In the 1998 CCTV Spring Festival Gala, before the opening of the sketch program "Square and Opposition", with the introduction of the host Ni Ping, the "square" actor, led by Zhu Xijuan, stepped on the drum of the "march" and appeared heroically. The "opposite" actors are led by Chen Qiang, with the melody of "Devils Entering the Village". The actor who was named after the "intelligence chief" made a statement, simply circled his legs and took a stage with a gun to sweep, which made the audience laugh.
The laughter is still there, and the Scythians are dead. At that time, the "opposite" actors Chen Qiang, Shu, Ge Cunzhuang, and Wang Xiaozhong had already passed away one after another, just last month, Liu Jiang, the "Hu Hansan" of the post-80s childhood, died at the age of 95. If you follow the "five villains" theory, similar to Wang Xiaozhong, another "ghost professional" on the screen, the old actor Fang Hua glanced back as early as 1994 in "Sunny Days", but two lines "don't look, don't look..." became a permanent trick.
Stills from "The Positive and the Negative"
At that time, Liu Long, an actor who walked in the penultimate position of the "opposite side", had just passed away a few days ago. Like Liu Jiang, the two veteran actors of the Bayi Factory, who died in their old age, were sincerely sad and close, and followed by Cao Mengde's song of wine, which can be described as "grace grass and trees". Limited by the times, it is also created by the times. Since the 1950s and 1960s, these villain actors have been engraved into the collective memory of generations of Chinese people. This point, by our daily jokes when a glance, a blow, a sentence "high, really high!" "Inadvertently, I have already painted a lot of real life.
Huang Shiren's viciousness, the cunning of the intelligence chief, the fierceness of the landlord and squire, the stubbornness of the foreign invaders, their screen images are good at winning. You may never know their real names, but you will never forget their appearance. Compared with his peers, Liu Long starred in many commercial films in the 1980s, bringing laughter to a generation, far less than his terrible performances. Director Zheng Dasheng once recalled the experience of watching films in the screening hall of the Shanghai Film Studio: "405 Murder" and "Donggang Spy Film" appeared in the electronic music, there were jumping clips, "from the technique to the concept, there are many explorations of enlightening significance, which is a rare genre exploration." ”
Stills from "Word Hunting 99"
In this regard, the 1978 film "Word Hunting 99" also belongs to this category, and if you look at it today, it is a cult film without compromise. Liu Long played the latent agent Ban Debiao in it, vice chairman of the Shanghai Filmmakers Association and professor of the Shanghai Theater Academy, ishikawa recalled, "It was really a childhood nightmare." Liu Long later said that after performing this play, the daughter of a makeup artist in the Bayi Factory compound ran away as long as she saw him, "Once I asked her mother, how did my daughter run when she saw me?" It turned out that I was afraid that I would poison her milk (the plot of the movie)..."
Such an experience is not an isolated testimony in the life of that generation of villain actors, but it is a reversal of the charm of their screen image. In 1943, Liu Long, a graduate of middle school, came to Shanghai and applied for the left-wing drama troupe. During the interview, he read a sentence and read "stone, tongue, sun" again, and Liu Long naturally grew up under the roots of the imperial city. After that, he started from the drama and the field record, and gradually appeared on the stage and had his own role. Liu Long once recalled a rehearsal drama "Yunnan Uprising", in which he played Yuan Shikai's bodyguard. When he was leaving, Shi Waving pulled him aside and said, "Liu Long, why do you always hunch your head?" On the stage, the actor can't keep his head down, and the audience can't see you and you're in trouble. After that, I understood that I couldn't keep my head down. ”
This sentence "You can't keep your head down" is his method of opening up the stage, and it is also a metaphor for the right way of life. "There are no small roles, only small actors. This is the dignity of that generation of actors. In an exclusive interview with The Paper, Ishikawa sighed.
Liu Long personal photo
【Dialogue】
"Golden Cannon Rack"
The Paper: Liu Long is a native of Shandong, grew up in Beiping, why did he come to Shanghai in the 1940s? Not only him, a group of actors with similar life backgrounds were concentrated in Shanghai at that time.
Ishikawa: From the late 1930s to the early 1940s, Shanghai was a cultural pier that no one could avoid. At that time, the transformation of traditional civilized drama to modern drama stage required a large number of actors from the Pingjin area with language foundation to join. Similar to the transition from silent films to sound films, actors have also changed from Zhejiang and Guangdong as the main body, the "four famous Dans" in the film and drama industry in the 1940s, in addition to Qin Yi is a Shanghainese, Bai Yang, Zhang Ruifang, Shu Xiuwen are all born in the north, or have lived and studied in Beijing, including Shi Hua and Lan Ma who acted in dramas are also northerners, and they have innate advantages in language.
The Paper: Can you introduce the Hard work troupe?
Ishikawa: The Kukan Theater Troupe is a fan-made group initiated by Huang Zuolin and others, named after his proposal to "work together and work hard".
