Douban 9. was a distraction. After 38 years, we haven't made such a clean film again.

"Outside the pavilion, by the ancient road, the grass is blue and the sky is blue.

the evening breeze blows the willow flute, and the sunset is beyond the mountains.

Whenever the melody of Li Shutong's "Farewell" rings, it always brings back infinite memories.

many people commented on this song: I don't know what I like in the song when I am young, but I have already heard it.

Pu Shu once cried when he sang this song in a performance. Before the song was finished, he had already collapsed.

What makes this song a well-known classic melody is due to an old domestic movie 38 years ago.

The film has no magnificent scenes and exquisite costume props, but it has become a classic film that has cured several generations of China audiences with fresh and simple stories and meaningful and moving plots. It is still regarded as:

There is no one among the best poetic films in China cinema!

The film scored as high as 9. on Douban, better than 97% of the feature films, and won many international awards.

In this issue of "Forgotten Domestic Genre Films", let's revisit this classic film 38 years ago!

Old Things in the South of the City

My Memories of Old Beijing

was released in 1983 and produced by Shanghai Film Studio.

The film is adapted from the short story of the same name written by Lin Haiyin, and directed by Wu Yigong, the fourth generation director.

In that year, the film won the Golden Rooster Award for Best Director, Best Supporting Actress and Best Music. At the same time, it also went abroad and became the first batch of works that won awards abroad in the reform and opening up. It won the Golden Eagle Award for Best Feature Film at the Second Manila International Film Festival and the Best Film Idea Award at the 14th Belgrade International Children's Film Festival in 1984.

The original work is a retrospective autobiographical novel by the writer Lin Haiyin. The novel describes the life of an ordinary person in a quadrangle in the south of Beijing in the late 192s. Through the childish eyes of the little girl Eiko, we can see all kinds of people and things in Beijing at that time, showing the customs of old Beijing with deep feelings and delicate brushwork, and the words are full of strong fireworks.

The director Wu Yigong accidentally saw this novel in 1981, and was immediately moved by it. He once said:

The deep lovesickness and faint sadness in the novel deeply touched people's hearts, and were full of simple and warm thoughts and feelings.

Wu Yigong immediately started to adapt the novel into a movie. The original novel was written by five people in five paragraphs, namely, Hui 'an Pavilion, Let's Watch the Sea, Aunt Lan, Rolling on a Donkey and Daddy's Flowers Left. When it was adapted, Director Wu deleted some plots.

But even though the whole content of the novel can't be filmed, the film is very faithful to the original plot.

The film, like the original, tells the story from the first perspective of the little girl Eiko, using her immature and childlike eyes to look at the changes in the world around her and the sorrows and sorrows of the world. Although Eiko is young, she tells the joys and sorrows of the adult world.

The whole film does not deliberately feel sad, nor does it pretend to be sensational. It completely adheres to the same calm style as prose poetry.

In Beijing in the late 192s, it was already the middle of winter.

Every autumn, camel teams carrying coal to Beijing will stroll into and out of the city with camel bells.

In the morning, beside a well in an alley mouth in the south of the city, the accumulated water nearby froze out.

As usual, the camel team came to a house in an alley to unload coal.

The owner's family name is Lin, and there is a six-year-old daughter named Yingzi, who grew up in an alley and was curious about everything around her.

Look at the camel parked in front of the house, with a dull expression and a look of chewing grass.

Eiko, wearing a red cotton-padded jacket, couldn't help learning the camel's demeanor. She asked her father,

"Why do camels hang bells?

Father explained that the camel was afraid of wolves, so people hung bells on him. When the wolf heard the bell ringing, he knew that someone was protecting the camel, so he didn't dare to disturb him.

This is naturally what adults say, but for Eiko, who is a kid, he often has his own ideas about the problem.

She thinks that camels have big feet and walk in the desert without sound. It must be the camel-pulling human beings who can't bear the long and lonely journey, so they put bells on the camels to add some fun to the road.

The father was noncommittal about his daughter's idea, only saying: Maybe your idea is better!

