"I don't understand the movie."
"I didn't understand it, the director didn't intend to let everyone understand, this is an art film, it's for people in the next century."
This is the line of the movie "The History of the Demise of Romanticism", which became a slur, and suffered a double word-of-mouth attack after its release. The winner praised it as the first domestic film of the year, and the loser blamed the director for being too showy and the timeline was chaotic. Tang Weijie, an associate professor at the School of Humanities at Tongji University, said after watching the film twice: "I can't believe that ordinary audiences can't accept this film at first, and the director played a trick on the narrative timeline. He pointed out that the plot and character relationship of the film use the original materials of the history of the Shanghai gangs, reproduce the governance and decline of the gang forces in the region, and tell the modern and modern history of China in the way of Shanghai.
Character archetypes that can be seen or guessed
"The History of the Demise of Romanticism" tells the story of the Shanghai gangsters in the 1930s, and it is interesting that almost none of the characters in the film have full names, and they all appear with symbols such as Mr. Lu, Mr. Wang, miss Wu, etc., which actually correspond to the real Shanghai Beach figures Du Yuesheng, Jin Jinrong, Butterfly and so on.
Tang Weijie believes that audiences who do not understand the old Shanghai are easily confused by the director's tricks on the timeline, and he divides the film into four paragraphs for easy understanding:
The core of the first paragraph is Mr. Lu, which is about his interaction with all the ways of society, creating an image of an eight-sided exquisite and fierce heart, and this paragraph ends with the failure of the Japanese assassination of Mr. Lu.
The second paragraph is about three years ago, the main line is Zhang Ziyi played by Xiao Liu, she is the wife of Mr. Lu's boss Mr. Wang, enjoying the glory and wealth and can't stand the commotion to go with other men, this paragraph mainly talks about feelings, and at the same time, through this celebrity affair, the interest relationship between Lu, Wang and Zhang is brought out. In this paragraph, Mr. Lu's brother-in-law Watanabe, on the way to send Xiao Liu away, suddenly asked the driver to stop and ended, leaving a suspense here.
The opening of the third paragraph is a mime, which brings out the scene of Miss Wu, played by Yuan Quan. This paragraph is mainly about Mr. Lu's matchmaking between Miss Wu and Mr. Dai (who did not appear), in fact, it is about Mr. Dai's strength and the political situation at that time. After Mr. Du fled to Hong Kong, he sent someone back to assassinate the traitor Mr. Zhang.
"The last paragraph begins with Mr. Lu and Miss Wu eating, and Miss Wu's sentence 'Wherever you like to eat' implicates a re-examination of Mr. Lu's brother-in-law Watanabe, revealing his identity as a Japanese spy and recounting his experience of imprisoning Xiao 63 for 63 years. In the end, Watanabe is found and shot by Mr. Lu in a prisoner-of-war camp in the Philippines, and the whole film ends with Mr. Lu going to Hong Kong. ”
Mr. Lu
In terms of character archetypes, Mr. Lu's prototype is Du Yuesheng, the leader of the Shanghai Youth Gang, and the statement that the three tycoons once had "gold rong greedy for money, Zhang Xiaolin is good at fighting, and Du Yuesheng will be a man", which directly reflects Du Yuesheng's focus on the world. At the end, the shot of Mr. Lu standing at the door of the depressed house is a true portrayal of Du Yuesheng's late life. "In the April 12 coup d'état of 1927, Chiang Kai-shek did not fully use his personal army. At that time, the Nanjing government was unstable, and the gang was a huge organization, so that they had actual control over Shanghai, and began to dominate the political situation before the War of Resistance, so the best way was to cooperate with the gang, so Chiang Kai-shek largely relied on Du Yuesheng's gang strength, which was not shown in the movie.
