Since the sound track is added later for all films made in Taiwan, the burdens of the dubbing studio are monotonously familiar to most actors. But for Hou, who is primarily a director, looking at himself on the screen is not yet an accustomed role.
He has appeared on the screen before: a cameo as a sly city slicker in his own The Boys from Fengkuei; and in a relatively minor role as a fast-talking, hot-tempered junior exec, he almost walked away with last year's I Love Mary, based on a satirical novel by Huang Chun-ming. But it is this appearance in Taipei Story—directed and written by Yang Te-chang with contributions from Hou and writer Chu Tien-wen—that marks Hou's debut as a leading man.
Hou's recent emergence as a major actor (though it's highly doubtful that he'll abandon his career as writer and director for the putative pleasures of movie stardom) makes him the most conspicuous of Evergreen Film Company execs. But he is, still, only one of the talented artists who form the relatively new, independent film organization. Creative collaboration is, in fact, one of the hallmarks of the Evergreen Company and a major force in Taiwan's cinema, slowly but surely bringing Taiwan-made movies to international standards—and winning international recognition.
Until just a few years ago, most films made in Taiwan were likely to be monumentally forgettable costume epics, witless kung-fu quickies, slapdash-slapstick comedies, and soppy, credulity-taxing tearjerkers. Not that there's been a complete revolution. The above categories still dominate the market along with equally numbing European, Japanese, and American mediocrities.
As in America's film world, imitation on the island is often seen as the sincerest form of flattery—and, more importantly, a guarantee of success. One of last year's more successful local comedies, for example, Made for Each Other—little more than a crude pastiche of barnyard humor and pathos—actually took its plot and, in some cases, entire scenes, from Charlie Chaplin's City Lights and The Kid.
Some of the much touted recent examples of the new realism in Taiwan's cinema have that heavy aura of cashing in on a trend. The 1983 box office blockbuster Papa, Can You Hear Me Sing? offered a preposterous commercial concoction of bizarre disasters interspersed with third-rate Las Vegas-style showstoppers purporting to depict the perils of show biz.
A much more widely acclaimed film, A Map, won last year's national cinematic Golden Horse Award for best story and was earlier selected by the Government Information Office as one of the five best films representing Taiwan abroad. The script by Wu Nien-chen, one of Taiwan's most highly regarded screen writers, and surely the most bankable (he also co-wrote Papa), pounced eagerly on most available movie cliches.
The first major development in the welcome trend away from the rigid categories and hackneyed conventions of the past was the 1982 film In Our Time, featuring the work of four directors who have since gone on to produce other noteworthy films. In Our Time was followed by Growing Up, the first Evergreen production, the Evergreen Film Company having been newly-established by veteran collaborators, writer-director Hou Hsiao-hsien, director-cinematographer Chen Kun-hou, and their longtime colleagues Hsu Shu-chen and Chang Hua-kun.
Both Hou and Chen brought a wealth of experience to the venture. Chen had already been a cinematographer for twenty years, and Hou, entering the film industry in 1973, had served as assistant director for Chen and others. In their collaboration for various film companies, Hou generally wrote the scripts, Chen photographed, and each alternated as director.
The six films they made from 1978 to 1982, basic vehicles for innocuous pop stars, already exhibited signs of the unobtrusive realism and low-key approach that have characterized their films since.
Of their work, writer Chu Tien-wen comments: "I thought Hou's scripts were very true to life. Although at that time the boss selected the stars, etc. and told them what to do, and that imposed a lot of limitations and a certain unfree atmosphere, Hou still exhibited his special skills. The films were about Taiwan's people and places—very down to earth, not off in a fantasy world."
But by 1982, both Hou and Chen were tired of the demands posed by overseers and, spurred by a disagreement with one film studio producer, decided to start their own company.
Hou resists the suggestion that Evergreen's first production (directed by Chen)—Growing Up, also considered a breakthrough in Taiwan's film industry—is substantially different from his and Chen's previous efforts. But its naturalistic acting, realistic story, and Chen's skillful, well modulated photography did make the film a standout. Growing Up was also noteworthy for the recruitment of Chu Tien-wen, then only 26, who adapted her original story for the screen (with help from Hou). The daughter of well-known writer Chu Hsi-ning, and sister of two other well-known writers, Chu was only 15 when her first novel was published.
Since Growing Up, Chu has had a hand in all Evergreen's films—the script for The Boys from Fengkuei, based on director Hou's suggestions and recollections; Daddy's Blue Heaven, a screen adaptation of the prize-winning story by her sister, Chu Tien-hsin; a script inspired by a Chang An-chin story, for Tung Tung's Vacation; and the story adapted for the screen by Ting Ah-min for last month's Most Memorable Season.
In Chu Tien-wen, both Hou and Chen have an ideal collaborator for a complete meshing of styles. A combination of remembered scenes of childhood, with acute observations of ordinary human nature presented in a clear-eyed, yet understanding manner, characterizes both the Evergreen films and Chu's writing.
Though the script and the short story have different sets of demands, Chu has been encouraged to use novelistic techniques in writing screenplays (for example, Fengkuei was first written as a novel). And it is this novelistic care for background and detail that helps give the Evergreen films their compelling authenticity and artistry.
