1. The early development of China's film industry
In 1921, due to the heavy pressure of imperialism, China's national capital, which had flourished and developed during World War I, became the object or vassal of imperialist economic aggression. Some capitalists no longer invest their capital in industrial production, but instead move to land, public debt, and other speculative enterprises. In 1921, more than 140 exchanges were established in various parts of China within nine months, and speculation attracted funds for industrial production, and the sluggishness of industry deepened the confusion of exchanges. By March 1922, only 12 of the more than 140 exchanges had collapsed. Speculators have taken a fancy to the burgeoning film industry, and the Chinese film industry has unusually prospered in this chaotic state.
According to the statistics of the "China Film Industry Yearbook" published in early 1927, around 1925, there were a total of 175 film companies in Shanghai, Beijing, Hong Kong, Hangzhou, Chengdu and other places, and 141 in Shanghai alone. Some of these companies, of course, pooled a certain amount of money and started making films. However, the vast majority of them are fictitious offices, empty signboards, and they don't know what to do if they are not completed. In Shanghai in 1926, nearly 40 film companies actually made films.
Among the founders, investors, and persons in charge of these large and small film companies, there are salesmen, hooligans, and small businessmen, as well as national bourgeoisie with weak financial resources and bourgeois intellectuals who have studied abroad. Most of them are to make money, as long as the film can attract urban small citizen audiences, there is a so-called "box office value", and any film can be made.
The film industry was controlled by speculative businessmen as a tool for them to make money for speculation, and film creation was occupied by the cooperation between the literati of the Mandarin Duck and Butterfly School and the civilized theater troupe, as a means to express their feudal and comprador consciousness. This combination of business speculation and creative feudal comprador nature formed a major feature of the cinema of this period.
2. The initial film creation of Star Film Company
In February 1922, Zhang Shichuan, Zheng Zhengqiu, Zhou Jianyun and others organized the establishment of Star Pictures Co., Ltd. and set up the Star Film School at the same time. The company was formally established in March 22 at the original site of Datong Exchange on Guizhou Road, Shanghai.
Regarding the "star" version-making policy, Zheng Zhengqiu initially insisted on his consistent proposition that art should "educate society", and wanted to make "feature films", believing that "star works, when they first meet Chinese people on the screen, think of themselves as dramas". The host Zhang Shichuan believes that "only interest is still everywhere, and there is no ism in order to win people." So the company started shooting a bunch of boring funny films.
The Legend of the Funny King Wandering to China", showing Chaplin's jokes after coming to China, played by the British Youlu expatriates, simulating his image and acting skills;"Fruit Throwing" shows the story of a fruit merchant courting the doctor's daughter;"The Theater of Trouble" is even more whimsical, allowing the images of Chaplin and Roque to appear in the film at the same time, teasing and chasing, and making a big fuss. It inherited the mantle from the Asian Film Company.
Zhang Xinsheng", in the filming of a new civilized drama, Zhang Xinsheng's murder for money in Pudong was in the footsteps of "Yan Duansheng", which was banned because of the cruelty of the scene and the violence of the theme. All four of these ** were filmed in the glass studio of the Italian Lauro.
Due to the failure of the short films, the economic foundation of the "stars" is in jeopardy, and they are looking back at Zheng Zhengqiu's feature film proposition. The company began the creation of the "social film" "Orphan Saving Ancestors".
2. "The Orphan Saves His Ancestors", which propagated bourgeois reformism
"The Story of Orphans Saving Ancestors" is a film that "teaches filial piety", "punishes evil", "persuades learning" and advocates "compulsory citizen education", directed by Zhang Shichuan, photographed by Zhang Weitao, and filmed at the end of 1923 after 8 months of shooting.
