In late May 2019, the Li Xing Film Exhibition of the 11th Cross-Strait Film Exhibition was held at the China Film Archive. Li Xing, 89, appeared at the opening ceremony on crutches, accompanied by zhen zhen, an actor who has not appeared in public in nearly four decades, and Yang Guimei, an actor he brought into the industry. At this time, it has been 60 years since he directed his first film, "Brother Wang LiuGe Travels to Taiwan". Contemporary directors Hu Jinquan, Li Hanxiang, Bai Jingrui, etc. have all passed away, and Li Xing has been active in the film industry, and his name has run through the history of Taiwanese film for more than half a century.
"Streets and Alleys" · 1963 ·
Born in Shanghai in 1930, Li Xing, whose real name is Li Zida, settled in Taiwan with his family due to the outbreak of war. After entering the industry, he directed more than fifty films. In 1963, Li Xing's "Streets and Alleys" was well received and brought him fame; later films such as "Oyster Girl" and "Duck Keeper" allowed him to gradually form his own style and become a representative of "healthy realism". Since 1979, Li Xing has won the Best Feature Film Award at the Taiwan Film Golden Horse Awards for three consecutive years with "A Boat in the Ocean", "Story of a Small Town" and "Good Morning Taipei", reaching the peak of his directorial career.
A Boat in the Ocean, 1978·
Li Xing's creations are conservative, always adhering to the local atmosphere, supporting traditional morality and family ethics, and sometimes even preaching. In his films, loving fathers and mothers are a common collocation. But this is contrary to his own experience, his father is strict and upright, and his mother is gentle and thoughtful. During his childhood, his father dropped a sentence of "I want to go to the northwest to promote the religion", so he hurried away, leaving his mother alone to pack up the belongings and chase after his four sons.
In the 1960s and 1970s, Taiwan twice set off the "Qiong Yao Fever", both related to Li Xing. In 1965, he adapted two of Qiong Yao's short stories "Six Dreams" "Pursuit" and "Dumb Wife" into "Wanjun Cousin" and "Dumb Girl's Love", which exploded at the box office, and Qiong Yao's novels became the fragrant food of major film companies for a while. In the 1970s, he partnered Zhang Yongxiang and successively adapted 6 Qiongyao works such as "Caiyun Fei", "Heart with Thousands of Knots", "Seagull Flying Place", and "BiyunTian", which further expanded Qiongyao's popularity.
On the set, Li Xing is known for his strictness, and the industry circulates the saying that "actors who have not been scolded by Li Xing will not be popular". Through his lens, Deng Guangrong, Zhong Zhentao, Zhen Zhen, Yang Guimei and other actors are well known, and in the 70s, Taiwan's popular actors Qin Han, Qin Xianglin and Lin Fengjiao all had a deep relationship with him. From the 1980s to the beginning of the new century, the representatives of various disciplines of Taiwanese cinema were more or less trained by Li Xing.
After entering the 1980s, Li Xing frequently traveled between the two sides of the strait and the three places, sparing no effort to promote the interaction and cooperation of mainland, Taiwan and Hong Kong films. His film "A Boat in the Ocean" was the first Taiwanese film to be released on the mainland and became a sensation. In 1990, he led a Taiwanese film delegation to Beijing for the first time, reuniting filmmakers from both sides of the strait who had been isolated for four decades. Under his good offices, the cross-strait and three-place directors' seminar has been held several times in turn by the three places.
In view of the similarity of age and experience, the film industry often compares Li Xing with Xie Jin, and the two met at the 1992 cross-strait directors' meeting and saw each other at the same time. Later, Xie Jin went to Taichung to play, Li Xing put his own movie "Tangshan Over Taiwan" to show him, saw half xie Jin could not help but speak, he said: "This film is directed by me." You replaced the director with Xie Jin, and the director of my "Furong Town" with Li Xing, which is very similar. In 2008, Li Xing recorded a talk show, and at the end of the interview, the host talked about the news of Xie Jin's death, and he burst into tears after hearing it: "Director Xie Jin is a giant in the history of Chinese cinema!" ”
"My Land and My People", 1975·
At the opening ceremony of the Li Xing Film Exhibition, he preserved his life's film materials in the China Film Archive. His hair was gray, but he was full of breath and choked up several times as he recalled. He said that the staff of the Taiwan Film Archive had advised him not to bring all the materials back to the mainland, "I have been walking on the exchange of films across the strait, as long as I feel that I have the spirit and physical strength, I will continue to promote cross-strait exchanges." I replied that I wanted to return the leaves to the roots. ”
On August 19, 2021, Li Xing died of heart failure in Taipei at the age of 91.