After the victory of the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression in 1945, Chiang Kai-shek was full of confidence and wanted to rely on a new political situation to govern the country, at which time he felt that the gang was too backward. In fact, before the liberation, Du Yuesheng had always been very open-minded, and after the victory of the Anti-Japanese War, he returned to Shanghai and even ran for the first mayor of Shanghai. However, Chiang Kai-shek was actually ready to suppress the gang forces, when prices in Shanghai soared, Chiang Kai-shek sent his son Chiang Ching-kuo to carry out market price reform, requiring the people to exchange all foreign currency and gold and silver held by the people into gold yuan coupons. Du Yuesheng's son, Du Weiping, was arrested by Chiang Ching-kuo for "hoarding goods and speculating in stocks" and sentenced to six months in prison. To some extent, this is also a knock on the mountain, Du Yuesheng originally understood people, knew his own situation, which is why he neither went to Taiwan nor stayed in Shanghai, but went to Hong Kong. ”
In the film, Mr. Lu has a line: "These people don't have the emotions of normal people, they don't like these now, high-rise buildings, order, good-looking, fun, delicious, they don't like it, or have other purposes, it is not a pity to destroy Shanghai," this is a gang leader's desire to protect Shanghai. In the end, Mr. Lu left Shanghai alone, and Cheng Er called this the end of an era.
The prototype of the second brother is Zhang Xiaolin, who was shot by his bodyguard after he threw himself into the sun.
Mr. Wang's prototype is Jin Rong, and his history with Xiao Liu actually has real elements.
Little Six
"Xiao Liu's character modeling is partly a reference to lu Lanchun, a famous Peking opera singer. In the 1920s, Shanghai's Peking Opera female actors began to become popular, when Jin Rong was the head of the French loan patrol Huayu, and there was a common stage in the Eight Immortals Bridge to perform Peking Opera, while Lu Lanchun's main stage was there, and Meng Xiaodong was also there. Jin Rong, who is over 50 years old, is very infatuated with Lu Lanchun, but Lu Lanchun says that he cannot be a concubine, so Jin Rong gives up his original partner Lin Guisheng. However, their age difference was 30 years, and later Lu Lanchun fell in love with the son of a merchant surnamed Xue, and was so angry that Jin Rong kidnapped Xue. Lu Lanchun eloped with Xue with Jin Rong's safe key at that time, and after mediation, Jin Rong agreed to divorce, and Lu Lanchun returned the key. ”
Tang Weijie said that Jin Jinrong's affair was also related to Du Yuesheng to some extent, "Before marrying Lu Lanchun, Jin Rong had been going to the scene, and once met Lu Xiaojia, the eldest son of Zhejiang overseer and warlord Lu Yongxiang, who was a real power figure in Shanghai beach at that time. Lu Xiaojia was wearing civilian clothes at that time, and About Lu Lan Chun did not drink Lu Lan Chun on the spot, and as a result, he was beaten violently by Jin Rong's men. A few days later, Lu Xiaojia took several truckloads of soldiers to kidnap Jin Rong, which made Jin Rong's disciples feel confused, and it was Du Yuesheng who played a role at this time, and he intervened with Lu Xiaojia. Later, Jin Jinrong was called 'Falling Bully' in the newspaper because of this matter, and gradually the scene did not come out much, in a sense, Du Yuesheng began to replace him at this time. ”
Miss Wu's prototype is the famous Shanghai movie star Hu Die, Tang Weijie said, "In reality, Hu Die is also married with Dai Kasa, but unlike the movie, her husband is not an actor and a businessman named Pan Yousheng, and it is said that he is still relatively generous." Hu Die was also engaged to actor Lin Xuehuai before Pan Yousheng, so she came and went several times, and Hu Die was very afraid of the pressure of the Shanghai tabloids, so there would be later choices in some major events. The real Hu Die is also a social flower, can speak well and has a very hard personality, and can carry things in case of trouble, unlike Ruan Lingyu. ”
To some extent, xiao liu's character setting also has elements of Hu Die, and "being imprisoned for three years" is the contrast between Hu Die and Dai Kasa.
The role of Wang Ma refers to Du Yuesheng's housekeeper Wan Molin, the difference is that Wan Molin is Du Yuesheng's cousin. Wan Molin was once known as the "first red man of Dumen", and it is said that he has a good memory and memorizes 190 sets of telephone numbers for Du Yuesheng's career. Just like the coachman played by Du Chun in the movie, wang's mother recommended that Du Chun eventually assassinate Mr. Zhang, in reality, Zhang Xiaolin was killed by Lin Huaibu recommended by Wan Molin.
