Mei Yanfang may have been too prominent in creating her unique and versatile image of herself, and it is easy to quickly forget that she had long curly hair and sang Xu Xiaofeng's "Season of the Wind" in the rookie singing competition, and was briefly compared with Xu Xiaofeng.
Of course, it was a misunderstanding, even if it was similar, not so much like Xu Xiaofeng, but barely the stage experience of the two people was similar - that was the last generation, as well as the Hong Kong day and night of the nightclub resident singers, the old-school stage style and the live corresponding wisdom of running the dock, all of which were still extremely needed survival skills. So fast, the singers of the 1980s are no longer out of this tradition of the end of the world, from the singer to the film queen, from the tradition to the new era of international idol packaging tide, Mui Yanfang inherited the tradition of Hong Kong's song hall, and further reshaped the pop music scene. The expression space and style of female artists are more abundant from her. And in the end, Mei Yanfang's restrictions are also the restrictions of the times-
After all, she is not the woman who "can't be obedient" and secretly wants to "get bad".
In the last days of her life, with the end of righteousness and dedication, she is back to an ordinary woman, remorseful love and the emptiness of the family, reflecting the loyalty of the martyr woman to the stage.
Like the experience of witnessing a flower in "Rouge Buckle", contemporary couples ask themselves: If it were you, would you die for me? Today, will there still be singers who will die for the stage?
Mei Yanfang in childhood
From the 1960s to the radiant 1980s and 1990s, Mui Yanfang experienced important changes in Hong Kong's entertainment culture, and her death in 2003 became a symbol.
Looking back at Mui Yanfang and her Hong Kong days, there are two important entry points in the career, and we have to reset the story to a larger context. The first is her traditional inheritance as Hua Dan. The second is how to combine contradictions as a woman in an old era to a new era.
The long actress image track, even further back.
In Hong Kong in the 1950s and 1960s, the singers and band stars from the south were still used to singing Chinese songs in nightclubs. Xu Xiaofeng, who was born in Hubei and grew up in Hong Kong, has always had another name in Hong Kong called Xiao Baiguang. At that time, the distance between the media and the stars was far away, and the stars appeared mysterious, thus adding to the faded star light of today. Take Xu Xiaofeng as an example, her generation of demon Ji image, open up the "bad woman" atmosphere (can also be understood as non-traditional values, dare to live out their own personality), but in reality, she went to Hong Kong to shoot a few movies, actually disappeared for more than 10 years, living her own life.
Xu Xiaofeng
The image that Mei Yanfang created in the early music world and the film industry in the middle period is exactly the "bad" of Xiao Baiguang. Both of them can sing and act, and are good at playing famous female characters with personalities and even heroic personalities. Coincidentally, this allows Mei Yanfang and Bai Guang to complete the inheritance evolution of an artist indirectly. Understanding this heritage, we understand that Mui Yanfang belongs to the story of hong Kong actress image and changes in the acting industry.
Xu Xiaofeng's "Season of the Wind" 1984 special edition
In addition to the singers, what needs to be understood is the Hua Dan tradition of Hong Kong from Cantonese opera to Cantonese feature films. Hua Dan of Cantonese opera is a very important responsibility, generally flexible and witty, relaxed and changeable, can perform a variety of different roles, very high plasticity, and can become a key figure to promote the development of the plot. In the Cantonese film era of the 1950s and 1960s, actresses known as Hua Dan Wang, including Deng Biyun, Fang Yanfen and Phoenix Women, were almost a variety of professional performers. In Mei Yanfang's early film "Crazy 83", she made a cameo role called the Red Line Woman.
Hua Dan plays comedy, tragedy, anti-string, song and dance drama, and costume drama. But when the tradition came to the 1970s, when the male hormone era of Hong Kong films focused on pillows and fists, the status of actresses was strongly impacted, and most of the time, if they did not appear in vases, they could only be used as sexy code names.
Until the 1980s, the rules of the game in hong Kong's entertainment industry were completely broken. There is a new wave of injection in creation, there are various independent studios in production, and the actors are not from traditional drama classes or science classes, but more from various beauty pageants, and even from advertising.