Healthy realism
In 1957, Li Xing served as a director for the first time, and he co-directed the Taiwanese film "Wang Ge Liu Ge Tour To Taiwan" with two other directors, which was a huge success at the box office, and then filmed the "Wang Ge Liu Ge" series of films to cater to the market. At that time, Li Xing had no directing experience, let alone personal style and creation, usually the next day to shoot a film, the day before into the cinema to see the film released, to see what treatment methods can be borrowed.
Six years later, Li Xing set up his own film company to shoot the Chinese movie "Streets and Alleys". In the early 1950s, seven or eight families from other provinces who had come to Taiwan from the mainland lived in a large courtyard, living a hard life, but they never gave up the hope of returning to the mainland. They support each other with the people of the province in the hospital. The scavenger Shi Santai has a lot of love for the orphan daughter Xiaozhu, although she lives in poverty, the two have deep feelings, love the same father and daughter, and live a plain but satisfying life.
At this time in Taiwan, martial arts movies and love literary and art movies were prevalent, and they were in the midst of a fight between Huangmei's new and old songs and urban strange love and tragic comedies, and the content was vain and far from reality. Li Xing aimed his perspective on the real social landscape of Taiwan, with small citizens as the protagonists, focusing on the portrayal of human feelings and the traditional Chinese spirit, bringing a fresh breath to the film industry at that time. The film also became the tenth annual box office in Taiwan that year, and was also praised in the newspaper by director Li Hanxiang, who was famous in Taiwan for his HuangMei-tuned films.
Gong Hong, then general manager of China Film Company, was greatly moved after watching "Streets and Alleys" and thought that this was in line with his artistic concept of respecting the spirit of realism. At that time, China Film borrowed a number of "provincial government construction" documentaries from Taiwan Film Studios, mostly covering the life of rural fishing villages. Seeing the shot of the oyster truck returning one by one under the sunset in the seaside of Changhua Lukang, Gong Hong suddenly opened up and played the slogan of "healthy realism", hoping to go out of the poor alley and go to the field, shoot realistic films with a brilliant and healthy spirit, avoid the dark side, praise the positive spirit, and create a healthy realistic route.
He hired Li Xing and Li Jia, director of "Haipu Spring Tide", to co-direct "Oyster Girl", which tells the love story of a Taiwanese oyster girl. It became the first experimental work of "healthy realism". At the 1964 Asian Film Festival, Oyster Girl won the Best Picture Award.
Oyster Girl (1963)
"Duck Farmers" · 1965 ·
After that, Li Xing was given the opportunity to independently direct "Duck Keeper's Family", which tells the story of Lin Zaitian, a master duck farmer, who raised his adoptive daughter Xiaoyue. During the filming, Li Xing built a duck farmer's home in the studio, filmed the farmhouse on real scenes, and interspersed with details of Taiwanese folk customs such as the agricultural product exhibition and the song boy stage filmed on location, and this film became one of the representative works of "healthy realism". After the film was released, it won the Best Film and Best Director Awards at the 3rd Taiwan Film Golden Horse Awards. Since then, healthy realism films have made a name, and under the initiative of Gong Hong, the public film studio Taiwan Production (Today Taiwan Film) and private film studios Volkswagen, Guolian, Wansheng and other companies have followed up and converged into a stream, and finally achieved the far-reaching production route of Taiwanese films that lasted for 15 years and had a far-reaching impact. Healthy realist films have also become one of the mainstream of Taiwanese film genres.
In the late 1970s, after shooting commercial films for a period of time, Li Xing returned to healthy realism films, successively making realistic films depicting Taiwan's people's livelihood such as "A Boat in the Ocean", "The Story of a Small Town", "Good Morning Taipei", and "Original Villagers". Compared with films such as "Duck Farmers" ten years ago, the experienced Li Xing has more accurately cut to the conditions of Taiwan's market, and further portrayed the virtues of sympathy, concern, forgiveness, humanity and self-sacrifice in human nature. After the overall improvement of shooting and audiovisual experience, Li Xing's films have a more diverse look and have survived in more forms: Teresa Teng's performances of "The Story of a Small Town" and "The Original Villager" and other film interludes are still widely circulated today.
