June 15 this year marks the 100th birthday of renowned film artist Zhang Ruifang, while June 28 marks the day she died six years ago. For this "big sister" in the Chinese performing arts industry, who was born in 1918 and regarded art as her life and dedicated her life to the ideal, my generation is full of admiration and admiration. In commemorating her 100th birthday and remembering the sixth anniversary of her death, I can't help but return to the mental state of writing the documentary "Seocho Fanghua - Zhang Ruifang's Story" for the elderly, so that the past events about her are like close-up shots, pushed in front of me...
In November 2010, the series of activities of "Miyakusa Fanghua - 70 Years of Zhang Ruifang's Screen Career and Chinese Film Culture Inheritance Forum" held in Shanghai Cinema Seemed to be yesterday. That time, I reviewed the wonderful life of this famous four famous people on the Chongqing drama stage in the 1940s, an outstanding film star who starred in classic films such as "Songhua On the River", "Home", "Li Shuangshuang", "Spring Water Dingdong", honorary president of the China Film Art Performance Society, and the old leader of the Shanghai Film Actors Troupe, and first published the documentary I wrote and directed, and together with her film masterpiece DVD, as a gift to the guests. I remember that in addition to being "particularly excited and grateful", the old man modestly said "I am a lucky person" when he won the Lifetime Achievement Award, repeatedly emphasizing: "The number of scenes I have filmed is not much, not much achievement, the honor given to me by everyone is too heavy, and young people are better than me..."
Through the editing and directing of the documentary, I have a deeper understanding of Zhang Ruifang, and I feel that the biggest difference between her and other performing artists is not how unattainable she is in performance, but that she has a proud red experience, which can be called "Red Sister"...
First, Beijing, the old residence of the Zhang family with a red soul
At the beginning of the preparation of the documentary, director Zhu Feng, who is related to Zhang Ruifang, told me that zhang Ruifang's old house in Beijing when she was a child, No. 10, Gulou Dongfatong Temple, was a stronghold for revolutionary activities. So, I entrusted a friend to go to the field survey and shoot, but I saw that the place had become "Huafeng Hutong No. 23", which was completely unrecognizable and was "divided" by many students of the Central Academy of Drama, and only the bedroom she had at that time was still relatively intact.
Photo by Zhou Yating, the master bedroom of her hometown in Beijing where Zhang Ruifang lived
In 1949, Zhang Ruifang was reunited with her sister Zhang Nan (right) and sister Zhang Xin (left) in Beijing.
When Zhang Ruifang was interviewed that time, she was in poor health and was admitted to Huadong Hospital, which seemed a little sluggish, but she immediately felt refreshed when she talked about the past. She said that after the "Xiaguan Massacre" in Nanjing, they moved their family to Beiping, and her mother Du Jianru (later renamed Lian Wei) used part of her savings to buy an old house in Mei Lanfang in the remote north city in order to get rid of the extreme grief caused by the martyrdom of her husband who participated in the Northern Expedition and the death of her young daughter. After the outbreak of the "129" student movement, there were often some mysterious "strangers" here, "classmates" brought home by her sister Zhang Nan - Peng Zhen, Yao Yilin, Jiang Nanxiang, etc., as well as Huang Jing (the first mayor of Tianjin after liberation). When the young Zhang Ruifang knew that these were the underground party cadres in Beiping who led the student movement, she watched them walk into the east room one by one through the screen window of her bedroom with reverence. Throughout the day, there was silence there, but according to the mother's behavior of "taking the wind" at the door, a sacred cause was being carried out in the door, and a lamp was lit in my heart.
This scene was later reproduced in the movie "Mother" starring Zhang Ruifang and Jin Yan, Zhang Yi, Qin Wen and others, and she played the mother who "guarded the door" for the revolutionaries. This film, which is based on the revolutionary experience of Zhang Ruifang's mother, is often overlooked, but in her heart, it is a very important work.
The movie "Mother" in 1955, Zhang Ruifang played the mother, jin yan played the old Deng
Soon, Zhang Ruifang's mother became a member of the Chinese Communist Party and was directly led by Huang Jing, just as Zhang Ruifang was later directly led by Zhou Enlai in Chongqing. Under the influence of her mother and sister, the consciousness of "resisting Japan and saving the dead" quickly occupied Zhang Ruifang's mind, and she joined the youth group "Chinese National Liberation Vanguard" led by the Beiping underground party, actively participated in the parade and performances organized by left-wing film and drama workers, and played lianxiang, the wife of an unemployed worker, in the one-act drama "Dawn", thus meeting two important people: the male protagonist of the play, Cui Wei, and the screenwriter Chen Huangmei. Under the guidance of these two, she embarked on a path of revolutionary literature and art.
Second, a mobile theater troupe full of red romance
On July 15, a week after the July 7 Incident, the Beiping Student Field Mobile Theater Troupe, with the aim of publicizing the anti-Japanese war, was established, headed by Zhang Ruifang's classmate Hao Long, whose members included Rong Gaotang, Yang Yichen, Cheng Guanglie, her sister Zhang Nan, and chen Huangmei, a 24-year-old member of the Communist Party of China. Speaking of this bumpy and interesting experience, Zhang Ruifang will suddenly be excited, because she regards the day when she began to "move" with the troupe as the day she participated in the revolution and embarked on the road of professional literary and artistic work.
Zhang Ruifang and her sister Zhang Nan, Rong Gaotang, and Chen Huangmei planned to go to Tianjin first, then take a boat to Shanghai, go through the relevant community formalities, and then return to Jinan, meet with other members of the troupe, and then go all the way south. To be on the safe side, she and her sister put on floral cheongsam and dressed up as misses. Rong Gaotang was dressed in a cardigan, like a maid who had come to pick them up. Chen Huangmei wore a dress and pretended to be their cousin. They waited in Tianjin for two days before finally boarding the British ship Swire and heading to Shanghai.
