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The documentary "Dragon and Tiger Martial Artist", which is currently being screened in theaters, is quite distinctive: full of passion, intensive information, linearly laid out timing structure, and the theme of torch inheritance. And all this is aimed at a rather special film industry: dragon and tiger martial artists.
Dragon tiger martial artist
The position of "Dragon and Tiger Martial Artist" is taken from Cantonese opera, which refers to the martial artist who is specifically responsible for martial arts. In the film industry, dragon and tiger martial artists are mainly responsible for the stunt work of action scenes and the role of galibi. In some blockbuster action scenes, even if the action stars perform in person, there will be dragon and tiger martial artists who will test the difficulty coefficient first.
In general, Hong Kong action movies are equivalent to Chinese action movies, and the source of Hong Kong action movies is opera. There are two main types of opera affected, one is Cantonese opera and the other is Peking opera. Cantonese opera can be understood, why did the northern opera Peking opera come from? In the documentary, Tang Jili's statement is that because of the War of Resistance, Peking Opera actors moved south. This is just one of the reasons. In addition, there was the National Government's ban on the filming of martial arts films in the 1930s and the Civil War between the Kuomintang and the Communist Party after the War of Resistance.
In Hong Kong martial arts films of the 1950s and 1960s, the action scenes were almost copied from Cantonese opera and Peking opera, and according to Zhang Che, "the action scenes were almost the same as on the stage". In the martial arts films directed by Hu Jinquan, the action scenes are extremely similar to Beijing opera. The advantages are self-explanatory, the disadvantages are that beijing opera is entrusted with abstract bokeh space, space is based on the actor's position to come out (such as Qi Rushan's summary of "silent, no singing, no moving, no dance"), the film is a physical space, director Hu still let the actors keep moving, and the aesthetic gap generated here is very conspicuous.
Dragon Gate Inn (Hu Jinquan, 1967)
The real change in the situation of Hong Kong action movies was Bruce Lee, who came out in the 1970s. In fact, battle kung fu has made fans around the world obsessed with body movements come out of the Ninth Heaven. But what cannot be ignored is that Bruce Lee's action plays still have certain opera and dance elements. This is revealed in the documentary.
Bruce Lee has the famous killing scene of killing the Buddha with one dang ten, encountering the Buddha, many martial arts moves around his people, this Week Xuan confrontation has a strong dance-style movement rhythm, and Bruce Lee's signature shout, the surface role is to improve morale, combat effectiveness, and more importantly, to prompt the martial arts to pay attention to the rhythm. Because during the fight, the buried martial arts will be nervous and out of control, forgetting whether they should shoot at this moment. The shouts are like rhymes.
Big Brother Tangshan (1971)
It was also in the late sixties and early seventies, the era of Bruce Lee's fires, that the demand for martial arts surged. I don't want Bruce Lee to die without a few years. This dealt a near-devastating blow to the Dragon tiger martial arts division. In the documentary, a martial artist recalled that in the 1974-76 period, Hong Kong action films almost came to a standstill. Many Dragon and Tiger martial artists were forced to change careers, and those with skills opened rentals, and those without skills were even low enough to work as porters. It was not until the end of the 1970s that Liu Jialiang and Hong Jinbao's kung fu films emerged that the situation was salvaged.
The explosion of Hong Kong action movies is linked to the explosion of Hong Kong movies and the rapid take-off of Hong Kong as a modern city. The 1970s were a time of miraculous explosions in Hong Kong's economy. The social environment has been greatly improved by the popularization of compulsory education, the establishment of subway stations, the implementation of the public housing scheme, and the establishment of the Independent Commission Against Corruption. Hong Kong society in this era has extreme instrumental rationality on the one hand, and a strong anti-intellectual tendency on the other hand. This social background, implemented into Hong Kong action films, is characterized by both the sense of innocence and rambling that seems to be a return to the era of film silent films, and the ultimate thrill of exhausting all possible physical tyranny.
The story of "Seven Little Blessings" need not be said much for fans familiar with Hong Kong action movies. It is worth noting that Peking Opera has made a much greater contribution to the modernization of Hong Kong action films than Cantonese opera, and if "Seven Little Blessings" learn Cantonese opera, it is really impossible to guarantee whether they can have later results. The important reason here is that the action scenes of the northern school opera are more stable and thick than the short action of the southern school, which is much more open and closed, and the change of frequency and amplitude is more rapid and the sense of movement is more sufficient, which is reflected in the stage, and the visual level will be very pleasing to the eye.
The martial artist interviewed in the documentary said that the Master of Peking Opera came to Hong Kong to open the "Chinese Drama Academy" in Hong Kong, and that he accepted apprentices to make a living. Yu Zhanyuan soon realized that the possibility of these apprentices singing Beijing opera in the future was very low, and the emerging film was their right way, so there was also a purpose for cultivation. After all, his youngest daughter, Yu Suqiu, had become an important actor in Hong Kong martial arts films in the 1960s.
