A good drama that has been watched n times
On September 21, 1989, to commemorate the 40th anniversary of the founding of the People's Republic of China, a tribute film "The Founding Ceremony" was grandly released. With its magnificent historical pictures and real and delicate artistic techniques, the film reproduces the glorious course of the birth of the republic. Looking back at the difficult road of revolution and pondering the mystery of the rise and fall of the Kuomintang and the Communist Party, we have shown the new atmosphere of New China.
So, what are the untold stories behind this?
It's interesting to say that the origin of this movie actually originated from a drinking party. In 1987, playwright Liu Xing intended to write a drama "The Founding Ceremony" that described the founding of New China, so he found Zhang Xiaotian and Zhang Tianmin, who were also screenwriters. However, the influence of the drama was relatively small, and in the end they decided to change it into a movie script, so as to conform to the temperament of "The Founding Ceremony".
Just do it, Liu Xing quickly wrote the script of "The Founding Ceremony". Then, he came to Xi'an Film Studio with the first draft. At that time, Xi'an Film Studio successfully transformed under the leadership of director Wu Tianming, and its films such as "The Child King" and "Old Well" won many awards and became a leader among many film studios.
Unfortunately, when Liu Xing came to Xi'an Film Studio, Wu Tianming happened to be on a business trip. Liu Xing waited in the hotel for 7 days, and finally saw only a deputy factory director. But when the deputy director read the script, he arrogantly said: "Does anyone else watch this kind of thing now?""At that time, war films had tended to be lonely, and drama films and martial arts films became the mainstream of the market. The arrogant attitude of the deputy factory director disappointed Liu Xing and returned home.
Many years later, when Wu Tianming talked about this, his intestines were about to regret it.
Later, Liu Xing found Bayi Film Studio again, but at this time they were preparing to shoot the "Armageddon" trilogy, and they had no time to separate, and in the end Liu Xing could only find Changchun Film Studio to try their luck.
Unexpectedly, the attitude of Changying Studio was very sincere, and it decided to shoot "The Founding Ceremony" as a sole proprietorship, and the screenwriting team of Zhang Xiaotian, Zhang Tianmin, Liu Xing and Guo Chen was formed. So who will direct the movie?
At that time, because Bayi Film Studio was going to shoot "Armageddon", they almost looted all the directors who could shoot war movies in China, and set up 5 director groups, and our army and ** each had different directors to complete the shooting.
Later, after research, it was decided that the film would be co-directed by Li Qiankuan and Xiao Guiyun, who are known for working together to shoot major historical films.
At that time, it was already July 1988, more than one year before the 40th anniversary of the founding of the People's Republic of China, Li Qiankuan and Xiao Guiyun were filming the TV series "Blood Spilled Ancient Capital", and they suddenly received the script of the film "The Founding Ceremony". The script is divided into two episodes, with a total of about 80,000 words. The husband and wife read the script overnight and couldn't sleep at night, and the mood at that time was "very excited and a little nervous." "Excitedly, it is the couple's long-cherished wish to shoot an epic film to commemorate the 40th anniversary of the founding of the People's Republic of China;The nervous thing is that it takes about 1 year to complete the filming of a two-episode blockbuster, which is as difficult as you can imagine.
At that time, someone advised them not to pick it up, "138 characters, go to ** to find it?."So many major historical events have to be concentrated in such a **, and it is also a big documentary after filming. ”
But Li Qiankuan and his wife were unmoved, and took the book without hesitation.
In order to make this film well, Li Qiankuan and his wife visited many old-timers with reverence and consulted a large number of historical materials. Although there are many historical figures in the "Founding Ceremony", the most important thing to shape is the two representative figures of the Communist Party and the Kuomintang - * and Chiang Kai-shek. Li Qiankuan said that he and Xiao Guiyun agreed that the leaders of the Kuomintang and the Communist Party should be living and real historical figures, and they must break through the previous stereotyped expressions. "Since he is a real person, he should use artistic means to express the real and historical *** and the real and historical Chiang Kai-shek, so as to convince people. ”
During the filming, the film crew traveled to 12 provinces and cities across the country, and mobilized 150,000 extras to reproduce that stirring history in a real environment. It is probably difficult to replicate the creative situation of the past today. In the movie, the crew entered Zhongnanhai Yi Nian Hall, Tiananmen Square, Xibaipo, Shuangqing Temple, ** Mansion and other venues for on-site filming, such a grand production scale is rare today.
