Source: People's Daily
Stills from the movie "Southern Expedition and Northern War".
Image source: China Film Archive
Propaganda Poster of the Southern Expedition and Northern War (partial).
In the spring of 1947, the Kuomintang reactionaries launched an all-out offensive against the Liberated Areas, and although they declared bankruptcy with the result of being annihilated for 8 months and annihilating more than 700,000 people, they were not willing to lose, and instead adopted the strategy of focusing on the offensive, gathering heavy troops and launching an offensive against the liberated areas of northern Shaanxi and Shandong. The Kuomintang reactionaries were defeated on both battlefields, and the timetable for the liberation of all of China was thus greatly advanced.
In 1952, when a team dressed in Nationalist uniforms and carrying American equipment walked into the Yimeng Mountains of Shandong Province again, the old anger of the local people was ignited, and they picked up stones and threw themselves into the team. The military staff officer rushed over and explained to his fathers and fellow countrymen, "We are making a movie." ”
This film is the first war epic film and military film "Southern Expedition and Northern War" film produced by New China.
The anger of the compatriots subsided, but the role of the Kuomintang army was difficult to convince, because they were actually volunteer soldiers who had just returned from the battlefield of the War to Resist US Aggression and Aid Korea. Let the "loveliest person" play the "most hateful person", the comrades really can't figure it out, and they can't help but get emotional. The battalion commander who led the troops patiently taught everyone that it was also a glorious task to make movies and play villains, and that it was to expose the crimes of the Kuomintang reactionaries. This made it clear to the soldiers' ideological work, and they were finally willing to obey the director's command and unequivocally plunge into the new task.
Another thing that is highly similar to the real history and the plot of the movie is the deep friendship of the fellow villagers. In order to reproduce the scene of the migrant workers in the Liberation War, the film crew invited local villagers to be extras. Because the villagers were scattered in various villages, Director Cheng Yin was worried that they would not be able to reach the shooting location on time. Surprisingly, the villagers arrived early, and also found the clothes and used objects they had worn in those years, and brought them to the scene together. It was early summer, and when the villagers heard that they were going to shoot the winter scene, they immediately helped the crew to clean up the leaves that appeared in the camera frame.
The people's support for people's films is as good as their support for people's wars. The contribution of the volunteers to the people's film is also the same as their contribution to the people's war. They don't understand the film profession, but they don't have to. This unprecedented film creation model has left a magnificent war epic film "Southern Expedition and Northern War" for the history of Chinese film. In the past 70 years, "Southern Expedition and Northern War" has been loved by the vast number of audiences and has become an indelible common memory for generations.
"Southern Expedition and Northern War" has undergone a complex creative process. At the beginning of 1951, the People's Liberation Army Art Theater of the East China Military Region created and performed the drama "Battle Line", reflecting the heroic deeds on the battlefield in East China during the Liberation War. Under the instructions of Comrade Chen Yi, the Political Department of the East China Military Region decided to adapt "Battle Line" into a movie, and screenwriters Shen Mojun and Gu Baozhang cooperated to complete the first draft of the script. The task of filming was handed over to the Shanghai Film Studio, and the director was Cheng Yin of the Beijing Film Studio. In fact, in order to ensure the quality of shooting, this film uniformly allocated the manpower and resources of various units and the army, and Tang Xiaodan, director of the Shanghai Film Studio, joined the line of fire and divided into two roads with Cheng Yinbing, shooting the scenes of the Kuomintang army and the People's Liberation Army respectively, and then "meeting the division" to complete the whole film.
Comrade Chen Yi has always paid attention to the creation of "Southern Expedition and Northern War", giving creative direction and revision suggestions, and Comrade Su Yu also personally participated in the film's military scene shooting plan. Their participation gave "Southern Expedition and Northern War" a heroic courage and revolutionary romantic temperament.
"Southern Expedition and Northern War" is a well-deserved artistic masterpiece, before this, Chinese films have never had such a grand and exquisite picture of war history.
In terms of narrative spatial structure, the film uses the axis of motion to establish basic relationships. When the People's Liberation Army goes from right to left, it retreats step by step toward Peking University; when it goes from left to right, it strides south. Between the advance and retreat, it is a glued battle process, adding composition and scheduling in both directions of depth and height. This allows the audience to see at a glance military terms such as "movement warfare", "obstruction warfare" and "annihilation warfare". The battle map is displayed several times in the film, and the location coordinates of important battlefields are repeatedly prompted, helping the audience to link the scene picture with the entire battlefield situation.
In terms of narrative time, the psychological rhythm caused by the RETREAT and advance, static and moving, defense and attack of the PLA. The opening line explains the change of the theme of the war from anti-Japanese to liberation, and the set dress presents the specific season in which the story takes place. Through the subjective movement viewpoint of the soldiers on the way, scenes such as the General Temple and the Skyscraper Ridge have entered the audience's eyes one after another. The brief reunion of the warriors and their families was a surprise, and the ensuing evacuation was intriguing. At this time, we will understand why the director chose Feng Zhe to play the protagonist Gao Yingchang, who has both civil and martial arts and Confucian temperament to properly smooth out the emotions from the soldiers on the screen to the audience under the screen, and also reserves enough energy for the next series of blockades and pursuits. Feng Zhe and Zhang Ruifang were both actors who grew up in the Shanghai film industry before the founding of the People's Republic of China, and they did a good job of transplanting the traditions and experience of left-wing progressive films in the early years into the soil of the new Chinese film industry and dedicating themselves to a new state of performance. Zhang Ruifang's role as a militia captain led by the militia to stop the enemy from blowing up the dam is a night scene outside the main battlefield of all male characters, and also laid the foundation for her outstanding performance in the movie "Li Shuangshuang" ten years later.
The design is based on historical facts, but also has some choices and creations. Phoenix Ridge blocked the battle, and the camera alternately showed the enemy and our two armies going up the mountain from the north and south at the same time, and the natural daylight caused the effect of "yin and yang cutting dawn". At the same time, PLA soldiers held steel guns, the muzzle of the gun was always forward, and the Kuomintang soldiers used a shoulder-to-shoulder posture, and the muzzle of the gun was often facing backwards. The battle has not yet begun, and victory or defeat can be predicted. Obviously, the creators not only seek to reproduce the appearance of history, but also creatively seek the form of art and present the essence of history.
Re-watching "Southern Expedition and Northern War" today, we will not only not feel the vicissitudes, but also be deeply shocked by the vibrancy of the film and the film language of everyone's style. Revisiting the red classics, we get not only a history, but also a blueprint drawn by the creators. There is the accumulation of traditional culture and film resources in the blueprint, the exploration of realism and modern aesthetics, the interweaving of heroism and romantic temperament, and the most important thing is the revelation of the internal logic of history. The power of history comes from the people, and the power of art also comes from the people, and only by blending with the people, life and death, can we gather indestructible majestic power.
(The author is a researcher at the China Film Art Research Center)