Oriental Network Zhongxiang news reporter Chen Chen
The single-day box office of "Eight Hundred" broke through 100 million yuan for 10 consecutive days, winning the global weekend championship with an absolute advantage. The film rarely uses the expression form of the whole dialect, which makes the audience everywhere feel more intimate, and the characters are more real and vivid.
However, the use of dialects in the film also raises many questions. Du Chun, played by "Xie Jinyuan", is from Hebei, and because the "Guangpu" in the film is not standard enough, netizens have discussed. Wang Qianyuan, a native of Liaoning, spoke Shaanxi dialect, Li Chen of Beijing played Shandong Bing, and Ou Hao of Fujian spoke the whole Hubei dialect...
How well is the dialect reduction in the film? What are the usage errors? The accent in the regular army was originally related to Chiang Kai-shek? The reporter of the Oriental Network and Zhongxiang Invited Guo Yemin, a writer of literature and history, to explain in detail the dialect problem in the film "Eight Hundred".
In the film, the role of "Xie Jinyuan" played by Du Chun has attracted many controversies due to accent issues. Some viewers said that its "wide popularization" was not standard enough. In this regard, Guo Yemin said that Xie Jinyuan's Guangpu is not standard, because the historical head of the Xie regiment should speak "Hakka dialect".
"Strictly speaking, Xie Jinyuan himself is definitely not speaking 'Guangpu', because he is from Meixian County, Guangdong Province, and should speak Hakka, not Cantonese or Cantonese in the usual sense. So if you arrange for him to speak Cantonese Mandarin, he is right if he speaks in a non-standard manner. ”
(Pictured: In the film "Eight Hundred", actor Du Chun plays Xie Jinyuan, deputy of the 524 regiment.) ）
In addition, the dialect of 1937 is also very different from the current dialect. Taking "Guangpu" as an example, the accent of the Cantonese people in the early Republic of China who spoke "official dialect" was not the Cantonese Mandarin accent used today. Because there were no means of communication such as tape recorders and televisions at that time, the official dialect of each province was "learned nearby". Although Guangdong is a provincial capital, it does not speak official language, but learns the southwestern dialect of Guangxi. Guilin, Guangxi, is the closest place to Guangdong to speak official dialect, so the Cantonese who studied official dialect at that time actually had an accent closer to Guilin dialect.
Therefore, whether it is to look at Xie Jinyuan's accent by the standard of the current dialect, or from the origin of the prototype character, Xie Jinyuan's "Guangpu" is not standard. As for whether the "non-standard" presented in the film is intentional or insufficient evidence, it is still impossible to judge.
With the change of the times, the dialect is also developing and changing, but the degree of change in the dialect varies from place to place. The dialect of Hubei is relatively stable and relatively close to the accent used now, so from a historical point of view, the film's Hubei dialect is also more restorative. However, the Shanghainese dialect of the Shanghainese citizens in the concession is not in line with the historical situation.
According to Guo Yemin, the "Shanghainese" that appears in the film was actually formed after the 1950s and 1960s, and is a relatively "new" Shanghainese. It does not fit the film's 1937 setting.
"In the film, Shanghainese say that 'we' all use 'Allah', but 'Allah' comes from Ningbo. If the time is 1937, some older people, like the old professor who has been standing on the balcony in the movie with a telescope, may not have accepted the relatively new word 'Allah', and may still say 'wuling'. This is a very typical difference in wording. The producers may have found a group of people who could speak the current Shanghainese dialect, but in fact the Shanghainese dialect of 1937 may be closer to the accent of Pudong or Nanhuijiao County. ”
The eight hundred heroes of the town guarding the Sihang warehouse have the accent of the north and south of the world. The Dragon Boat Festival, Xiao Hubei speaks "Hubei dialect", Zhu Shengzhong speaks "Shaanxi dialect", Yang Ruifu speaks "Tianjin dialect"... Is such an army with mixed accents in line with historical facts?