The troupe is not mainly for profit, specializing in serious drama creation. The backbone is led by actors from the Pingjin area, Shi Hua and Zhang Fa are all, and Liu Long's master Cui Chaoming played the villain at that time. Forced by the living environment, the number of actors in the troupe and the film company at that time was relatively fixed, which caused an actor to continue to act what he played, similar to the division of trades in Peking Opera, so there were many "professional" actors. After 1949, Ge Cunzhuang played the landlord and Fang Hua played the devil can also be regarded as a kind of "stereotype".
Always playing a type of role, it will be repeatedly pondered, so it has created a group of "small roles, big actors". For example, the statement, Cheng Zhi, and Bai Mu are all like this, and director Xie Jin called them "golden cannon racks" at that time. "Red flowers" can be changed like a marquee, and "green leaves" will always be this group of people. Including Niu Ben, who played this kind of role when he was young, and still plays it, almost never playing a leading role. The main actor in "Fake Phoenix" is Shi Hui, and the male actors in the Hardwork Theater Troupe at that time were almost all inside, and Liu Long only had two or three scenes, almost in a flash.
The Paper: After 1949, these supporting actors also continued their own development model?
Ishikawa: Liu Long and a group of other actors, they are facing the transformation of the old and new society, and their cultural concepts have also changed. According to Mao Zedong's positioning at the Yan'an Forum of Literary and Art Workers, revolutionary literature and art is a weapon for educating the people, uniting the people, and cracking down on the enemy, so actors must pursue a clear distinction between love and hate, and play villains and bad elements, then we must let the audience hate you after watching it, and to some extent the actors must make sacrifices. For example, Chen Qiang played Huang Shiren in Yan'an, did a lot of research, and combined the local "Yangge Bu" into his own stage. There is a scene where Huang Shiren is drunk, humming a small song and walking out of the scene, and as a result, he was criticized by the leader after the performance, and many female audiences watched the play and had a good feeling for this landlord, with a gentle voice and a dancing posture, so handsome!
This is a reflection of you (Chen Qiang) This is a reflection of you personally, not the role, the role is to make the audience hate. This made Chen Qiang get a lesson, he later played Huang Shiren again, the small soldier who joined the army not long after the stage cut his teeth and hated, raised his gun and shot at the stage, fortunately, the squad leader quickly raised the muzzle of the gun and escaped the disaster. These two things are positive and negative, indicating that the performance concept of that era was to give their own love and hatred to the role.
People who have not received aesthetic training often cannot separate the role from the actor, which is a cute childish disease. After the 1980s, this concept of performance began to change, whether it is a villain or a decent person, as a person, the complexity of human nature must be performed. Sun Feihu, who plays Chiang Kai-shek, begins to portray him as a "person", and he has his own set of home-country feelings. Correspondingly, the audience began to accept such a performance.
The Paper: Liu Long is known for playing the young master Paga in the 1960 movie "Mengyasha", can you introduce his chances of getting this role?
Ishikawa: The requirement at that time was to use local actors where the story took place. When filming "Ashima", Ashima was a Bai, Yang Likun was a Yi, and the film studio urged her to act, and the film was of course very successful, but on this point, it was later criticized, and even raised to the height of "violating the ethnic policy". Liu Long was still unknown at that time, and he was able to find this role, which was inseparable from his identity as an actor in the Kunming Military Region Repertory Theatre, although he was Han Chinese, he understood the local customs and customs. Young Master Paga's line, "Bring me nine thousand nine hundred and ninety-nine grains of rice, one more grain is not needed, one less grain is not OK." "Probably from local folklore. This was also inseparable from the advocacy of "living under the masses" at that time, and the folk style was obtained.
Stills from "Mengyan Sha"
"You can't talk about performance on performance, and get away from the environment of the times"
The Surging News: The collective curtain call of Liu Long's generation of villains, before them, is the end of the concept of performance. Looking back, how to evaluate their artistic value?
Ishikawa: As one of the last people to witness that era, they are a great cultural treasure for us. For example, the statement that playing the intelligence chief in "Reconnaissance of Crossing the River" is just a few scenes, and no one can copy it now, which is very much in line with people's memories and imaginations of that kind of life experience. In the 80s filming "Sunrise", Fang Shu, who played Chen Bailu, asked the old actors of the Republic of China era for advice - the standing posture of the wind and dust women in that era was like a "teapot", with a cigarette in her right hand, a flick on her wrist, and a waist pinch in her left hand. Later, Xie Jin filmed "The Last Nobleman", invited Teacher Lu Yan back from the United States, and taught Pan Hong and Xiao Xiong how to walk in the cheongsam.
The Paper: Ang Lee filmed "The Ring of Color |", and also asked Teacher Lu Yan to teach the actresses the manners in front of the table. In the final analysis, that taste cannot be learned, it is the experience and experience given by the times.
