Zheng Junli (data map)
He co-directed the epic masterpiece "A River of Spring Water Flows Eastward" with Cai Chusheng, independently directed the social satire comedy "The Crow and the Sparrow", and he was also the first filmmaker to introduce the Stanislavsky system to China. Zheng Junli, an outstanding filmmaker, can be called a rare "all-rounder" in the history of Chinese cinema in the past century.
Spanning drama and film, across performance and directing, across theory and practice, the outstanding filmmaker Zheng Junli can be called one of the rare "all-rounders" in the history of Chinese cinema in the past century.
As an actor, he was selected as one of the "Top Ten Male Stars" selected by authoritative film magazines that year - "Movie Emperor" said Golden Flame, and "Movie Tiger" said Zheng Junli. As a director, whether it is the epic masterpiece "A River of Spring Water Flows East" co-directed by him and Cai Chusheng, or the social satire comedy "The Crow and the Sparrow" that he independently directed, even if it is considered in the world film industry today, it deserves the reputation of "immortal masterpiece". As a film theorist with extensive theoretical cultivation, he was also the first filmmaker to introduce the Stanislavsky system into China, and has written translations of "Actor Self-Cultivation", "Six Techniques of Speech", "The Birth of a Role", "Voiceover" and so on.
Sadly and regrettably, a catastrophe of the Cultural Revolution forced Zheng Junli's clock of life to shut down at the age of 58. On the cold hospital bed, Zheng Junli died alone with the desolation and helplessness of his ambitions.
The beginning of the artistic path
Zheng Junli, whose original name was Zheng Zheng and Zheng Qianli, was born on December 6, 1911 in Pinglan Tianbao Village, Sanxiang Town, Zhongshan City, Guangdong Province, because his parents went to Shanghai to make a living at an early age. At that time, many Cantonese people set up fruit stalls along Tiantong'an Road in Hongkou, Shanghai, and Zheng Junli's father was one of them. His father's meager income supported the poor family, and when the year passed, there would be creditors who would come to the door to force debts, and Zheng Junli personally saw his father kneeling in the hall house to beg for forgiveness from creditors. The unbearable experience of his childhood made Zheng Junli have the determination to be angry and strong from an early age, and he was ideologically easy to accept the propaganda of the Communist Party.
From Guangzhao Yixue to Lingnan Middle School in Shanghai, Zheng Junli came into contact with a large number of Chinese and foreign masterpieces, and he especially liked Goethe and Tagore with profound philosophical implications, during which he was influenced by a classmate who had made films, and he developed a strong interest in art, and watching dramas became his biggest extracurricular hobby. At the age of 16, before graduating, he made a major decision to change his life on his own, and applied for the Southern Art School founded by dramatists Tian Han, Ouyang Yuqian and others. This decision was fiercely opposed by his father: "You want to do a drama, right?" The family is already so poor! The angry father finally could not survive the kneeling, resolute Zheng Junli, and could only reluctantly agree.
After being admitted to the Nanguo Art School, Zheng Junli and Chen Ningqiu, Chen Baichen, Wu Zuoren, etc. became classmates, deeply influenced by Tian Han's aesthetic romantic art concept, and studied English with great enthusiasm according to Tian Han's requirements. In 1928, he used a dictionary to translate Ibsen and The Three Schools of Soviet Russian Drama, which were later published in the People's Daily. After working as a miscellaneous job at the Southern Drama Company and running several dragon sets, Zheng Junli was given the opportunity to star in Wilde's famous drama "Salome" in 1929 because of the lack of Chen Ningqiu. After each collective rehearsal, Zheng Junli, who is hard and rigorous, will leave himself alone in the house to rehearse repeatedly, so that his daily performances can be emotionally stable, standardized and not out of shape. In the winter of that year, Zheng Junli and his classmates formed a modern drama club. In 1930, the Modern Drama Society went to Nantong to perform, and Zheng Junli's performance greatly impressed Zhao Dan, who was acting in the "Little Drama Society" in Nantong at that time, and Zhao Dan asked Zheng Junli for advice on acting, and the two became friends of Mo Rebellion.
