1934, the Soviet Foreign Cultural Association invited Mei Lanfang to perform in the Soviet Union as a national guest. Mei Lanfang was very excited and decided to accept the invitation. Due to traffic problems, Mei Lanfang's trip to the Soviet Union has been postponed to February 1935.
When the Mei Troupe arrived in Russia, the Soviet Foreign Cultural Association had set up a "Mei Lanfang Reception Committee" composed of great dramatists stanislavski, Dan Qin Ke, Meierkholid and famous film director Eisenstein, and warmly welcomed Mei Lanfang and his party.
Mei Lanfang is in Moscow and Leningrad (now St. Petersburg)? Two big cities held a three-week performance. In addition to all the members of Mei Lanfang's reception committee, there are Soviet party and state leaders, literary giants Gorky, Tolstoy, the famous ballet dancer Semeonova, and the German dramatist Brecht who was forced into exile in the Soviet Union because of his opposition to the Nazi regime.
Mei Lanfang achieved great success in the Soviet Union. His wonderful performance captivated the vast Soviet audience.
Another great achievement of Mei Lanfang's trip to the Soviet Union was to get together with stanislavski, Brecht and others. The three masters are collectively called "the world's three major drama systems" by the international drama community. The gathering of representatives of the three major drama systems has become a major event in the history of modern drama in the world.
Besides, Mei Lanfang became friends with Eisenstein, a famous film director.
When she first arrived in Moscow, Mei Lanfang noticed the youngest member of Mei Lanfang's reception committee. He is a handsome man with curly hair and blue eyes. He is not tall, but he is strong. His big head and wide forehead stand out. The relevant personnel introduced to Mei Lanfang that this is Eisenstein? Mei Lanfang has long admired his name, and now he is also very happy to see him in person. They shook hands warmly. Eisenstein is the founder of film montage principle, so he enjoys the reputation of "the father of modern film". 1925, in order to commemorate the Russian revolution in 1905, Eisenstein directed the movie Battleship potemkin for the first time by montage. With its majestic momentum and amazing uniqueness, this film has caused a sensation in the world film industry.
Battleship potemkin ushered in a new era of world cinema, and 27-year-old Eisenstein became famous all over the world.
After watching Mei Lanfang's performance, Eisenstein appreciated that Chinese Peking Opera is not limited to the pursuit of shape, but also pays attention to the artistic characteristics of form and spirit, and also admired Mei Lanfang's superb acting skills. A few days later, Eisenstein visited Mei Lanfang and invited him to make a sound film.
The play Eisenstein is going to shoot is the scene of the Oriental clan and its heirs singing and dancing with guns in Hong Guan. Because the play has a sense of dance, it is very suitable for foreigners to watch. Mei Lanfang saw that Eisenstein was so considerate and readily agreed.
On the night of filming, all members of Mei Troupe came to Moscow Film Studio, and Eisenstein was already waiting at the gate. Mei Lanfang and Eisenstein first discussed how to shoot the scene. Mei Lanfang hopes to shoot both characters in the play, using more intermediate scenes and panoramic views, and less close-ups and close-ups. In his view, only in this way can the characteristics of China's plays be fully displayed.
Eisenstein nodded in agreement, but he added, "I respect your opinion, but close-ups must be inserted." You should know how eager the vast Soviet audience is to see your face clearly! "
Seeing Eisenstein's sincere attitude, Mei Lanfang had to obey the director's principle without raising any objection. So I started shooting, and it was already 12 midnight.
When seeing off Mei Troupe, Eisenstein signed his newly published monograph on film theory and gave it to Mei Lanfang as a souvenir of this happy cooperation.
After the founding of New China, Mei Lanfang attended the World Peace Conference held in Vienna at the end of 1952 as the representative of China. The China delegation passed through Moscow on its way home and was warmly received by the Soviet Foreign Cultural Association.
After revisiting his hometown in Moscow, Mei Lanfang was very excited to see the great development and changes of the Soviet Union since 18. The only thing that makes him sad is that all the members of the "Mei Lanfang Reception Committee", which was so touching eight years ago, have passed away. I remember that stanislavski and Dan Qin Ke were both over 70 years old, and Meierkholid and Gorky were both old people. Only Eisenstein is young, a few years younger than Mei Lanfang. However, due to long-term intense work, his spirit was always in a state of high excitement, and Eisenstein broke down from constant overwork. Coupled with his keen innovative spirit, he was regarded as "restless" at that time and was criticized many times, which made him mentally traumatized and exhausted, and he died suddenly at the age of 50 in 1948.
On his second trip to the Soviet Union, Mei Lanfang brought back two precious gifts-a photo of him and stanislavski and a bronze statue of Gorky. As for Eisenstein, it's a pity that I didn't get any souvenirs about him, because Eisenstein was wrongly criticized as a "formalist" in 1946, and his reputation was restored until 1958, that is, 10 years after his death.
Pudovkin
montage of attraction
Eisenstein's theoretical achievements: He began to publish papers in the early 1920s, and then made in-depth exploration and research on montage film theory during his teaching in the Soviet National Film School, which made great contributions to the formation of a relatively complete montage theory.
