The most beautiful thing in the world is Green Snake.

As a film made in 1993, Green Snake is undoubtedly the most unique work in the history of Hong Kong films and even Chinese films. It has created an aesthetic masterpiece that transcends the times with its tactful and fluent visual language, bold and unique color matching and intoxicating ancient music. Looking back now, it is still amazing.

When it comes to Green Snake, the most memorable thing is the elegant and seductive design of Green Snake and White Snake. Narrow-sleeved waist-mending tops, numerous and orderly layered skirts, light and transparent veils, and traditional Chinese opera women's hair ornaments distributed from the head are the top classics of two Hong Kong masters, production designer, Zhang Shuping and Baoling Wu. It is said that in order to satisfy Tsui Hark's constant innovation and break the traditional modeling requirements, Zhang Shuping and Baoling Wu put a lot of thoughts into it. After submitting a version of the modeling design draft similar to Ghost Story, Tsui Hark severely denied it, Zhang and Wu settled down, re-examined Tsui Hark's opinions and requirements, extensively read materials, and constantly scrutinized it, and finally determined the character modeling style based on Kunqu opera female Dan and Taohuawu New Year pictures. Not only that, Zhang and Wu also broke the boundaries of Chinese costumes, but also absorbed the elements of traditional Indian costumes in the use of clothing colors and materials. Finally, based on "seduction" and "elegance", they created this beautiful two-snake shape, which is still ahead of the trend of the times and amazing.

In The Green Snake, the shapes of lady white snake and Xiaoqing both reflect the classical feminine beauty in different shapes from the beginning to the end. At first, the two snakes became human, slippery and sticky, and they were entangled in the nude. A strange and enchanting painting style came to my face, and the horror was fragrant. Accompanied by the enchanting singing of "Mohologa", two real snake demons tore the tradition naked and appeared in front of the audience. I believe many people will never forget it once they have seen it.

After that, the green demon and the white demon, who gradually understood the personnel, began to stroll among the small bridges and flowing water in the water town in the south of the Yangtze River, accompanied by the charming laughter of "twisting and twisting", which drove a group of vulgar boatmen into the water. At this point, Xiaoqing and lady white snake's hair style and makeup are modeled after the big head of Kunqu opera female Dan, with their hair tied behind their heads, their hair hanging down on their chests, their tails slightly tilted with thin eyebrows, and their white faces with a touch of red lips. They are charming and charming in their ghosts and full of youth in their seduction. Although it is a white snake and a green snake, the clothing is not a traditional solid color. lady white snake has a pink inside and a white gauze outside, while the green snake is a mixture of blue, yellow and green gauze. The willow waist wind blows and the clothes are fluttering. Sandy has a jade hand and a tulle fan to cover his face. Although his smile is wandering, it shows a classical romantic style.

The most exciting scene in the whole film is that Xu Xian went to the White House to return his umbrella, and the door slowly opened, and the green snake floated towards Xu Xianqian with an umbrella. In the call of "Xiaoqing, Xiaoqing", the white snake came out by the door, soft as a bone. Day Chu Qing, delicate and charming, at that moment, I'm afraid it's hard to resist this charm for any mortal man with strong will.

However, with the development of the plot, the two snakes turned against each other because of their feelings, and their images began to change. At this time, after the smoke, their clothes changed into plain colors, white snake and green snake were pure black, still elegant but murderous. A plain white snake is particularly chic, and several white ribbons are floating in the wind, which is beautiful and touching. This scene of the double snake fight is very different from other martial arts films because of the addition of traditional Chinese opera elements. Because Tsui Hark pays attention to the sense of elegance and strangeness here, the killing of two snakes in gauze clothes is more like a dance than a fight. The last picture of the white snake sealing its throat with a sword is as beautiful as an ink painting. But the white snake shed tears, and the green snake is ignorant. It still doesn't know what the true feelings in the world are, so it can only be entangled in pain.

From the first meeting of the West Lake covered with veils to the black-and-white costumes of the two sisters, each set of "Green Snake" shows the charm and elegance of the two snake monsters. In the end, when Jinshan Temple was flooded, the costume copper coin head of Qingbai two snakes made a grand debut, which integrated tradition and trendy to a new height. With elegant, soft and slightly ghostly design, the myth of a thousand-year-old snake demon was completely subverted and plunged into the audience's mind. This kind of modeling design is a model of bold innovation and the essence of China ancient costume.

It is interesting that Baoling Wu, one of production designer, is the design of the TV series The Legend of the New White Snake. Although The Legend of the New White Snake was a big hit in 1992, and the Angie Chiu version of the White Snake, which was similar to Guanyin, was popular across the Taiwan Strait and three places, Baoling Wu was not influenced by it at all. Instead, he tried his best to overthrow the previous style through Green Snake, remolding the images of the two snake monsters from the perspective of "monsters", and his skill was evident.

even now, such a beautiful modeling design is still avant-garde. The 21 version of A Dream of Red Mansions, which is highly similar to The Green Snake, has been criticized by countless audiences, which has become one of the important evidences of the new version of A Dream of Red Mansions. However, "Green Snake" launched such a trendy design 2 years ago, and its consciousness is advanced and amazing. Although the artistic design of Green Snake was nominated for the 13th Hong Kong Golden Awards, it was a great pity that it was defeated by bride with white hair (production designer: Tian Hui Mei and Xinyao Zhang), which had a strong momentum at that time.