In 1930, the Chinese Left-Wing Writers' Union and the Left-Wing Dramatists' Alliance were established one after another, and Zheng Junli, as the executive member of the Left-Wing Dramatists' Union, wrote and drafted the "Recent Program of Action of the Chinese Left-Wing Dramatists' Union". In this program, Zheng Junli wrote a radical battle text: "If the enemy attacks us with bombs, we will return them with bombs." He actively and enthusiastically participated in a series of activities such as the demonstration led by the Drama Federation, the flight performance in factories and schools, and participated in the performances of "Nala", "Chincha Minister", "The Great Thunderstorm" and other plays. Passionate life full of fighting spirit, the other side is poverty. A copper plate to buy a burnt cake fritters, just with running water can make up a meal, because there is no money to play a left-wing drama. After each performance, everyone also walked back together.
Later, as the Chinese Communist Party began to develop left-wing films in Shanghai, Zheng Junli also switched from the drama stage to the film stage, becoming an employee of the Lianhua Film Company in 1932, starring in films such as "The Great Road", "The New Woman", and "The Lost Lamb". During this period, Zheng Junli did not give up the stage of drama, starring in plays such as "Flood" and "Resurrection". On the screen and on stage, Zheng Junli became famous for his free movements in his body and his ability to grasp the inner emotions of his characters.
Equal emphasis is placed on practical theory
On Zheng Junli's artistic path, it is an important feature that theoretical research and artistic practice promote and complement each other. Since entering the Nanguo Art School, Zheng Junli has been full of interest in performance and theory. From 1932 to 1938, it was the brewing period of Zheng Junli's performing art theory, and his practice in the fields of film and drama laid a solid foundation for his future theoretical research and the formation of artistic style.
After the outbreak of the Anti-Japanese War, Zheng Junli threw himself into the anti-Japanese rescue performance activities, first serving as the captain of the third team of the anti-Japanese rescue drama team, and then entering the "China Film Studio" ("Chinese production") at that time to shoot the documentary "Northwest Special" on the theme of the Anti-Japanese War, which was later expanded into "Long Live the Nation". In the past two or three years, Zheng Junli has been shooting documentaries in Shaanxi, Ningxia, Suiyuan, and Qinghai provinces, and transportation and communication are extremely inconvenient, and living conditions are extremely difficult, but the shooting life under the rain of guns and bullets has not allowed Zheng Junli to let go of his further study of theory. During the filming of the "Northwest Special" in Inner Mongolia, Zheng Junli crossed the Gobi and the Yellow River during the day, and at night he crouched down under the dim oil lamp of the chicken feather shop to complete the remaining translation of "Actor Self-Cultivation". The translation of the book went through several twists and turns during the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression, and was finally published by the Life Bookstore in 1943.
Beginning in 1942, Zheng Junli began to write "The Birth of a Character". Due to the wartime life running east and west, Zheng Junli did not have time to concentrate on writing books, and could only be divided into chapters such as "How Actors Prepare for Roles" and "How Actors Rehearse Roles". The book was not completed until 1946. Mr. Hong Shen, a famous dramatist in China, personally wrote the preface to the book and spoke highly of the book. As a pioneer in the study of drama theory in China, Zheng Junli has extensively studied the characteristics and laws of various arts and literature such as music, painting, sculpture, dance, etc., and found a successful way to absorb nutrient-rich performing arts from other art disciplines.
During this period, there is a detail that reflects Zheng Junli's insistence on artistic principles as an artist. In 1942, during the filming of "Long Live the Nation" by Zheng Junli, the newly appointed factory director Wu Shuxun put pressure on Zheng Junli to add a shot of Chiang Kai-shek to "Long Live the Nation" and locked him in the factory director's room, forcing him to change the "response to the chairman" in the lyrics of the film to "obey the chairman of the committee". Zheng Junli was very disgusted and showed strong resistance, and finally Zheng Junli was expelled from the "middle system" for being inferior. Zheng Junli returned to the drama world and successfully directed "Drama Spring and Autumn" co-written by Xia Yan, Yu Ling and Song Zhi that year. This experience also provided a solid theoretical foundation for Zheng Junli's creation of "The Birth of a Character".
