Jinyang.com reporter Hu Guangxin
“Let us roar up the boat, pushing the waves away…” The classic nursery rhyme “Let us roar up the oars” nourishes the hearts of generations of Chinese people. This song is the theme song of the first campus children’s feature film in New China, “The Flowers of the Motherland”. “The Flowers of the Motherland” was filmed in 1955. It is the first film in New China that reflects campus life. Since then, the student group of New China has officially appeared on the big screen.
From the wandering child who never continued to eat for three meals in the old society to the successor of socialism in the early days of the founding of New China, from college students full of idealism in the 1980s to boys and girls with a flamboyance and comprehensive development in the new century, in the 70 years since the founding of New China, the vast number of literary and artistic workers have used their lens to record the growth of every generation of Chinese students.
“Sanmao Wandering”
“Flowers of the Motherland”
A. From “Sanmao Wandering” to “Flowers of the Motherland”:
We are the successors of socialism
At the beginning of the founding of New China, director Yan Gong directed two children’s films: “Sanmao Wandering” in 1949 and “Flowers of the Motherland” in 1955. These two films just reflect the huge changes in the situation of children in the old and new China.
“Sanmao” was barefoot, thin, uncovered, and had a poor Sanmaohai on her big head. Although he is a fictional character, he is also a microcosm of millions of wandering children in the old society: he was supposed to study and go to school, but he was left on the streets and could not continue his life. Yan Gong recalled in his autobiography that he and screenwriter Yang Hansheng disguised themselves as they collected information, and saw with their own eyes that the frozen child was thrown into the car by the “corpse collection team”. When casting, Yan Gong insisted on choosing a child actor with similar life experiences to the role. Therefore, except for Wang Longji, who plays the protagonist “Sanmao”, the other three young actors are really wandering children.
The Story of Sanmao Wandering was already planned to start filming before the founding of New China. At the end of May 1949, Shanghai was liberated, Yan Gong and Zhao Ming continued to complete the filming, and added a filming: the People’s Liberation Army entered the city, Sanmao and his wandering children joined the yangko dance team for the celebration parade, and the film ended on their smiling faces. Yan Gong commented on this ending: “This ending is real and in the situation of just liberating and the whole country is jubilant.” “Sanmao Wandering” is the first children’s film officially released in New China, written on the homepage of the Republic: At the end of September 1949, on the eve of the “Foundering Ceremony”, “Sanmao LivingKomiksWaves” was first released in several theaters in Shanghai and was released nationwide in October, causing a great sensation.
Six years later, “The Flowers of the Motherland” directed by Yan Gong created a completely different image of children from Sanmao. The protagonist of the film is students from Class 3, Class 5, Beijing Primary School. They study on a clean campus, with kind teachers and friendly classmates. The most memorable thing in the film is the scene where children row and sing in Beihai Park: the lake is sparkling, the scenery is beautiful around them; the children are energetic, the red scarf on their chests flutters in the wind, and the youth and innocence are bathed in the sunshine of New China, with vitality and innocence overflowing from the screen.
“The Flowers of the Motherland” is a pioneering film. Since then, “The Flowers of the Motherland” has become synonymous with young children and laid the foundation for BabaylanThe tone of campus-themed works in the next twenty years. This metaphor also aptly reflects the relationship between the collective and the individual: the motherland is the “soil”, and children are the “flowers”, and no flower can leave the soil. Just as in “The Flowers of the Motherland”, Cinema, Jiang Lin (played by Li Xixiang) is naughty and Yang Yongli (played by Zhang Yunying) is willful and willful. With the help of squadron leader Liang Huiming (played by Zhao Weiqin), etc., they finally corrected their character shortcomings and became qualified successors of socialism.
