In the early spring of 1951, a team came from the Linqu Song Mountain Scenic Area in Shandong Province, wearing polished steel helmets and American military boots, one by one. The militia captain of the village was shocked at first glance: Isn't there a blue insignia on the steel helmet? The bad guys are back? The militia captain immediately sounded the alarm, and people poured out from all directions, and some villagers took stones and threw them at the team. The military staff officer who led the team was in a hurry and shouted: "Fellow villagers, we are making a movie, don't get excited." This movie was later known as one of the "Three Great Wars", "Southern Expedition and Northern War".
[This scene in the play was filmed at the abandoned railway station in Qingzhou]
"Southern Expedition and Northern War" is the first military theme feature film filmed after the founding of New China, telling the story of the East China Field Army in Shandong during the Liberation War, which completely crushed the enemy's key attacks. Its total investment reached 10 billion yuan (old currency), but the 10 billion yuan was not raised by the Shanghai Film Factory, but Marshal Chen Yi squeezed out of the military expenses of the East China Military Region. In order to shoot this film, our army dispatched a field division of more than 5,000 people, a volunteer unit that had just been withdrawn from the Korean battlefield to rest. At that time, it was a real big production.
The director of the film is a grandmaster figure in the history of new Chinese cinema: Cheng Yin and Tang Xiaodan. The two divided the soldiers into two groups, Cheng Yin was responsible for the shooting of the part of our army, and Tang Xiaodan was responsible for the shooting of the enemy part. The shooting of this group of Cheng Yin is much simpler, and the real field division to play our army is both professional and dedicated, and various tactical actions and formations are coordinated in one go. Director Cheng Yin's request is: don't pretend, don't act, you are the soldier.
[In the Play of the People's Liberation Army, except for the little fat man who is an actor, the others are all volunteer soldiers]
Once, during the filming of the battle scene, the buried explosives suddenly exploded in advance, and the fighters on the scene all fell down collectively like a conditioned reflex, and the result was that everyone was fine, but the director did not react and was injured by the explosives, which can also see the difference between the real fighters and ordinary group performances.
In contrast, director Tang Xiaodan is not easy. Let the volunteer soldiers play Jiang Jun, they are reluctant to be old. Some were once liberation fighters, and they couldn't look back on what happened to them in the old army, and now let them reminisce about the past, and they are very resistant. The cadres broke their lips before they let them put down their ideological baggage, and as a result, they were misunderstood by the masses when they just arrived on location, and some people took the opportunity to "pick a pick" and wanted to strike the performance.
When it was time to shoot the battle scene, Tang Xiaodan looked at it and cried bitterly: one after another was majestic and murderous, like a fierce tiger descending the mountain, which was the enemy army that had lost the battle? It is also difficult for the soldiers, who have just beaten the US military in North Korea, but now let them play the head-hugging rat, and everyone does not know how to act. Tang Xiaodan had to teach one by one: bend the waist a little more, squint his eyes a little more, and his expression was a little more obscene...
This group was filmed from early spring to midsummer, the warriors suffered from old sins, performed actions that were never usually possible, but also had to wear cotton jackets and cotton pants in the high temperature of thirty or forty degrees in the summer, and wait until the end of the shooting was like fishing out of the water. What's more, the summer filming winter drama, the mountains are full of green and lush, so that people can play as soon as they see it. The director can only take the actors with him, and all the green that will appear in the shot is bare, and there is not a single leaf left on some trees.
[Gao Camp Commander played by Feng Zhe (second from right)]
The life of the lead actor in the play is not good, Feng Zhe, who plays the high camp commander, comes from a big city, has a difficult bookish atmosphere, and the role of the high camp commander is not suitable, so the crew sent him to the coastal troops to experience life. In addition to practicing military skills such as assassination and bomb throwing with his soldiers every day, he also had to swim in the sea in the winter. The director saw that he was frozen purple, afraid that he would not be able to stand up, Feng Zhe said: "Can't bear this pain, how can you play the battalion commander of the People's Liberation Army?" In the end, Feng Zhe succeeded in creating a classic image of our military commander who was wise and courageous, elegant and heroic, kind and awe-inspiring.
Zhang Ruifang, who plays the female village chief, is also from a big city, her eyes, actions and language are inconsistent with the role, and the director sent her to the countryside of the old district of Shandong to eat and live and work with the villagers. She put on the coarse cloth clothes of the countryside, worked in the fields with the villagers during the day, practiced creeping forward and dropping bombs with the militia, and held meetings around the oil lamps at night to listen to the stories of the tribesmen and the battles. Eight months later, when the director came to see her again, she was a heroic female village chief in front of her, and she could not see a trace of performance in her speech and demeanor, and the director was very satisfied.
【Zhang Ruifang and Chen Ge】
In addition to the two protagonists, the other supporting characters are also flesh and blood. For example, Chen Ge said in Mandarin with a Sichuan accent, "Jiang**'s abacus has always been pulled by our hands", which has become a familiar golden sentence, and Zhang Junchang, played by Xiang Kun, was self-conscious and domineering in the early days, and the embarrassment after being captured was perfectly displayed on him. In addition, many of the extras who participated in the performance were the masses who really participated in the front of the support in that year, and they found out the clothes of the year and launched the car of the year, which truly reproduced the scene of the people's enthusiasm in front of the support.
[The prototype of Zhang Junchang, played by Xiang Kun, is Zhang Lingfu]
On August 1, 1952, "Southern Expedition and Northern War" was released as a gift film for the Founding Day, and the film triggered a boom in the crowded movies, and its reproduction of military materials such as strategic decision-making, battlefield momentum, scale of the campaign, and application of tactics was unprecedented, and its level was epic. If you insist on picking out any flaws, it may be that the volunteer soldiers are accustomed to not playing leggings, which is slightly different from our army in 1947. However, it is not an exaggeration to say that this film is the highest level of military theme films in New China.