Towards the peak of directing
At the same time as completing the theoretical monograph "The Birth of the Role", Zheng Junli also successfully completed the transformation from actor to film director. From 1946 to 1947, he and Cai Chusheng co-directed his first directorial work, A River of Spring Water Flowing East.
This epic work, which brings together a series of outstanding actors such as Bai Yang, Tao Jin, Shu Xiuwen, Shangguan Yunzhu and Wu Yin, set a record for the highest number of moviegoers after "Fisherman's Song" before liberation - in just three months, more than 710,000 people watched the film. After the film arrived in Hong Kong and Nanyang, the sensational scene was no less than that in Shanghai, and local film critics said that they were "proud" of domestic films because of the film. In 1956 and 1979, the film was re-screened in the mainland and was still a great success. Film critic Ke Ling once praised: "'A River of Spring Water Flows East' runs through 8 years, spans thousands of miles, and vividly depicts the front and rear of the war, life and death, broken walls and ruins and green wine and red lights, almost as a chronicle of the War of Resistance Against Japan, and the multi-level, multi-directional, multi-angle, positive and negative left and right jagged contrasts, like a heavy building, played to the extreme." ”
Zheng Junli started his directing career with a very high starting point, and the first step of independent directing work", "The Crow and the Sparrow", reached the world standard. The famous Japanese film scholar Tadanan Sato believes that the film is "more than enough" compared with the representative works of Italian neorealist films of the same era. He even believes that "if this work had been introduced abroad at that time, then with the support of international public opinion, the space for Chinese film artists may be greater after that." ”
"The Crow and the Sparrow" was filmed from the eve of liberation in 1948 to the founding of New China, and the script was collectively created by 8 people, including Chen Baichen, Shen Fu, and Zheng Junli. Left-wing filmmakers decided to make this film in order to document the collapse of the Kuomintang regime, satirizing current politics and criticizing reality. At that time, in order to cope with the Kuomintang film censorship system, the crew submitted a different script, but it was still banned by the Kuomintang authorities, so the film was not finally completed until after liberation.
As an outstanding social satirical comedy, the film condenses the turbulent situation of the time into a building for metaphor, the overall structure is perfect, and the director shows a picture of social beings in an unusually narrow space through flexible camera scheduling. Boss Xiao, who Zhao Dan played in the film, has also become one of his most classic screen images.
In Zheng Junli's film works, there is his delicacy and euphemism as a Lingnanian, and also has a long-term artistic conception of national traditional culture, whether it is his musical use, visual presentation or the creation of a picture artistic conception, it is full of "humanistic atmosphere".
Effort in confusion
After the founding of New China, Zheng Junli, as the backbone representative of left-wing directors, greeted the arrival of the new regime with joy. He moved from the broken building of the Kunlun factory into a house in the best part of Shanghai and lived opposite Song Qingling's former residence. He was bent on making good films for the new regime, but in terms of artistic creation, he was often "confused" because of the changing literary and artistic policies at that time, and his later artistic creation efforts were almost all in response to the times.
At the Second Plenary Session of the Seventh Central Committee, Mao Zedong mentioned the problems after some Communist Cadres entered the city, and Zheng Junli responded to the call and quickly created a script "Between Our Husband and Wife", starring Zhao Dan and Jiang Tianliu, telling the story of a Communist Party member who was knocked down by a "sugar-coated shell" after entering the city, abandoned his wife in the countryside and married a city girl, but the film was shot before it was released. Subsequently, the Shanghai Film Studio's "WuXun Zhuan" was severely criticized, and Zheng Junli, who had vigorously promoted the filming of "Wuxun Chuan", felt that he could not blame it. In order to wash away the "political mistakes" of "Wu Xun Zhuan" as soon as possible, the Shanghai Film Studio asked Zheng Junli to shoot "Song Jingshi", but such a film made for "atonement" was only released briefly because Song Jingshi had surrendered to the Qing court, that is, it was banned from the library.
