The heartfelt film documentary "Actors" was screened on October 18 this year. As the first documentary in China to explore the moral and artistic skills of actors, in today's muddy and sandy entertainment industry environment, it undoubtedly inadvertently conforms to the current call for actor morality and so-called "business ability".
With "The Twenty-two Film Stars of New China" as the main line, the film comprehensively reproduces the filmmakers' pursuit of actors' art, their enthusiasm for the film career and their adherence to the ideal of revolutionary romanticism through actor interviews and film literature displays. The film lasted for five years, not only in the documentary theme and content of the unique and profound, but also full of historical materials and film documentary value.
The "history" told by "The Actor"
"Actors" is mainly composed of two parts, one part is the history of the era told by the actors who shined on the screen in the early days of the founding of New China (that is, the actor's oral narrative + the display of film materials), and part of it is in the current time and space, we see the appearance of these old but still full of vitality actors (that is, the actors who are more than half a hundred years old in front of the camera at this moment).
The initial stage of these actors dedicating themselves to their artistic lives on the film screen was also the stage when the film was founded in line with Comrade Mao Zedong's "Speech at the Yan'an Forum on Literature and Art" to carry out a new ideological reform.
Prior to this, the Chinese people had experienced years of war, and the film was once desperate in the war. Under the influence of Lenin's idea that "film" is the most important of all arts, Chinese cinema has long been valued by the Party during the period of foreign wars and internal revolutions, and with the establishment of a new and hopeful country, film not only satisfies the entertainment needs of audiences, but more importantly becomes an important "superstructure" for recording, propaganda and education.
The actors who stood out at the beginning of the establishment of this new Chinese film industry can be said to be not a simple film screen image, a screen darling worshipped by the audience, but more of a flesh and blood symbol of war and revolution. The film characters portrayed by their sincere feelings form a mirror contrast with the heroic and warlike revolutionary fighters of the Communist Party who really existed in the war, and let the noble images that failed to leave an image record "reborn".
The documentary selects many film clips that we are familiar with for editing, and in the actors' narration of the shooting process at that time, we once again experience the hardships of the revolution and the awe of the filmmakers at that time, which is the history of art and the art of history.
The most impressive thing is that Zhang Jianyou, who played a pilot in "Shangganling", couldn't help but burst into tears when talking about that era.
"Shangganling" shows the history of the Chinese volunteers fighting for justice during the period of the War to Resist US Aggression and Aid Korea, and when it was put into filming, a surviving communist who really participated in the War to Resist US Aggression and Aid Korea participated in the whole filming. Zhang Jianyou talked about this, couldn't help but get excited, and said: "We are indeed not acting with technology, the technology of actors, but with heart. ”
This is also different from the current wave of commodification, which has gradually become a film that is wrapped up in "entertainment to death", in the 1960s, filmmakers used their sincere hearts to feel and reproduce those cruel and great.
The art of the actor
As a socialist country, in the early days of the founding of New China, the Soviet union experience was drawn on the film system and film concepts, and the art of actors constantly mentioned in "Actors" also came from the Soviet Stanislavsky system.
This performance system, which focuses on "life experience," undoubtedly coincides with Comrade Mao Zedong's belief that literary and artistic works should serve the workers and peasants.
In our current era, movie stars are given countless halos, and it seems that making the audience feel "distant" is a label that highlights their own value. Among the actors of the last century shown in "Actors", it can be said that mingling with the masses means the success of the actors.
In Actors, almost all the actors emphasize the experience of real life. In the filming of those difficult years, it is necessary to go deep into the countryside to observe and experience the living conditions of the people, which has become a part of their actors' artistic lives. It is also based on this that those films will not be superficial, can bring people real image shock, and are worthy of generations of audiences to commemorate and reminisce.
Actor Yu Yang said that in a clip of the movie, to take the cigarette bag handed by the peasant uncle, if you rub it on the clothes like an ordinary person at this time, it will appear to be "disgusted", so you must take it and smoke it. This kind of small action design can only be perceived by the actors who really feel the masses of the people and go deep into the masses of the people, rather than what some actors can learn like some actors now, sitting in the dressing room and being held by the stars.
The film does not use too much emotion to render the artistic status of these people's artists, only through objective fixed interview shots, the access of classic film clips, to complete this dialogue across the river of time. In the quiet flowing piano music, we indulge in those never fading screen images through the literature of the past, the camera objectively turns, those once sparkling figures sit in an old but still energetic appearance, the carving of time seems to only stay at the physical level, when they talk about the artistic careers that have been fought for, they are still young.
Zhu Xijuan, the actor of Wu Qionghua in "The Red Detachment of Women", sits in a theater that is larger and more magnificent than in the last century to watch this simple and sincere movie starring her, in a quiet space, time seems to be invalid, and she is still the communist who shouts "Long live the revolution" on the screen.
Movies of the movie
Unlike other biographical films that attempt to explore the film itself through artistic expression, the fact that the famous film theorist Lee Dao-sin served as the consultant for the film shows that the documentary documentary value of this documentary gives way to artistic techniques, but this does not mean that "Actor" has lost its artistic expression here, on the contrary, through such a real documentary technique, it restores the film about the film.
"Ruan Lingyu", directed by Guan Jinpeng, is also a film that shows the artistic life of the actors, which also completes the narration of Ruan Lingyu's performance life through the contrast structure of the mirror image and the insertion of real film materials. And "Actor" obviously does not intend to use film art to show the life of an actor, but to summarize the artists of an era and their common original intention in the intervention of the director himself to a very low level.
In the 1960s and 1970s, the film was still a product of the planned economy, the film workers in the state-owned studio cooperated with each other to produce a movie, there was no interest competition between the actors and the actors, in "Actors", we can also hear Qin Yi, Xie Fang and other actors tell the warm story of the predecessors in the crew who taught them to act.
With the advent of reform and opening up, films have also had to change the previous production form, chasing fame and profit in the competition of the film box office, and to a certain extent, it also affects the interest relationship between various departments in a film shooting.
"Actor" shows us the pure "comradely" relationship between the actors of that era, they came out of the war, many film actors were once communist revolutionaries, as Tian Hua, who played Yumei in the movie "Daughter of the Party", said, she lost her mother at an early age, and later joined the Communist Party, which can be said to be a "daughter of the party played the 'daughter of the party'". These actors respected and loved each other, performed the revolutionary romantic ideal passion in the film, and also played the revolutionary friendship music during the filming process.
The theorist Moran, in his book Film Stars, criticized: "In the relationship between actors and characters, stars give beauty to the protagonists of movies. "In the beginning, beauty was the only requirement, and even as long as the looks were passable, makeup artists could create beauty."
In "Actor", Kindi talked about playing a rural girl in the past, after letting the makeup artist draw eyelashes for himself, he was criticized by the director.
Among these people's artists, restoring the brilliance of entertainment is not their purpose in establishing an image, and they use all their life experience to shape "true beauty". They are not a group of "movie stars", but through performance to build real "actors".