Behind-the-scenes production of five golden flowers

The film "Five Golden Flowers" tells an interesting love story of a young Bai man and woman, and reflects the happy life of ethnic minorities in the frontier areas of New China. It is a rare life comedy with lyrical color and national characteristics in China film history. As soon as it came out, it was loved by the audience and swept the country. How did this film come into being? The author makes a disclosure for readers.

Premier Zhou assigned this task.

At the beginning of 1959, the literary and art circles set off an upsurge of offering gifts to the 0/0 anniversary of the founding of the People's Republic of China. Zhou Enlai was very concerned about these works produced for the National Day, and personally saw the works sent up. When he saw films such as "A Family of Iron Blood" and "A Hundred Flowers Are Always Spring", he was deeply dissatisfied with the excessive political slogans in the film industry at that time and the lack of aesthetic feeling and relaxed and happy state of the films. He called Xia Yan, Minister of Culture, and said, "Didn't you go to Dali not long ago? Do you want to write a comedy film with Dali as the background, reflecting the songs and dances of frontier ethnic minorities? " Xia Yan said: "I am not familiar with the living customs of ethnic minorities, but I can recommend someone to write it." Premier Zhou said, "Well, you should hurry up and do it."

The person Xia Yan wanted to recommend was Ji Kang, a screenwriter who was sent to Menghai County of Xishuangbanna Dai Autonomous Prefecture as a farmer. Soon, the Propaganda Minister of Yunnan Provincial Party Committee called Ji Kang and Gong Pu to Kunming according to Xia Yan's instructions. After a brief explanation, he said to them, "Give you a week to make up a story quickly. If you can't make it up, you won't be able to catch up with the National Day. "

"A week? Can you write it in such a short time? " Ji Kang was a little anxious. Fortunately, she and her husband have been to Dali as early as 1955, and they are familiar with the customs of horse racing in March Street. The two hit it off and decided to take horse racing as the opening scene of the film, and based on this, they launched their own ideas. In less than a week, they wrote the outline of the movie Twelve Golden Flowers.

In mid-April, Ji Kang went to Beijing to write a manuscript, and Gong Pu go to dali further collected creative materials. Ji Kang spent two days and two nights writing the first draft of Seven Golden Flowers. When she finished writing the last word, she even fell asleep before taking off her shoes covered with mud during rural reconstruction. The script tells a real and touching love story in the way of expressing love beliefs handed down from generation to generation by ethnic minorities: Vice President Jinhua and Bai youth A Peng fell in love at first sight on the traditional Dali festival "March 3rd" and agreed to meet again in butterfly spring one year later. A year later, A Peng set foot on the road to find his sweetheart, Golden Flower Girl, as promised. Along the way, he met the golden flower piled with fertilizer, the golden flower of livestock farm, the golden flower of ironworks, the golden flower of tractors, the golden flower of reservoirs, the golden flower of tea picking, and even met his grandfather who was looking for it, but he always passed by his sweetheart. After a series of trips to save lives and help, A Peng finally met his sweetheart in the song "Iris on the Edge of butterfly spring".

The script was handed over to Xia Yan, and Xia Yan fully affirmed it after reviewing it, but also put forward his own opinions on some storylines and artistic expressions. He said to Ji Kang: "This script can be made into three films, and one film is only 105 minutes. If you have a good idea, it will take a lot of effort to adapt the script into a movie. " Ji Kang then drastically revised the script, changing the original "seven golden flowers" into "five golden flowers" and subtracting "golden flowers on the reservoir" and "golden flowers picking tea". Xia Yan is very satisfied with the revised book. Soon, the script of Five Golden Flowers was published in a magazine and was well received.

Who will be the director?

The script has come out, and the next step is how to direct and shoot it. The director is the key to the success of a film. Publicity Department of the Communist Party of China and the Ministry of Culture screened famous national directors and handed the task of directing Five Golden Flowers to Wang Jiayi, a changchun film studio director who just returned from studying in France. Under the general climate that literature and art followed politics at that time, Xia Yan told Wang Jiayi many times: "Don't engage in political slogans, but show the beauty of mountains and rivers and human feelings. The theme of this movie is socialism is good! "

After receiving the order, Wang Jiayi immediately found the script. After reading it, although he felt that the script was innovative, it was still far from making a movie. As a precaution, the Wangs took the author Ji Kang and the composer Lei Zhenbang and his party go to dali to see the location. After living in the ancient city of Dali for four or five days, Wang Jiayi couldn't find the feeling of making movies. Seeing that his hard work was destroyed in this way, Ji Kang felt very sad. Composer Lei Zhenbang didn't want to be separated from him. As a composer, Lei Zhenbang has heard many folk songs of ethnic minorities and written many songs in this field. He asked Ji Kang, "Can you change the dialogue into duet?"

Ji Kang immediately got excited and said, "Yes!" And improvised a song "Suzaku flies over the top of the mountain, leaving a string of ringing bells ...".

Lei Zhenbang was refreshed when he heard this: "Great, it's beautiful. How can you write so well? Do you usually write poetry? "

Ji Kang said, "Although I write novels, I also like to write poems."

After listening to Ji Kang's recitation, Wang Jiayi's mood suddenly came up and said, "OK, OK, just write in this tone."

"Dali has beautiful scenery in March, and butterfly spring has a good dress. Butterflies come to collect nectar. What's a-mei's post for combing her hair? ..... The younger brother is affectionate and interested in his younger sister. From now on, we will not be separated, share joys and sorrows, and love each other forever. " In the next few days, Ji Kangsi swarmed in and wrote all the lyrics of five golden flowers in one breath. Lei Zhenbang spent several days writing lyrics. Hearing their audition, Wang Jiayi was so happy that his mouth couldn't close properly. Ji Kang, the author, is the happiest when he sees five golden flowers that are about to wither and rejuvenate under the nourishment of "duality".