The campus films of this period are full of collectivism, as Yan Gong said: “The film reflects the yearning and praise of ordinary people for beauty, harmony and friendship… This is exactly the mentality, ideals and wishes of the society at that time. ”
The vibrant female college students in “Female College Student Dormitory”
Long Live Youth”
B. From “Long Live Youth” to “Female College Student Dormitory”: The light of idealism will never die
With the resumption of the college entrance examination in 1977, the door of higher education has once again opened to the whole society. Among the “New Three” (Note: After the resumption of the college entrance examination, there are many people who have been changed by the college entrance examination: Zhang Yimou, an employee of Xianyang Cotton Textile Factory, was admitted to the Photography Department of Beijing Film Academy; his classmate Gu Changwei, who worked as an unemployed vagrant for two years before the college entrance examination; he has attended several “Chinese works” Yi Zhongtian, who was a rich man in the Cinema family, was just an ordinary middle school teacher before he was admitted to Wuhan University in 1978…
The 1980s was an era of reconstruction. Everything was revived, intellectuals were full of hope for the future, and idealism became one of the themes repeatedly expressed by campus movies at that time.
In 1983, Wang MengxiaoCinema said that “Long Live Youth” was brought to the screen, causing a nostalgic heat. The novel was created in the fifties in the last century. It tells the story of progressive students helping students with poor backgrounds to correctly understand themselves and return to the collective embrace. The idealistic temperament revealed by the story resonates with the times, just as the December 1983 issue of Literary Review commented: “When young people in the 1980s reflected on history and explored life, they obtained valuable inspiration and useful reference from the life path and spiritual journey of the young people in the 1950s under similar historical conditions. This is really due to the times and life, and is a great thing dominated by the internal laws of historical development. ”
Also in 1983, the movie “Female College Student Dormitory”, which describes university life in the 1980s, was released. The movie was filmed at Wuhan University and Zhejiang University, telling the story of five girls with different personalities and backgrounds in the university dormitory. Director Shi Shujun lived in Wuhan University for more than a month. Every time the script was revised, she handed it over to students and teachers of Wuhan University to discuss and revise. Because of this, she successfully condensed the spirit of college students of the times in “Female College Student Dormitory”: “I rewrote the script based on the passion of Wuhan University students at that time, questioning their own responsibilities, criticizing old educational ideas, and all aspects of their campus life, and 80% of the plays were rewritten. “
The campus life described in the movie still seems to be very friendly: school welcomes the new year, visits the library, New Year’s Day party… In these seemingly sparse and ordinary daily life, the light of idealism shines. Shi Shujun filmed “Female College Student Dormitory” as a youth film. She has been trying to capture the real state of young people in the era: their relationship with their teachers and parents, their friendship and contradictions, their own ideals and pursuits…
In her opinion, the energy that intellectuals have been suppressed for a long time was released in the 1980s. href=”https://comicmov.com/”>Cinema, “They talk about national affairs with their ideals and feel that the responsibility is very great… This kind of thing is very precious, and I have to be immersed in the entire work.” In the film, Shi Shujun expressed his expectations for the college student group through a scene of the university club discussion meeting with the help of the male protagonist Lan Wei: “Some people say that contemporary college students are a question number; and we contemporary college students say that we should look at society with question marks and think with our own minds. Not only do you need to think, but you also need to strive and create. ”
“Female College Student Dormitory”
“Missing Female Middle School Student”
“Don’t Cry at the age of Seventeen”
C. From “Missing Girls”Students” to “Don’t Cry at the age of Seventeen”:
Love is the only way to grow up
In the 1980s and 1990s, female directors with fresh and delicate directing styles became the main force in the creation of campus film and television works. Female directors such as Shi Shujun, Huang Shuqin, Peng Xiaolian, and Lu Xiaoya tell stories from a unique female perspective. The once secretive topic of “love” also emerged from the campus film works at this time.
Shi Shujun’s “The Missing Female Middle School Student” is one of the best. The movie tells the story of Wang Jia, a female middle school student who was in adolescence, who had a crush on Lan Bo, a college student at the Conservatory of Music. Shi Shujun delicately expresses the freshness, anxiety and pleasure of a girl when she first met love, and the slight deviance of her behavior. She still seems avant-garde.