The boat drifted on the yantai sea for a few days before arriving in Qingdao, where they arrived at Jinan, a "transit station" with the help of their uncle Du Jingtian. When they met with Huang Jing, Yang Yichen, and others, they unanimously decided to go to Nanjing to create a momentum first to gain the approval of the authorities, and then to smoothly carry out propaganda activities. They carried forward the style and "occupied" the last open-top carriage carrying livestock on the train, but after Xuzhou suddenly fell heavily, the carriage was filled with water. Rong Gaotang shouted loudly: "Ladies, don't be polite, you can't sit in the water, just sit on the lap of a male classmate!" As soon as Zhang Ruifang turned around, she sat on Yang Yichen's lap, and her sister sat on Rong Gaotang's leg, and a group of people huddled together tightly to avoid the rain and keep warm. The careful Chen Huangmei found that there was a lot of water on the canopy, so he used a stick to put it down, and the water poured down from all sides, and everyone laughed and put together the oil poem - hahaha, mentioning this past, Zhang Ruifang even laughed out loud with a comparison.
When they arrived in Nanjing, under the mediation of Mr. Shen Junru, they met Zhang Daofan, who was then the Minister of Education, and they were given the opportunity to perform. The troupe first promoted Chen Huangmei's newly edited "Fight the Devils", which tells the tragedy of how japanese devils bullied and insulted Chinese in the occupied areas. Zhang Ruifang's sister-in-law Zhang dajie is in pain after being defiled by the Japanese army, but there is also a baby in her arms waiting to be fed. When she inadvertently touched a hand of blood and found that the child was dead, she screamed and stumbled off the stage...
Zhang Ruifang fell on the reed mat in the background, still trembling. The reporter asked her how she acted so realistically? She couldn't answer, but remembered to use cotton soaked with homemade "blood water" stuffed in the "baby's" stomach to help herself mobilize her emotions, very effective. Later, some people concluded that her way was "experiential".
The authorities allowed them to perform publicly. So, their wandering, like the war, has just begun, and they are very revolutionary and romantic...
3. Chongqing, a red stage for recording brilliant achievements
When Zhang Ruifang arrived in Xi'an with the mobile troupe and was about to go to the long-awaited Yan'an, the troupe's "official meeting" considered her physical condition and future of acting and decided to let her go to Chongqing. For this reason, Zhang Ruifang once had a grudge in her arms, in her words, "tears brushing the ground". She did not, and could not have expected, that Chongqing would become the most important city in her life.
In Chongqing, she has acted in countless stage plays such as "The General Mobilization of the Whole People", "Under the Eaves of Shanghai", "State Supreme", "Women's Apartment", "National Thief Wang Jingwei", "Beijinger", "Autumn Harvest", "The Flower of Tang Di", "Qu Yuan", "Home", and the film debut "Baptism of Fire"; among them, "Qu Yuan" was the most sensational, and during those days, there were people everywhere in Chongqing learning to learn the "Ode to Thunder" and "Blow It Up!" Blow it up! Greatly stimulated the people's anti-Japanese enthusiasm, as one of the "four famous dans", Zhang Ruifang is worthy of the name. More importantly, she officially became a member of the Chinese Communist Party in Chongqing, and was directly led by Zhou Enlai until after liberation.
That summer, Zhou Enlai met Zhang Ruifang alone in the reception room of the Xinhua Daily in Chongqing. He first quietly listened to her, birth, family, acting, everything. Zhang Ruifang said, "From childhood to adulthood, no matter where I am, everyone is very good to me. Zhou Enlai smiled and said, "Everyone is very good to you, and that's because you must be good to everyone." Zhou Enlai encouraged her to "make more friends, learn from her outstanding predecessors, strive for excellence in acting, and be a good actor of the Communist Party." Zhou Enlai's words, Zhang Ruifang firmly remembered for a lifetime.
In 1963, Zhou Enlai congratulated Zhang Ruifang on winning the Best Actress of the Second Hundred Flowers Awards of popular films, including Zhou Yang.
In order to be more conducive to the work for the party's literary and artistic cause, Zhou Enlai personally deployed zhang Ruifang to "fade out of the political circle" and "hide" it. Zhou Enlai said he was very busy at work, so he might not be able to meet with her regularly and frequently, but he would contact her whenever necessary. As a result, Zhang Ruifang did not even participate in the party's organizational life, and deliberately showed indifference to some things that she had been enthusiastic about participating in, but her heart was awkward and painful, and she could not tell anyone, and could only rely on continuous acting to enrich herself, forgetting the unhappiness of concealing the identity of party members.
Still, Zhang Ruifang had the privilege of walking through the winding alley countless times to Zengjiayan No. 50, a small three-story building where Zhou Enlai lived. When she stood on a high place, overlooking the mighty Jialing River and the scenery on both sides of the river, she couldn't help but feel a pang of relief, and the melancholy that had been accumulated in her chest disappeared. Like everyone else, Zhang Ruifang also likes to call Zhou Enlai "big brother", listening to the "big brother" many times to describe the grand blueprint of building a new China after the victory of the War of Resistance, tasting the "big brother" personally cooking the special dish "braised lion's head", she feels extremely happy.
At every critical moment of growth, Zhang Ruifang will be encouraged and supported by Zhou Enlai. She never forgot the teachings of "Brother Zhou" for a moment, "strive for excellence in acting, be a good actor of the Communist Party", and practice it for life.
"Southern Expedition and Northern War"