Huang Yongyu and the movie: a story you didn't know

There are many legends about Huang Yongyu, such as a poor boy from the ancient city of Phoenix in Xiangxi who married the daughter of a beautiful general, such as the miracle in philatelic history created by the monkey stamp he created, and some of his past with his cousin Shen Congwen.

There is also the owl that turned a blind eye, which was criticized as a "black painting" during the Cultural Revolution, but now it has become a model for drawing owls in almost all children's art classes.

That mischievous energy shows that the old man has a playful attitude to life.

A few days ago, the news came that 99-year-old Huang Yongyuxian had died. I picked up the book "Fables of Animals for Children" at home and flipped through it, and marveled at what an old man with a sword that went off the beaten edge, with a strange pen, with some cynicism and unruly cards.

Born in 1924, he is the same age as Jin Yong and Li Lihua, and both of them were close friends. I don't know what the interaction between these charismatic characters is like?

Unfortunately, when tracing the life experience of the old man, it seems that few people mention his brief "electrocution" experience when he went to Hong Kong in 1948 and worked at the Great Wall Film Company.

At this time, I remembered the box of "Great Wall Pictorial" that the family painstakingly collected and regarded the weak treasures.

I rummaged through the cabinets, hoping to find some slush from these dusty old magazines.

According to Li Hui, a writer who wrote Huang Yongyu's biography, Huang Yongyu used to write and edit the Great Wall Pictorial, and at that time, in addition to using "Huang Yongyu" and "Yongyu" as his signatures, he also used "Zhang Guanbao" and "Guanbao" as pen names.

In addition, in the only work he worked as a screenwriter for Great Wall Company, "The Book of Children", he signed Huang Di.

Based on these clues, I did find a small stack of pictorial magazines related to it, concentrated between the 8th issue in August 1951 and the 17th issue published in June 1952.

The last issue in hand is the special issue of the "Children's Sutra" movie written by Huang Yongyu. It was also on the occasion of the release of this movie that Huang Yongyu felt the call of his homeland and left Hong Kong with his family to settle in Beijing.

I haven't got a glimpse of the movie "Daughter's Sutra", but this issue of "Great Wall Pictorial" contains a film novel that describes the content of the movie in detail.

The movie tells the story of a couple raising 7 children. The father in the story is played by Pingfan, a journalist who is busy working and writing to support his family all day, and has no time to take care of his children. The mother played by Gong Qiuxia is busy with all kinds of firewood, rice, oil and salt, exhausted.

Each of the 7 children has its own naughtiness, each has its own problems, and all kinds of messy conditions are mixed up, and this ordinary family is a chicken feather. Parents first let their children go, and then adjusted their education policy to become stick education, and found that there were many problems.

The Great Wall Pictorial described the film as "an educational comedy" and described it as "ironic".

The tone of "satirical comedy" is obviously very much in line with Huang Yongyu. He has always liked the style of comics, and it is obvious when you look at the book "Animal Fables" in my hand.

In the unique film book that he accidentally tested the waters of his life, his personal interest and style were also highlighted.

From the information I read, there are many very life-like details in the movie, which can show that kind of comedy that is both grounded and ups and downs.

The eldest daughter, Daming, played by Shi Hui, is a middle school student in the rebellious period of youth. She longs to get a used bicycle transferred by her classmates at a cheap price, boasting to her classmates that her father will definitely buy it. But her family was really stretched, and the car was not bought, which was ridiculed by her classmates, and her family accused her of not being sensible.

An important story line was led by Daming. Cycling, children, realistic expressions and other elements are a bit reminiscent of "The Bicycle Thief".

Daming broke the borrowed bicycle and found Ermao, who was "good at repair" but "good at disassembling", and the result was, of course, that the more it was repaired, the worse it became. Then Sanmao and Four Niu did not stop, and Sanmao, who Suxi fought with people, was injured and bleeding, and a series of ironic situations occurred at home.

Shi Hui, known as the "Second Princess of the Great Wall", was only 19 years old at the time, and had already emerged with "A Family Spring" and "A Hundred Flowers Blossom", and was awarded a "Golden Image Award" by the Great Wall Company for her performance in the "Children's Sutra", and her performance in it was praised by everyone.

Looking at many of her photos, people have the impression of a very quiet and well-behaved classical beauty, but in this drama, the labels given to her by "Great Wall Pictorial" are "female A Fei" and "cow girl", in the play she is truant and obsessed with substances, induced to play cards, go to the dance hall to dance, and perform a different temperament, which shows the plasticity of Shi Hui's acting skills. She also sang three episodes from the film.

If "comedy" is reflected in the details of the life of a family of 9 chickens and flying dogs, then the "irony" is that parents who ignore education issues.

"Great Wall Pictorial" wrote: "Children's education should be the most important issue for parents, but like Mr. Yan in the film, because the burden of life is too heavy and neglects his due responsibility, just born without regard to upbringing, the result is easy to make children barbaric and naughty, the purpose of this film is to remind those parents who do not fulfill their responsibilities, teach them to pay attention to educating their children." ”

Director Tao Qin also wrote: "Parents who want to manage their children well cannot take the most convenient method. Ordinary 'harsh' parents employ a form of punishment to discipline their children, beating, scolding, and even confinement; Of course, this is very easy, but firstly, it affects the physical and mental development of the child, and secondly, curiosity is driven, in order to resist oppression, they will do everything you can't imagine, which often makes parents unmanageable.