The combination of feudal morality and reformism constitutes the entire ideological content of "The Orphan Saves His Ancestors." In terms of the level of film creation at that time, "The Orphan Saves the Ancestors" has certain achievements in artistic processing. First of all, it has a more national life atmosphere, getting rid of the attack on Western bourgeois films, "the script materials, actors' costumes, and set furnishings all try their best to avoid Europeanization, and purely use Chinese style";Secondly, in terms of the authenticity of the image and the characteristics of the life of the scene, it has been greatly improved compared with the previous works, and it has more got rid of the exaggerated stage performance procedures of the new drama of civilization." The plot of the film is twisty and full of storytelling, and its reformist ideas can still appeal to the psychology of some citizens at the time. As a result, the film was welcomed by the audience, which was quite a sensation, and also financially saved the crisis caused by the filming of films that "only interest is the right thing to do". In 1924, Zheng Zhengqiu released "Bitter Sons and Weak Girls" and "Good Brothers", both directed by Zhang Shichuan, and the content was similar to "Orphans Save Their Ancestors".
3. Zheng Zhengqiu's film depicting the tragic fate of Chinese women.
The "social film" advocated by Zheng Zhengqiu not only supported the business of star companies, but also set a precedent for the theme of Chinese films in this period. During this period, he also produced a number of films about women's lives. In this kind of film, Zheng Zhengqiu still maintains the critical edge of the positive side of his democratic thought, exposing the cannibalistic crimes of the feudal marriage system and the prostitution system, describing the tragic fate of Chinese women under the semi-feudal social system at that time, and deeply sympathizing with their lack of suffering.
"The Soul of Jade Pear", filmed in 1924, tells the tragedy of a young widow who observes the festival. The film opposes the sin of widows keeping festivals and acknowledges the legitimacy of arranged marriages. This conciliatory attitude is a concrete manifestation of Zheng Zhengqiu's reformist thoughts, which runs through almost all of Zheng Zhengqiu's women-themed film creations during this period.
1925's "The Last Conscience" depicts the evil feudal marriage Xi of child brides-in-law, sons-in-law, and holding tablets to become relatives.
In A Family in Shanghai (1925), Zheng Zhengqiu raised the issue of prostitution. He sympathized with prostitutes who lived an inhuman life, praised the good virtues of prostitutes, and clearly put forward that "prostitutes are not born prostitutes, and society creates them", but the author's solution to the problem of prostitutes is to enter a vocational school after redemption, and still does not depart from the category of bourgeois reformist ideology. In the same year, Zheng Zhengqiu also wrote "The Orphan Girl", the first half of which depicts the poor orphan girl being abused by her mother-in-law and refusing to be insulted by the foreman, resulting in tears all day after losing her job, resulting in blindness. In the second half, the conflict was eased, and the blind orphan girl was rescued by throwing herself into the sea, and found a child from the propertied class, and the stepmother also found out with her conscience. He also reconciled this acute social contradiction with reformist thinking.
In 1927, Zheng Zhengqiu's "Twenty-Eight Beauty" advocated the emancipation of handmaidens, hoping that the oppressed and deprived of personal freedom of poor daughters could live an ordinary life. However, the solution to the problem of handmaidens was still through a bourgeois-educated young master's speech on "women's liberation", which moved those wealthy relatives and friends and burned the deed of sale of the whole family's handmaiden.
In addition to the creation of films about the lives of these women, Zheng Zhengqiu also wrote and directed "A Little Worker" (1926) with the theme of "arousing conscience and saving the country through industry" and "Little Lover" (1926), which condemned the old society's culture of dragging the oil bottle son.
The strong reformist ideology and a certain degree of realist tendencies constitute the main characteristics of the "social films" created by Zheng Zhengqiu during this period. As a film director, Zheng Zhengqiu also has his own characteristics in artistic creation. He was more familiar with the social life at that time, better understood the preferences of the audience, and was good at grasping the story structure and setting off the atmosphere of the plot, so he was welcomed by the audience.