Interestingly, none of the best students in the China Academy of Drama became movie stars. Jackie Chan, Yuan Biao, and Hong Jinbao, who sang and saluted the last seat, became the most popular movie superstars, and these superstars were all started by the lowest dragon and tiger martial artists. Maybe it's yin and yang, maybe it's related to the internal aesthetic mechanism of Beijing opera. There is no doubt that Jackie Chan and Hong Jinbao's housekeeping skills are to film the action aesthetics of Beijing opera.
After the end of the 1970s, the Hong Kong action film circle formed a situation in which Cheng Jia Ban, Hong Jiabao, Yuan Jia Ban and Liu Jia Ban fought against each other, which was originally very similar to the drama team confrontation. The form of confrontation between several parties is largely "fighting bridge section" (the theme of the film and the main line of the drama can be ignored), which is a bit similar to the street stage sense of the overpass. The baggage in the bridge section and the cross-talk industry is the same function.
The documentary "Dragon tiger martial artist" has a larger page showing the dragon and tiger martial arts master's fighting spirit in the style of steelmaking, showing the details of their incredible physical fighting.
Mars, an important member of the family class, said that during the filming of "Plan A", there was a scene of falling from the second floor. There were no mats on the ground, just looser mud. The crazy point of Jackie Chan's demand is that not only does it require the process of decline to churn and twist to show the dynamic sense of body posture, but it must also fall on Mars. During the filming, the wrestler hit Mars' waist with unmistakable accuracy, and the latter then lay motionless in the hospital for two months.
On the performance of fighting life, Hong Jinbao and Jackie Chan are compared, and the fiery madness is even worse. Take "Dragon's Heart" as an example, this movie is originally about brotherhood (the story is inspired by the famous book "Between Man and Mouse" by American writer John Steinbeck), and the literary drama is the main axis, but because the protagonists are Jackie Chan and Hong Jinbao, there must be action scenes and must give enough homework.
Hong Jinbao carefully designed a scene in which eight people jumped off the building after the explosion of the construction site, and the difficulty of this scene was that the eight people jumped off the building together, and it was likely that there would be a situation where people were oppressed in the process. In the process of real shooting, as soon as Hong Jinbao finished filming, he immediately shouted out not "finishing work", but "saving people", and there was indeed a tragic situation of people oppressing people on the scene.
There is also a jumping scene in this film, which requires the jumper to jump from the third floor to the cloth roof of the second floor, from the ceiling to the top of the car that is driving in front of them. The first time the real shot was no problem, Hong Jinbao asked to come a second time, and as a result, the martial artist Qian Jiale jumped over his head, and the third floor jumped directly to the ground. Directly from the scene to the hospital. The craziest thing is more than that, Yuanwu was asked to jump from the fourth or fifth-story building of the mall to the ice of the ice rink in "Provincial Hong Kong Flag Soldier", and the tragic thing is that he must fall to the ground first!
Yuanwu said in the interview that if it were not for the drama supervised by the eldest brother Hong Jinbao, he would definitely not jump. After this scene jumped, he knew that no matter what the outcome was, he would definitely go straight to the hospital.
There is no specific analysis or detailed explanation of the reasons why these action actors and dragon and tiger martial artists are crazy and crazy to create extreme body action scenes. Considering social factors and growing up, there are probably the following points that cannot be omitted.
First, the treatment is indeed very high. Xiong Xinxin said that he came to Hong Kong from the mainland in 1987 to work as a dragon and tiger martial artist, and his monthly income was 8,000 Hong Kong dollars, which was similar to the salary of mainlanders for one year at that time. Although there is no way to buy insurance (Jackie Chan believes that Tom Cruise's series of extreme action scenes are fake), the leading brother will be responsible. Hong Jinbao's statement in the documentary is that all the actions he designed must guarantee that no one will die, and if he is paralyzed, he will be raised for a lifetime. Most of the Dragon and Tiger Martial Artists have a low level of education, and even a few primary schools have not been read, and they lack physical skills, which is a very tempting salary.
Second, in the early 1980s, the newly elected British Margaret Thatcher and the Reagan administration in the United States implemented a conservative neoliberal policy, and under this influence, the social norms of free competition and the law of the jungle were magnified to the extreme in Hong Kong. One side jumps from the seventh floor into the sea, and the other side has to jump directly from the eighth floor into the fire pit. Hong Jinbao's favorite action scene is to bump into the waist before people fall to the ground. This crazy competition leads to the escalation of the action scene step by step to the point of no expense.
Third, most of these action actors are from the drama team. The actors in the drama team have experienced extreme physical abuse since childhood, and they have been trained in masochism. As some martial artists in the documentary say, the painful experience of the body can sometimes even form a deformed pleasure.
Wu Siyuan lamented for the martial artists in the documentary that he had a high income that year, but he did not know how to manage money, and even tainted bad habits, resulting in a desolate evening scene. There is nothing wrong with this statement, but the generalization of this phenomenon also has its roots, not just the low level of personal education. Jackie Chan once said in an interview with Yang Lan that in the era of crazy shooting of difficult action scenes, he didn't care about anything at all, and he died. When the tension between the poles of life and death is stretched to the extreme, all that can be taken into account is the pleasure of the present moment.
