Editor's note: This is a nostalgic theater.

October 27 is the "World Day for Audiovisual Heritage" established by UNESCO. On this day, a "legendary cartoon" that has been buried for 40 years was re-emerged in the world - the Kuzura Animation Archives released the animation of the 4K restored version of the film "Strange Hand" in the collection. This is a collective creation of the Beijing Film Academy's 1978 animation major. It was produced by the Beijing Youth Film Studio in 1982. Looking at it now, it also brings back a lot of memories and reverie.

"The Strange Hand"

"When I was a child, I had the plot of this story - turning my wife into gold, but I don't remember if I saw it or not. It was still possible to see it in 1982." In "Strange Hands" 4K Restoration In the comments section, a netizen wrote. Indeed, the absurd and bizarre plot of the film, combined with the bright and eye-catching golden theme color, is unforgettable.

At the beginning of the film, the appearance of the house is represented by a simple dark color block. A man shuttles through the color blocks, sneaking "flying over the eaves" for a while, strutting upright in a suit, breathing clouds in a windbreaker, and a string of sparkling watches hanging on his hands. Men are typical "rubber tube men", with their torso, limbs, and five senses freely twisting and deforming, performing various social occupations. Who is he? The narrator of the video answered in a timely manner: "Oh, it turned out to be a seller of smuggled goods!"

The role modeling adopts "rubber tube man", which is flexible and vivid

Men who made money selling smuggled watches came home with boxes big and small and trendy radios. At home, the wife threw the sugar into her mouth one by one - candy in the 1980s was no longer a luxury. In the brisk sound of erhu, she started a "fashion show", sleeveless skirts, small foreign skirts, silk scarves, very fashionable! But when his wife asked for money, the man took out the empty pocket, apparently all the money he had just earned was spent in a blink of an eye. The man was lying on a bench by the side of the street, distressed, and banknotes appeared in the smoke ring he exhaled. In the next second, he was chased by his butt to escape, and his legs were almost over his body. It turned out that the smuggled watch just sold was a fake, and the buyer came to him.

The upper body and lower limbs of the man fleeing are separated, and exaggerated expression techniques are used

After finally getting rid of the buyer, the man stopped at the door of a theater, and he saw a magician's performance poster. In his eyes, the playing cards in the magician's hand turned into money. He widened his eyes, thinking how nice it would be to make money through magic. The man then went to the magician with a gift and asked to learn how to make money from magic. Pushing it off again and again, the magician gave the man hands that turn stone into gold, and anything he touched with his hands would instantly turn into gold.

In the eyes of a man, the cards in the hands of the magician turn into money

The man came home and showed his wife his magic trick of turning stone into gold, golden apples, golden teeth, golden vases, and even golden cats. The husband and wife were ecstatic and lived a life of mixing oil with honey. One day, a drunk man turned on the radio and danced to the popular electronic music. The man accidentally turned his wife into a golden man!

"What are you nervous about, wouldn't it be better if your wife became golden?" But after a while, the man began to hate his hands. At this time, the hands were entangled in him like a poisonous snake. The man was sad and desperate, and shed tears of remorse. "Don't rely on evil ways to live your life in the future, wake up!" In the educational voice of the narrator, the film ended.

Accidentally turned his wife into "gold"

'Strange hand' haunts man like serpent

In just ten minutes, only three or four figures depict the two sides of China's social landscape in the 1980s. On the one hand, the spring breeze of reform and opening up has enriched the people and opened their minds. People gradually no longer have to worry about filling their stomachs, the supply and marketing cooperatives have more products, and entertainment venues have also opened. Ladies took off the stereotyped greens and grays and put on colorful and diverse fashions. On the other hand, everyone is busy and calculating around "money". There are popular sayings in society that "it's better to make missiles than to sell tea eggs" and "it's better to have a hatchet than a scalpel." Therefore, the creators of "Strange Hands" wanted to use absurd and exaggerated artistic techniques to satirize the opportunistic people in the society at that time, who broke the moral bottom line, and only wanted to get something for nothing-money fanatics eventually became madmen.

Screenshot of "The Strange Hand"

This animation has another noteworthy label - Class 78 of the Animation Department of Beijing Film Academy.

"Nortel Class 78" is a well-known existence in the history of Chinese film. In 1977, the state decided to resume the national college entrance examination. After a lapse of ten years, Beijing Film Academy has ushered in a new student - the famous Beijing Film Class 78. The list includes Zhang Yimou, Chen Kaige, Tian Zhuangzhuang and other famous directors known as the "fifth generation", as well as Zhang Fengyi, Zhang Tielin, etc. A household name actor. This group of "lucky" students eagerly absorbed new knowledge and devoted themselves to creative practice. They got rid of formula, conceptualization and dogmatism in their creative ideas, combined their artistic heritage with life experience, and dared to explore and create new ideas.

"Red Elephant", the graduation assignment of the same year of the director department of Class 78, assembled a fantastic lineup including Zhang Yimou, Tian Zhuangzhuang, Zhang Jianya, Feng Xiaoning, etc. The pioneering audio-visual effect was applied to a children's film, and it also left a "shadow" to many people's childhood. .