Wang Ma
The Shanghainese pronunciation in the movie is "crossing"
The dialogue in the play is mostly In Shanghainese, and the audience in Shanghai is easy to notice the accuracy of the actor's Shanghainese pronunciation. If you want to study carefully, the Shanghainese in the play can still hear the non-standard pronunciation of the actors themselves, and the more standard post-dubbing two. Shanghainese is difficult for northern actors, because Mandarin is four tones, Shanghainese has five to eight tones according to the old and new, so the later stage is a more convenient means, but the post-dubbing can not make up for the sense of space on the scene, there are several scenes that can obviously be heard to be added later, but it breaks the continuity of the same period, but even the late dubbing is not the Shanghai accent of the 1930s. For example, an errand run (Wang Chuanjun) at the beginning of the movie has a very standard pronunciation at the same time, but it is still a standard modern accent. The old-school Shanghainese dialect has a sharp tuan tone, while now the new Shanghainese language mainly speaks Mandarin according to the tone of Shanghainese. ”
Wang Chuanjun in the film
The writer Shen Tong, in "The Difference Between the Old School and the New School of Shanghainese" (1981), divides Shanghai into three schools according to language: the elderly over the age of flower armor, the middle-aged people in their forties and fifties, the prime-aged people in their thirties and forties, and the young teenagers, who speak Slightly different Shanghainese, mainly in terms of pronunciation. Teenagers sometimes feel that middle-aged people speak with Suzhou accent, middle-aged people will feel that the elderly speak with Pudong accent, and the elderly, middle-aged people and prime-aged people think that the Shanghainese dialect of teenagers is no longer authentic.
Tang Weijie believes that the Shanghainese dialect of the film may cause Shanghai audiences to play, but not outside Shanghai, after all, the story can always justify itself, he took Hou Xiaoxian's "Sea Flower" in the 1990s as an example, when someone asked Hou Xiaoxian: According to the "Tale of flowers on the Sea" book, the Qinglou woman at that time should be Su Bai, but why in fact, only Pan Dihua is speaking Suzhou dialect in the whole movie, and even Liu Jialing, who is a Suzhou native, speaks Shanghainese with a Suzhou accent? Hou Xiaoxian explained that Shanghai was a city of immigrants at that time, and the Shanghainese dialect with a local accent was in line with the environment of the times.
"In this way, we should not be too concerned about the Shanghainese pronunciation of "The History of the Demise of Romanticism", after all, Shanghainese is only a marker, a style, if you have to investigate, Mr. Lu played by Ge You should also speak Takahashi according to the prototype Du Yuesheng."
When watching "The Demise of Romanticism", you can think of the classic gangster films of Quentin, Corport and other directors, and even the sentence in the movie, "This movie is made for people in the next century", is not original, but from Tian Zhuangzhuang - it is interesting to talk about movies in movies.
It has been more than a decade since the mainstream cinema bid farewell to the Shanghai dialect, and the last time was "Shares" (2002), why should a movie be made in Shanghainese in such an era?
Tang Weijie's understanding is that the director did not limit his focus to Shanghai: "Unlike making a film in Henan or Anhui, I don't think that Shanghai is a regional film or a Shanghainese film. Shanghai has a particularity in the history of modern China, 'Shanghai' is not a description of the region, but an expression of a certain aspect of modern Chinese history, which is why Li Oufan wrote "Shanghai Modern", and cultural studies have Shanghai Studies. In my opinion, Cheng Er is a director with a desire for historical expression, and he is definitely not a film made for the extreme protectors of the Shanghai region. ”
At the same time, Tang Weijie does not think that this is a nostalgic film, the so-called "history of the demise of romanticism", on the contrary, it should be deconstructed romanticism and anti-romanticism, disintegrating some people's wishful thinking about a certain period of history, and is the audience's history of the demise of romanticism, like a small joke on people who are nostalgic at every turn. He reminded viewers with Shanghai nostalgia that the film has a postmodern deconstruction tone and cannot take some details too seriously.