Ishikawa: Yes, it comes down to how we should look at the performance paradigm of that generation. Some people think that the performances of Chen Qiang and Liu Long's generation are outdated and a relic of history, but this is like how do we look at the photos of ourselves wearing open crotch pants as children, do you want to laugh at your past, or do you care for them? Modern people should have a basic position on this issue: they cannot talk about performance on performance, and withdraw from the environment of the times.
Now many film and television works "have actors, no roles", people remember the star in the film, will not remember the role he played. In the films of the fifties and sixties and the seventies, we blurted out the roles and lines, like "Liu Jiang" and "Liu Long" (such names) themselves are very popular, acting for a lifetime, and the audience may not be able to call the name when they look at the familiar face.
Surging News: These supporting actors, villain actors do not have much living space on the stage, often one or two scenes, and even a line makes generations of audiences read it.
Ishikawa: These actors may not have received a complete academic education, like Liu Long, but through repeated on-stage practice, Shi Hui, Cui Chaoming and others are his teachers, after performing a review to give some advice, he listened to it, slowly realized, and gradually formed his own performance system and unique work. Shi Hui is particularly good at combining Chinese and Western performance programs, such as acting in "The Great Thunderstorm", before he appears, he coughs behind the scenes, which is the appearance style of the old students in Peking Opera. These "preemptive" techniques are not found in the Western performance system. In addition, they are good at observing life, such as speculating about the behavior of the white people in Shanghai in the old society. Huang Zuolin was a student of George Bernard Shaw, and Shi Hua said that his university was "the Beijing Flyover", and the two different systems were cross-referenced and integrated, resulting in a group of masters.
Stills from "The Founding Ceremony"
"He was really 'scared' a generation bigger"
The Paper: Compared with those classic villain actors, Liu Long's innate conditions are "better", does it mean that he must be more creative in character selection and shaping?
Ishikawa: Liu Long's villain image and his own appearance have no specific correlation imagination. His typical Chinese character face is also good and evil, and playing a villain needs to find out where the "bad" is in the mental state. The so-called eyeballs turn, counting the heart, the performance level of a play should be stacked more closely, and the stitches cannot be seen. Liu Long left an impression on a generation of people, and the element of "fear" is mostly. Liu Long played the one-eyed dragon enemy deputy in "Three Missing People", which was almost a nightmare of my childhood. A series of movies such as "Hunting Word 99" really scared a generation.
This can be taken from Xie Jin's three realms of actor performance, the first is the ability to understand the character, there is no life can not understand, such as "Wrangler" in the cow ben played Guo Bianzi, "Go to go, have not seen your father and your mother married ah? "One line is particularly evocative. The second is the ability to present the role, which can present the character traits by raising their hands and feet. The third layer is more demanding, giving the characters a unique charm. Those old actors still deserve our respect, and the performance is marked by the times, and no one can deny their character charm.
The Paper: Many villain actors have the taste of comedians in their later years, or in the right years, what do you think?
Ishikawa: In the 1989 "Founding Ceremony", Liu Long played Mao Renfeng in it, and the former and the latter Gong in a sense brought out a funny taste. In 2009's "The Great Cause of The Founding of the People's Republic", Jiang Wen's role as Mao Renfeng also made people gag, and the two felt completely different. Jiang Wen taught the opportunity to "get rid of Zhang Lan and Luo Longji", which was completely the style of the gangster godfather. Liu Long conveyed it on the phone, saying "It's that batch, Zhang Lan, Luo Longji..." When he still covered the microphone and lowered his voice, this is all drama.
Whether it can be transformed depends on the care of opportunities. Chen Qiang's transformation was successful in his later years, and after "Look at This Family", he cooperated with his son Chen Peisi in the "Second Son Opens a Shop" series, and Ge Cunzhuang also had a son to be proud of, but he did not meet the right role. Liu Jiang and Liu Long participated in most of the films in their later years as cameos, and their own stage basically ended in the 80s.
The Paper: Actors who play villains often have a good reputation in their lives. Of course, there is an internal cause for this, and when it becomes a holistic reputation, is it a social reason?
Ishikawa: These actors are all from traditional education, and the so-called gentleness and frugality are there. On the stage, he is willing to be a green leaf, and he is also self-aware in life, and he is very low-key. In the 1970s and 1980s, Liu Jiang was surrounded by a group of children on the street, "Hu Hansan! Hu Hansan! "So what can he do?" I had to laugh it off and go back in sorrow. I heard that Liu Long also wore sunglasses on the street in the 1980s, and he did not want to cause unnecessary trouble. The common cultivation, or wisdom, of their generation was that "water is good for all things without controversy, and it is evil to all, so it is more than the Tao." ”
At the same time, revolutionary education has enabled them to uphold the concept of collectivism and retreat in the big revolutionary collective family when they encounter honor and struggle forward when they encounter difficulties.