The fighting spirit of dragon and tiger martial artists is certainly an important reason why Hong Kong action movies can even surpass Hollywood and be at the highest level in the world, but if this is over-rendered, it will also make people ignore the craft attributes of their martial arts treasure book cheats. Are Hong Kong action movies just relying on fighting to dominate the world of martial arts?
This is certainly not the case. Podwell's famous book "The Secret of Hong Kong Cinema: The Art of Entertainment" summarizes some, but not all, some laws can only be understood in actual combat, and some even do not spread such as occult laws. Jackie Chan himself made a documentary "Jackie Chan's Stunts", which disclosed some industry secrets. Just to name a few (examples not entirely from this documentary).
The previous mention of Bruce Lee's big killing squad, with one as ten. Jackie Chan has improved this scene. Bruce Lee killed the battle, addiction is too much fun, but from a realistic point of view, why should a group of people in the background want to go up one by one? Wouldn't it be faster to take revenge when a group attacked?
Jackie Chan's improved plan is that there can be no one in the background, and the enemies come from all directions of the picture one by one, which is significantly improved at the level of realism. Then there is Jackie Chan is a Beijing opera actor, beijing opera pays the most attention to appearance positioning, concave shape, which is reflected in Jackie Chan's hairstyle. Although his hairstyle was later ridiculed by netizens, it really enhanced the flowing dynamics of the body.
Jackie Chan will also have some creative solutions that do the opposite. Generally speaking, one-shot action will give people a sense of reality, but Jackie Chan will occasionally choose clever editing points that are usually overlooked. For example, jumping on a motorcycle and kicking people, a mirror seems real in the end. Jackie Chan's plan is, after jumping up, immediately cut it, and the next shot is a kick, which creates elastic motion at this editing point. One shot will not have this effect in the end.
On the whole, the action movies of Jackie Chan and Hong Jinbao are a kind of physical expression of people in a state of crazy survival in the current environment. A variety of fighting props, incredible physical misery, and a game-like chase and escape are all organic parts of this expression. This is actually a kind of historical metaphor for the social situation in Hong Kong.
There are many types of Hong Kong action movies, and Jackie Chan and Hong Jinbao naturally cannot represent all of them. Liu Jialiang is mentioned in the documentary, and the Hongquan master Liu Jialiang must be fisted to the flesh because he is a real kung fu fighter, otherwise there is no visual effect (can be compared with the actual combat scene directed by Xu Haofeng, who has risen in recent years).
For Yuan Heping, the movie is not real, but makes fake things real. Yuan Heping's characteristic is to use various fulcrums to visually rationalize the exaggerated actions that are theoretically impossible to complete, and Xu Ke's "Huang Feihong" is a masterpiece of physical extreme ingenuity.
The famous ladder battle in the film, Xu Ke is inspired by video games. Xiong Xinxin said that Jet Li was injured, and he and Gu Xuanzhao took turns playing Huang Feihong and Yan Zhendong. As the Grandmaster of the Southern Sect, why Huang Feihong played all the Northern Sect Kung Fu was completely out of Xu Ke's consideration. Then there is Cheng Xiaodong's action style, which is completely a wave of freehand flow, paying attention to the artistic creativity of the scene.
"Huang Feihong"
There is no problem with the feelings and professionalism of "Dragon tiger martial artist", but the viewpoint level is limited. This is not to say that the interviewees are less Jackie Chan or Yuan Biao, but are limited to action directors and martial artists, and lack an external extraction and analysis point of view. If there are more non-action actors, non-action film directors, foreign filmmakers, experts and scholars, the image of these martial artists will be richer and more three-dimensional, and the audience's understanding of action movies will be deeper.
The second half of the documentary talks about weakness and inheritance, Qian Jiale opened a professional Dragon and Tiger Martial Arts Training Class in Hong Kong, Dong Wei cultivated a large number of new outstanding martial arts instructors in the mainland, and Zhen Zidan integrated MMA techniques into traditional martial arts. However, whether it is the mainland or Hong Kong, there have been no new action superstars since the new century.
Hollywood's study of Hong Kong action movies began in the late 1990s, and a large number of action scenes in movies such as The Matrix, Tomb Raider, and Spider-Man are Hong Kong-style action design at first glance. In films like "Spy Heavy", you will find that the combination of editing skills and close free combat techniques has been able to create a Hong Kong-style action movie on an equal footing. By the time of Kung Fu Panda, Hollywood computer stunts have been able to fully imitate the Hong Kong-style action style.
Kung Fu Panda
However, if you compare the best-known action film series in Hollywood in the past decade with the current "Fury And Heavy Cases", you will find that in the live-action action movies, Hong Kong-style action movies still have some things that Hollywood cannot surpass. For example, the sense of rhythm, such as the clever design scheme of creating a crisis - solving the crisis, such as the dexterous interaction between space and props, and more importantly, the expressive energy of the real body - how does Keno Reeves compare with Zhen Zi Dan?
"Fury: Serious Cases"
In today's post-human era, if the Nolan classical scheme challenges the hegemony of Hollywood special effects blockbusters, Hong Kong action movies will always be the most important opponent and inspiration for Hollywood action movies.