Determine the heroine

After the script is finalized, Wang Jiayi's next task is to choose the actors. Although Five Golden Flowers was shot by Publicity Department of the Communist Party of China and the Ministry of Culture, Yunnan has not let it go. Yuan Bo, then the propaganda minister of the Yunnan Provincial Party Committee, told Wang Jiayi: "This film wants to promote Yunnan and Dali, and all actors must be from Yunnan." The Wangs took a group of people to choose actors all over Yunnan. Soon, all the "four golden flowers" were filmed, and Zi Jiangmo was chosen as the leading actor. It's just that the role of Jinhua, an important woman in the play, took a lot of effort and didn't land. One day, the Wangs came to Yunnan Song and Dance Troupe with an attempt. I looked at all the girls present, and none of them liked it. Just as he was going out, a girl standing on the windowsill of the rehearsal hall cleaning the glass caught his attention. Just as they passed by, someone greeted the girl: "Yang Likun!" "hey!" The girl looked up, and a simple smiling face attracted Wang Jiayi's attention.

"That's her, that's her!" Wang Jiayi cried with joy. The heroine of the five golden flowers was thus settled, and Yang Likun 16 years old that year. Facts have proved that Wang Jiayi is very discerning. The success of Five Golden Flowers is inseparable from Yang Likun's performance. Yang Likun is not only born with beauty and acting talent, but also works very hard. In order to make this film well, she went to Shangguan Village in Dali with the film crew to experience life, worked and lived with the Bai people in Dali, and repeatedly tried to figure out the role of Jinhua in the script. Her performance is simple and natural, and she just grasps the discretion, vividly showing a Bai girl's longing for life and love in her unpretentious beauty, slightly shy generosity and simplicity. Premier Zhou also praised her performance and took Yang Likun abroad twice. When he knew that "Five Golden Flowers" were other people's voices, he also encouraged Yang Likun to be strict with himself and learn Mandarin well as soon as possible. Later, after Yang Likun took over Ashima, Premier Zhou called to ask how Yang Likun was learning Mandarin.

Among many directors, Wang Jiayi is famous for his seriousness. He spared no effort to pay attention to every detail of the shooting. It only took two days to shoot a shot of Peng riding a horse from the corner of a dirt road. It is his earnest efforts that make the beautiful picture of "hero" and "beauty" meet in the film become a classic in film history.

New artistic height

While filming Five Golden Flowers, Wang Jiayi was also trying to shoot a comedy film of New China, which naturally incorporated his exploration achievements in this field. To some extent, Wang Jiayi's Five Golden Flowers also pushed life comedy to a new height, and thus formed its own unique comic art style. In the film, we can see that Wang Jiayi's life movies do not seek to break away from the gimmicks of the characters, but make the characters' personalities form comedies. It not only eulogizes loyalty, love, kindness and creativity, but also makes jokes and is interesting. Try to be as real as possible in the characterization, as if it were people and things around you, not exaggerating, not pursuing jokes, but making people feel sweet. For example, a nosy uncle is a kind and enthusiastic old man. He loves to drink, and he becomes more excited and enthusiastic after drinking. It is precisely because of this that a series of quirks between A Peng and Jinhua are formed, which promotes the development of the plot. In addition, it is worth mentioning that Wang Jiayi paid great attention to the advantages of audio-visual art when shooting Five Golden Flowers, and organically combined folk customs, music customs and story, which made the film have high artistic appreciation. Later, when talking about his own creative experience, he said: "When it comes to comedy, it often means irony and exposes society with laughter. In today's socialist country, can't we praise those new characters and new ideas in the form of comedy and give people encouragement, strength and hope through those beautiful things? " Premier Zhou Enlai was also very excited after watching the movie. 1959 When talking about "Five Golden Flowers" at the reception to celebrate the opening of the new film exhibition, he praised: "Our film has begun to create a new style that can reflect the great times ... a new style that combines revolutionary realism with revolutionary romanticism."

The film "Five Golden Flowers" also explores the expression of musical feature films, that is, the application of writing heroine duets in the film. Although the duet of five golden flowers only accounts for a small part of the film, it has produced unexpected artistic effects, which prompted composer Lei Zhenbang to create a film in the form of duet, and thus gave birth to two musical films, Liu Sanjie and Ashima.

The filming of Five Golden Flowers is at the forefront of China's Great Leap Forward. As a result, the crew also had a "great leap forward" in shooting. After the continuous operation of the whole crew, "Five Golden Flowers" ended in only four months. After the film was released, it immediately aroused strong repercussions among the audience, and thus set off a craze for learning golden flowers. The golden flower suddenly became synonymous with the model and a symbol of honor, and Dali, Yunnan Province also took this opportunity to launch the production competition of "Thousand Golden Flowers" and "Ten Thousand Golden Flowers". Five golden flowers not only spread all over the country, but also spread abroad. Since 1959, Five Golden Flowers has been released in 46 countries, setting a record for China films to be released abroad at that time. 1960, at the second Asian-African Film Festival held in Cairo, Egypt, five golden flowers won the Silver Eagle Award for best director and the Silver Eagle Award for best actress. Egyptian President Nasser also invited Yang Likun to accept the prize in Egypt and received her cordially.

Now, although more than half a century has passed, the five golden flowers have not disappeared in people's memory with the passage of time. In 2000, "Five Golden Flowers" was rated as the first of 10 films in the national "Best Film in a Hundred Years" selection campaign.