At this time, in 1982, Mei Yanfang took her above-mentioned background of alternating old and new to the stage of the times, and also symbolized the last "Hua Dan" of the old era. Although she is not from a traditional Cantonese opera class, her acting talent is more similar to the Hua Dan in Cantonese opera mentioned before. Her childhood training in singing and appearing in the song and dance troupe has achieved her mastery and familiarity with stage traditions, the courage to embrace the role, and most importantly, the emotional identification. This recognition of the stage even directly affects the decision of the final date of her life.
If you cut into Mei Yanfang's film screen image from a gender perspective, you will find that it is different from her singing image.
As a singer, after the emergence of her "Bad Girl", she undertook the new female singer atmosphere on the international music trend, from the Madonna in the United States to the idol faction in Japan, and the exaggerated modeling style was the first step to break through, combining bold and direct lyrics and stage sense, and jointly established her image characteristics of daring to challenge tradition. However, in the more complex film circle with various forces and capitals, based on market considerations, the role of a bad girl, a female character with an independent personality who dominates her own destiny, may not be able to withstand the test of the market.
Therefore, the image of Mui Yanfang in the movie we see in the early days still can't escape the routine of Hong Kong female stars in the 1980s. One is a silly big sister, straightforward and cheerful, not annoying, more like an innocuous little sister next door. The other is the jade girl type, which is quiet enough to look beautiful and deep, but often encounters tragic endings. The third is the vase character in the big brother comedies that were extremely popular in those days.
But Mei Yanfang soon became different.
Mei Yanfang's first impressive impression in the film did not come from the role she played, but from the movie song "Like Water Flowing Year" that she sang. People can't help but ask how a girl in her early 20s can sing the sorrow of the passing years with such a low voice and a slow tone. At this time, everyone can already feel that Mui Yanfang will become the next comet in Hong Kong movies and music.
However, in Hong Kong in the early 1980s, there were indeed not enough complex and three-dimensional roles for actresses to play. People remember several wonderful performances, Ye Tong of "Seven Days of Wrong Love" is a blockbuster, and Zhong Chuhong of "Autumn Fairy Tale" is a moving temperament, but they can only say that their true colors win. Until 1988, Mei Yanfang participated in "Rouge Buckle", and it was really the combination of her talents in singing and acting Hua Dan that she combined them into the first very "Mei Yanfang-style" classic performance.
For the audience who loves "Rouge Buckle", the attraction of ruhua lies in her obsession. Some people may think it's too silly, but in fact, she is in the active position. She encourages the twelve teenagers to die, and she returns to the Yang Realm to search for it, not only to protect everything, not only a foolish wind and dust woman, but also reflects the strength of motherhood. In life and death, commitment and betrayal, women tend to show greater perseverance and conviction. This is what Mei Yanfang gave to everyone through "Rouge Buckle", an image of true temperament that overflowed off the screen.
And where "Rouge Buckle" shines, there is also a professional setting of the Qinglou woman, which allows a female star from the stage to play to the fullest. For example, when she appeared on the scene, her anti-string men's clothing scene seemed to return to the aforementioned Cantonese opera Hua Dan technique. It can be said that the whole story of "Rouge Buckle" cannot be done without Mei Yanfang. Because of Mei Yanfang, the entire script and film are forced to have a charm sublimated by the performance.
From "Rouge Buckle" to "Hero's True Color", the same face with a weak and delicate surface, after more than a year, can play another character like a chivalrous woman, and only Mei Yanfang can do it.
It was in the late 1980s, and Mei Yanfang's position in the song and film industry was in the sky, appearing as a big sister. Entertainment news, at this time also began to cling to the real life of the star, everything is known. Her real-life arrogance and righteousness have become a kind of persona relationship between stars and actors, true or false. In this context, re-watching "Hero's True Colors III Sunset Song", I found that this movie is completely a portrayal of Mui Yanfang and her professional identity at that time (1988-1989), and even Hong Kong society.