With great pressure, Zheng Junli threw himself into the filming of the biographical film "Nie Er". The success of "Nie Er" and later "Lin Zexu" made Zheng Junli somewhat reduce his "guilt". Both films were shot in 1958 and were not filmed smoothly to be screened as gift films for the 10th anniversary of the National Day. At that time, it was the era of the "Great Leap Forward", high indicators, blind command, false reporting, and exaggeration were prevalent, and the Studio actually stipulated that each crew should shoot at least 60 shots per day. This is an impossible task for Zheng Junli, who is serious and can only shoot three or four shots a day.
Zheng Junli and son Zheng Dali (data map)
According to Zheng Junli's son Zheng Dali, Zheng Junli was under pressure at that time, returned home to meditate and think hard, and even shed tears sadly. Out of respect and adherence to the laws of art, Zheng Junli withstood great pressure and insisted on his own creative attitude and methods. Fortunately, later Premier Zhou Enlai inspected the shooting site, and after listening to Zheng Junli's report, he explained that the two films must be carefully filmed and strive to become masterpieces. In this way, Xu Sangchu, the director of the factory at the time, gave Zheng Junli the green light, and "Lin Zexu" and "Nie Er" could be filmed without following the provisions of the "Great Leap Forward". Among them, there is also an interlude about the end of the movie "Lin Zexu". Today's ending was changed to because of Premier Zhou's instructions.
Historically, Lin Zexu was finally assigned to Ili, Xinjiang by the Qing court, and Zheng Junli's original design end was Lin Zexu, played by Zhao Dan, leading the horse, going farther and farther, and frozen for the film when he looked back meaningfully. However, this ending was considered by Premier Zhou to be not high-spirited enough, and he hoped to design the ending to resemble the concept of "Although Lin Zexu is gone, the Pingying Regiment among the people (a non-governmental organization that fought against the British colonists) has risen", at that time, the Premier also specially found a seven-word poem by the Pingying Regiment, to the effect that it was to defeat the British colonists on a rainy night and let them lose. At this time, there was no time left before the national day gift screening time, but Zheng Junli and the crew still rushed to change the ending according to the premier's wishes, so the audience saw the footage of the fisherman's daughter played by Qin Yi on the battlefield.
After the release of the two films, they were a great success. Zheng Junli, who submitted an application to join the party as early as 1953, was finally absorbed into the communist party by the party organization at the end of 1958.
In 1961, Zheng Junli directed "Dead Wood Fengchun", which depicts the suffering of schistosomiasis patients from terminal illness and the family's sad and happy encounters in the new and old society with poetic shots. In 1964, at the request of Zhou Enlai, Jung Jun-ri filmed the movie "Red Propagandist", which was based on the sensational North Korean film "Lee Sun-ko", and Jeong Jun-ri led the crew to North Korea to shoot, during which the crew was also received by Kim Il-sung. However, the film was just finished and was stranded. Because the premier told Zheng Junli: "The 'Cultural Revolution' is coming" and "the film is going to be shelved."
Although the policy is difficult to grasp, Zheng Junli's rigorous attitude towards artistic creation has never changed, and the road of further research and exploration of director's theory has not stopped. His directorial monograph VoiceOver was written during this period. Due to the Cultural Revolution, the book was not finally published until August 1979. According to Zheng Junli's son Zheng Dali, Zheng Junli usually attaches great importance to summary, and after each film is completed, he will carefully sort out the information, and carefully bind the director's elaboration, sub-shot script, work notes, correspondence with collaborators, lens editing of the completed film, work summary and even the audience's reflection after the release, etc., carefully bound into a book. In Zheng Junli's home, you can still find a set of pictures he left behind, all of which are sub-shots of the movie, which are carefully drawn by Zheng Junli alone. Such a meticulous summary and thinking allowed Zheng Junli to complete China's first monograph on the art theory of film directors. This is also a summary of Zheng Junli's directorial career.
