Who is the king of Chinese comedy? | round table

Crosstalk, sketches and comedy

Kaiyin: What style of comedian do you think Jia Ling is?

SaiRen: A very normal, ordinary, and regular comedian who belongs to the stage, she actually acted in some movies later, including cameos in the call of Beast Yi Xiaoxing or other films.

Kaiyin: I don't remember if she ever played a heroine in a movie...

Racer: I have the impression that she has not been the heroine, everyone knows her on the stage, that is, on the spring evening to say crosstalk. From "Hello, Li Huanying", we also know that she was admitted to a class of the Central Academy of Drama, that is, the cross-talk class, and the cross-talk class is relatively easy to test, because many people are reluctant to take the test. Actresses are even more reluctant. It is rare for a woman to be willing, but it seems that this is not Jia Ling's intention. She first arrived at the Chinese opera, and later became Feng Gong's apprentice. Therefore, in the movie, Feng Gong also appeared.

Kaiyin: There is a shot.

Hello Lee Huan Ying (2021)

Sai Ren: Help the apprentice, but also hope that his appearance can add color to the movie. I think she's a stage actress.

Kaiyin: What do you think is the difference between a stage actor and a film comedian?

Racer: Stage actor with a special focus on results. Just like Peking Opera, Peking Opera is also an appearance, red face and white face, the actor goes to that station, you don't need to know his/her history at all, you already know whether it is loyalty or adultery. When you watch the sketches of the Spring Festival Gala, you can quickly understand the temperament, personality, love and hatred and desire of the characters. It is not a character, it directly presents a kind of personality in our habitual consciousness, or a general character profile. It wants to let the audience know a character as quickly as possible.

This is not the case with movies, not only art films, but also commercial films, and the "result" is at least not something that is deliberately pursued, and it will not bring you a very clear element as soon as it is unveiled. It doesn't have to give you a clear image label right up the line. Because the movie is long enough, in 90 minutes or more, you'll slowly get to know the person.

Kaiyin: What you said is very interesting, it seems that the characterization of the stage sketch is flat.

Sai Ren: It's not easy to say so, television, sketches and movies each have their own attitudes, methods and directions for shaping characters.

Kaiyin: My perception is that the character shaping of the sketch is very weak, in fact, the sketch is aimed at explaining one thing. Of course, it cannot be generalized, such as Zhao Benshan.

Sai Ren: Yes, this cannot be generalized, but the situation you mentioned is relatively common, and I agree.

Kaiyin: But some other forms of comedy on the stage, such as cross-talk, have strong personality characteristics of the performers, Hou Baolin, Liu Baorui, Ma Sanli do not need to mention, like Guo Degang and Wang Zijian are also very strong in the theater. I am a fan of Wang Zijian in the small theater era, and many people are only familiar with Wang Zijian, who used to be a talk show TV host, and I don't know that the same person is in the second small theater of Guangmingge in Beijing Drum Tower, which is a completely different performance state.

I think that in the small theater, in addition to the shaking baggage of words, he has a very unique ability to communicate with the audience in the theater with his own personality characteristics, and his imagination is also very rich, he looks introverted but has a strong inner aura, and he can often bring cross-talk to the direction of absurd drama. He is a rare live cross-talk actor with a talent for intuitive acting in a small theater, and he is very brisk and does not rely on the "next three roads" rhetoric, but it is a pity that he has now given up not saying cross-talk. At that time, he could really be regarded as a representative of the revival of the Beijing school and the new generation.

Wang Zijian (left)

Sai Ren: He is very pitiful now, criticized by Zhang Ziyi and Hao Lei. He went to the talent show for "I'm the Actor," where it was sometimes awkward. But I've seen him host the show.

Kaiyin: He can't host the show, from the small theater to the TV host program ("Tonight's 80s"), in fact, from a cross-talk actor to a role similar to a sketch actor, but he acted in a sketch, or went to participate in a variety show, the level immediately dropped into an ordinary person.

"I'm an Actor"

Sairen: He performed some movie clips on that show, and I've seen the movies he did.

Kaiyin: I've also seen his films, which are very ordinary.

RACER: No, no.

Hello, Maniac! 》（2016）

Kaiyin: I think these changes of his are very representative, when he says cross-talk, he actually needs to build the content and level of the performance around his own personality, characteristics and aura, to a large extent, the content he said is not so important, but the way he shakes the baggage, combined with the expression, action and the cooperation of the bearer, in order to complete a performance process.

But when acting in the sketch, all the actors are actually revolving around a pre-universal prepared plot (xiangsheng itself has a strong live improvisational nature), such as Wang Zijian's later back-to-back stand-up comedy paragraph written by the screenwriter on "Tonight's 80s", I guess he himself did not clearly realize that he actually lost his personal vivid and flamboyant live performance personality, and was trapped by the text content of those few sentences.

"Tonight's Post-80s" (2012)

The cross-talk actor performance is actually self-centered by the performer, which is not only different from the sketch, but also has conflicts and contradictions. Once a cross-talk actor like Wang Zijian switches to an event-centered performance mode, his ego disappears and his charm is completely gone.

Back to today's theme, I would like to say that like Jia Ling or some other actor from sketches (although Jia Ling is also from a cross-talk background), her habitual performance mode is event-centered - I want to perform a very funny thing, but this cannot be formed, to exaggerate, "author" style. Like Hou Baolin and Ma Sanli, they are like writers in the cross-talk comedy industry.

Racer: Their egos are strong.

