Playing Guqin and Pipa Composer: Lu Zhenyuan
Technical Consultant: Zhao Ding.
Cloth loading: Tam
English subtitles: Xue
Effect: Xia Lishi
Mandarin dubbing: Huada Studio (namely Huada Film and Television Enterprise Co., Ltd.)
Role description: Mrs. Dong, Yang, Dong, Zhang Ershu, Wen Xiu? Wan Li-Wucun-Chen Shu-Zhao Yun Si-Shu Zan-Paul Hu-Zhang Yuquan-Synopsis/kloc-In the 7th century, in a remote village in the southwest of China, there lived a young widow. The villagers respectfully called her Mrs. Dong. She devoted herself to serving her mother-in-law and raising her only daughter, Ling Wei. He treated the villagers outside and set up a private school to teach, which was respected by his neighbors.
One autumn, a group of officers and men went into the village to help people harvest. Under their leadership, Yang was arranged to live behind Dong Zhai's study. Yang appreciates Mrs. Dong's demeanor and reserve, and shows his love to Mrs. Dong several times. In her indifference, Mrs. Dong vaguely realized her lust when she was young. At the same time, I found that Ling Wei, a daughter of 16 years old, also fell in love with Wei Guanyang. The villagers adored Mrs. Dong and invited the chastity archway for her to the emperor. So she struggled between Yang and chastity memorial archway, and many contradictions led to confusion and confusion.
Finally, she ushered in the chastity archway, but lost everything. Daughter and Yang married for the official and left. Uncle Zhang couldn't bear her loneliness and pain and left sadly. Standing in front of the chastity archway, Mrs. Dong bathed in unprecedented brilliance and became a tragic hero.
Award-winning record The 9th Taiwan Film Golden Horse Award:
Best actress-Lisa Lu, best black-and-white cinematography-Qihe West; Best black and white film art design-Tianming Bao; The most creative special prize-Tang Shuxuan
Among the 1970 Hong Kong films, Mrs Dong (1969) is the most worth writing in the history of Hong Kong films, with a box office of160,000 and an annual box office ranking of 57th. Mrs Dong is the representative work of Tang Shuxuan, a female director and an alternative pioneer. This film is regarded as a masterpiece of female psychology written by Indian film Satyagit satyajit ray. Tang Shuxuan's aesthetic breakthrough in interpreting ancient folk stories from the perspective of modern women and existentialism became the first wave of the new wave of Hong Kong movies in 1970s. "Mrs. Dong" of Art Cinema also won four Golden Horse Awards in Taiwan at 197 1. Yan Lu, the leading actor, won the Golden Horse Award for this film, which attracted the attention of overseas film circles, and entered the Cannes Film Festival and the Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film, with great artistic value.
As one of the few female film directors at that time, Tang Shuxuan's works were always different. Although the circulation of Mrs. Dong is not large, it is still her most influential masterpiece. This film is edited by Indian photographer Subrata Mitra's black-and-white film, les blank and C.C.See. Among them, there are many freeze-frame shots of the representative style of the new wave, as well as large-span push-pull and rapid flashback, which play an important role in depicting the protagonist Mrs. Dong's struggle with chastity and feelings in the later stage of the story.
Mrs. Dong's bold experimental spirit has the shadow of "new movies" in Europe and Latin America. Compared with post-new wave works, Tang Shuxuan's style makes people feel bolder. Internationally renowned representative works of the new wave, such as Allen Fong's Love between Father and Son (198 1), Xu Anhua's Going to the Nu Hai (1982) and Yim Ho's Time flies (1984), are all realistic works with rich contents. Shooting naturalistic films in Hong Kong-that is, shooting nearby, speaking local dialects and using unknown actors-is a bold move, but it is not risky by world standards. This film is a prelude to the new wave of Hong Kong movies. Tang Shuxuan's own film works are not many, but her position in the Hong Kong film industry is very important. Before her, the Hong Kong film industry was basically a traditional workshop-style mentoring model in China. She was the first academic director to return from overseas. After her, Tan Jiaming, Tsui Hark, Xu Anhua and other academic directors began to stir. Zhang Shuping used to be the deputy director of Tang Shuxuan, and Wong Kar-wai was influenced by her.
As a "female writer", Tang Shuxuan has the first-level significance. From the content level, it covers the expression of human nature, female psychology, female emotion, female behavior and so on. From the formal level, it covers delicate inner portrayal, prose writing, peaceful perspective and so on. This kind of female theme and viewpoint has been fully displayed in his first two films, especially in Mrs. Dong, whose female theme and female writing style are more obvious.