The Death of the Artist
Zheng Junli's artistic life was forced to end with the advent of the Cultural Revolution, and those days were a nightmare for many artists, including Zheng Junli.
Zheng Junli was diligent and hardworking all his life, and before he was imprisoned, he rode a very worn bicycle to and from work every day, carrying a large rattan bag with water cups and a hard leather folder, which was not a so-called "big director" style at all. He is just an artist who wants to make more good movies and is bent on making achievements in art. But the absurd times could not tolerate his little ideals.
As for the reasons for Zheng Junli's persecution during the Cultural Revolution, it is now accepted that it is related to Jiang Qing. After the founding of the People's Republic of China, whenever Jiang Qing went to Shanghai, he would visit Zheng Junli. However, at the beginning of the "Cultural Revolution," Zhang Chunqiao, then secretary of the Shanghai Municipal CPC Committee, was ordered by Jiang Qing to conduct a special search of Zheng Junli's home, and all the photos and pictures, and the handwritten paper were filled with two sacks of marijuana, and then taken away with them.
According to Zheng Dali's recollection, during the "Cultural Revolution" every day at 3 a.m., he had to watch his father write confession materials: who he met every day, and how his relationship with the other party was. Then go out at 6:30 to participate in labor reform, and go home at 8:30 p.m. During that period, the confused Zheng Junli examined himself every day with sincere trepidation, constantly cleaning up his thoughts and constantly writing inspections, which was extremely painful.
Although Zheng Junli paid great attention to exercising when he was young and practiced dumbbells every day, such a foundation could not withstand the torture of the "Cultural Revolution", and several times he was beaten to the nose and blue face and went home, but he only said to Zheng Dali: "Little brother, don't cry, don't ask who hit it, and don't ask why." Just help me put the medicine on. Despite the torture, Zheng Junli never wanted to give up his life, he still had many wishes, he wanted to shoot the art film "The Story of Dunhuang", Tian Han's "Ruan Lingyu", Ke Ling's "Qiu Jin" and also wanted to put "Drama Spring and Autumn" on the screen, but this outstanding director who told his son "I will never commit suicide" finally fell seriously ill and died. It was April 23, 1969, and Zheng Junli had just turned 58 years old.
Zheng Junli started his directing career with a very high starting point, and the first step of independent directing work", "The Crow and the Sparrow", reached the world standard. The famous Japanese film scholar Tadanan Sato believes that the film is "more than enough" compared with the representative works of Italian neorealist films of the same era.
Chronology of Zheng Junli's events
1911: Born in Shanghai, his ancestral home is Xiangshan, Guangdong (now Zhongshan).
1928: Entered the Southern Country Art School, and founded the semi-monthly magazine of "Modern" drama with Chen Baichen and others.
1930: Founded the "Modern Drama Society", joined the Left-Wing Dramatists' Union, was elected secretary of the Left-Wing Drama Association, and wrote and drafted the "Left-Wing Drama Association Action Plan".
1932: Joined Lianhua Film Company, and successively starred in "Struggle", "Big Road", "New Woman", "Lost Lamb" and so on.
1937: Served as the captain of the third team of the Shanghai Rescue Drama Team.
1939: On the Dramatic Movement of the War of Resistance.
1940: Joined the China Film Studio as the director of the News Film Department, and spent two years shooting the long documentary "Long Live the Nation" of the War of Resistance in the northwest and southwest regions.
1943: Participated in the China Art Drama Society, directing "Drama Spring and Autumn", "Motherland" and other plays. Published and translated the book "Self-Cultivation of Actors".
1947: Co-directed with Cai Chusheng "A River of Spring Water Flows Eastward". Published the treatise "The Birth of a Character".
1948: Independently directed The Crow and the Sparrow.
1958: Directing "Lin Zexu" and "Nie Er", a great success, he became a member of the Communist Party at the end of the year.
1961: Director of "Dead Wood in Spring".
1969: On April 23, he fell seriously ill and died. Source: Shenzhen News Network