谢晋：从文革中活下来的导演

      享年84岁的中国导演谢晋的一生就是一部极好的电影，他的故事也是激流动荡的二十世纪中国历史的真实写照。

     1949年新中国成立后他的光芒开始闪耀，也是为数不多的在文革中文革后依然耕耘不辍的导演之一。他的一生坎坎坷坷。被指控为资产阶级人文主义者，他被迫下乡劳改并在软禁中华年尽逝。其后，又因为在“四人帮”时期协助江青，也就是毛泽东的夫人，创作“八个样板戏”而被污为“机会主义分子”。
     生逢日本侵略之动荡年代，家本绍兴的谢晋在四川江安戏剧艺术学院就读，在那里，他学习易卜生，莎士比亚和契诃夫。1949年，中国内战即将结束之时，他开始在上海大东影业做助理导演并于四年后执导了他的第一部电影——《危机》。谢承认受苏联电影影响，并称其“具有精妙的道德情操的严肃性和深度”，他很快成为被称之为“第三代导演”中的佼佼者。
    《女篮五号》”，他的第三部作品为他赢得了“女性导演”的称号，该片描写了新中国成立后运动员们人生的不同轨迹。将社会主义现实主义和好莱坞情节剧美学结合起来，谢晋创造了自己的独特流派。在一次Jump cut的采访中，谢晋说：“我的童年记忆里满是被压迫受害的妇女，在封建压迫下，女人受的罪是男人不能比的，一个男人可以娶好几个老婆，但是一个寡妇就不能再婚，那样的话对她的家族而言就是耻辱。”。
   《红色娘子军》，经典的革命电影，讲述了琼花，一个被无良地主虐待后被一位党员救出来的丫鬟如何成长为女子游击队的领袖。这部电影对于革命如何改变人们对女性的态度无疑是一次开创性的检验，和精工细作的《舞台姐妹》一样，这部电影生动的色彩，组合以及创造性的镜头交相呼应。《舞》这部影片讲述了一个流动歌唱团的两个小姑娘，一个被物质主义吸引，放弃歌唱嫁人，最终落得悲惨的下场；另一个投身革命并与人合作组织了一个演出公司。尽管是谢晋的杰作，但谢导回忆说：“我不得不改台词，我不能按我所想的去完成它，如果让我把第二部分再改改，那整部电影就好多了。”这部电影同时也是文革前制作的最后一些电影的一个。而整个文革只有六部电影，而且都是通过惊人的视觉效果来进行宣传的粗制滥造之作，有些诸如《红色娘子军》就是根据电影改编的芭蕾舞剧。谢晋在文革中被从劳改地释放执导三部样板戏，无论是在美学上还是政治上都与他的其他作品大相径庭。
      文革结束，电影制作重新起步，很多都是批判文革的作品。谢晋制作了《天云山传奇》来回应那些他创作样板戏是有违自己的良心的指责，在这部影片中表现了一个被红卫兵压迫的女孩子因为政治而离开了自己的知识分子恋人。《芙蓉镇》，讲述了二十世纪六十年代的罪恶，在中国广受欢迎，虽然出品时被剪掉了三十分钟，但是仍然是一部通过一个勇敢的受害者的眼睛看那个时代的伟大作品，本片的主要力量在于避免了陈腔滥调和华丽辞采——甚至当地恶棍看起来都很富有人性，以及在情节剧的框架下，在政治和社会讽刺之中，戏剧和现实主义之间左右逢源的手法。谢的电影在八十年代的中国依旧流行，虽然被七十年代末北京电影学院毕业的第五代导演（例如陈凯歌和张艺谋）在国际舞台上边缘化。
    谢晋的社会关怀和历史责任感——事实上，他竭力避免政治敏感话题，意味着他的作品比起第五代导演们的更容易被执政者接受，虽然他规避喧嚣的民族主义和单纯化的信息。例如，《最后的贵族》，这部片部分在美国拍摄，讲述三个在美留学的年轻中产阶级女子的生活和她们想在1949年回国时所遇到的困难。该片没有对资本主义的阿谀奉承，但也表示了对其受害者的同情。
     《鸦片战争》（1997），谢导的倒数第二部作品，也是中国电影史上最贵的电影之一，总花费在一千五百万美元上下。该片有意在香港回归之时放映，讲述了两个帝国，中华帝国和不列颠帝国在十九世纪八十年代的冲突。虽然是反殖民主义的，但在处理上予以平衡。2001年的《女足九号》回归女运动员题材，本意在国内大显身手，却在国外大受好评。
      谢晋是唯一一位身兼美国电影艺术科学协会会员和美国导演协会会员的华人。谢导身后留下夫人和一子。
      谢晋，电影导演，生于1923年11月21日，卒于2008年10月18日。

Xie Jin :a film director who survived the cultural revolution

Xie Jin

Chinese film director who survived the cultural revolution

• Ronald Bergan
• The Guardian,
• Monday October 20 2008
• Article history

The life of the Chinese film director Xie Jin, who has died aged 84, would make an excellent movie in itself, reflecting the turbulent history of his country in the 20th century. He shone brightest among those contemporaries who emerged after the establishment of the people's republic in 1949 and was one of the few directors to continue to make films during and after the cultural revolution. It was not an easy ride. Accused of bourgeois humanism, he was forced to do manual labour in the countryside and spent time under house arrest. Later, he was accused by some of being an opportunistic party hack because he was enlisted to help Mao Zedong's wife, Jiang Qing, direct the "model opera" films during her time as a member of the Gang of Four.

