The historical event of occupying the Presidential Palace, most people are most impressed by chen Yifei and Wei Jingshan's cooperation in "The Capture of the Presidential Palace", a famous oil painting, from which we have all felt the grandeur conveyed by it.
Photography: Literary Secrets
On the eve of this year's National Day, when the author visited the Shanghai Songhu Anti-Japanese War Memorial Hall in Baoshan District, he also saw an oil painting created by oil painter Wei Jingshan in 2015, which is a figure painting, which is a portrait of Huang Meixing, the first senior general to die in the War of Resistance Against Japan.
Portrait of Huang Meixing by Wei Jingshan
The symbolic significance of the "occupation of the presidential palace" is self-evident, it symbolizes the birth of a new republic, is an important historical node, so it is indispensable to reproduce this historical event in film and television works.
Recently, two revolutionary film and television works with relatively large responses, "Decisive Moment" and "Diplomatic Storm", have reproduced the video scene of "occupying the presidential palace" on the screen.
"Decisive Moment" and "The Great Undertaking of Nation-Building" are the same shots
"Great War Ning Hu Hang" footage
However, this passage in both works is taken from the "Great War of Ninghuhang" in the "Great March" series filmed by Bayi Film Studio, which shows that the film of Bayi Film Factory still reproduces the symbolic historical situation of "occupying the presidential palace" very classicly.
The earliest source of the classic picture of "Occupying the Presidential Palace" dates back to the Soviet director's 1950 documentary "The Victory of the Chinese People".
The Soviet photography team for this documentary came to China on the eve of the founding ceremony. As soon as I arrived in China, I was put into the shooting of the founding ceremony, when the Chinese photography team could only shoot with black and white film, and the Soviet film team could use color film, so the end part of the "Decisive Moment" released this year directly quoted the founding ceremony part of the Soviet Film Team that year, allowing us to see the vivid figure and face of Mao Zedong and other leaders of the older generation who had never seen it before.
Valramov, the general director of the Soviet Union for the filming of "The Victory of the Chinese People", was good at shooting war documentaries, and had filmed famous documentaries such as "The Great Defeat of the German Army Outside Moscow" and "Stalingrad", and won the Stalin Medal four times.
When Wallamov filmed "The Victory of the Chinese People", the three major battles were over, so he used the original troops who participated in the battle to re-shoot the war scenes. Lin Biao's Four Fields had already reached Hainan, and in order to cooperate with the filming of the Liaoshen Campaign, the troops were specially dispatched back to the original position of the Liaoshen Campaign and made up for the battlefield.
In "The Victory of the Chinese People", the scene of the capture of the presidential palace was also remade, which is the scene of the People's Liberation Army rushing into the presidential palace that is now seen.
Before that, Chinese photographers had also made a documentary about "A Million Heroes Descending to Jiangnan", in which there were also scenes of attacking the presidential palace, but the Chinese photographer only filmed a few shots of the People's Liberation Army opening the door of the presidential palace, and then the camera shook up, and the lintel of the three characters of "Presidential Palace" appeared.
The capture of the presidential palace in "A Million Heroes Under the Gangnam"
In contrast, Wallamov's artistic play of the same scene in "The Victory of the Chinese People" was filmed majestically and dynamicly, and the way the camera in the film was processed has always affected the film and television creation of today's film and television occupation of the presidential palace.
The shot of rushing into the presidential palace in "The Victory of the Chinese People"
Under the treatment of the Soviet director, the film camera first faces the horizontal road in front of the presidential palace, and then, following the figure of the People's Liberation Army charging, shakes to the gate of the presidential palace, and then moves up to see the Kuomintang flag on the lintel slowly descending. The entire lens achieves a perfect synthesis in vertical and vertical movement, giving people a sense of artistic integration.
The most famous shot is that the Soviet director saw the depth of the corridor of the presidential palace, and then he let a group of people rush into the presidential palace, and the camera followed the figure of the soldiers all the way to the end of the corridor.
This shot, set by a Soviet director, was repeated and imitated by subsequent films and televisions with the theme of Liberating Nanjing.
However, "A Million Heroes Descending jiangnan", which was previously shot by a Chinese photographer, did not have this set of dynamic PEOPLE's Liberation Army rushing all the way into the presidential palace, which shows that soviet photographers gave the documentary a vivid and impactful aesthetic form.
The earliest film footage showing the People's Liberation Army rushing into the presidential palace was "Tonight's Starlight" shot in 1980.
A set of shots from "The Stars Shine Tonight"
In the film, the peasant girl played by Li Xiuming is sleeping, fantasizing about following a group of fighters to the presidential palace, and then she follows the figure of the soldiers and runs all the way to the characteristic corridor of the presidential palace, and the design of the entire lens is completely a copy of the Documentary of the Soviet Director.
In this group of shots, halfway through, the peasant girl breaks away from the warrior's march and opens the door of a room, and the camera follows her to the side, where the peasant girl smashes the statue of the dignitary representing the old era.