However, after 1926, Zheng Zhengqiu's works tended to cater to the audience, lacking a critical sense and a spirit of education. On the one hand, he created films such as "The Legend of the Phoenix", "Shandong Ma Yongzhen", and "Beijing Yang Guifei" to please the little citizens, and directed "Plum Blossom Falling" and "White Cloud Tower" with Zhang Shichuan, and independently wrote and directed "Blood and Tears Monument", which is a so-called family drama adapted from the civilization drama more than ten years ago;On the other hand, martial arts films such as "The Woman in Black" and "The Handmaid Savior" were filmed. After being criticized by the society, he is no longer in the same stream as martial arts films.
In 1928, after filming "Blood and Tears Yellow Flowers" adapted from social news, and after filming "Little Compatriots on the Battlefield" in 29, Zheng Zhengqiu returned to the old path of adapting civilized dramas. Adapted "Broken Piano Building", "Peach Blossom Lake" and "Red Tears Shadow" into movies. These films have improved their plot structure and directorial treatment compared to Zheng Zhengqiu's previous creations, and they are much more clever than many shoddy productions of the same period, and have a stable audience, and the left-wing film "Sister Flower" was filmed in the late period.
4. Hong Shen participated in film work and his early creation.
In the winter of 1924, the star company began to increase foreign shares, and built its own glass shed, and purchased mercury lamps, arc lamps and various machinery and equipment. In 1925, it officially formed the Star Film Co., Ltd. ***, and hired dramatist Hong Shen as the choreographer and director. In 1927, a second studio was opened, which was divided into two groups to shoot at the same time.
Hong Shen (1894-1955), a native of Changzhou, Jiangsu, loved literature and drama since childhood. After graduating from Tsinghua University in 1916, he went to the United States to study pottery engineering, and later entered Harvard University to Xi literature and drama. After returning to China in the spring of 20, he was employed by China Film Co., Ltd. *** due to the company's premature death and failed to make a movie. In 1925, he entered the star company, and in the same year, he wrote and directed the first film "Young Master Feng", and directed Zheng Zhengqiu and Zhang Shichuan Chuangyi's "Early Birth of a Noble Son", and in 26 years, he wrote and directed "The Rose Blooms Everywhere in April" and "Love and **", and in 27 years, he wrote and directed "Ms. Wei's Profession", and in 28 years, he translated and edited the drama "Young Grandma's Fan" based on the stage play of British writer Wilde on the screen, and wrote and directed "Classmate Love".
Hong Shen's films are quite distinctive in terms of artistic treatment. He is good at the use of small actions and the portrayal of inner states, focusing on the treatment of plot structure and character personality, and his scripts also have a relatively complete format. The subtitles, expressions, scenery, and even the nature and number of shots were specified, which was rare at the time. Some people praised Hong Shen's choreography and directing skills very much, saying that he has five ** in a row, describing 37 characters, and can complete the independence of personality, each without mixing, and the plot of the five ** has its own structure. However, because these techniques learned from foreign dramas and films lacked the characteristics of their own people's flag life, they did not gain popularity with a wide audience and did not do well at the box office, except for a few bourgeois, upper petty-bourgeois intellectuals and certain students.
3. The different production tendencies of Great China Lily Film Company and Tianyi Film Company
1. The "Great China Lily" and its film genre that are obsessed with "Europeanization".
The Great China Film Company was founded in January 1924, invested and operated by Feng Zhenou, a frequent acquaintance, and most of its main creative staff, such as Lu Jie and Gu Ken, were intellectuals educated by the Western bourgeoisie and were deeply influenced by American films, which determined his "Europeanization" tendency in production. However, after filming the two films "People's Heart" and "War Exploits", due to poor capital turnover, it merged with Lily Film Company.
Lily Film Company was founded by Zhu Shouju, the head of the Shanghai Film and Drama Research Association at that time, with the investment of Wu Xingzhi, a pigment merchant. His filming of "The Chrysanthemum Girl" (1929), "Bitter Student" and the "shady" "Revenge of the Filial Girl", as well as the "Mandarin Duck Butterfly" style "The Past Love" were also not popular with the audience.