The film is adapted from Lin Yutang's China legendary novel Chastity Archway. Due to the influence of the May 4th Movement and the author's masculinity, the original novel has a distinct anti-feudal enlightenment consciousness and satirical comedy style: Lin Yutang tells the story of a widowed widow who fell in love with her gardener for many years. Later, in order to pursue her own happiness, the widow voluntarily gave up the upcoming chastity archway and married the gardener under the arrangement of her daughter and son-in-law, thus achieving a marriage beyond class differences. At the end of the novel, the widow's blood relatives are disappointed at the loss of the chastity archway. Tang Jiahua's film has greatly improved the original novel, making it a film with a female theme and a distinct female perspective.
The film tells the story of the protagonist's wife Dong who has been widowed for many years. She and Zhang Ershu, the housekeeper at home, have a good impression on each other, but she has always controlled her emotions. Occasionally, another man I like, Yang (Roy Chiao), enters her life circle, and her heart can't help but feel emotional ripples. Later, Mrs Dong's daughter (Xuan Zhou) also had feelings for Yang. The triangular emotional vortex between herself, her daughter and Yang, Zhang Ershu's friendship and the upcoming honor of chastity memorial arch have plunged Mrs. Dong into deep contradiction and pain. In the end, for the sake of her daughter's happiness and personal and clan honor, Mrs. Dong had to give up her affair, refused Yang's love, suppressed her feelings with Uncle Zhang, and solemnly accepted the chastity archway in the sound of firecrackers, becoming a victim of emptiness and despair.
On the surface, the film seems to retain the anti-feudal theme with enlightenment consciousness in the original novel, but Tang Shuxuan expressed a deeper proposition of human nature with the theme and viewpoint of a female author, and the media that conveyed this profound proposition was a woman full of contradictions and pains. Mrs. Dong's heart is full of longing for emotion, but on the surface, she tries her best to control herself, especially when the man she likes appears. While longing for happiness and dreams, she also feels the pain of contradiction and despair. When her daughter married Yang and the chastity memorial archway was coming, she finally realized that the dream that once existed in her heart would never come true, and the emotional world would be endless despair and pain. We saw in the film that at this moment, Mrs. Dong suddenly rushed to the door and killed the chicken with a knife. Uncle Zhang Ran came out and looked at her in surprise. She turned and ran out, showing her despair and collapse to the fullest. Finally, firecrackers exploded, and she accepted the chastity archway with a straight face. Behind this expressionless face, the audience doesn't know how much helplessness, sadness and despair they will read.
The film's interpretation of this female psychology is the most prominent expression of its female theme. Therefore, although the film has certain enlightenment significance, it focuses on expressing the inner feelings of the characters rather than conveying some thoughts, and focuses on the internal writing of human nature. "It discusses the pressure of family and social order on human nature, and the contradiction between personal feelings and freedom and relative collective values." This female theme also gives the film a deeper speculative value.
On the screen, Mrs. Dong is also very infectious. Hong Kong film critics point out that her films combine China's poetry and painting skills. Tang Shuxuan used a new idea, combining the shaking mirror with the scattered mirror (zoom), which is very common in foreign films, and her overprint and freeze-frame mirror (freeze-frame) will be the axe used by Wong Kar-wai in the future.
The scene of "Mrs. Dong" is just like China's ancient poems, and the feeling of contrast arises spontaneously. The amplified soundtrack is like the amplifier of this "immersive feeling" generating device. Compared with Spring in a Small Town (1948), Mrs. Dong's amplification and highlighting effect is particularly obvious. "Spring in a Small Town" makes this blending happen in the natural spreading of pen, ink, paper and inkstone, while Mrs. Dong seems to draw the artistic conception of ink with western meticulous painting, with clearer boundaries and easier to distinguish. The same is true of expressing feelings. Both Mrs. Dong and Spring in a Small Town express their feelings slowly. However, "Spring in a Small Town" moistens things silently, and "Mrs. Dong" turns into a spring tide late and impatient. Spring in a Small Town is often conveyed to the audience by the creator's scenery. Although "Mrs. Dong" also uses a lot of scenery and objects (it also uses a lot of "dissolution", but compared with the west, the "dissolution" here seems more appropriate), it also uses a lot of people who directly show their psychological motives, and also makes their feelings more straightforward. Until it finally broke out, it was completely out of the meaning of Chinese painting. Repeated shots like pressure, focused attention, and hysteria broke out behind elegant Chinese. The word "resentment" in "Spring is always in my heart" suddenly ran out of the boudoir in spring, canceling the frame, and the * * * parasitic between the frames became Dr. Freud's dream of spring.
