In the early 1950s, a large number of excellent films were born in China's film industry. These films are outstanding because they are at the beginning of a period of transition, at a stage where the film industry's creative ideas, shooting resources and talent reserves are unprecedented, and the enthusiasm and dedication are at their best.
Before liberation, the center of China's film industry in Shanghai, film production has a fairly high standard, but the main creative staff in the creative ideas are still based on the beijing, Shanghai and other places of the citizen class, its film market is mainly a limited number of large cities. At the same time, the major film companies are each paved, and they are often weak in terms of funds, talents and resources.
After liberation, the eight major private film companies were merged into the Shanghai Film Studio, all problems were solved, and funds, talents, resources and even publicity did not have to consider too much, so filmmakers could carefully craft a film, so that the film's quality rate was extremely high.
One of the most representative films is "Chicken Feather Letter", which has a production cycle of up to two years, took more than a year to shoot alone, and its finished film is only about 70 minutes, but in any way, the film is a superior work even now.
This article tells the story behind the scenes of "Chicken Feather Letter".
First, chicken feather letters and message trees
The story of "Chicken Feather Letter" has been selected into primary school textbooks, the plot is not complicated, its theme "Chicken Feather Letter" is not a unique thing in China's War of Resistance, in ancient times there were similar military documents, called "Feathers", the feathers on the documents represent the degree of urgency.
During the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression, chicken feather letters were not unique to the anti-Japanese base areas, and appeared throughout the country, but they were still carried forward in the anti-Japanese base areas after 1939.
For chicken feather letters, the statements vary slightly from place to place, some say with irregular envelopes, and some say that special folding methods are used without envelopes. The same thing is that the more chicken feathers means that the more urgent the content, the more important it is. One chicken feather is general, two chicken feathers are express, and three chicken feathers are 100,000 urgent. There is also an explanation that one chicken feather represents no delay, two chicken feathers represent rapid delivery, and three chicken feathers indicate rapid delivery. According to veterans, some extremely important letters with three chicken feathers were even escorted by a company of regular troops.
The message tree is a beacon-like messaging tool used in mountain base areas, each village sets up one on the hillside, and when one village finds a ghost, it drops its own message tree, and then other villages will see it and pass it on.
This method is relatively hidden and not easy to be discovered by the enemy, and it also saves time to light the beacon.
Second, the work of the Shanghai Film Factory
Before the merger of the eight major film companies, some films made by Wenhua and Kunlun, such as "Guan Lianchang", were criticized, and when it was merged into the Shanghai Film Studio, the factory was determined to present a new high-quality film gift, and "Chicken Feather Letter" was selected.
For this film, the elite of the studio did their best, the best actor and director Shi Hui at that time personally went to the battle, and the assistant director was the young talent Xie Jin, and the production director was also the famous actor Gu Yelu.
In the filming of "Chicken Feather Letter", many problems were encountered, such as almost all the crew members had never been to the northern countryside and had not worked in the base areas, and they knew very little about the situation in the anti-Japanese base areas.
The solution is to experience life in depth, and the director and actor have spent several months in the countryside of Hebei, eating and living with farmers, learning from them to grow crops, harvest crops and herd sheep.
Because the filming cycle of the film is relatively long, in the winter, the slopes are all covered with heavy snow, although the PLA soldiers who participated in the shooting took the initiative to undertake the task of snow plowing, but the snow sweeping work of several mountains is too heavy, the key is that you sweep today and then snow tomorrow.
To this end, Xie Jin proposed to shoot in the south, so the entire crew moved to Hunan to shoot the rest of the scenes, and finally made up for the artillery tower on the outskirts of Shanghai.
Due to the experience of life, transitions and various accidents, the final shooting cycle of the film was nearly one and a half years, and the production cycle was as long as two years, which was relatively rare at the time.
In addition to the two directors, the two supporting roles of the film are also worth mentioning.
Playing Haiwa's father is Comfort, a handsome guy who had just returned from Hong Kong and had never seen a militiaman before, and he was going to play a militia captain, which was too challenging. To this end, comfortable ran to the countryside of Hebei, lived in the home of a villager who had been a militia captain for several months, and finally transformed himself into a "native" militia captain, which can be seen from his walking posture in the film.
Playing the puppet army "crooked mouth" is Cheng Zhi, he has been following Shi Hui before, not only has his own understanding of playing the villain but also Shi Wei's words and deeds, so the puppet army he plays has become a highlight in the film, the lines and expressions are very in place "Lao Tzu eats this tender energy".
Third, everything is true
Director Shi Hui is very paranoid about making movies, and he demands that everything that appears in the shot must be true.
So, the crew really planted a crop at the shooting site, and then the actors went to the field to harvest it.
When the ghosts burned the village in the film, the crew really burned several houses.
Haiwa is a sheep herding baby, so the crew really raised thirty sheep, and followed the crew all the way from Hebei to Hunan.
The devil wants to eat Haiwa's sheep, and Shi Hua lets the crew really kill a few sheep.
This is still a small matter, the key is that Shi Hui requires the actor to use real guns and real bullets, so as to shoot the real gun effect.
Although the production director Gu Yelu was resolutely opposed for safety reasons, in the end he could not resist shi waving, and as a result, all the shooting pictures we saw in the film were real guns and bullets.