There is also a particularly "loving" parent, who adopts an attitude of ignorance, but this method of free development by the child, if in a bad environment, the results are very dire. ”

Huang Yongyu also published a screenwriting speech under the signature of "Huang Di", explaining that the inspiration for writing this work came from the personal experience of a good friend around him, and then he keenly pointed out the importance of the topic of education——

Is this a family issue, but is it not a complex social issue?

Observing individuals and families, cutting into social topics with ethics, and continuing cultural imagination and national identity in a distant corner is also in line with the creative context of leftist filmmakers in Great Wall Company at that time.

Perhaps it was this keen sense of smell, coupled with the hard work of all the production staff of the Great Wall Company, that the film was released at the beginning of Christmas and New Year 1953 with great success, and it is said to have broken box office records at the time.

"The Book of Children" together with another film "Honeymoon", "The sales records of all Western and Chinese films released at the same time were categorically overwhelmed by these two films... The first round of cinemas in Hong Kong and Kowloon and overseas film companies have therefore asked Great Wall for the screening rights of other new films, and the battle for the screening rights produced by the Great Wall in 1953 began" (quoted from Douban).

It is worth noting that in the "Special Issue of the "Children's Classic" of "Great Wall Pictorial", there is an article "On Child Actors" that occupies a very prominent position.

Editor's note: "We specially asked Miss Yao Fulan to write a special article about child actors, talking about the importance of child actors in the art of film." The person who signed "Yao Fulan" was Jin Yong, who wrote a series of film review articles in the Great Wall Pictorial.

Huang Yongyu and Jin Yong used to work together at Ta Kung Pao, and Liang Yusheng, another colleague of their Ta Kung Pao, said of them, "Jin Yong is a hero, and Huang Yongyu is a strange man."

In his essay "Sketching Causes", Huang Yongyu once recalled his days in Hong Kong during that time: "I used to live by submitting articles, and then I worked as a non-permanent art editor in a newspaper. He also wrote scripts for one or two film companies and drew four sketches for each issue of their film pictorial. Sometimes people, sometimes landscapes. ”

"Writing scripts for one or two film companies" shows that in addition to writing scripts for Great Wall Company, Huang Yongyu may have also cooperated with other companies, but this is impossible for me.

His sketches of characters and landscapes in the Great Wall Pictorial, looking at the "Great Wall Pictorial" at hand, you can still appreciate a lot.

In the column "Sketches of Filmmakers", he has painted Xia Meng, Yan Jun, Dong Keyi, Li Pingqian, Comfort, Ordinary, Han Fei and so on. In the column "Sketches of the Life of Filmmakers", he wrote and painted, the first one was about the ordinary of the filmmakers, describing his simple, thrifty, humble and hardworking life.

Huang Yongyu visited Pingfan's home, painted his furnishings, and recorded his exchanges with him. From the text to the picture, the short length makes the image of a film actor jump on the paper.

Landscape sketches, he has painted "Bird's Eye View Panorama of Wan Chai", "Kowloon Diamond Hill Foot Chalet", "Kennedy Road", "Garden Road Mountain View", etc., when viewing these paintings, it is like bathing in the strong old Hong Kong style.

I was also impressed by Huang Yongyu's two articles. One of them is "Behind-the-scenes Filmmaker Close-up" column, Huang Yongyu wrote ""Lighting Ancestor" Fei Guanqing".

This article has a very humorous sense, writing that this old Fei "children and grandchildren are around the knee, ten generations in the same household", and his apprentices and grandchildren are actually that lamp, and the words between the lines highlight the spicy, dedication, enthusiasm and vision of this filmmaker.

The other is "Comic Cartoon Brothers", written by Huang Yongyu with great emotion, introducing the entrepreneurial and struggle experience of the Wan brothers, the founders of Chinese animation. From their experience, we can also glimpse the pioneering journey of the Chinese cartoon Lan Wei.

The article also carries a lot of Huang Yongyu's own experience and understanding, and also shows his patriotic and progressive fist heart for the founding of New China and the arrival of a new era.

There are also columns like "Film March", where Huang Yongyu introduces all aspects of the film's behind-the-scenes creation in the form of comics.

In the screenwriting exposition article of his "Children's Classic", he very modestly shows that Yu is just a layman in this line, and thanks to the help of director Tao Qin, his script is more in line with the filming rules of the film.

But it can be seen from "Great Wall Pictorial" that his contact with filmmakers and his understanding of the behind-the-scenes of the film are quickly absorbing various elements of this line like a sponge, and the "layman" can soon cross the threshold and enter the hall.

It is no wonder that director Fei Mu, who is also in the Great Wall Company, cherishes talent and loves talent, and once suggested that he work full-time in the film industry. When Fei Mu died, he read the script of Huang Yongyu's "Sea Story" and prepared to change it into a split-shot script. Unfortunately, he ended up falling on the manuscript paper and never woke up again.

I sometimes think that if Huang Yongyu had not received a letter from his cousin Shen Congwen, had not left Hong Kong and returned to Dayabao Hutong in Beijing, then he might have been able to continue his relationship with the movie.

Maybe he will become a director like Hu Jinquan, who works as an artist in the "Book of Children"?

However, with his personality of the Hunan Phoenix City kid, he must be a completely different style from Director Hu. In addition, his films should also have a variety of comedy elements.

But after all, it was all just hypothetical, and he was extremely clever and went to create a legend in another place. Hong Kong, after all, is only one stop in the journey of this carefree prodigal son.

A brief encounter, Huang Yongyu and the movie. Brief encounters are not necessarily eternal. But in the end, it left some scratches of the years.