Kaiyin: But if you give Ma Sanli a sketch and push him to perform, maybe he won't be able to find the north at once. When it comes to the film "Hello, Li Huanying" along this line, at least the first two-thirds of it are connected by different sketch-like events, and in such a comedy of composition, it seems that no matter how the actor performs, it is difficult to really see her or his level.

SaiRen: There is a very important thing in comedy performance, that is, it does not care about the image, and more seriously, it is to dare to vilify yourself.

Kaiyin: Are there beautiful women acting in comedy...

Sairen: Wang Zuxian also has comedies, including performances like Liu Jialing and Wang Zuxian in "East Becomes West".

East Becomes West (1993)

Kaiyin: Maggie Cheung is ok.

Racer: Maggie Cheung is very good at acting in comedy, and then Wu Junru, people are at least not ugly. There is also Mao Shunjun like this. I even think that Mao Shunjun was quite beautiful when she was young, and Shao Meiqi also acted in comedy, and Shao Meiqi was very dignified at that time. "92 Black Roses and Black Roses" is good. And Baby Feng...

92 Black Roses and Black Roses (1992)

Kaiyin: We're a bit far away...

Racer: Yes, we'll talk about Hong Kong later. Back to Jia Ling, because Chinese crosstalk has rarely had female cross-talk actors for a long time, including now, which has also resulted in almost no cross-talk writers writing for female cross-talk actors. This is probably why she switched from cross-talk to acting in sketches. But few actresses in the sketch can do it like Song Dandan, and Song Dandan can compete with Zhao Benshan, that is to say, Song Dandan's personality weight in the sketch can be equal to Zhao Benshan.

And Zhao Benshan's other partner, gao Xiumin, who has passed away, is actually very good at playing, but there is no real clear personality. Also including Zhao Haiyan, who has emerged in recent years, the drama is good. But no matter how wonderful their performances are, they only complete a theatrical task, not present a personality.

In the sketch actor, Zhao Lirong has a personality, Gao Xiumin is always cooperating with others, and she is not, Zhao Lirong is everyone cooperating with me, according to the current saying, Zhao Lirong is set up. Her kind of old lady image that looks very cute and is actually very discy will run through every sketch, and Song Dandan also has this ability.

Jia Ling's performance on the stage does not have these, and it seems inappropriate to say so. The characters she portrayed should be considered to be not distinct enough and not full enough. Let's look at "Hello, Li Huanying" again, Jia Ling's personality is not too prominent. Shen Teng is different, he has, and in a short period of time, he can output the charm of the character image very efficiently.

Without specifically talking about shen teng's performance technology, there is also a very interesting problem here, that is, sketch actors, including comedy performances, he is constantly accumulating his own stage image and film image, so that the audience and performers stay in a comfort zone, and it is difficult to accept the challenge of defamiliarization. This also applies to the audience. It's not defamiliarization, but the more familiar the better, always watching the same number of performances.

Kaiyin: But familiarization and defamiliarization don't seem to be the same thing, I agree with you, but familiarization does not affect defamiliarization.

Racer: Yes, it doesn't affect defamiliarization. But comedians are also more stereotypical than other kinds of actors, and can't challenge your established understanding of me.

Kaiyin: It has a personality model.

RACER: Right. You can't keep the audience coming to terms with his other personality, or that he has several personalities. I don't know if it's feasible, but no one has done it yet.

Kaiyin: Comedians should not be. So from the perspective of "Hello, Li Huanying", Jia Ling actually did not really show a different talent for comedy performance in this film.

SaiRen: I don't see her talent as a comedian in all her films, and what we just said like Wu Junru, Song Dandan, and Zhao Lirong have very strong charm or form a very gripping magnetic field. She hasn't done it yet, but I guess it doesn't matter, I think she's pretty good at being human. I am a fellow countryman with her, she looks very likable, and in life, she is also very likable, so she can set up such a team.

Stage performances and film performances for comedy

Kaiyin: In fact, we can divide this problem into two levels. First of all, is there a difference between these comedians in Chinese films and stage comedians? And then worldwide, is there a difference between a movie comedian and a stage comedian?

Racer: I don't think I need to dwell too much on the stage or the comedic formation that comes with other art styles. In fact, comedy performances, including Europe and the United States, including our domestic ones, it has stage traces, or that sentence, almost all performances have stage traces, because the earliest performance is from the stage, the history of Western performance must be closely related to the history of theater, then the history of stage performance in the West is thousands of years longer than the history of film performance, so it will inevitably bring such a trace. But I know that now with the innovation of the language of film, it is mainly the change of film concept, so that it is not necessary to rely on staged performance.

Kai yin: But there are some film comedians who bring it to the stage, and it just doesn't hold.

Racer: Let's take an example.

Kaiyin: For example, Zhou Xingchi, although he has been a TV host, it seems that he has never acted in a stage play... Some of Stephen Chow's performances in the movie will probably not be established when they get on the stage.

Sairen: I think so, if Stephen Chow goes to act in a sketch, and the Cantonese sketch also needs a screenwriter and a director, then they will think of a way to transplant something. I think there are a lot of things that don't have a natural barrier.

It's just that we sometimes have a hard time imagining how Zhou Xingchi can act on a stage. I've seen him and Wu Mengda say a Cantonese cross-talk on TV, and from the perspective of crosstalk, of course, it's very general, but I feel that he can present a face on the stage.

Kaiyin: When it comes to this idea, I think that after the birth of the film, the form of comedy has changed, but on the other hand, there are very few actors in Chinese mainland who can really achieve this form change. I happened to be reading a book about the history of ancient Greek theater a while ago, and ancient Greek actors wore masks when performing comedies, and the audience could not see who the actors were. This actually means that the actor's sense of personality in that era was very weak. All they perform is what the playwright writes.