"The Strange Hand" Production Team

Although the animation department is not as bright as the director class, most of them have also become the mainstay of China's animation education and industry in the future. The film's creation list is also full of famous names. Hu Yihong from Class 78 is the director of my country's first domestically produced "Youth Music Idol Animation" "I'm Crazy for Songs". This animation later became the heartwarming memory of a generation's adolescence and was called "the first person to eat crabs". .

At the same time, Strange Hand is not purely student work. Looking through the list of film creators, there are big names gathered, including not only well-known artists in the industry at that time, but also practitioners who have been very successful later.

"Strange Hand" creator Hidden Dragon Crouching Tiger

Director Wu Qiang participated in the creation of the famous "Little Tadpoles Looking for Mother" and "Mu Di" in his early years. In 1980, Wu Qiang was transferred to the Fine Arts Department of Beijing Film Academy as an animation teacher. At this time, the animation major had been closed for more than 20 years, and there were no teaching materials at all. Wu Qiang compiled several large handwritten animation teaching materials based on his years of creative experience, which contributed to the cultivation of the first batch of animation talents in my country in the new era.

The screenwriter Gong Jianying later served as the director of the creative planning department of the Shanghai Fine Arts Film Studio. "Childhood memories" such as "The Legend of the Heroes of the Sui and Tang Dynasties" and "Big Ear Tutu" came from her. Another screenwriter, Lou Ying, is one of the photographers of the representative work of Chinese ink animation "Landscape Love". At the same time, he is also one of the photographers of the familiar childhood memory "The Black Cat Sheriff".

Composer is the famous musician Hu Weili, who has composed scores for nearly 100 movies such as "The Deer Ding Ji", "Tang Bohu Dianqiuxiang", "Nine-Pin Sesame Official", etc., and has won numerous awards, such as the Hong Kong Film Awards "Best Film Score Award", Taiwan Golden Horse Award "Best Film Music Award".

The recording of "Strange Hand" is a student of the Beijing Film Academy's 78-level recording department. Looking through their recording production reports, "new ideas" appeared frequently: the first use of electronic synthesizers to make strong, dramatic sound, such as climbing, falling, somersaults, circling, etc.; squeezing foam with wooden sticks Cotton, making the "squeak" sound similar to tearing, using the sound of the keychain shaking to simulate the sound of the watch; trying to use the reverberated metal sound to simulate the sound of tears falling. Small and smart sound effects give viewers a rich audio-visual experience and imagination. Even in the final "Art Summary", the creators "reflected" on various deficiencies, including "too nervousness", the fact that the band formed temporarily was not rehearsed, and the equipment was not good, causing some instruments to interact with each other. The scales in between are not accurate, and the sound level also appears to be large and small. Now it seems that "sincere" is full of cuteness that is unique to student work.

Looking at life with humor, satirizing social current affairs, expressing one's own opinions, and criticizing bad people have always been the common artistic expressions in the Chinese literature and art circles. After the reform and opening up, literary and artistic works have turned to a relatively invisible and artistic way to arouse readers' thinking and lead correct social values. Among them, the bold and sharp ironic style returned, which became the prevailing artistic style at that time. In 1979, People's Daily launched the country's first cartoon-based newspaper, Satire and Humor, in the form of a supplement, which wrote in "To Readers", "Life cannot be without satire, nor without irony. Humor", to give a well-meaning, prickly critique of various wrong thinking styles in social life.

Screenshot of "The Strange Hand"

Looking back, the reputation of the teachers and students of the Beijing Film 78 animation class may not be as loud as their counterparts in the director class and performance class, but they were undoubtedly standing at a new starting point for Chinese animation at that time - not only the increasingly rich themes and sophisticated The skill of the artist is the return of the previous style orientation - the prelude of the second creation of Chinese animation is slowly unfolding in front of them. According to records, the production cost of the film was 30,000 yuan, and the 10-minute volume was considered excellent in that year. As a graduation work, the film also passed the censorship of radio and television and was released nationwide.

The 1980s that followed were called the revival era of Chinese animation. In our childhood, the humorous "Three Monks", the paper-cut films "Monkey Fishing for the Moon" and "Mr. Nanguo", the puppet show "Avanti", and the "Black Cat Sheriff" that we watched on TV every night ""The Gourd Brothers" "The Adventures of the Sloppy King"...

It was an era of fantastic fantasy, when everything could be animated, and the best products came one after another. In the next thirty or forty years, Chinese local animation has experienced the erosion of imported films, and the dark valley of disorientation, and then "finds itself" again. "Journey to the West: The Return of the Great Sage" and "Havoc in the Heavenly Palace", "Nezha's Devil Child Comes to the World" and "Nezha's Trouble in the Sea" can be said to be tributes to the classics, but innovative and breakthroughs.

100 years of Chinese animation

Taking advantage of the "return" of this pioneering work 40 years ago, in addition to remembrance and praise, I hope that in the century of Chinese animation, it will still be bold, innovative, vigorous, and have a "Hundred Flowers Blossom". new future.