In June 1925, "Great China" and "Lily" merged and reorganized into the Great China Lily Film Company. Since the company gathered all kinds of intellectuals at this time, the films produced also showed different tendencies.
Transparent Shanghai (1926), choreographed and directed by Lu Jie and photographed by Zhou Shimu, is one of the company's representative works at this time. The film depicts the story of a warlord's son who seduces a widow and girl from a poor family on the beach in Shanghai. The film is set in all Western style, and it fully renders the life of the semi-colonial, semi-feudal upper class and the love between men and women.
Wang Yuanlong's "Visiting Relatives" (1926) depicts the father and daughter visiting their wealthy son-in-law in the city, showing the upper-class social life in Shanghai on the one hand, and how the father and daughter are helpless at a banquet with Western food and how they make jokes at a ball.
Ma Jiefu (1926) is based on the same name of "Strange Tales from Liao Zhai", which depicts the story of Ma Jiefu's punishment of a fierce woman and preaches karma;"Happiness in the Middle" (1926) depicts the story of a nerd who replaces a gangster and marries a girl from a good family who is seduced.
Wind and Rain (1925) and "Serial Debt" (1926) are typical shady films. The former exposes the "selfishness" of a couple, while the latter depicts how three couples hook up with each other.
2. The aesthetic tendency of Shi Dongshan's early film creation.
Shi Dongshan (1902-1955), formerly known as Kuang Shao, a native of Hangzhou, Xiangjiang, studied painting Xi his early years, loved **, and participated in the Shanghai Chenguang Art Society sponsored by Dan Du Yu, Ding Wei, Zhang Guangyu, etc. The aesthetic ideas of this group had a great influence on the formation of Shi Dongshan's artistic outlook. In 1921, he joined the Shanghai Film and Drama Company as an artist, and in 1925, after choreographing and directing "Yang Hua Hate", he was transferred to the Great China Lily Company.
Shi Dongshan emphasized the "role of beauty" in film. He said, "Cinema is the most extensive and magical thing, in terms of art, in addition to the beauty of "sound", whether it is the beauty of "color", "the beauty of lines", "the beauty of action", in short, whether it is natural beauty, artificial beauty, can be expressed on the screen in an orderly manner. ”
His "Yang Hua Hate" in Shanghai Film and Drama Company is a film that embodies the modern aesthetic art concept. Describe a woman who lives a **, loves vanity, is seduced, and is abandoned after leaving her husband. After Han Yunzhen starred in this film, she won the title of "Wind Star".
Shi Dongshan's work of the same period, "Cohabitation Love" (1926), also wrote about the love between men and women. "Blessing of Children and Grandchildren" (1926) exposes the essence of Shi Dongshan's creative thought more clearly at this time. The theme of the work is: "You have lost your husband aside, you are taking care of a few children, and you have a few flowers in your life, don't sacrifice your happiness too much."
In 1927, Shi Dongshan wrote and directed the self-proclaimed romantic martial arts costume film "Wang's Four Heroes" (Zhou Shimu photography), which was deeply influenced by American Westerns. At the same time, he strives for the beauty of the picture, set, costume, and modeling design, even to the extent that he does not consider the authenticity of the plot and life, so that the scene gives people the feeling of non-Chinese, African and Western.
Ignoring the life situations that match the ideological content of the film and the plot, and simply pursuing the beauty of the so-called form, sensuality and enjoyment, are the characteristics of Shi Dongshan's early works. He "pays attention to patterns, and the interior and exterior scenes are worthy of an elegant character", "pays attention to local performances, and carefully studies them with a smile and gestures". These early creative activities provided the director with experience in the styling techniques of future films. After the September 18 Incident in 1931, he began to devote himself to leftist film making under the influence and help of the party's underground organization. 3. Tianyi Company and its film production that promote feudal morality and ethics.