This lack of actor personality may have lasted for a long time in the history of Western theater, and it was not until shakespeare's time that it really changed qualitatively. But after the advent of the film, I think there is a big change, such as Buster Keaton, whose comedy performance form is not stage dramatization, but more like the action derived from circus performance, but this form is put on the movie screen, but it becomes a more attractive than theatrical performance, with strong personality characteristics and cinematic meaning.

Racer: Non-stop flowing.

Buster Keaton

Kaiyin: The film has greatly changed the model of comedy. Many Hollywood comedians are actually quite cinematic, such as Jerry Lewis, an imitation of Stephen Chow. His lines and story in the film are very weak, relying on physical and emotional details to communicate with the audience.

Jerry Lewis (right)

Racer: Stage performance, there is a great emphasis on the body language of comedians. Conversely, the film's reliance on body language is less intense.

Kai yin: But the focus of the film is still different, it is not that it does not require body language, but the requirement for body language expression is weakened, and to a large extent, it focuses on some interaction between body language and the environment, which is more obviously Jacques Tati.

Back to Stephen Chow, he pays great attention to the momentary sense of posture of the performance, and can always design a lot of emotional moments to release to the audience. For example, in "The King of Comedy", Cecilia Cheung poses and Zhou Xingchi goes to support her chin, which in an instant gets rid of the idea of performing comedy around one thing, which releases an environment, characters and emotions related to the personality of the performer.

The King of Comedy (1999)

Sairen: He would often learn Chaplin's expression.

Kaiyin: Such a performance will be particularly glorious when viewed on the screen.

Racer: Exceptionally glorious.

Kaiyin: But putting it on stage may have a reduced effect.

Sairen: I know what you mean, he must have needed a movie camera, not a TV camera. The camera zooms in on his limbs to focus on the action, the moment.

Chaplin

Kai Yin: And Since the birth of Chinese cinema to the present, I think there are not many comedians who can really complete the transformation from stage to screen. Perhaps it is precisely because of this transformation that our comedy movies will always look like sketches.

Racer: It's not good to talk about it absolutely. In fact, the same is true of Western comedy films, such as Laurel and Hardy in the silent film period, one fat and one thin. Then our country has Han Langen and Yin Xiuchen to copy them. There is also Xiulan Temple, we also copied one, it seems to be called Hu Rongrong. The one who played "Pressing The Year's Money" copied her stuff in it. But if you look closely, Lauley and Hardy, including Chaplin and Keaton, are all from the circus.

Pressing The Old Money (1937)

Keaton, in particular, doesn't use stunts when he performs. His bizarre and difficult moves were all done by himself. This is all thanks to his upbringing in the circus. I admit that their performances are cinematic, but the way they perform comes first and foremost from the stage.

Kaiyin: There is a source.

Racers: Chaplin and Keaton, as well as Chaplin's idol, the French comedy maestro Max Lindé. They rarely appear in close-ups in movies. It is basically presented in the middle and the long view, so this is the stage form. Because when we're watching a stage play, even when we sit in the first row, it's hard to see changes in an actor's facial muscles.

In the sound film, Kim Carey became the king of comedy with the flexible movement of his facial muscles. But his performance is also highly staged in my opinion.

Kim Carey

Speaking of which, I suddenly thought of the russian actor Andrei Miyakov, who had just died. It's the one who played "The Office Story." He is a very good comedian. "The Story of the Office" turned out to be a stage play. Earlier, he also acted in a movie called "The Trick of Fate", which was also based on a stage play. Tell me about a man who drank in the New Year, got on the wrong plane first and then got into the wrong bed.

We've talked about this film before. In that play, he had a lot of solo scenes with women, and at this time, his performance range was not large, the facial changes were very fine, and there were many micro-expressions that could only be captured with a camera. You won't laugh so hard when you watch this movie, but this movie will always be circling in your head and will make you smile. I think it's a real, cinematic comedy.

The Trick of Fate (1975)

Kaiyin: Miyakov reached another level. When he appears in the movie, his movements and expressions are completely off stage.

Racer: I don't want to deliberately arrest people.

Kaiyin: He doesn't look so rich in expression, but he has a unique comedic aura and interaction with the surrounding environment, which produces a related performance, rather than a blind exaggeration.

Racer: Kim Carey is the latter, right?

Kaiyin: Yes, and Kim Carey are two genres, and Miyakov's performance is very cinematic comedy.

The Story of the Office (1977)

Racer: It's one. I talk about this kind of comedy performance, he is a kind of "close-up" comedy. This word is certainly not accurate enough, many comedy film performances, can only complete the shaping of comedy characters in the middle and close-up, right? And Myakov is a close-up to achieve. And he doesn't have immediacy yet, he doesn't explode right away and detonate your laughs. In a more advanced way, after you read it, you will not laugh. He plays a comedic character who doesn't want to catch you all at once. He knows that movies, like life, require a process, and the more people grow up, the more mature they are, the less likely they are to see through at a glance.

Our comedies in recent years have been particularly hurried and panicked, afraid that the audience will not be able to sit still and will run. Some comedy films in the former Soviet Union can express the uneasiness of people's hearts in a very quiet way. There is also an actor that I particularly like and is also very good. His name was Olegga Bashirashvili, and he was also known in The Story of the Office.

There's also a film called "Autumn Marathon," and that kind of comedy performance is too advanced. He always plays in a slow and half-beat form, everyone is fast, he is slow, or in fact there is nothing, he still keeps slow, with a uniform speed to present the fatigue of the characters.