Not far from Eiko's house, there is a Hui 'an Pavilion, where a girl named Xiuzhen lives.

She wears a big braid. Every day, she always leans against the door, calling the name "Xiaoguizi" from time to time. People nearby call her a crazy woman.

Eiko is curious about Xiuzhen, but the adults don't allow her to get close to Xiuzhen.

Especially Song Ma, a servant at home, always warns Eiko:

"Aren't you afraid of the crazy people in Huian Pavilion?

The bold and lively Eiko retorted,

"She smiles at me every time she sees me!

On my way home, I happened to meet the police "on a red errand", and people were all watching and cheering.

Eiko doesn't understand this old saying that prisoners are executed in old Beijing, let alone why people on the sidelines are desperately cheering.

After that, Song Ma took Eiko to a nearby oil and salt store. The clerk in the store was trying to make it difficult for a little girl the same age as Eiko to sing a little song before selling her the sauce. But Eiko was angry and took the initiative to take the sauce and handed it to her.

Later, Eiko saw the girl fetching water from the well in the Hutongkou again, only to know that the little girl lived nearby, named Niu.

Eiko invited the girl to her house to play, but the girl didn't dare. She was afraid of the crazy woman across the hall from Eiko's house.

When Eiko went back to the house, she met Xiuzhen, a crazy woman squatting at the door, and got the nerve to ask:

"Who is Xiaoguizi?

Xiuzhen took Eiko into the room and pointed to the New Year picture doll on the wall and said,

"Look how fat my little cassia is!

Xiuzhen's father heard his daughter talking about these things again outside the house, and immediately scolded:

"Don't be ashamed.

Eiko went home to see Song Ma whispering with an old woman selling matches nearby, as if she was talking about Xiuzhen.

When Song Ma saw Eiko coming, she stopped talking, but Eiko, who is so strange, knew that the adults were talking about Xiuzhen's scandal.

It turns out that Xiuzhen once fell in love with Sikang, a college student who came to study in the city, and they secretly decided for life, but later the college student was taken away and never came back, and Xiuzhen was pregnant at that time.

xiuzhen later gave birth to a daughter named xiaoguizi, and when she felt ashamed at home, she was thrown at the foot of the city wall and disappeared.

Since losing her lover and children, Xiuzhen has become crazy.

The following year comes to spring, and the weather gets warmer. Eiko has reached the age of going to school. But when she is free, she often plays with girls nearby, and sometimes she goes to see Xiuzhen, a crazy woman, and the days are so slow.

Sometimes Eiko will see some college students coming home to talk to their father, and her mother will always persuade her father not to get too close to those people.

But my father said,

"Those are great new youths!

My mother followed my father's words and said,

"Hey, I heard that the crazy man in Hui 'an Pavilion is also …"

Before she finished speaking, her father stopped her and motioned her not to say any more.

Eiko, who was practicing calligraphy, listened to the whispers of her parents and vaguely knew something, but she didn't quite understand it.

I just feel that the world of adults always seems mysterious.

Later, Eiko went to Hui 'an Pavilion to see Xiuzhen. Xiuzhen sometimes recalled some fragments intermittently, and mentioned that there was a blue birthmark on the back of Xiaoguizi's neck. She also told Eiko that if she saw Xiaoguizi in the future, she must go home early.

In summer, Eiko was playing in an alley and saw a girl walking with a tall, thin man with a huqin.

Yingzi greets, but the girl is pushed away from the alley by the man behind her.

Eiko knows that a man is a girl's father.

Seeing that the girl ignored herself, the lost Eiko went to Huian Pavilion. Xiuzhen met her and greeted her warmly.

She also mashed her own henna with alum, and dyed Xiaoying's nails red. Xiuzhen recalled while painting:

"Sikang likes my dyed red nails best ..."

When she came home that night, the girl suddenly came to Yingzi and cried. The girl was often beaten by her father, so that she was hurt all over.

Eiko doesn't understand why parents are so cruel.

But the girl cried and said that she was not born to her parents now, but was picked up.