The 1982 film "Bell Mountain under the Wind and Rain" did not use the impeccable aesthetic footage of this group of People's Liberation Army rushing into the presidential palace taken by soviet directors, directly showing Chen Yi coming to the front of the presidential palace, looking up at the lintel, only to see the PLA soldiers standing on the lintel and raising the red flag.
This set of shots is obviously closer to reality than the one shot shoted by Soviet directors, following the historical facts recorded by Chinese photographers in the past.
In the 1989 "Founding Ceremony", it was basically designed according to the lens design of "Wind and Rain Under the Bell Mountain", showing the SOLDIER soldiers standing on the lintel of the presidential palace, celebrating victory, and did not use the soviet director's design to rush into the presidential palace.
Footage from the Founding Ceremony
Perfectly reproducing the Soviet director's shot design of rushing into the presidential palace is the 1999 film "The Great War of Ninghuhang", which shows the soldiers of the People's Liberation Army rushing through the gate of the presidential palace like a wild ride, rushing into the presidential palace along the central axis, and using the long shot of the follow-up, reproducing the magnificent scene of the soldiers marching along the promenade and rushing into Chiang Kai-shek's office.
Since then, this set of shots has become a classic prototype that has been repeatedly quoted in subsequent film and television works.
The recently released "Decisive Moment" and the 2009 film "The Great Undertaking of the Founding of the Nation" have followed this set of shots rushing into the presidential palace.
In "Diplomatic Storm", we can also see that this set of shots is used.
A shot from Diplomacy
In the TV series "Changing the Human World" broadcast in 2018, the footage of Mao Zedong's poems was overprinted, and the scene of the People's Liberation Army rushing into the presidential palace appeared, and the footage from "The Great War of Ninghuhang" was also directly used.
A shot from "Changed the World"
In the film, when Chen Yi and Deng Xiaoping came to the presidential palace, they saw the troops sleeping directly in the corridor of the presidential palace and cut off the carpet in the corridor of the presidential palace, which triggered the decision to strengthen the discipline education of the army.
And this set of plots has a similar expression in the "Founding Ceremony". In the film, when Deng Xiaoping, Chen Yi, and Liu Bocheng arrived at the Presidential Palace, Deng Xiaoping found that the carpet in the corridor had been cut off, and after questioning, it was the troops who had been stationed to cut them off, thus introducing the reiteration of military discipline, which was the key plot before the liberation of Shanghai.
Footage from the Founding Ceremony
In the TV series "The Decisive Battle of China's Destiny", we can also see such a set of scenes. In the TV series, when Chen Yi, Deng Xiaoping, and Liu Bocheng come to the presidential palace, they find that the soldiers are sleeping directly on the corridors of the presidential palace, which naturally triggers a new theme of strengthening discipline education.
Footage from The Decisive Battle of China's Destiny
In "Changing the Human World", when Chen Yi and Deng Xiaoping entered Chiang Kai-shek's office, they saw Chiang Kai-shek's portrait lying on the ground and asked who did it, and the soldiers said that they did it, because they hated Chiang Kai-shek, so they broke his portrait.
According to the 1975 film "The Wheels Are Rolling", the portrait of Chiang Kai-shek in the presidential palace was struck by a stick from Geng Dongshan, a former model in the film. However, this film does not show the shot of rushing into the presidential palace, directly showing the People's Liberation Army rushing into the office of the presidential palace, and then the protagonist takes a dog beating stick and suddenly breaks the portrait of Jiang.
Footage from Wheels Rolling
The scene of the seizure of the presidential palace in the TV series "Mao Zedong" broadcast in 2013 also came from "The Great War of Ningbo, Shanghai and Hangzhou".
A shot from the TV series Mao Zedong
The TV series "The Decisive Battle of China's Destiny" was filmed in 1999, and it is worth noting that the picture of the capture of the presidential palace in the film directly used the lens of the Soviet director rushing into the presidential palace, even after such a long time, the group of shots shot by the Soviet director was used in the current TV series, and there was no sense of violation.
The scene of the seizure of the presidential palace in the TV series "Peking Peace Talks" broadcast in 1998 should also be transplanted from the Soviet director's "Victory of the Chinese People".
A shot from "Peking Peace Talks"
Overall, in a group of film and television shots that seized the presidential palace, when the "Great War of Ninghuhang" filmed in 1999 was the most classic and the most imposing, but as the director of the film Wei Lian said, it is difficult for a film to achieve the momentum of this film in the future, so we see that many film and television works mostly cut war shots from the series of films "Armageddon", "The Great March" and "The Great Turn", in this sense, the "Great Armageddon" series of Bayi Factory laid some basic war scenes. It can be said that it is indispensable to reproduce those real images in history. How to achieve the transcendence of existing historical documentary images will be the top priority that China's military-themed film and television works should think about in the future.