The Autumn Marathon (1979)

Kaiyin: Regarding the characteristics of Bashirashvili, it was told to me by my mother when I was a child, and she was a fan of his films. I remember this description very clearly to this day, she said that you see he played a "bad guy" in "The Story of the Office", but in "Two People Station" played a sad but a little comedic "good guy".

Comparing these two films, when he played the two diametrically opposed roles, he used the same set of expressions and actions, and the methods used were the same, but the audience did not feel awkward, but naturally accepted. The top realm of an actor is here, and there must be a qualitative change in his performance, but this change cannot be observed by the audience from the outside, and can only be felt intuitively. My mother said it was a super good actor, more than —

Racer: Better than Miyakov.

Two-Man Station (1983)

Kaiyin: I think the essence of this kind of performance is very cinematic, it is difficult to achieve this effect on the stage, if you play different roles on the stage, you need the actors to make a lot of drastic external changes.

Sai Ren: I really don't praise Soviet films, their comedies, pay great attention to the flow of life itself, believe in the comedy that life comes with it. And now most comedy movies respect the audience, not respect people. I don't care if you can understand this sentence. Man is complex, ambiguous, caught between self-knowledge and unconsciousness. Soviet comedy is very respectful of man, it does not suddenly speed up when the character enters the situation, it knows that man has his own speed.

One thing about comedy is that you use panic to disguise composure, you replace shyness with shamelessness, or vice versa. This is all the absurdity brought about by the social nature of man, that is, alienation. Only by appreciating the absurdity of man can your comedy be relevant to man. There is a saying in the West that people are born guilty, original sin. What I want to say is that the development of society to this day, people are born, is absurd.

Russian literature has a very good tradition, that is, life is alive, there is not much capital to be proud of, people are humble, they admit that people do not have the ability to determine themselves. And our comedy movies are too comedic, as far as I am concerned, to obscure the truth of life. It is not easy to say the performances of Huang Bo and Shen Teng. Nor is it entirely their responsibility. They are not playing a person who can be known and felt, but a group of character symbols running with laughter as the ultimate goal.

In most comedy movies in our country, man is abnormal at first, but he will be afraid of this abnormality, but eventually he will return to the normal track. In Soviet films, people seem to be normal, and when you go deep into the character itself as the film progresses, you will find that he has a lot of abnormal behavior, and this abnormality is difficult to eliminate.

Chinese comedy movies rarely do this, and "Have Something to Say" has this meaning, that is, Jiang Wen and Li Baotian have done what they are not willing to do. Doing what you don't want to do is a tragedy as well as a comedy.

Something to Say (1997)

There is also Zhang Ailing's "Long Live the Wife", which is also the case. Zhang Ailing was very impressed by Liu Beiqian. There are many good actors in this play, including Shi Hua, Zhang Fa, Jiang Tianliu, and Shangguan Yunzhu. The good part of this play, it is not so exaggerated, the plot is very smooth, like flowing water. It's about a woman who spends all her ingenuity on maintaining family relationships, but the family is a home of hypocritical indifference, and she happily goes back.

Long Live the Wife (1947)

In Zhang Ailing's view, or in the view of her boyfriend and director Sang Arc at the time, this attitude towards life is certainly not worthy of praise and praise. And most of our comedies say that this life is worthy of praise. It's too much like a lie, and the play "Long Live the Wife" is that it builds a lie, then pokes a lie, and then builds a lie. It's a chain reaction. The West seems to call it the cake effect, and if I remember correctly, it puts a lot of emphasis on causation.

In some Soviet films, its causal relationship is not so strong, or it is not obvious. Typical is "Autumn Marathon", does the hero really not love his wife, or love his lover? In my experience, people interact in the emotional process, perhaps at the beginning, because of something. But after the interaction, many people will say that the reason why we have a good relationship is not only because we are like-minded, but also because we have been together for too long.

This is something that Soviet cinema often has to do. Like "The Trick of Fate", it is a chat, there is no purpose, a rambling chat, but you will feel that the hearts of the two men and women will be particularly close when they waste this time.

Tragedy and comedy

Kaiyin: This can lead to a very interesting topic, whether it is a comedy or a comedian, the real core performance is actually tragedy, and when tragedy is made into comedy, it will be moving and wonderful, far more effective than making comedy purely for comedy. Chaplin's films have actually always been tragic, but he has always been portrayed in comedic acts. The same is true of Stephen Chow.

SaiRen: I think that Zhou Xingchi is not only called tragedy, but Also called It a vicious drama, which is particularly cruel.

Kaiyin: Sometimes it's a horror movie.

Sairen: Yes, I think he is sometimes very vicious in form, and also vicious on the inside, and "The King of New Comedy" is very vicious.

The New King of Comedy (2019)

Kaiyin: But he shows it in the form of comedy. On the contrary, using comedy to show comedy is actually a turning point.

Racer: The public is still willing to accept the turn.

Kaiyin: What about "Hello, Li Huanying", it is not a tragicomedy.

SaiRen: Strictly speaking, "Hello, Li Huanying" is not called a tragedy. Dead people are not called tragedies, tragedies are tearing beautiful things apart. And this movie is to preserve that beauty. What is at its core? Two people are in love, I love you and you love me, that's comedy. What is tragedy? It's that I love you and you don't love me, or you hate me, or even want to kill me. Simply put, comedy is about making people's wishes come true. The tragedy is that I can't fulfill this wish.

Kaiyin: What about the sensational part at the end?

Racer: It's just the driving force of the narrative, it's not really going to be a tragedy, Chaplin or Zhou Xingchi, when he came up, he was giggling, and when he finally came to understand, the wish is not realized, Zhou Xingchi is a bit nihilistic, right? You changed your life, so what? Whether you are rich or lowly, there is no essential difference. I think the reason a lot of people don't like The New King of Comedy is that he's not inspiring.