Not long after, on a rainy night, Niu ran out of the house quietly. She told Eiko that she couldn't stand the beatings of her adoptive parents and wanted to find her biological parents.

she heard from her family that she was picked up at the city gate. Eiko suddenly remembered the conversation between Song Ma and the woman who sold matches before, so she looked at the back of the girl's neck again. Sure enough, there was a blue birthmark-this confirmed that she was Xiaoguizi.

The girl didn't understand, so Eiko dragged her to Huian Pavilion.

When Xiuzhen saw the girl who came over, she immediately hugged her and said,

"My little cassia in bad karma, you finally came back!

At this moment, there was a train whistle in the distance, so Xiuzhen quickly dressed the girl, saying, we have to take the 8: 5 train to Tianjin, take a big ship to Tianjin, and find your father together!

After packing and looking at the girl in front of her, Xiuzhen suddenly stopped and asked the girl in front of her:

"Why didn't you call me? Call me mom.

Eiko didn't understand whether the girl believed Xiuzhen was her mother, or whether she was moved by a mother's love that she had never felt before, and actually called out to her mother. They braved the heavy rain overnight and got on a rickshaw and left the alley.

Eiko was caught in the heavy rain and became feverish. When she realized it, she couldn't stop Xiuzhen and Niu, and fell into the rain.

The newspaper in the street later reported a news:

A woman with a little girl died in an accident near the railway.

When Eiko woke up again, it was already in the hospital. The doctor said that she had been in a coma for a long time because of a fever, and almost worried her parents.

After leaving the hospital, Eiko's family moved to Xinlan Hutong, and Eiko also went to the nearby Changdian Primary School to study.

She has never seen Xiuzhen and Niu again, but she can't help thinking of them.

One afternoon, three boys were playing football in a nearby alley, and someone kicked the ball into the grass in an abandoned yard nearby.

It is rumored that this house is haunted, and all the boys are afraid to go in and pick up the ball. Only Eiko is not afraid and takes the initiative to walk into the grass.

In the grass, Eiko accidentally found an exquisite bell and a copper tea tray.

At this time, the boys told Eiko to come out quickly, so Eiko put everything back and ran out of the grass without looking for the ball.

After returning home, my father and mother mentioned in their conversation that the Zhang family in Hutongkou was robbed and a bell was stolen.

Eiko listened, and she remembered what she saw in the grass in the afternoon.

The next evening, Eiko, who was curious about the thief, went to look for those things in the grass again, only to find a man crouching under the tree.

Eiko was shocked, but fortunately, the man seemed harmless, so he took out a ball and asked Eiko, are you looking for this?

Eiko took the ball, but took the initiative to speak to him boldly. Seeing that he had been squatting on the ground, she asked,

"Are you here to take a shit?

The man didn't blush, but laughed and agreed.

Seeing Eiko talking to herself without scruple and being innocent, the man opened his heart and took the initiative to talk to her.

When he learned that Yingzi was studying in Changdian Primary School, the man said excitedly that his younger brother was studying there, too, and he studied very well.

Eiko became curious about men. When she got home, she didn't tell her parents about seeing men.

At this time, the nearby police are going door-to-door to investigate and ask if they have met thieves or seen suspicious people.

The next afternoon after school, Eiko took the initiative to come to this grass again. When he saw the man squatting here, he started talking again.

This time, the man said a lot:

"My brother is good at his studies, but his own brother is incompetent and can't support his brother to go to school. I have taken this step and there is nothing I can do. My mother and brother don't know. Do you think I'm a good person or a bad person?

Before Eiko could answer, the repentant man cried bitterly.

Eiko actually doesn't understand what men say. She wants to comfort men, but she just says,

"I don't understand ... there are so many people that I can't tell them apart.

Then Eiko said:

There is a lesson in our text, Let's Watch the Sea, but I haven't seen the sea, and I can't tell the difference between the sea and the sky, and I can't tell the difference between good people and bad people.

the man seems to have figured it out after listening, so he put it away.