Besides modeling, the beauty of ancient artistic conception in Green Snake is also the most rare in many Chinese films.

The beauty of the scene in Green Snake lies not in its complexity and splendor, but in its emptiness and dreaminess. Whether it's a small bridge or a misty and rainy West Lake, whether it's a romantic old house or a solemn Buddhist temple, Green Snake is explaining what Chinese classical beauty is with a unified visual language. Different from the current costume films, "Green Snake" does not focus on restoring various ancient scenes. From the picture, the composition is very simple and clean. But at the same time, Tsui Hark pays great attention to the use of color and smoke to create a sense of ghosts and legends, which makes the whole story seem to come out of a classical mystery novel, dreamy and vivid. Therefore, Tsui Hark referred to a large number of illustrations and prints of ancient novels, from which he got a lot of inspiration to restore the legendary artistic conception of classical monsters. For example, at the beginning of the film, Fahai looked down at the ugly scene on the stage, and from the color and content, God restored an illustration of Strange Tales from a Lonely Studio, thus laying the foundation for the magical style of the film.

After that, the film painting style changed with the plot, sometimes enchanting and charming, and sometimes fresh and lovely; Sometimes secretive and gloomy, and sometimes solemn and heavy. Although the mood is different, the same is the boldness of the picture color. Tsui Hark never seems to be stingy with color to render and amplify emotions. In large patches of color, he creates a sense of time and space shrouded in smoke and psychedelic, and at the same time maximizes the emotional expression of people and demons in the play. On the other hand, at present, Tsui Hark has improved his stunt level in Di Renjie series, flying swords of dragon gate and other films, but it is both progress and regret to move towards realism.

In 1992, when many Hong Kong films were still choosing the traditional local scenery, Tsui Hark insisted on shooting in the mainland in order to restore the artistic conception of Jiangnan in the book, which was very laborious at that time. Although Tsui Hark's ideal location was Wuyishan at that time, in the end, in order to accommodate the actors' time and schedule, most of them chose to set the scene in Hong Kong. Even so, he insisted on taking pictures in Hangzhou and deliberately avoided popular attractions such as the broken bridge of the West Lake and found the scenery he wanted in a secluded place. These exterior scenes that have taken great pains only contribute a small part to the beauty of The Green Snake, and the best scene design comes from the ancient house of Baifu, which is made up by magic. Mentioned here, have to mention a person-Bill Lui.

The book "Flowers in Full Bloom-Hong Kong Film Art (1979-21)" once mentioned that Tsui Hark has extremely high requirements for the artistic style of "Green Snake", and he demanded that "the art of" Green Snake "should have uniform lines, all of which are round and cannot have right angles; Second, screen design should, like the illustrations in Liaozhai, only highlight the main things and simplify everything else, such as the main scene without walls; People on the street wear white or black, only the protagonist's clothing has color, and the background only uses one color. " This minimalist requirement is extremely difficult in essence. Although Tsui Hark's idea is very simple: "lady white snake's house is a conjunct house, but it's even more difficult to grasp this ethereal style, so that emptiness and beauty can coexist. So when Bill Lui took over from production designer, Tsui Hark had already changed six production designer terms, and he was the seventh. Moreover, on the first day of taking over, Tsui Hark only gave Bill Lui and another production designer Zhuang Zhiliang one day to "change" out of the White House in the quarry in Hong Kong. Under the urgent deliberation of the two men, chiffon was used as the internal space of the White House, which was blown by a big blower to make it feel elegant. At the same time, a lot of bamboo was taken around the scene, painted green as the background, smoked, and separated from the room with gauze curtains. Under the light, an ink painting jumped. Tsui Hark was very satisfied, but Zhuang Zhiliang resigned from the crew after filming that night, and all the burdens fell on Bill Lui.

As a pioneer of alternative Hong Kong aesthetics, Bill Lui kept innovating in Green Snake. He consulted a lot of ancient China paintings and found that many indoor paintings in Tang and Song Dynasties were actually very simplified, just beds, chairs and chairs. Bill Lui believes: "Whether it is true in real life or not, it is also an aesthetic for painters to abandon details, so I will go in this direction." Therefore, in the later stage of building the White House, in order to realize this classical and elegant artistic conception, Bill Lui made great efforts in both major points and details, from the spinning that fluttered all the time in the room to the fan in the hand of the snake demon, from the beautiful lotus pond to the oil umbrella propped up in the rain, all of which were his masterpieces. Being able to make such a beautiful and traditional design in such a simple style of painting, Green Snake is a leader.

In 1993, Green Snake suffered a box office failure that year, which is a great pity for Tsui Hark's film career. At that time, The Green Snake was very different in character modeling and content ending, and suffered a lot of criticism. However, with Tsui Hark's insistence, it unexpectedly created a beautiful, touching, real and fantastic world of classical monsters, and became a classic across the times. So far, it still makes people fascinated and amazed. Today, when Chinese costume films are becoming boring, the beauty of Green Snake is especially cherished and lamented.

When can I see Green Snake in the future?

Life is like this,

Life is like this,

Fate begets death,

Who knows, who knows?

Love ends with love,

Love is infatuated with truth,

What? Where?

I am in love with you!

—— "Life is like this"

Some pictures and background information in this article come from the Internet, so I would like to thank you.