Kaiyin: Not warm.

Sai Ren: So a lot of people can't accept it, and he laughs so much, he scolds, and finally scolds everyone again, which hurts his self-esteem. Comedians often self-destruct their image, such as hitting a wall with their flesh, such as jumping into a cesspool pit in spite of themselves. By obliterating self-esteem, they are actually maintaining the audience's self-esteem. More advanced comedy is that the creator and the audience fall into the dust together.

Kaiyin: Let's talk about actors, do you think these comedians in the mainland are better?

Racer: Ge You.

Kaiyin: Really, it's just Ge You.

Racer: Yes, but Ge Fu's performance in recent years has not particularly satisfyed me. His best comedy performance —

Kaiyin: I think it should be "The Story of the Editorial Office".

The Story of the Editorial Office (1992)

Racer: Very good.

Kaiyin: Ge You has two comedies that are particularly good, one is "The Story of the Editorial Department" and the other is "The Big Satan".

Racer: "The Great Satan" made Ge You win the Golden Rooster Award for the first time. Well acted.

Kaiyin: Yes, the core of "The Great Satan" is a tragedy, but he uses the comedian way to take a tragic route, so it is very sad to see the end, but it is very relieved.

Sairen: He acts like a man. But now a lot of comedians often float around performing, unlike people.

Kaiyin: Like a psychopath.

Sairen: In that film, Ge You made people want to laugh and make people want to cry. He also performed a lot.

The Great Satan (1992)

Kaiyin: The key point is that I think Ge You was not cultivated by the academy system.

SaiRen: He studied drama and the Railway Literary troupe.

Kaiyin: But he is not from a science class, so there will be no academic problems. He should have directly performed on stage as soon as he entered the industry, and developed some performance habits by self-cultivation. For example, his body movements and expressions are not very rich, more restrained, with a little Brecht's withdrawal, but this withdrawal in turn has formed an impact on the audience, I think there are very few people in this Chinese actor who can form this "cold" impact, except for Ge You, I can't think of anyone.

Racer: Xu Guanwen, Zhou Xingchi is also influenced by him. The performances of both men were wide open and very neurotic. Neurotic performance and life-like performance, these two kinds of exaggerated or introverted performance, we don't talk about its high or low, I hope that the method of comedy performance can be a little more, now it is too monotonous. Happy twist their whole set of such a performance, not that they don't act well, but that I watch too much, I am a little tired.

Xu Guanwen

Kaiyin: Is it not that many actors confuse the difference between personal characteristics and monotony from performance from time to time? Some actors who are happy twist, when it comes to the key moment, always show the same expression, which may indeed achieve the effect of serving the plot, but that's all. When we think of Chaplin or Jacques Tati, we can feel this gap, and I think it essentially involves a perception of acting, to film, and even to values.

Jacques Tati

Racer: No way.

Kaiyin: When actors don't have much feeling about the life and people around them, it is easy to form a fixed and unchanging pattern. But like Tati and Chaplin, they seem to have formed a set of performance methods with personal characteristics, but they have actually been constantly observing and feedback on the surrounding environment, what kind of influence the external environment has on them, they will use their own habitual performance methods to find ways to include external shocks, and then show that their methods will continue to adjust with the content, emotions and emotions to be expressed, and the formation of performance patterns, personal characteristics and styles, but definitely not monotonous.

Many domestic comedians, especially big names, have a bit of such a posture: no matter what character they play and what kind of plot events they carry out, they will use his habits to conquer everything regardless of three seven twenty-one. I think it's a subtle but essential distinction, essentially a cognitive problem, and it leads to a level gap. Like Ge You is a better one, he has his own model, but also more flexible, in fact, he is trying to constantly use the environment and characters to carefully adjust his performance habits, as far as possible in the performance to include more content.

Sairen: There is also a category of comedians, Chaplin, Jacques Tati, and Japan's Atsumi Kiyoshi. They have a cultural self-awareness. They see life as a joke, and our comedy is to see people as a joke, and these two understandings of comedy for laughter are different. Including the Western Kim Carey, Adam Sandler, Ben Stiller, they are not playing a person, they are always playing a concept, what is this concept? This is a little man who is not ambitious, a man who is afraid of his wife, and this is a person with a strong vanity.

They are playing personality defects, not personality. This is definitely not a problem for an actor, and perhaps the entire creative team, including the production company owner, may find personality defects more attractive than personality. They feel that this can be able to cater to the audience, and they are not interested in leading the audience, they are particularly interested in catering to the audience. Because leading the audience is risky, they don't take risks.

Atsumi Kiyoshi

Kaiyin: Your statement is rather cruel.

Sairen: I may be greedy, and I want both a diversity in the comedy performance and a transcendence in his performance.

Kaiyin: I think we skipped a very key person, not to mention him, Chen Peisi. Of course, there is Chen Peisi's father, Chen Qiang, and Chen Qiang's old partner Zhao Ziyue. Chen Peisi should have a more important place in Chinese comedy before the advent of the 21st century.

Sairen: When he acted in comedy, he was already relatively mature. The first time I saw him act in a movie called "Returning to the Heart Like an Arrow", he played the bandit soldier, he used to be in the Bayi Factory, he was because of Chen Qiang's relationship with Tian Hua, Tian Hua was a white-haired woman, and his father was Huang Shiren. He went to the Bayi Factory. He also acted in a Yan Jizhou film "Pipa Soul". He played some villains in his early days. His performance was officially formed, starting from "Look at this family".