"The Original Villager", 1980·
Since he was a child, his father taught Li Xing to abide by the family discipline of Chinese ethics and morality, and he attached great importance to "filial piety" and had a special love for traditional culture. This makes his characters in the film often succumb to tradition when faced with choices between the elder and the younger, the clan, and the family. During his university years, he studied in the Department of Education of the Teachers' College, which also gave his work a didactic color.
"My understanding of Chinese culture is all related to my memories of the 19 years from childhood to youth in the mainland, as well as my experience of watching movies in high school in Shanghai and the enlightenment of film culture." Li Xing experienced a batch of good movies in Shanghai in the 1940s, such as "Fake Phoenix", "Nightclub", "Eight Thousand Miles of Luyun and Moon", "Long Live the Wife" and other films left a deep impression on him, and he said in an interview that his shooting style was deeply influenced by Fei Mu's film "Spring in a Small Town".
In Li Xing's films, hometown and human feelings are the two major themes. He said: "They are all separated from their hometowns, so people's hearts are depressed. I don't care about people's hearts and minds, I want to reflect real life, and portray my mood in the confusion of where the future is. I use love to resolve these contradictions and conflicts, to see Taiwan's future development, where these people should go. ”
For cross-strait films, for Chinese films
Throughout his career as a director, Li Xing has struggled with art and box office. In 1965, after triggering the first "Qiongyao fever", Qiongyao was on fire, and the novel could not be written. Li Xing made films such as "Zhenjie Arch", "Road", and "Jade Guanyin", which exerted his personal will, and the box office failed miserably. He spent 14 months making "The Road" and told the emotional story of a father and son. At 10 o'clock on the day of the release of "The Road", he crouched in the corner and stared at the ticket office, and found that passers-by looked at the poster and left. "I wanted to rush over and pull him to buy a ticket, saying look, it's not good to see me refund your money." Much like a prostitute soliciting. "One morning show only sold seven or eight tickets, which was a big blow to him." I wanted to do something that no one else had done, but there was frustration in the box office validation. I thought, although winning awards is important, selling is the most important thing. Investors can't get their costs back, who wants to continue to invest in making movies? Li Xing recalled.
Subsequently, he made two popular records "Lover's Tears" and "Heroes of the Crowd", which saved the box office, and then joined hands with Bai Jingrui and Hu Jinquan to help Li Hanxiang shoot "Joy and Sorrow", which won the box office and word of mouth, and was affirmed.
"Joys and Sorrows", 1970 ·
In the 1970s, Li Hanxiang returned to Taiwan from Hong Kong to set up the League Of Nations Film Company, but the business situation has not been good. Li Xing, Bai Jingrui and Hu Jinquan offered to shoot a drama together for free, hoping to make money to help pay off debts. One person is responsible for a quarter of the story. Bai Jingrui is good at making comedies, responsible for "Hi", shooting a silent film. Hu Jinquan adapted the Peking Opera's "Three Forks" and finished filming "Anger". Li Xing adapted a period of human ghost love in "Liaozhai" and filmed "Lamentations", and Li Hanxiang also took "Liaozhai" and filmed "Le". Li Xing recalled: "Twenty or thirty minutes of things, everyone wants to use a new way to deal with their own paragraph, the four directors are competing. In the end, he came out to sell money very much, helped him pay off his debts, and also stabilized the friendship between the four of us. ”
After that, Li Xing began to focus on promoting the costume drama "Autumn Decision" that he had conceived for many years. This film is based on the folk tale "Bu XiaoZi Bites off the Nipples of the Mother", which tells the story of the grandmother's heart to protect the grandson, and the excessive doting caused the grandson to be imprisoned as an adulterer, and in order to continue to have children and grandchildren, the grandmother sent the woman to prison in order to pass on the generations. The grandson has always resented his grandmother, and it was not until the day of the autumn decision that he gradually realized that he was brave and responsible. In this film, Li Xingyi changes his usual small-town narrative and focuses on the discussion of traditional Chinese culture, patriarchy, ethics, life, and chronology.
"Autumn Decision", 1972·
Li Xing spent ten years conceiving, and the film was invested in the help of his friends. When Run Run Shaw heard that Li Xing was going to make "Autumn Decision", he gave him 100,000 yuan without asking about the content, telling him: I hope to be able to complete your ideals more generously in your budget. Run Run Shaw asked Li Xing to show him a copy after shooting, and if he was satisfied, he would buy it at a high price, and if he was not satisfied, he would return 100,000 yuan. After the shooting was completed, Shaw was satisfied with the film, but he told Li Xing: Distribution is really difficult. Li Xing spent two or three months promoting in Hong Kong, but the film failed to enter the top 100 of the Hong Kong film list that year.
