For the spiritual life of the post-80s audience, Hong Kong movies are an indispensable spiritual feast. For a period of time, Hong Kong movies have given too many surprises to the post-80s audience. Zhou Runfa 's "Little Ma Brother", Jackie Chan 's "Police Story", Zhou Xingchi 's "postmodern" nonsensical comedy, allowing viewers born-80s to see a completely different attitude towards life, culture, and life in Hong Kong movies. In that not very open era, Hong Kong films used an vague attitude on the screen to let the audience understand that in the ups and downs and downs of human nature, it turns out that we can be a little more vulgar and more civilized, but this attitude does not lose the dignity and backbone of the lower class people.
Among the many types of Hong Kong films, in addition to the above mentioned several, martial arts films are indispensable. Speaking of martial arts films, it is not only a kind of film that is the Hong Kong film industry, but also a Chinese film industry. The so-called "martial arts" is a kind of thought and sentiment unique to Chinese literati. The "hero" culture is another concentrated display of the backbone of Chinese literati who is different from the orthodox way. Unlike the "high temple", people who are worried about the people. The original intention of the "hero" culture is that those talented men who did not pass the imperial examinations in the ancient imperial examinations or were frustrated in the officialdom (think themselves) "distance in the world" and worry about their feelings for their family and country.
The chivalrous spirit that has been passed through China for thousands of years is not the chivalrous people who truly walk around the world with their swords, but the literati who are full of scholars and businessmen who are in a down-and-out and unsuccessful manner. Whether it is the Pu Songling that wrote "Strange Stories from a Chinese Studio", or the Shi Nai'an that wrote "Water Margin", or even Jin Yong who wrote "Swordsman" in modern times, they are all creating a fantasy world in which their family and country feelings and their children's love and hatred thoughts are galloping between their lines in the lines. In this world, they can patriotism, love their homes, and love their friends in their own way. In this world, they can find their own spiritual sustenance. This kind of literary sentiment of borrowing books to express one's aspirations was once when Sima Qian wrote "Records of the Grand Historian", Shigong Tai had expressed his feelings in this ancient masterpiece.
So whether the audience is watching martial arts novels or martial arts movies , they simply hold this kind of mentality of being unappreciated and cynical. As creators of martial arts culture, they hope to enable themselves and later generations to obtain a relief between ideals and reality through the stories in them. Enable yourself and the audience to look at your current situation with a more broad-minded, more foresight in time and space, and more cautious attitude with family and country. And let the audience find a spiritual path that makes people worry about their king when they are far away from the world.
In Hong Kong films, there are also many classic works that are in line with the ancient chivalrous culture of our country. For the post-80s generation, the martial arts works that have a far-reaching influence are Tsui Hark's " New Longmen Inn ". This martial arts film, created in the 1990s, is a rare martial arts masterpiece in Hong Kong films. People usually call "New Dragon Inn" a work of Tsui Hark . In fact, in the cast, Tsui Hark is the producer of this film, and the real director of this film is called Lee Huimin . The reason why people generally believe that "New Dragon Inn" is Tsui Hark's work is because as a producer, Tsui Hark is accustomed to playing without following common sense. When he is a producer, he often performs some director duties, and he will also deeply participate in the creation of the film. This is not only reflected in the film "New Dragon Inn", but also in "A Chinese Ghost Story", which is directed by Cheng Xiaodong and also directed by Tsui Hark as the producer.
Let’s talk about the movie "New Dragon Inn". The reason why this film occupies a very important position in Hong Kong films is because, as the most representative martial arts film of that era, it brought the audience from the inside out, from visual to the soul. The editing style of this video is completely Tsui Hark style. In order to enhance the viewing of the film, Tsui Hark deliberately accelerated the fight scenes of the film.And through editing the film, the story is more compact and the pace is brighter than that of previous martial arts movies. Among the so-called previous martial arts movies here, the so-called "Longmen Inn" released in 1967 and directed by Hu Jinquan .
Tsui Hark's "New Dragon Gate Inn" completely draws on Hu Jinquan's "Long Gate Inn" in the story. However, when creating the story, in order to cater to the market at that time, Tsui Hark deliberately changed the boss of the old version of the inn, Shopkeeper Wu, to Jinyingyu. And the real historical figure Yu Qian in the original story is hidden, weakening the historical background. These columns of operations make it easier for Tsui Hark to make a fuss about "new". Also in order to cater to the film market at that time, Tsui Hark wrote a special book on the original version of the hidden but unreleased love for his children in the new version. This allows the audience to see a feeling of children under the age of family and country.