Look at The Family (1979)

Kaiyin: I think Chen Peisi and Shen Teng are quite similar in some aspects, but the two people have a little gap in some aspects.

Sai Ren: As we just said, Shen Teng is acting with personality defects, and Chen Peisi's series of images are playing people with personality defects. The characters he plays always want to be the tide of the times, but he is often overwhelmed by the times. "The Second Son Opens a Shop" is like this, and so is "Grandpa and Son Open a Song Hall". The first book in his "Born I Am Bound to Be Useful" series, "Father and Son", he fell asleep while entering college. What does it mean that he is asleep? He is missing his time, which is not urging you to forge ahead, but hypnotizing you. This is very sad, the father wants to beat him for his son's entrance to college, scold him to kill him, and then the son really can't pass the exam, not this piece of material, the board truck dragged him out of the examination room.

Father and Son (1986)

Sometimes, I think, it's not Shen Teng's fault either, it's a problem with the whole comedy environment, and there's no image like this that is dozing off in class. You don't need to act when you doze off, you don't need to take out your face. When your cry sounds, there is a tension that is the power of comedy and the power of tragedy. At this time, we should not rely on showing our faces, because the face in front of him is already exposed enough, or it is humiliating enough. I'm burying my face now. The invigilator told him and he said don't move, don't disturb my dreams.

Kaiyin: It may be said that Chen Peisi is also a comedian with a self-conscious sense of tragedy.

Sairen: Yes, most of his later comedy films, that's the way it is. There is a man called "Grandpa and Son Open a Song Hall", his father opens a song hall, he gives you like a young master, and then a woman comes over, first seduces Lao Tzu, then seduces his son, and then occupies the song hall. The scene of the father and son opposing the purpose suddenly made me think of Dong Zhuo and Lü Bu, those two are sex ghosts, and this film is not a sex ghost. It was the two big masters who were bullied by a weak woman. Many of Chen Peisi's films are not comforting.

"Grandpa and Son Open a Song Hall" (1992)

Kaiyin: Yes, I was particularly impressed by this plot, in addition to being funny, I also felt a vague sense of ethical discomfort at the time, which made it distinguish it from other comedy films.

Sai Ren: There is also an inexplicable embarrassment and pity.

Kaiyin: Yes, but I think it's pretty good.

Sairen: That is to say, this era actually opened a window for you, but in fact closed a door. Chen Peisi's films especially love to talk about these. Most of the comedies now are too silly, and every day they look forward to a good day, where are so many good days. They all say to empathize with the audience, but to empathize with the audience, we are all fools, you will always be a fool, you will not become a smart person in your life. The audience is not expected to accept it.

Kaiyin: In fact, the audience wants to empathize, and does not want to really face what is happening in reality.

Racer: Comforting.

Kaiyin: Popular movies don't dare to tell the audience that you are all fools, so that the audience can't empathize, and commercial movies only dare to tell the audience that you are hopeful.

Racer: I have hope, I can do a good job and I will succeed.

Kaiyin: I suffer losses now, but I will make a lot of money in the future (laughs).

Racer: You won't suffer a loss forever now, right? You're just getting started.

Kaiyin: But Chen Peisi's impression in "Father and Son" is: you can't go to college now, and you won't be able to go to college in the future! Completely waste wood.

Racer: The last shot of "Father and Son" is the father pulling the scooter under the big sun, and the scooter is the sleeping son. The beginning of the long march, your life journey, from this moment, officially began.

Kaiyin: In fact, the "Father and Son" series is all this model, and everything is a failure, whether it is to open a song hall or a hotel.

Sairen: Because his name is very good, called "Stupid Manager", this word is an old Beijing saying, now it is rarely said, the translation is "stupid manager". I think Chen Peisi's comedy, he respects both people and audiences.

The Fool Manager (1988)

Kaiyin: In recent years, when I watched him talk about comedy in interviews, I found that he was still quite theoretical.

Racer: He's very professional.

Han Fei and Niu Zhenhua

Kaiyin: Finally, I can say that there is probably the only comedian in China with an intellectual temperament, Han Fei, who played "Qiao Lao Ye Shang". The vast majority of Chinese comedians aim to be mixed up with the public, or to become small people in the city. Only Han Fei always carried a very cute and high posture. But he still achieved comedic effect, which is quite special.

Joe on the Sedan (1959)

Sai Ren: If you are in the top three Chinese comedians, there should be Han Fei. You just said intellectuals, in fact, I especially want to mention that he acted in another movie, "Icing on the Cake". Han Fei plays an intellectual, and in a new environment—the slogan at the time is that intellectuals are reformed—he shows a lot of anachronistic things. However, director Xie Tian was more generous and kind when filming, or recognized some virtues in intellectuals, or did not simply take them as the object of transformation, this film is actually a process of mutual transformation, it is not a one-sided.

Icing on the Cake (1962)

Kaiyin: Learn from each other.

Racer: I think everybody has a flash point, and then without a flash point you don't want to be with him at all. I said that the flash point is also a general flash point, but without a little flash point, you will certainly not associate with him. You just said it very well, that kind of intellectualism. Han Fei has also played some villains, which is also very exciting. "Long Live the Wife" we just mentioned, he is also in it. He has worked with Sang Arc many times, and Zhang Ailing also admires him. In "Mourning Middle Age", he played his son.

Han Fei's performance is short and fast, and he can quickly establish characters, but he has a continuous atmosphere. Can solve problems quickly. I think his face is, and I want to laugh when I look at it. No matter what he did, as soon as he spoke and looked up, he was filled with joy. This person is born to eat this bowl of rice, plus, he himself loves to read, so there will be book gas. In fact, in the 1930s and 1940s, the film mainly served the urban working class, so it had the interest of petty bourgeoisie and petty intellectuals.