This does not prevent this film from becoming Li Xing's favorite work. At the 10th Taiwan Film Golden Horse Awards held that year, "Autumn Decision" won the Best Feature Film, Best Director, Best Actor, Best Supporting Actress and Best Cinematography Awards. Since then, it has been re-screened many times, and Li Xing has also relished it in each interview.
After "Autumn Decision", Li Xing cooperated with Qiong Yao again, and filmed 6 Qiong Yao works such as "CaiYun Fei", "Heart with Thousands of Knots", "Seagull Flying Place", "Biyun Tian" and so on, setting off the second "Qiong Yao fever" in Taiwan.
At this time, Li Xing was already one of the most prestigious directors in Taiwan, and working with him became the dream of many actors, and he was very attentive to each actor he worked with. Deng Guangrong partnered with Li Xing for the first time, and Li Xing called a photographer, makeup artist, lighting artist and costumer to model him together. Deng Guangrong had been practicing iron sand palms for many years, and the flesh was very rough. When filming his scene, Li Xing shook the camera as soon as his hand was lifted, otherwise there would be a very stiff hand.
Zhong Zhentao first worked with Li Xing in the movie "A Tale of a Small Town", when he was a member of the Hong Kong band "Wenna Five Tigers", wearing a backpack rock head. As soon as Li Xing saw it, he offered to bulldoze his hair. After Zhong Zhentao agreed, he invited various media to hold a press conference the next day, shaved the head of Zhong on the spot, and then sent him to Lukang and Sanyi to live for a period of time to get close to the role.
"Small Town Story" · 1980 ·
Lin Fengjiao is one of Li Xing's royal heroines, and the two first met in the café of the Peninsula Hotel in Hong Kong. He asked Lin Fengjiao to walk from one side to the other and walk back again. "This time and round, I will see if she has that material." A lot of new actors you let him walk, he won't, hand in hand. Lin Fengjiao can do it. It's natural. ”
In 1983, Li Xing co-directed "The Great Reincarnation" with Bai Jingrui and Hu Jinquan, which was surpassed at the box office by "The Son's Big Doll" co-directed by Hou Xiaoxian, Zeng Zhuangxiang and Wan Ren, and since then, Hou Xiaoxian, Yang Dechang and other new generation directors have appeared on the stage of history and once became famous internationally, while Li Xing did not have any more films after filming "Tangshan Crossing Taiwan" in 1986, and instead ran for cross-strait film exchanges.
In 1996, Li Xing's eldest son died in a car accident. In the hospital, Li Xing has been holding his hand, close to smell, "nostalgic for his tender little hands as a child, there is a smell of milk." "After the death of my son, there was a year of temple work, and on the last day, all the ashes of the Spirit Bone Pagoda were blown up. The original altar of columbarium could not be found, and it could only be made into a crown tomb. Every New Year's Festival, Li Xing went to the temple to look at the crown tomb. "Later I told my daughter that after we passed away, we were cremated and left in the sea or buried in a tree or on a mountain. Three generations later no one remembers you. The death of our son makes our husband and wife look at life and death very lightly. Li Xing said.
Twenty-five years after his unmade life, Li Xing's life is still closely related to film. He is committed to promoting cross-strait film communication and frequently travels between the three places. In an interview, he said: "I have made it my mission to love, loyalty and hard work for movies, and I will never change my mind. The impact of these things is not immediately visible, but we still have to push it, and I have been doing these things in my lifetime. Not for me, but for cross-strait films, for Chinese films. ”
(References: "The Godfather of Taiwan Cinema - Interview with Director Li Xing", "Li Xing, Old and Strong, Running Across the Straits, Unifying Films", "On the Healthy Realism of Li Xing's Films", "Taiwan's Local Film Masters", "Witnessing the Rise and Fall of Taiwanese Films", "Drawing the Trajectory of Taiwan's Film Development - Remembering Taiwan's Outstanding Film Artist Li Xing", ""What I Made is Chinese Film" - Director Li Xing's Dialogue", "Taiwan's Living Film History - Director Li Xing", "The Film Road I Walked- In-depth interview with famous Taiwanese film director Li Xing)
Southern People Weekly reporter Zhang Mingmeng