One advantage of Mrs. Dong is the application of "condensing mirror". From the beginning to the end, Tang Shuxuan often performed a lot of "freeze-frame mirror image" techniques that were extremely free and even almost unbridled. However, although Tang Shuxuan has given a new life to the film trick of "repeating an action", it is inconvenient to say that Tang Shuxuan has also given a new life to "Ning Jing", because if you say so, will you be sorry for KonIchikawa and Fran? ois Truffles? Ois Truffaut. Tang Shuxuan said that she doesn't like Japanese culture and Japanese movies, so she probably hasn't seen The Key of KonIchikawa (1959), in which the new arrangement of "standing the mirror" as the last full S of each section probably has no influence on Tang Shuxuan.
However, Fran?ois Truffaut's Three-quarters Coup (1959) ended with the last "condensed mirror", and even the two "condensed mirrors" in Zuzhan/Jules et al. Jim (1962) were unprecedented. It can even be said that Tang Shuxuan's adaptation of "Mirror" in "Mrs. Dong" was inspired by Fran?ois Truffaut. Because in this world, it is Fran? ois Truffaut, the only Fran? ois Truffaut who has given the "condenser" a new life. When he used the "Mirror of Cohesion" to condense the last expression of the little boy Chambiario in Four Hundred Strikes, at the same time, the score was cut off in the middle and the script ended. We can also say that his inspiration may come from KonIchikawa, but it can't be regarded as plagiarism, because he cut off the score at the same time and the script ended, which has a brand-new meaning.
In Zuzhan, he used a series of "condensation mirrors" to freeze jeanne moreau's smile. Later, Zu and Zhan reunited for a long time. He used a flying fairy "condensation mirror" to freeze the expression of his old friend's first meeting for a second, and then they came forward to shake hands. At this time, Fran?ois Truffaut is immortal in the film history. The beauty of Tang Shuxuan's variation "Looking at the Mirror" in Mrs. Dong is that there are all kinds of "a whole S", "capturing an expression" and "capturing the moment of an action". Therefore, we must not say that Tang Shuxuan's performance in the mirror is "plagiarism" but "variation", let alone that she has learned a lot. If Tang Shuxuan compares with Fran?ois Truffaut in this respect, we can probably say that Fran?ois Truffaut's Flowers in the Mirror is brilliant, while Tang Shuxuan's is brilliant, but it is just a word "love". Because although she didn't "create feelings for writing" as Liu Xie said, she obviously didn't "create articles for feelings". We can feel that her filming of Mrs. Dong is actually "literature and art", which is more important than "feelings". In the end, the difference between the two is not too big. So when we see Mrs. Dong, we won't be completely emotional. Personally, however, I think watching Mrs. Dong is not so much for the role, but for the feelings and situation of the role, rather for Tang Shuxuan's "film sense". Apart from the classic China films in the early 1930s, Tang Shuxuan was the first person in her era who really understood what a (pure) film was.
Under the background of Hong Kong's film industry, especially during the transitional period in the 1970s, serious literary genres basically have no room for survival. Although Mrs. Dong won many international awards, the box office in Hong Kong was still terrible, but it was successfully released in North America and Europe and became a popular film festival. . Therefore, Tang Shuxuan can best illustrate the dilemma of introducing new ideas into the film industry in 1970s. Tang Shuxuan is the first important female directors and the pioneer of the new wave. She was born in Chinese mainland on 194 1 and was born in a wealthy family in Tang Shuxuan. Her grandfather Tang was a famous patriotic general in the history of the Republic of China, and later moved to Hong Kong, where he lost to the Film Academy of the University of Southern California. His first film, Mrs. Dong, was an early independent production in Hong Kong. Tang Shuxuan first raised funds in the United States to shoot in Hong Kong and Taiwan, and then returned to the United States for post-production.
Lisa Lu, the star of "Mrs. Dong", resolutely gave up her position in Hollywood after years of hard work in 1967 and came to Hong Kong to film at the invitation of Tang Shuxuan. Lisa Lu recalled filming "Mrs. Dong": "That play was very hard, because the director was the first one, and her first play was female directors. I did this play to support her, because I thought she was from China and a lady, so I helped her. I ran out of money in the middle of filming, and everyone else left, but I still kept it, waiting for her, waiting for her to finish filming. With the support of Lisa Lu, the film "Mrs. Dong" was completed. In this film, Lisa Lu plays a widow who wanders between chastity archway and love. This movie also surprised everyone with Lisa Lu's acting skills. Lisa Lu interprets the intellectual gentleness of oriental women with her unique oriental temperament.