During the filming of the founding ceremony, the crew directly climbed the Tiananmen Tower, and hundreds of retired veteran cadres and veterans enthusiastically participated in the filming. On the day of filming, the Jinshui Bridge was full of people looking up, and when Gu Yue, who played ***, walked down the city tower, the crowd surrounded him and competed for a group photo.
The same situation also happened in Xibaipo Village, where the people were enthusiastic, "* did not dare to go out of the house easily, and they were surrounded by people."
During the filming in the Northeast, the crew dug trenches in temperatures of more than minus 30 degrees Celsius to reproduce the real battlefield of the year. Similarly, when filming Chiang Kai-shek's escape route, the crew also followed the real route from Xikou to Ningbo, Hangzhou, Shanghai, and Nanjing.
The Founding Ceremony of the People's Republic of China objectively and accurately reflects a series of stories from the victory of the Huaihai Battle to the Founding Ceremony. It includes the peaceful liberation of Beiping, Chiang Kai-shek's descent into the wilderness, the peace talks between the Kuomintang and the Communist Party in Beiping, the battle of crossing the Yangtze River, the liberation of Nanjing and Shanghai, the late night long talk with Mao Anying, and the dialogue between Chiang Kai-shek and Chiang Ching-kuo. Even "The Great Cause of the Founding of the People's Republic", which gathered many years later, followed the basic framework of this story.
One of the biggest features of this film is that it uses a large number of footage as creative elements to participate in the creation, combining historical documentaries and later shots through color transformation, lens use, actors' performances, and scene transformations. The film makes the film at the junction of the feature film and the information film old and brown, which not only makes the connection between the real historical space and the artistic creation space appear natural, but also enhances the performance function of the film. At that time, Li Qiankuan and Xiao Guiyun screened thousands of data films one by one in the database, and according to statistics, from the beginning to the end of the "Founding Ceremony", a total of more than 40 information pieces were used.
For example, during the founding ceremony of the People's Republic of China, when millions of people in Jinshuiqiao celebrated the grand rally and military parade of the founding of the People's Republic of China, the choreographer skillfully used a large number of original footage in the film, ingeniously processed the footage into a brown film, and used the technique of gradient to make it intersect with the artistically processed brown footage with a documentary style, and change from brown to color just right. In this way, the historical pictures of the present and the past are naturally connected and integrated.
The film premiered on September 21, 1989, and received a 1The good result of 700 million yuan, I remember that the movie tickets at that time were 1 yuan each, which shows the popularity of the movie by the public. At that time, when the film was released in Hong Kong, it lasted for a total of 113 days, breaking the record of 107 consecutive days of domestic films released in Hong Kong for "Liang Shanbo and Zhu Yingtai". Du Yuming's son-in-law Yang Zhenning not only spent money to buy a copy, but also invited Zhao Qinghua, who played Du Yuming in the play, to go to the United States for inspection, which can be called a good story.
With its profound ideological connotation and high artistic achievements, "The Founding Ceremony" not only won the best box office and good reputation, but also won the Best Feature Film Award, Best Screenplay Award, Best Director Award, Best Supporting Actor Award, Best Editing Award and a number of Golden Rooster Award nominations at the 10th China Film Golden Rooster Awards. At the same time, it won many awards such as the 1989-1990 Outstanding Film Award of the Ministry of Radio, Film and Television, the 12th Changying "Little Hundred Flowers" Award, and represented China in the 62nd Academy Foreign Language Film Screening. Over the years, the film has been shown on television screens many times, and many scenes have become memories for generations.
I still remember the last set of shots of "The Founding Ceremony": when *** shouted "Long live the people" impassionedly on the tower of Tiananmen Square, the fireworks were set off one after another, and at the same time, the picture was filled with the shots of the heroic struggle and glorious sacrifice of the PLA soldiers, and the two sets of shots were interspersed with each other. As Xiao Guiyun, one of the directors, said: "I hope to tell young people through this film that the motherland is not easy to come by today, and we must always love and protect her." ”