Shi Hua's comedy along the way is more bitter and vengeful, with a sense of wandering, which I call a circus complex. Han Fei was more leisurely than them, and there was no heavy baggage. His comedy has no sense of responsibility as an enlightener, but rather the fun of enjoying life with him. More naturally, if you look at Zhao Dan's comedy again, I feel that he has baggage, and those low-level youths he plays, he has a strong ability to imitate, very similar. But he could not always find the natural, carved parts of the character. I think Han Fei has a very quiet feeling, while Zhao Dan is windy and fiery.

Mourning Middle Age (1949)

Kaiyin: I think Zhao Dan's performance is actually rather "noisy", he is a typical method school, the external performance is very rich, but the core is relatively weak. He can accurately meet the requirements of the dramatization of the film, and may even do more than the requirements, but his performance is in a state of drift at the core, such as the character in "The Crow and the Sparrow", which looks very active and rich, but there is always a bit of temperament and character dislocation inside.

The Crow and the Sparrow (1949)

Compared with Xie Tian, because the latter is also an actor with a strong temperament, but in the "Sixth Gate" to play the underworld, the temperament of the earth snake that erupts outward from the bones can be divided into higher than Zhao Dan. Of course, Zhao Dan's skills are no problem, very good. I feel that an actor's performance is composed of two parts, one skill, the other is the core personal talent and temperament, and the performance should be a combination of these two parts.

Gate Six (1953)

Sai Ren: You must have understanding and sympathy for the characters. To love people is not simply to complete a comedic task, not to be the engine of emotions. You're not an emotional engine, or a movie isn't a martial arts scene for your acting skills, it's not.

Kaiyin: You actually brought down a large number of Chinese actors when you say that.

Sairen: Speaking of which, I suddenly wanted to talk about Niu Zhenhua, "Stand up straight, don't lie down."

Kaiyin: And "Back to Back, Face to Face."

Racer: Both of these films are good, and "Red Light Stop, Green Light Line". Niu Zhenhua was also the first cross-talk and sketch actor. But in the movie, the stage traces are not heavy. It's natural and comfortable, and the acting doesn't jump, not a surprise.

Red Light Stop, Green Light Line (1996)

Kaiyin: I also think that Niu Zhenhua is a special case, he acts in sketches and movies, which are two completely different states.

Racer: There must be debugging by director Huang Jianxin. Huang Jianxin's comedy is to believe that life itself is full of jokes. And now the screenwriters and directors don't believe in life, and they don't understand life. Life itself is ridiculous enough.

You see Niu Zhenhua in "Red Light Stop, Green Light Line", and the full stop, are all sketch actors, but acting, in addition to being smooth, there are some "dull" parts, which is very good. There was a scene in that play, a group of students who learned to drive, had a meal at noon, came to pay the bill, no one went to buy it, the big money said I came to buy, he wanted to swipe the credit card. It's actually not funny to say, but as soon as the camera moves and the actor's expression keeps up, you will find it funny.

Kaiyin: Cinematic comedy cannot be described in words.

Racer: The lens is given, don't have to work so hard, the effect can come out naturally.

Kaiyin: In fact, in the actors of "Stand Up Straight, Don't Lie Down", Feng Gong and Niu Zhenhua are both from cross-talk, but Niu Zhenhua gives me the feeling that his performance has a process of "quieting down", and finally it seems to be layered, and the core personality of the characters expressed externally and internally shaped has a very interesting sense of distance. This sense of distance is not found in most sketch actors.

Racer: Less, especially less.

Stand Up Straight, Don't Lie Down (1993)

Kaiyin: But on the contrary, Feng Gong, in fact, he still stays on an external level, and the sense of distance between the inner and outer appearances has not been pulled apart, so it gives people the feeling that his performances are always "lively".

Sai Ren: Feng Gong looks more special and has a sense of joy. He succeeded in his skin, and defeated in his skin. Niu Zhenhua's appearance is a fat, very ordinary fat, easy to mix in the pile of people. And Feng Gong's image is more strange.

Kaiyin: Niu Zhenhua's film performance method is a bit like the Bashirashvili we just said, when he plays completely different roles in different films, he uses almost the same set of expressions and actions, but this same expression and body language have subtle changes that are not noticed, and when they appear in different contexts, they have different effects and meanings.

Obviously, in "Stand Up Straight, Don't Lie Down" and "Back to Back, Face to Face", the personalities, identities and concepts of his characters are completely different, but he has successfully created two different personalities in two situations with performances that don't look much different.

Back to Back, Face to Face (1994)

Racer: "Stand Up Straight, Don't Lie Down" and "Back to Back, Face to Face", Niu Zhenhua plays a smart person who reacts quickly to a thief. But the former is a rough person, and the latter is a cultural person. The former is very outward,the latter is very urban. Niu Zhenhua's performances are extremely evocative.

Kaiyin: I think this is an aspect of Niu Zhenhua's quite simple.

Wu Mengda and Zhou Xingchi

SaiRen: If you want to talk about Wu Mengda, I think we have to talk about Xu Guanwen first. He has acted in two major blockbuster films in Hong Kong, "The Great Warlord" and "Half a Pound, Eight Two". His performance is fast-forward and fast-out, and the emotions are immediately withdrawn, just like the zipper, brushing up and brushing down again. He can make the audience's attention highly concentrated in the shortest possible time, which is a bit like Beijing or Tianjin, the artists of the old society, the so-called flat land cake. As soon as you come around and he says two words, you're fixed. Xu Guanwen also has this ability, and it can also be said that his performance is very full.