To a certain extent, Tianyi Company can be said to be the predecessor of Hong Kong Shaw Company in the sixties of the last century. Shao Zuiweng operated various businesses in the early days, and after his failure, he changed his career to engage in civilized drama and established the Pingxin Drama Society. Influenced by the profits of the star company "Orphans Save Their Ancestors", Tianyi Film Company was founded in June 1925 with the original related civilized drama actor team as the creative capital. They advertise "paying attention to old morality and ethics, carrying forward Chinese civilization, and avoiding Europeanization".
"Standing on the Ground to Become a Buddha" tells the story of a son of an insatiable warlord who was beaten to death, and was enlightened by a monk and received the "enlightenment of the Buddha's decree", so he "put down the butcher's knife and repent of his past wrongs", "resigned on the one hand, and went to the field with electricity on the other", "sent his wife and concubine, scattered his wealth, and cut his hair into the mountains".
The heroine Li Feifei (1925) describes the destruction of a marriage that was "the life of the parents and the words of the matchmaker", the woman was falsely accused of being unchaste, and the truth was revealed after being rescued by the heroine Li Feifei.
In 1926, Tianyi Company's eight films, except for "The Secret of Husband and Wife" and "Movie Female Stars" (all starring butterflies), the rest of the "History of Liang Zhu Pain", "The Legend of the Righteous Demon and the White Snake", "Pearl Tower", "Meng Jiangnu", "Sun Xingzhi vs. Money Leopard", "Tang Bohu Dots Autumn Fragrance", are all adapted from folk tales or classical **. In terms of the treatment of the film form, the work is relatively shoddy. The ancients in the film wore fashion, but the market performance of the film was good.
4. It set off a trend of nondescript costume film bidding.
In 1927, various large and small production companies began to rush to shoot so-called costume films. Tianyi and Nanyang Film Company set up a joint venture to produce films (due to the choice of considering the Nanyang market), and filmed films such as "Liu Guan Zhang Breaks the Yellow Cloth", "Journey to the West", "Iron Fan Princess", "Ming Taizu Zhu Hongwu" and other films under the name of Tianyi Youth Film Company. Shao Zuiweng also used the names of Tianyuan Company and Tiansheng Company to shoot "Hong Biyuan", "Journey to the West Ten Palaces of Hades", "Tanuki for the Prince", "Five Rats in Tokyo" and other films. The Great China Lily Film Company has filmed films such as "Beauty Strategy", "The Story of Wu Pen", "The Great Breaking of Gaotang State", and "The Shadow of the Ancient Palace".
The Great Wall Picture Company has "Shi Xiu Kills Sister-in-law", "Wu Song's Blood Splashed Mandarin Duck Tower", "Nezha is Born", "Flaming Mountain", "True and False Monkey King". Shanghai Film and Drama Company has "Pansi Cave" and "Yang Guifei". The big China Film Company set up by Gu Dawei even made use of Peking Opera to shoot more than ten films in a very short time, such as "Zhu Bajie Recruits Relatives", "Monkey King Havoc in the Heavenly Palace", "Sun Xingzhi Havoc in the Black Wind Mountain", "Bottomless Pit", "Cao Cao Forced Palace", "Fengyi Pavilion", "Nezha in the Sea", "Yang Jianmei Mountain Collects Seven Monsters" and so on. Various small companies have also produced a lot of so-called costume films.
Most of these works were produced in a hurry in a short period of time. The artistic treatment is shoddy and vulgar. ** Criticism of "Pansi Cave" and "Yang Guifei" "The degeneration of art is also impressive". Many of the characters are dressed in fashion, the set is carved dragon pillars and Western chandeliers, and the Taishi chairs and sofas are displayed together, and more films are shot in Peking Opera costumes.
The proliferation of "costume films", on the one hand, is that the audience is disgusted with the talented and beautiful women, the old and the young, and the love between men and women in the themes of the film company's works at that time, and the creators have to renovate and open up other sources of money. More importantly, it is these ancient costumes and monster themes that are far away from the reality of the struggle, which meets the spiritual needs of the people who wanted to escape from reality and steal their lives in the troubled times at that time. This flood further formed a larger number of filming of gods and monsters and martial arts films.