As for "attraction montage", as mentioned earlier, "attraction montage" was first put forward by Eisenstein when he was engaged in drama creation, but as the practice of this theory, it was embodied in his film creation. He once said in the article "Montage of Attraction": "Variety is every particularly exciting moment in the drama, that is, those factors that can urge the audience to influence their sensory or psychological feelings, that is, those factors that can guarantee and accurately predict that if they are arranged in an appropriate order as a whole, they will cause some emotional shock, and they are the only means that can be used to express the final ideological conclusion." He further pointed out that "it is not a static' reflection' of an event, and it does not make all the possibilities of activities within the limits of the logical performance of this event, but jumps to a new stage: it forms a montage of arbitrarily selected (within the scope of connecting the thematic links of the functional performances) and those independent vaudeville performances, that is, everything is synthesized from the standpoint of some final theme effect. This is. In his film creation, Eisenstein believes that movies can directly convey ideas to the audience through attractive lens arrangement. He believes that there is no need to have a complete literary script as the basis, and he also denies the performance of professional actors. He used the theory of "attraction montage" in his creation, but in fact only "Battleship potemkin" was successful, and all other works failed to varying degrees.
The classic passage of Odessa Steps Massacre fully shows the exquisite skills of young Soviet film directors. Eisenstein decomposes and dislocates a series of action scenes, such as the running of the common people, the approaching of the czar's army, the sliding of the stroller, and the mother holding the dead child to meet the czar's army, which forms several outstanding features of this passage: First, it highlights the theme of the film with visual rhythm modeling factors, creates the artistic conception of the film, and forms the impact of the visual senses of the film. Secondly, strengthen the visual image of the film in the form of montage visual structure and expand the spatial effect of the film. Thirdly, the repeated continuous action from multiple angles makes the time of the film abstract, which leads to the delay of the performance of the film. In this passage, Eisenstein made a unique thinking and creative expression on the concept of time and space in film narration, combining objective phenomena with subjective consciousness, fully demonstrating the vitality of objects and profoundly reflecting the internal process of various phenomena. As the end of this paragraph, the lens of three stone lions shot by photographer Keith was poetically edited by Eisenstein as a metaphor of thoughts and feelings, which was very successful here. But in the performance of this paragraph, Eisenstein's montage concept is also one-sided. Because the core of his montage theory emphasizes "conflict" and the connection between two shots is not the sum of two numbers, but the product of two numbers, so in order to achieve this goal, he does not ignore the spatial expression inside a single shot, and makes the picture inside his single shot become a single information plane. But "Battleship potemkin" is undoubtedly a masterpiece of silent film, leaving immortal and brilliant achievements in the world film history.
Intelligence montage
Intellectual montage (also known as "rational film") was put forward by Eisenstein in the late 1920s. He advocates that in the film, the audience can transform a certain visual image into a rational understanding through the internal modeling arrangement of the picture. For example, the three stone lions in Battleship potemkin and the statue in Alexander III in October fell from the base. It symbolizes the collapse of tsarist autocracy; When the interim government embarked on the old road of the tsarist system, the statue of Alexander III was re-erected on the pedestal (upside down) to show the counter-attack of the reactionary forces. These are typical examples of the application of "intellectual montage". Here, the lens becomes some kind of symbol or hieroglyphic, and the combination of the two produces some kind of concept, thus replacing the artistic image. Eisenstein believes that the purpose of film art is not to vividly express reality, but to express concepts. In theory, Eisenstein is used to expand the possibilities of movies as a means to understand reality. But in his creation, he is divorced from the material of real life. Eisenstein's theory of exaggerating the role of montage not only makes his work style quite different from that of realism, but also is denied by film theorists and peers.
assoeiative montage
Pudovkin also regards montage as the basis of film art creation. Pudovkin founded "Associative Montage", which is full of poetic and lyrical factors. "Associative montage" juxtaposes videos with no material connection but very close theme. This technique can only be used in some parts of the film, but not to unify all the shots. Pudovkin's theory emphasizes the narrative of movies, that is, highlighting the importance of details through the lens, reproducing plots and events through the decomposition and combination of plots and events, making montage a continuation of plot fragments, thus strengthening the narrative power of movies; These theories supported the melodrama model of the Soviet Union and the United States in the 1930s and 1940s to some extent, so they were regarded by avant-garde artists in the 20th century as a continuation of the narrative structure of Griffith's films, and even regarded by Eisenstein as bringing montage, a new film modeling method, into the traditional category of reappearance aesthetics, which was a retrogression on the road of modernism aesthetics.
Natural landscape image
Pudovkin relies more on the images of natural landscapes than other contemporary directors, such as trees, rivers, mud, storms and so on. Pudovkin's unique style is fully reflected in his most important work "Mother": when revolutionary Barville imagined a moment of being released from prison, pudovkin switched the camera from his smiling face to a mountain stream where the snow and ice melted, and crystal water gurgled out of the winter confinement ... pudovkin also used a series of similar cameras to express the homesickness of Barville's friends-fields, horses, farming, touching the soil with both hands ... which deviated from the narrative ontology. In order to avoid monotony and repetition, pudovkin also attaches great importance to the organic combination of expressive montage and narrative elements in his films. Before the end of the film, the marchers merged into a mighty stream of people and marched along a big river. At this point, the camera switches to the scene where neva river rushes forward with ice floes, symbolizing the overwhelming revolutionary force. The season in the film is spring, and the places people pass by are also along the coast of neva river. Events and vehicles are in the same space, which constitutes the same objective reality and has a strong symbolic role. In the film, pudovkin alternately uses these two montage techniques and other film means, which fully embodies his realistic aesthetic view.