Half a Pound, Eight Twos (1976)

Kai Yin: Let me interject, of all the Hong Kong comedians, the only one I can't understand is Hui Guanwen. Probably because of the cultural difference, I can't laugh when I see what he plays, and I can't understand where the laughter point is. So I still want to hear you talk about the advantages of Xu Guanwen?

Racer: Hui Guanwen is actually the same as the actor mentioned earlier, they are all to create a series of personality systems, after the Take-off of the Hong Kong economy, Hui Guanwen played the laggard, but he will emphasize the reason for his personality. When he is a boss, he will bully the people below and exploit the people below, if he is the person below, he will be passive and sluggish, he will not work well, and there is basically no glorious point in personality. His greatest strength, because he was stupid, didn't break much. In fact, I think that at that time, the audience was braver and could accept the negativity of human nature.

Kaiyin: The disgraceful side.

Racer: This disgraceful side, the darkness can not be talked about. At a time when Hong Kong's economy is developing at a high speed, because individuals cannot keep up with the rhythm of the times, it is easy to release the evil side. He is just released, not really going to rob the bank, there is a stomach of bad water, but there is no place to pour, you can not find a container for bad water, Xu Guanwen movie has been talking about this matter. Zhou Xingchi's transformation of the character's limbs is influenced by Xu Guanwen, but it is not the same. Xu Guanwen's limb variants are physical and causal. Like in "Modern Bodyguard", he has a plaster cast on his hand, and he has to take medicine and play cards, which visually produces a very direct joke.

Modern Bodyguard (1981)

Zhou Xingchi's later films did not pay much attention to this causal relationship. Wu Mengda is Xu Guanwen's hand-dancing, open-and-close acting method. It is also highly unified with Xu Guanwen's physiology and psychology. If you praise Wu Mengda,his micro-expressions are richer than Xu Guanwen's, and sometimes he can find contrasts between external emotions and internal psychology. But it is still a causal chain at work, and here we only talk about the performance method, not the advantages and disadvantages. Zhou Xingchi has reached another realm, and can walk freely between me and no self.

Wu Mengda

Kaiyin: In fact, from the perspective of performance methods, it is very popular to say that actors are divided into two categories, one type of actor must ask the causal relationship: Why am I standing here? Why should I wear this suit? Why should I raise my hand and slap someone in the mouth, he asked clearly in order to create a situation for himself to perform; the other kind never asked, there was no need, I just stood there and did the action and spoke according to my wishes.

Wong Kar-wai's description of Lin Qingxia is the first, she must always ask the director, why she did this, what is the character's personality, the causes and consequences of doing things are clearly asked, she began to act. But Zhou Xingchi is the complete opposite of Lin Qingxia.

In this regard, there is a famous example, when filming Casablanca, director Michael Curtis asked Humphrey Bogart to stand by the bar and look at the door, Humphrey Bogart asked the director Michael Curtis what I was looking at, the director said you don't have to care about this, just watch, it turns out that this Humphrey Bogart gaze shot is one of the most attractive close-ups in the whole movie, no matter what he is watching, the next shot has a different charm.

Casablanca (1942)

Racer: The relationship between the combinations of movie pictures is not 1+ 1 equals 2.

Kaiyin: These are actually two completely different methods and genres of performance. Therefore, the reason why Wu Mengda and Zhou Xingchi look good together is actually because they are actors in two different performance systems.

Sai Ren: One has both form and god, and the other is a god and a god. Zhou Xingchi is a seemingly mysterious person, one is his original "me", the other is the "me" that he wants to transcend, and the two kinds of "me" are tied together. On the surface, Wu Mengda was the elder of Zhou Xingchi, an educator and a leader, but later, Wu Mengda became a follower of Zhou Xingchi. Wu Mengda plays a dependent role, and does not feel the pain of losing himself. Zhou Xingchi seems to have a great pursuit of self-realization, but in the end, he, like Wu Mengda, is also a kind of self-exile.

Kaiyin: So a large part of Zhou Xingchi's performance effect is reflected by Wu Mengda. Because the person next to him is actually a person struggling in a conformist life, his free crossing without boundaries is so glorious. The audience realizes the unproductive charm of his nonsense.

SaiRen: The characters he plays are essentially people without cause and effect. In "Shaolin Soccer", Zhou Xingchi slapped Zhao Wei for an unknown reason. Zhao Wei was so good to him before, and has established a set of emotional preparations in the audience's impression. Once upon a time one was very poor, one was ugly.

When this situation began to reverse, Zhou Xingchi came up and gave her a few slaps. Zhou Xingchi said that he was driving away the flies on Zhao Wei's face, which was nonsense. But it can also be explained that Zhou Xingchi is driving away the flies in his heart, and it can also be explained that he hit the audience. Forget the two men's previous grudges. Stephen Chow's performance here is extremely spatial.

Shaolin Soccer (2001)

Kaiyin: When I watched this scene, I had a strong impression that he was probably laughing at people watching off-screen: Don't you want to know why? I'll give you a reason. But this reason is very ridiculous when it sounds: why did I hit you, because you have flies in your face! This slap action not only carries comedic effects, but also permeates disdainful ridicule, while targeting Zhao Wei in the movie and audiences outside the film. A simple action, there are several levels at once.

Racer: "Shaolin Soccer" is a great movie, and I think Feng Xiaogang has a good evaluation of Stephen Chow. He said that some people are proud because of movies, and some people are proud of movies because of him.