Especially in the shot of a ghost shooting a house with a machine gun, Gu Yelu is worried every time that he will accidentally injure his fellow countrymen or accidentally injure his own people by jumping.
After all calculations, the crew still had two accidents.
Once, Cao Duo (the Yellow-browEd Demon King in "Journey to the West"), who played the militia squad leader, casually lifted a machine gun to see, but as soon as he lifted the machine gun, a misfire occurred, and a series of bullets flew towards the photographer and the camera assistant.
Fortunately, the photographer's life should not be killed, four bullets hit the ground at the photographer's feet, there was no accidental injury or jump, but it did frighten the whole crew, and from then on, shi waved the regulations, and no one in the crew was allowed to play with guns.
It is so easy to misfire, the author estimates that Cao Duo may have been playing with crooked handles at that time.
When the crew was filming a scene in the blasting tower on the outskirts of Shanghai, Shi Hui asked that the explosives be released, and as a result, the stone tiles at the explosion site flew everywhere, and one of the middle of the director Shi Hui's leg broke his leg.
Three years later, Shi Hua committed suicide in the sea, and another year and a half later, Shi Hua's body was found on the seashore, and one of the evidence that confirmed his body was that the body's leg bone had been fractured.
The film is also extremely careful in the service of the road, we look at these "bits and pieces" on the devil squad leader, there should be no lack of things, and the things that should not be there are not arbitrarily added.
In addition, Ishiwa did not deliberately defame the phenomenon of ghosts when shooting, on the contrary, the degree of reduction of ghosts is very high, such as the use of Japanese and the use and connection of concordia are almost flawless, and when the devils should speak Japanese, they must be pure Japanese, and there is no ambiguity when they say concord such as "great good".
As for the portrayal of the puppet army, Shi Hui is relatively good at it, because he has seen the traitors and is familiar with their faces.
To say more, real guns and real bullets are not only useful for the crew inside the field, but also have other uses outside the field.
The biggest difficulty the crew faced after transferring to the Hunan mountains was actually the tiger, when the South China tigers in the Hunan mountains flooded with great harm, and the crew saw villagers who were bitten to death by tigers in the local police station.
The police station sent manpower to help the crew prevent tiger attacks, they are mainly responsible for protecting the sheep, the actors and staff can not manage, at this time the real guns and bullets in the crew played a reassuring role for everyone.
Fourth, the main actor has all been changed
The main actor of "Chicken Feather Letter" is one person, Haiwa, and choosing this role is the most important.
At the beginning, Shi Hui and Xie Jin were interested in the actor Cai Songling's eldest son Cai An'an, who was about eleven years old and had already acted in the movie "Table" before, the key is that this child's acting skills are good and his appearance is more handsome.
Cai An'an lived in the countryside for a few months, learned to herd sheep, and also filmed scenes for more than a month, but suddenly one day he received a notice that he had changed from a sea baby to a dog baby.
It turned out that after watching the samples, Shi Hui felt that Cai An'an was too handsome and did not conform to the actual situation of most of the children's group members in the base area, and he took a fancy to Cai Yuanyuan, Cai An'an's younger brother.
Compared with his brother, Cai Yuanyuan's appearance is not handsome but more like naughtiness, which is in line with Shi Hua's positioning of the role of Haiwa, who believes that Haiwa must be a child with many smart ideas in daily life, and such a child should be naughty in appearance and personality.
In this way, the younger brother Cai Yuanyuan replaced his elder brother Cai An'an as the protagonist. It is worth mentioning that Shi Hui was extremely attentive to Cai Yuanyuan's guidance on the set, and almost every important shot had to be performed by himself first and then imitated by Cai Yuanyuan.
As a result, we see that in "Chicken Feather Letter", Cai Yuanyuan is like a "small stone swing", and his expression, actions and even lines with a slight Beijing film flavor are particularly like Stone Wave.
Interestingly, in the film, Haiwa was changed once, and another "starring" head sheep was actually changed once.
When the crew transferred to Hunan, the sheep from Hebei were dissatisfied with the water and soil, and the black-faced head sheep fell ill and unfortunately died, which caused considerable difficulties to the crew, because there was no head sheep, the sheep were not easy to manage, and those sheep only listened to the head sheep, but did not listen to people.
Therefore, we see a funny picture in the film, the three pseudo-soldiers should obviously be performing to catch sheep, but what we see is that they are vigorously bombarding the sheep, and even pushing the sheep's butt to make the sheep run, this "wear gang" is because there is no head sheep, the sheep "team" is not good to bring, when it is time to run, do not run ah.
The crew had no choice but to use the trick that filming was good at, and make up the sheep! They find a robust sheep, dress it up like the original head sheep, and then "train" it to become the new head sheep.
As a result, this sheep, who does not know whether it is lucky or unlucky, becomes a new sheep, but it has a new job every day, and because the black hair dye used by the crew is not very good for wool, the sheep must accept makeup like the actor every day to appear in the shot.
The two brothers, Cai An'an and Cai Yuanyuan, who participated in "Chicken Feather Letter", later devoted themselves to the film business, and in the late 1980s they established the "Tsai Brothers Film Company" in Macau.
As for the endings of the surviving "sheep actors", the author does not know, you guess?