsessed with the glorious past. With his lamentable appearance, Strausgen was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor that year. In another case, the respected elders use the method of personally participating in the battle to show their appreciation and promotion of the younger generations. Victor Sjøstrom was Sweden's most important early director, and his masterpiece The Wind is regarded as the best Western of the silent film era, and Ghost Carriage is considered to have laid the spiritual temperament of Swedish cinema in the decades that followed. After Sjøstrom, Sweden's only world-class master was Ingmar Bergman, and the religious core of the Seventh Seal that made Bergman famous around the world was inherited from Ghost Carriage. After filming The Seventh Seal, Bergman followed up with another masterpiece that had brought him to the altar, Wild Strawberry, in which the film's sole protagonist, an old man whose life was nearing death, was played by Sjøstrom. With the help of the angular face of this vicissitudes old man, Bergman presents the propositions of guilt and relief, contradiction and reconciliation, and even survival and death that may occur in a person's life with dreams and memories, giving this masterpiece a bit of psychoanalytic philosophical color. But if you want to choose the most passionate performer among all the directors, of course, it is Not Orson Wells. The genius, who shot the greatest film of all time ("Citizen Kane") at the age of 26, not only starred in most of his famous directorial works, but also portrayed a variety of characters in these films: sometimes a mysterious newspaper tycoon ("Citizen Kane"), sometimes an obsessive sailor who had been carrying a crime ("Miss Shanghai"), sometimes Shakespeare's alternative "Macbeth" and "Othello", and sometimes a rough police detective with a face of flesh ("The Robber Lady"). He has also left an indelible mark on the work of many other directors. His starring role in Jane Eyre (directed by Robert Stevens in 1943) is considered the best of dozens of editions of all time; the ghostly "Revenant" Harry in the classic film noir The Third Man has become the most eye-catching villain of all time; even the cardinal who made a cameo appearance in soy sauce in Sun Moon Is unforgettable. One thing is certain, even without the aura of the best director, Wells is still the top actor.