Chapter 22 Part II: Chronology of Xie Jin's Films in Two Special Periods of "A Thousand Miles Against the Wind"

Speaking of Xie Jin, the "chief director" of the Chinese film industry in the 1980s, he is a "famous director of a generation" with a sense of sacred mission and responsibility to society.Every film directed by Xie Jin is deeply imprinted with the distinctive marks of every important historical period in modern Chinese history.Suddenly looking back on Director Xie's film past in the past years, we will understand Director Xie more deeply.Only when a nation really stands up can it dare to face up to its history of humiliation. talent ahead of the storm After the victory of the Anti-Japanese War in 1945, Xie Jin, who started art, came to the metropolis Shanghai from his hometown of Shaoxing, Zhejiang. From 1948 to 1949, he successively worked in "The Dumb Wife" directed by Wu Renzhi, "Several Winds and Rains" directed by He Zhaozhang, and "Several Storms" directed by Zheng Xiaoqiu. Acted as an assistant director in "Happy Days" and "Heroes of Liyuan" ("Two Hundred and Five Short Biography"); after the liberation of the whole country, in "Looking Through the Autumn Water", "Biography of Movie Fans", "Chicken Feather Letter" directed by Shi Hui, and "Women's Representative" directed by Chen Xihe He continued to work as an assistant director. In 1954, he co-directed "A Storm" with Lin Nong, and began to independently direct films starting with a small test of Huai opera and opera films.Later, after filming the films "The Complaint" and "The Spring of the Water Town", in 1956, he directed "Women's Basketball No. 5", which greatly increased his fame. His directorial style of highlighting human nature, delicate and vivid, attracted the attention and attention of both inside and outside the circle.

The anti-"rightist" movement started in 1957. Under the strong political pressure at that time, people's thinking was pure and radical at the same time. Many people followed suit blindly, lest they could not keep up with the pace and fall behind.The simple Xie Jin is of course the same. He followed the situation closely, with full of enthusiasm, accepted the new task assigned by the organization, and rushed to shoot two very timely films in 1958 at Shanghai Film Tianma Factory-the children's theme "The Great Leap Forward". "Little Master" (co-directed with Yang Xiaozhong and Zhang Tianci), and the other is "A Little Story in the Big Storm".This film is composed of three short films "This Road Is No Way", "Old Hatred, New Hatred" and "Great Wind and Strong Grass". It was the only feature film with the theme of anti-"rightists" at that time.Xie Jin acted as screenwriter and director in one of them, "Great Wind and Strong Grass", starring Yin Weihui, Jiao Huang, Li Jiayao from Shanghai People's Art Theater and Yang Zaibao, Qi Heng, Gao Bo, Cheng Zhi from Shanghai Film Studio.The film mainly tells the story of Qin Zhaolong and others from East China University who used the rectification movement to attack the party, and Yang Wenying, a member of the Communist Youth League, fought resolutely against him.Yang Zaibao, who played the role of Qin Zhaolong, was selected by Xie Jin for the first time after graduating from the Shanghai Theater Academy and entering the factory. He played a role with a very different appearance and character, far from his "worker, peasant and soldier" image of appearance.This is Xie Jin's ingenious idea to test the basic skills of a young actor who has just entered the Tao, and Xie Jin clearly asked Yang Zaibao not to play the villain as a villain, but to understand the role from the heart, play the villain, and perform the narrowness of this character. This is enough to benefit Yang Zaibao a lot, and at the same time, we can also see Xie Jin's characteristic of being good at digging out characters in directing plays.Although this film is clearly labeled as a political illustration, Xie Jin's unique research in shaping and portraying the true image and typical character of the characters is remarkable.

However, the road of artistic creation is always full of thorns and dangers. With the deepening of the "Great Leap Forward" movement in 1958, the fledgling film art career of New China was seriously disturbed, and the film industry was affected by the "exaggerated style". However, some shoddy and occasional works shot in a hurry, rushing for speed, and seriously violating the laws and principles of artistic creation are increasingly on the rise.After the "Singing on the Reservoir", which was filmed and released by Changying Film Factory in 1958, was officially named "Artistic Documentary", Xie Jin directed another feature film in Tianma Factory that also reflected real people and real events - "Huang Baomei" It followed closely and became the second "artistic documentary" in the "Great Leap Forward" movement, and was called "the masterpiece of artistic documentary" by the critics.The film introduces the famous labor model Huang Baomei with real stories. Under the leadership of the party, together with the female textile workers, they eliminated the white spots on the joints and created "renovation by spindle", which further developed the vivid deeds of "Hao Jianxiu's operation method".The film's screenwriters Chen Fu, Ye Ming, and Xie Jin at this time took the lead in adopting news documentary techniques, and boldly suggested that Huang Baomei, a model worker in life, should play the leading role in person, so as to better highlight the characteristics of "artistic documentary".This initiative of using real people to play real people was adopted by famous directors Zhang Liang, Zhang Yimou and others after the late 1980s.Xie Jin took the lead as early as the mid-to-late 1950s, and his personalized director style is unique.In addition, Xie Jin also directed the short films "Service" and "Little Meteorological Station" of "The Little Master in the Great Leap Forward", which are composed of three children's story short films. a film.

At that time, through the "artistic documentaries" "Singing on the Reservoir" and "Huang Baomei", a large number of films of this type were led, and they took advantage of the wind of the "Great Leap Forward", and some of them were out of control. trend.In just two years from 1958 to 1959, more than 60 "artistic documentaries" were released one after another. These films with the theme of praising the "Great Leap Forward" appeared one after another, and they flooded the film industry for a while, forming the 1958-1959 In 2010, the "main theme" played triumphantly by the national film industry accounted for more than half of the total production of feature films in the country.This situation lasted until around September 1959, when it was replaced by 18 outstanding gift films celebrating the 10th anniversary of the founding of the People's Republic of China, and ended with only four or five weak films of this type.

In 1961, the painful lessons of the "Great Leap Forward" forced the central government to quickly adopt a policy to reverse the situation. After a period of setbacks in the film industry, there was a rare and gratifying creative momentum."The Red Detachment of Women" directed by Xie Jin is one of the outstanding ones.At that time, from 1961 to 1963, the Chinese film industry showed an overall decline in the number of domestically produced films, but films with high artistic value and high quality had formed a remarkable scale.The "Red Detachment of Women", directed by Xie Jin in 1960, was well-known and released nationwide in 1961. In 1962, it won the Best Feature Film, Best Director and Best Actress in the "Hundred Flowers Award" of the first "Popular Cinema" , Best Supporting Actor four awards.Or maybe it was the successful filming of "Women's Basketball No. 5". Xie Jin "remade Feng Fu" directed another sports comedy "Big Li, Lao Li and Xiao Li" in 1962, and the feature film " "Stage Sisters" caused Xie Jin to escape death in the coming "Cultural Revolution" storm.