Born in Shaoxing, Xie grew up during the Japanese invasion of the 1930s and attended the Jiang-an school of dramatic art in Szechuan, where he studied Ibsen, Shakespeare and Chekhov. In 1949, shortly before the end of the Chinese civil war, he got a job as assistant director at the Datong film studio in Shanghai, directing his first film, A Crisis, four years later. Xie, who admitted to being influenced by Soviet cinema, which he said had "a profound moral seriousness and depth", soon became the most celebrated of the directors who formed what was to be known as the Third Generation.

It was his third film, Woman Basketball Player Number Five (1957), that established his reputation as a "woman's director". It depicted the different fortunes of sportsmen and women before and after the birth of the new China. By combining socialist realism with the aesthetics of Hollywood melodramas, Xie created an extremely popular genre. "My childhood memory remains full of oppressed, victimised women," he explained in an interview with Da Huo'er in Jump Cut. "Under feudal oppression, the suffering of men could not be compared to that of women. To say the least, a man was allowed to keep several wives, while a widow was never permitted to marry again. It would bring too much shame on her family."

Red Detachment of Women (1961), a classic revolutionary film, follows Qiong Hua from an abused servant of a cruel warlord to her role as heroic leader of a troop of women soldiers, after being rescued by a party representative. It was a dramatic examination of the role of the revolution in reshaping attitudes to gender. The film revealed a vivid sense of colour, composition and inventive camera angles, as did the finely crafted Two Stage Sisters (1965).

This film tells of two girls who become stars of a travelling opera group. One is seduced by materialism, gives up singing, marries and drifts into misery; the other commits herself to the revolution and forms a women's cooperative opera company. Although probably Xie's masterpiece, he recalled: "I was forced to change the script. I couldn't finish it the way I would have liked. If I could redo the second part now, it would improve the entire film."

Two Stage Sisters was one of the last films made before the cultural revolution, during which only six films were made, all of them crudely propagandistic though visually striking, some being revised ballet versions of previous films, such as The Red Detachment of Women (1970). Xie was released from labour camp to direct three of them, aesthetically and politically at odds with the rest of his work.

After the cultural revolution, film production picked up, much of it highly critical of that period. Xie answered criticism that he had betrayed his conscience by making Legend of Tianyun Mountain (1980), which presented a bleak picture of a young girl pressured by Red Guards to leave her intellectual lover for political reasons. Hibiscus Town (1986), which detailed some of the sins of the 1960s, was a huge hit in China, and although cut by more than 30 minutes in the export version, it remains a powerful study of an era as seen through the eyes of a brave victim. The main strength of the film is its avoidance of rhetoric and stereotypes - even the local activist villains appear all too human - and its ability to move between political and social satire, comedy and realism, within the framework of a sweeping melodrama.

Xie's films continued to be popular in China throughout the 1980s, though he was pushed aside on the international stage by the Fifth Generation of film-makers - those directors who graduated from the Beijing Film Academy in the late 1970s (the most famous being Chen Kaige and Zhang Yimou).

Xie's social concern and sense of historical context - and the fact that he avoided politically sensitive subjects - meant his films were more acceptable to the regime than some of those by the Fifth Generation, though he avoided blatant nationalism and simplistic messages. For example, The Last Aristocrats (1989), partially shot in the US, deals with the lives of three young middle-class Chinese women studying in America, and the difficulties they face when trying to return to their homeland after 1949. Though certainly unflattering to life under capitalism, it showed sympathy for its victims.

At around $15m, The Opium War (1997), Xie's penultimate film, was one of the most expensive to be made by a Chinese studio. Pointedly released to coincide with the return of Hong Kong, it tells of the clash between two empires, the British and the Qing dynasty, in the 1840s. Although anti-colonialist, it is balanced in its treatment. While shown worldwide to much acclaim, Woman Soccer Player Number 9 (2001), in which Xie returned to the subject of women's sports, was meant for home consumption.

Xie was the only Chinese director to be made a member of both the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences and the Directors' Guild of America. He leaves his wife; a son predeceased him.

• Xie Jin, film director, born November 21 1923; died October 18 2008