After some innovations, Tsui Hark's "New Longmen Inn" highlights the "children of the rivers and lakes" and relatively balances the "family and country's future". In the new version of the story, it seems that there is not much change, but in fact it completely breaks out of the ideological pattern of the old version of "Longmen Inn". This jump was indeed clever and successful for the film market at that time. Moreover, in the old story framework, Director Tsui Hark once again threaded the needle and told a new artistic conception about the "jianghu story". This "new" is mainly reflected in the inner world of the children of the world. If Director Hu Jinquan pays more attention to the ink and landscape-style martial arts artistic conception, Tsui Hark magnifies a small magnification in this scroll, allowing the audience to carefully glimpse their inner world on the screen.
Hu Jinquan's old version of "Longmen Inn" pays more attention to a traditional ancient meaning, which can be seen in many details of this film. Whether it is the actor's costumes, the titles and cast lists written in traditional calligraphy at the beginning of the film, or even the formats and seals in the correspondence letters in the film, they all show the director Hu Jinquan's skill and understanding of traditional culture. These exquisite details even have certain historical reference value. It is said that just to verify the style of a hat in the film, Director Hu Da read a lot of literature. It is Director Hu's serious attitude that makes the audience feel as if they really return to the world that may have existed or may only exist in the imagination when watching the works directed by him.
Hu Jinquan's martial arts movie is more like Jin Yong's martial arts novels, with neat structure and logical logic. Coupled with the background music mainly composed of Xiao Di, the audience felt a musical beauty in the ink painting flowing in the light and shadow on the screen controlled by director Hu Jinquan. What is completely different from Tsui Hark's style is that Hu Jinquan's martial arts movies emphasize a profound artistic conception. In order to create this traditional ink painting and martial arts atmosphere, his mirror is more stable, as if he longs for this slow way of mirror wiping, which allows the audience in front of the screen to feel the rhythm in that time more carefully in the dimension of time.
. In terms of fighting scenes and action design, under the only technical conditions at that time, Director Hu Jinquan did not even disappoint the audience 57 years later. With each move, one move, one back and forth, Director Hu Jinquan created that kind of murderous intent. Compared with many martial arts scenes later, the martial arts scenes in director Hu Jinquan's works are simpler and more direct, and in simple and direct, there is no loss of the duel atmosphere. Often, life and death are only between three moves and two moves, and the fight doesn’t have many fancy moves. If some martial arts fighting with showing off skills is like playing street ball, then the martial arts fighting directed by Hu Jinquan is more like a rigorous NBA arena.
In addition to fighting and the extremely concise design of the pictures, director Hu Jinquan also has fewer dialogues in his film works. This way of expression of the movie makes the audience more like an onlooker mentality, objectively and calmly examining the inner world of the literati represented by Hu Jinquan.Films directed by Hu Jinquan rarely use emotional resonance to bring the audience into the stories on the screen, because emotional resonance often makes the audience lose the ability to think actively, which will greatly weaken the audience's attention to the overall situation of the film. Therefore, in the works of director Hu Jinquan, he does not portray a character as a villain one side. The villains in his films often have a source and a reason. This story setting makes the world he created on the screen more realistic and objective.
From this point of view, Tsui Hark's "new" is more emotionally inflammatory. In "New Dragon Inn", the character of Jin Yingyu is particularly inflammatory. Maggie can be regarded as a spiritual interpretation, making Jin Yingyu a classic character in the history of Chinese films, and also makes this character occupy an important position in the role of Chinese martial arts movies. The charm she showed in the film also greatly weakened the "family and country feelings" in the previous old version of the film. It is impossible to judge whether this setting is good or bad, all depends on the audience's sense of the film.
From this point of view, the "new" of Tsui Hark's version lies in marginalizing the feelings of family and country, and in this film, he added the inner struggle between the times and self-emotions of the heroes. To a certain extent, this struggle formed the inner dramatic tension of the film "New Dragon Inn". The dramatic tension of Hu Jinquan's version of "Longmen Inn" is more reflected in the struggle between the heroic sons and daughters in adhering to their own ideal world and the reality of the collapse of etiquette and music.
It can be seen that Hu Jinquan's "Longmen Inn" is more in line with the traditional literary people's sustenance to the world of martial arts, while Tsui Hark's "New Longmen Inn" is the result of the traditional martial arts culture compromised with the spiritual life of modern people. This is also the reason why "New Dragon Inn" is more widely circulated, but Chinese martial arts movies and traditional martial arts culture should not be forgotten by director Hu Jinquan's 52 years ago, because this work is an authentic elegy about martial arts sentiment.