From this movie, we can clearly see the contradictory attitudes of people towards early love in that era: secret love caused Wang Jia’s grades to drop significantly. When the mother learned that her daughter was thinking, she was furious, which led to Wang Jia running away from home. But this relationship is just a small episode in life: the passionate secret love comes and goes quickly. After a summer vacation, Wang Jia has put Rampo behind her and her life is back on track.
Although there are various limitations of the times, the valuable thing about “The Missing Female Middle School Student” is to face the emotions of teenagers and regard love as a part of growth. As Liu Yu, the actor of Wang Jia, said in an interview: “Middle school students should understand love and should also withstand the challenge of early love. Don’t you want to be a strong person? This aspect of strength is also very important.” With the openness and confidence of social atmosphere, the image of students in campus movies is no longer stereotyped. The girls in “The Missing Female Middle School Student” are lively and lively: wearing swimsuits Babaylan play by the beach, stealing the use of mother’s cosmetics and high heels, and begin to think about the future and life and death…
From then on, a group of campus youth group dramas emerged: the TV series in 1989 href=”https://comicmov.com/”>Komiks “Flower Season at the Sixteen Years”, the 1997 movie “Flower Season·Rain Season” and the TV series “Seventeen Years Don’t Cry”, the 2002 TV series “Sky at the Eighteen Years”…Cinema
At this time, the campus film and television works abandoned the perspective of adults and began to restore the original appearance of youth. “Early love” naturally became an indispensable part of these works. The 1989 TV series “The Flower Season of Sixteen” seemed quite bold at the time: “Missing BabaylanThe innocent Jian Ning and Yang Yuling, the two “school masters” appreciate each other and gradually develop feelings for each other; but for the sake of the future, they choose to restrain themselves. This fresh and natural TV series is not just love, the diligent and self-enthusiastic Jian Ning, the smart and capable Yang Yuling, the rebellious Raymond, the quiet and introverted Xiaodan… The audience and this group of high school students with different personalities experience the ups and downs of their studies, feelings, and the future, and grow up in injuries.
“The Missing Female Middle School Student”
“Hello Old Time”
“To Us Will Finally KomiksThe Falling Youth”
Youth School
D. From “To Youth” to “The Best Us”: The campus complex that touched generations of people
The new century film and television market boomed, and the forms of campus-themed film and television works became more diverse. In 2001, the whirlwind of the Taiwanese idol drama “CinemaMeteor Garden” swept across Asia, subverting the audience’s inherent impression of campus film and television works: the characters in the play are fashionable, prosperous, and personal. href=”https://comicmov.com/”>Komiks Yang, the landscape of the adult world has been transplanted to students. Commercial youth idol dramas such as “Red Apple Babaylan“” and “Looking at the Meteor Shower Together” have begun to appear in mainland China, which has become an important part of popular culture in the new century.
These works have strong imitation traces, but it is precisely because of the exploration of the first decade of the new century that the prosperity of the second decade of youth films has been created. The commercial era of youth films in mainland China began in 2Komiks In 2013, this year, the films of “To Our Youth Will Be Away”, “Chinese Partners”, “Tiny Times”, “Youth”, “City College Entrance Examination” and other films were released one after another. The number of youth films has exploded, and the box office has achieved great success: “To Our Youth Will Be Away”, “Chinese Partners”, and “Tiny Times” squeezed into the top ten of the annual box office list; “To Our Youth Will Be Away” even surpassed high-cost blockbusters such as “Pacific Rim” and “Die Renjie’s God Capital Dragon King” with a box office of 719 million yuan, ranking third, setting an example of “making big with small profits”.