In fact, since the Qing Dynasty, there has been a principle in the army establishment, and the troops stationed in each place must be recruited from the local area. This ensures that soldiers will not run away or commit evil. So the accent inside the army is also relatively pure. This situation continued until the early Republic of China. The mixed accents within the military that appear in "Eight Hundred" can be explained from two aspects:
First of all, the prototype of the army in "Eight Hundred" is the 88th Division, which belongs to Chiang Kai-shek's concubine army, the Central Army. Chiang Kai-shek's consort's military recruitment principle was that of Whampoa Military Academy graduates, and the Whampoa Military Academy itself was a national enrollment, and there were people from various places within the school.
For example, Chen Cheng, who later became Chiang Kai-shek's deputy, was actually from Qingtian, Zhejiang; Hu Zongnan was from Ningbo and a fellow chiang kai-shek. Therefore, the Whampoa Military Academy itself is a very mixed group, and the consequence is that there are people in all parts of the Central Army, just like in "Eight Hundred". Guo Yemin introduced.
"In addition, it is also mentioned in the movie that because the 88th Division suffered heavy losses in the Battle of Songhu and replaced a lot of personnel, the reserve source was supplemented from militia groups in Hubei, Anhui, Zhejiang and other places.
In the film, Jiang Wu plays the Northeast Army "Lao Tie", who claims to be from Andong (now Dandong, Liaoning), and has followed "Zhang Dashuai", while Zhang Kou is a Shandong accent. Many viewers wondered about this when they watched. In Guo Yemin's view, the accent design of this character is very successful.
(Pictured: Actor Jiang Wu plays Lao Tie, a soldier of the 524th Regiment and a battalion.) ）
"His Shandong accent was exactly in line with the situation of 'breaking into the Kanto' at that time. At that time, among the groups that broke into the Kanto region and came to the northeast, there were many people from Shandong and Yibin. ”
In the history of Chinese cinema, ordinary soldiers speaking dialects has only been accepted for nearly one or two decades. The famous filmmaker Shi Hui's film Guan Lianchang (1951) attracted criticism for letting the protagonist speak Shandong dialect. It is not difficult to see from "Eight Hundred" that speaking dialects makes the character image more "grounded", more real and vivid.
(Pictured: The 1951 film "Guan Lianchang", which tells about the liberation of Shanghai)
In addition to the large number of dialects used in the film, there are also characters such as "Xie Tuanchang" and "Fang Reporter" who use "local Mandarin". In the late Qing Dynasty and early Ming Dynasty, what is now Mandarin is known as "Chinese" or "Mandarin." China's promotion of "official language" began very early, but due to technical reasons, the speed and scope of promotion are relatively limited. This is not difficult to see in the film.
The term "official dialect" first appeared in the Ming Dynasty. Matteo Ricci, a missionary who came to China at the time, found that the language spoken by the provinces of China varied, but there was a common language called "official dialect". In his letters, he wrote: "I have learned the official language, which can be used in the provinces, and even women and children can understand it." ”
In the early days of the Republic of China, the term "official dialect" was replaced by "Chinese". In 1923, the government of the Republic of China established the "official language of Chinese", which is based on the vernacular grammar of the modern Northern Mandarin, and the spoken language is based on the Pronunciation of Peking Dialect. After the Kuomintang-Communist Civil War, due to political and historical reasons, the mainland changed its name to Mandarin, and Taiwan still called it Chinese.
In Guo Yemin's view, when the reporter in the film was interviewed at the Sihang warehouse, he spoke "Shanghai Mandarin" instead of pure "Shanghainese", indicating that at that time, everyone had agreed that Chinese was a tool for communicating with people everywhere.
Including the commissioner who finally negotiated with Xie Jinyuan, he may have the accent of Henan or Zhongyuan dialect, and the dialect itself is relatively close to Mandarin, so there is no need to change his accent, but Xie Jinyuan still speaks Cantonese Mandarin. Everyone is using Chinese a more serious and formal exchange. Including the donation publicity of the concession in the film, the loudspeaker is also using Chinese for publicity, which also shows that even if the popularity of Chinese at that time may not be as high as we are now, everyone already has the awareness of using Chinese to communicate with each other. ”