- English name：Evening Rain
- Broadcast time：1980
- Starring：李志舆、张瑜
- director：吴永刚，吴贻弓
Introduction
Today, I will introduce a Chinese film which called Evening Rain (巴山夜雨 bā shān yè yǔ). So let us have a brief introduction.
Evening Rain reflects the fight between Chinese people and the “Gang of Four” during the ten years of turmoil in China. It was directed by Wu Yigong (吴贻弓Wú Yígōng) Li Zhiyu (李致宇Lǐ Zhìyǔ) , Zhang Yu, Lin Bin (林本Lín Běn) playing the leading role. This movie won the first Golden Rooster for best picture in 1981.
Plot
During the period that the “Gang of Four” was on the rampage in China, a poet named Qiu Shi (秋石qiū shí) who had been in prison for 6 years was secretly transferred from Sichuan (四川sìchuān) to Wuhan (武汉WǔHàn) by ship under the guard of Li Yan and Liu Wenying (刘文英Liú Wényīng). They met six passengers on the ship – a poor girl named Xing Hua who had to sell herself to pay the debts, a just woman teacher, an old actor of Beijing Opera, a frail old woman who had just lost her son, a young worker that had a clear stand on what to love and what to hate, and a little girl in rags. One night, hopeless about her life, Xin Hua jumped into the river to commit suicide. Qiu Shi saved her and used his own experience to encourage the poor girl. All the people on the ship were deeply moved by this brave poet including Li Yan and Liu Wenying. Accidentally, it turned out that the girl in rags was Qiu Shi’s daughter and with the help of those people on the ship, Qiu Shi with his daughter finally got freedom.
This is a very fabulous film.
Professional evaluation
1、The film, with its unique creative conception and lyrical artistic style, has created a group of characters with distinct personalities, expressing the beautiful hearts of the Chinese people in a specific historical period. Actors such as Shi Ling, Ouyang Ruqiu, Mao Weihui, Lin Bin, Zhong Xinghuo, and Lu Qing accurately embody the director’s overall artistic conception in the film, and create a group of screen images with different personality characteristics with their outstanding performances, which enhances the film’s ideological and artistic expression. Gao Tian, who composed the soundtrack for the film, used a musical language with certain national characteristics to accurately set off the characters’ emotions and the atmosphere of the environment.
2、The film is a lyrical work with a slight political connotation. The director uses the artistic technique of multi-layer structural perspective to make the film present an anti-visual effect. The aesthetic brushstrokes, which are thick in ink but freehand in expression, and meticulous in brushwork but with white space, cannot but make people savor its meaning and cannot stop.
3、This is a good film with a unique style. The characters in the film have distinct personalities, and the actors’ performances are very realistic, which are in line with the characters’ identities. There are not many dialogues in the whole film, and the plot develops smoothly and concisely. The film is innovative in both subject matter and artistic expression. There is no dogmatic model, no pretentious performance, no cumbersome plot, and it is fresh and fluent. There is no long sermon in the film, but it expresses the theme very clearly.