The role of Mei Yanfang in the movie is played with the most diverse performance. She makes her first appearance at the airport as a cold but mysterious woman with a story, and after meeting the two male protagonists, she is a naïve romantic girl who can sprinkle flowers on Mark's brother. After she helped Mark brother choose Black Chao (sunglasses), pay attention to her expression that slowly transformed from a satisfied smile to a thoughtful expression, which can be said to summarize the key sentiments of "Sunset Song": all joy is short-lived, and the coming day is difficult. In the end, what we see is the action woman who goes to the soup and saves everyone.
In the history of Hong Kong cinema, there seems to be no female character who can play a complex background, from romance to fighting, and emotional drama in multiple scenes, so vividly written. If you extend it indefinitely, you will know the significance of this film, how important it is for Mui Yanfang, and for Hong Kong. It also explained why she would choose this song to end the stage of her life. After experiencing the life and death of the big era, I know what is the vicissitudes.
After this, Hong Kong cinema entered the final madness of the 1990s, accompanied by postmodern schizophrenia, Stephen Chow's hysterical funny, and deliberate interlacing of time and space. There are two films that can be said to be the wonderful works period that opened up Mei Yanfang's next stage, both of which are the works of Du Qifeng.
In 1992, there was a return to the Cantonese film costume comedy tradition of "The Inquisitor" (Taiwanese title "Wei long breaks into the sky", the old version in 1948 starred Ma Shi Zeng Hongxin). This work with Zhou Xingchi can be said to fully exert Mei Yanfang's comedic potential (forgetting the vicissitudes, you can only laugh), playing the wife of Wang Song Shijie, sometimes really stupid, sometimes pretending to be stupid, protecting her husband strong and persistent externally, and spoiling in the boudoir. She deduced what cantonese calls "playing with flower guns" and exuding the wisdom of small citizens.
Here, although Mei Yanfang's Mrs. Song is only "the next target position", she is not inferior to showing her Hua Dan talent, in the rhythm of dialogue with Zhou Xingchi, the expression of the ghost horse, fully interprets the kind of outside facing the case in the play to be strong, and the inner face of the road of harmony between the family and the husband and wife (suspecting that the husband is cheating, mistakenly touching the room and failing can only be excused by borrowing urine to excuse a classic). This kind of tacit performance, a pleasing body language and rhythm of speech, is completely masterful. Behind the nonsense, the aforementioned maternal spirit also plays freely. She is still the woman who can still block everything in the family.
1993's "Three Heroes of the East" uses the cross-border mix of wasteland science fiction and ancient costume martial arts to create a dystopia. The mission to save the world makes everyone feel the sharpness of the Hong Kong version of superwoman in the movie for the first time. Once again, "Flying Woman", a character type that often appeared in Cantonese films, was reset to a female heroine in the new genre films. And there is always only Mui Yanfang, who has enough convincing power to stabilize the military hearts of the three female heroes and strengthen the rare sisterhood power in Hong Kong films.
Of course, as a first-class superstar, in her long acting career, Mei Yanfang also has to accept more commercial performances, such as gambling films and laughing films. There are also productions tailored for her, mainly based on female touch, in line with her status as a first-class diva, such as "Kawashima Yoshiko" and "He Rijun Again". She cut her production in the late '90s and still had a number of films to keep an eye on. One is the short film "Smoke And Smoke" directed by Zhang Guorong, in addition to Zhang Guorong's desire to direct the film, Mei Yanfang also played the role of mother she has always wanted to be in the film with the most quiet sorrow, even if the child has slept in the tomb.
It was not until 2002, in the film 'Forty', that Mei Yanfang could play a mature mother to the fullest, and it was a change of chivalry and smiley face, washing away the lead Hua and holding the supermarket glue hand pump, walking indifferently on the housing platform. She played a role she had never played before: the most typical Yaumura Teacher's Milk in Hong Kong. Remembering her wish in her last concert: to get married and have children, to stretch out her arms, and to see someone around her.
In the cracks of the times, Mei Yanfang came into being on the one hand, seizing her own opportunities in the new entertainment order, demonstrating more possibilities for female images. On the other hand, she is also the Chinese mother who has both traditional motherhood and old values, the last support of men, and the last reliance of returning home.