After 2013, the href=”https://comicmov.com/”>Babaylan‘s youth films have gradually formed their own unique style. Films such as “To Youth”, “Chinese Partners”, “Soon of the Year” have a “nostalgic wind”. These works can be regarded as a response to former campus movies: most of the stories start from the campus in the 1980s and 1990s, telling the changes that young people have experienced from campus to society. The world outside the “ivory tower” is far more complicated than imagined, and the realization of ideals and the perfection of love are not easy to obtain. In these works, the realization of ideals and the completion of love are not easy to obtain. In the music, the once energetic students experienced disillusionment, cheering up, and starting again, waving goodbye to their youthful self. This sentimental narrative full of youthfulness touched the hearts of the “post-70s” and “post-80s”. After 2015, campus works targeting the audience of “post-90s” and “post-00s” began to appear. Unlike previous youth films, most of these works took a fresh and natural route, without the exaggeration of idol dramas at the beginning of the century, nor the cruelty of nostalgic movies. These works are like an evolutionary version of campus group dramas: a large number of newcomers in the film and television industry with similar ages as their characters, and BabaylanThe original CinemaCinemaCityCityThe difference is that the vague elements of love back then have now become the main storyline, Geng Geng and Yu Huai of “The Best of Us” and “To Us Simple” href=”https://comicmov.com/”>BabaylanLittle Beautiful” Chen Xiaoxi and Jiang Chen, Yu Zhouzhou and Lin Yang in “Hello, Old Times”… These works have spent a lot of writing about the youthful and sweetness of campus romance, leading the audience back to a beautiful youth.
According to statistics from the China Film Distribution and Screening Association, the average age of movie audiences has dropped from 25.7 in 2009 to 21.5 in 2012. The younger audience of the film and television audience and the relatively relaxed scale of youth themes have led to the popularity of youth films. In a 2013 article in the overseas edition of the People’s DailyDuring the interview, Yin Hong, a professor at Tsinghua University and director of the China Film Association, predicted: “Youth films will definitely become an important creative type in movies.”
This year, the movie version of “The Best of Us” achieved a box office record of over 400 million yuan. The series “To Us Warm Hour” scored as high as 8.0 on Douban. Campus youth works are in full swing. What surprises will they bring in the future? Let’s wait and see.
“The Best Us”
[The Secret of the Times]
Students in each period have their own “password of the Times”. Which of the following objects will evoke your youthful memories?
●Red Scarf
Red Scarf and Young Pioneers are common symbols of campus movies in the 1950s and 1960s. This is a symbol of progress, representing that the protagonist of the film is already a qualified successor of socialism: Xiaohua, the protagonist in “Flower Duoduo”, witted the red scarf to avoid major traffic accidents; in “Blessings for Children”, the poor child Zhang Huaguo became cheerful and brave due to the infection of the Young Pioneers; the ending of “Flower Duoduo of the Motherland” is that primary school students complete the enrollment ceremony in Beihai Park…
“Huaer Duoduo”
●Guitar Singing
A “folk style” emerged in the campus in the 1980s and 1990s, holding the guitar to swipe the chords, becoming the most representative scenery of this era. Many film and television works describing students’ lives back then have guitar singing scenes: In “The Missing Female Middle School Student”, Wang Jia’s father met a group of college students singing on the train with guitar; in “The Year of the Year”, Chen Xun, played by Peng Yuyan, sang with his guitar in his campus party. href=”https://comicmov.com/”>Cinema fascinated a lot of girls; in the comedy “Charlotte’s Troubles”, Shen Teng played Charlotte’s high school student in the 1990s, and became a campus celebrity with his guitar singing…
“You, the deskmate”
●Chinese school uniforms
Lose and fat, single styles, magical color matching, smoothing out the difference between men and women… Chinese school uniforms have been criticized for being “too ugly”, and some even say that “school uniforms ruin the youth of Chinese people.” However, Chinese-style school uniforms have now become the youthful memory of the “post-80s” and “post-90s”. Campus film and television works such as “Soon of the Year”, “The Best of Us”, “Hello, Old Times”, and “You, Deskmates”, all have allowed actors to wear school uniforms. Netizens who once thought that school uniforms were too ugly finally discovered: the ugly ones may not be the school uniforms, but us.