There are differences for Chu in working with Hou or Chen. For Hou, a veteran scriptwriter, "the dialogue and movements don't have to be so precise;" Chu notes, "I give the director lots of space to think." But for Chen, the script "must be very clear, though he controls the visual aspects very well." Both directors are marked, she added, by their ability to incorporate improvisation and spur-of-the-moment impressions.
The combined boxoffice and critical successes of Growing Up and the earlier In Our Time alerted commercial cinema to the possibilities of new trends. In 1982, the normally conservative Central Motion Picture Corporation produced The Sandwich Man, a trilogy of stories by Huang Chun-ming. Hou directed and Chen filmed the first episode, a compassionate look at the lower strata of Taiwan's rural society. And, in a rare break with movie conventions, the entire first episode and parts of the others were filmed in Taiwanese rather than Mandarin, China's lingua franca. The Sandwich Man was soon followed by Hou's most distinctive and individualistic work to date, The Boys from Fengkuei.
"I was in a kind of gang when I was young," Hou recalls, "and there was quite a long time when I would hang around with the neighborhood kids all day. So I'm pretty familiar with that kind of thing and thought many times about filming that kind of material." The story itself (Hou's autobiography to some extent) isn't too different from other film plots. It is Hou's way of telling the story that provides its impressionistic feeling, a breakaway from dogmatically linear structure. "I used a relatively objective approach in filming Fengkuei. That's why it could make people feel it was different from my previous works," he explains.
In Fengkuei, long scenes highlight a mood of aimlessness and isolation throughout the film. The opening scene—a bus pulling into a small town in a desolate Penghu Island landscape—establishes the atmosphere. The story follows four teenage boys awaiting army service from their restless days of youthful gang fights, pool playing, and roaming through the familiar town, to the urban friendlessness of the crowded streets of the industrial city of Kaohsiung (Hou's hometown). The film gradually concentrates on one of the boys, and near the end of the film, a camera positioned across the street focuses on him in a striking long-take. As traffic flows and pedestrians hurry, he stands, looking abandoned and forlorn, in front of the bus station.
In telling the story, Hou developed a trademark of his style—the long-take. Originally intended to spare actors the burden of ping-pong reaction shots requiring numerous repetitions, the long-take lets the film breathe, giving it a more natural, unhurried rhythm. The use of long-takes doesn't create dead air; the pace is still steady, without being choppy.
Though he has a film degree (from Taiwan's National Arts Institute), Hou's style is not based on film theory. Unlike some of the other prominent new directors, neither Hou nor Chen have studied abroad, and they had little chance to study foreign films before entering the industry.
Hou is annoyed by suggestions that his distinctive style derives from the French New Wave or other influences. And in truth, what makes Evergreen's films so unique is not just the professionalism, polish, and assurance of style, but a marked quality of being "home-grown."
Hou's most recent film, Tung Tung's Vacation, though different in content and style, continues to deal with the theme of maturity. The plot is a series of vignettes of a junior high school boy's summer vacation with his four or five year old sister at their grandfather's rural home. Some of the scenes are sad, some are funny, but all unobtrusively observe the solicitude and seriousness childhood merits.
Hou is known for his ability to coax natural performances from child actors, which he does by allowing them to experiment in their roles. Tung Tung was partially a showcase for such young actors; in addition there were outstanding performances by such professionals as Ah Hsi, Yang Li-yin, and others.
Chu's script for the film included some of her own childhood memories and was largely filmed in her grandparents' house in the Hakka (a Chinese subgroup) community of Miaoli.
Boxoffice success, though often scorned by purists, is nevertheless a general essential for filmmaking.
"There was a little financial difficulty" in creating Growing Up, Hou acknowledges. While noting in the same breath that film production costs in Taiwan are not exorbitant, he added that to film Growing Up, "Chen Kun-hou mortgaged his house to the bank. And I sold my house."
But "because tickets sold well," Chu went on, "everyone else now said, 'Well, we can also take this road.''' Subsequently, Fengkuei and Daddy's Blue Heaven also enjoyed moderate boxoffice success, lending some credence to Hou's claims that Taiwan audience standards have now been raised. But Tung Tung, a victim of bad timing, couldn't compete with splashier films and closed after just one week, and Evergreen's next film, Taipei Story, opened February 2 and, failing to find an audience, closed in four days—some kind of a record.
Taipei Story was Yang Te-chang's first work for the Evergreen Company and only his second complete feature (he directed one segment of In Our Time); the first was That Day on the Beach. Yang's probing, introspective style—full of long, contemplative silences and swirling cigarette smoke—does seem at times mannerly and affected compared to Chen's and Hou's unembellished naturalism. Perhaps Taipei Story was too obscure or simply too slow for Taipei audiences, but Yang does bring elements of distinctive subtlety and sophistication to Taiwan's cinema.
Is the sophistication and quiet realism of the Evergreen films lost on Taiwan's audiences? Despite the pathetic boxoffice records of Daddy's Blue Heaven and Taipei Story, any Evergreen release is guaranteed to be greeted with interest. Internationally, Evergreen films are bringing Taiwan's cinema to a much wider audience through screenings at various film festivals. Hou's films have garnered critical praise at showings in Hawaii, Holland, and France (where Fengkuei won an award this February). It only remains for Chinese audiences to fully honor these cinematic prophets with the requisite profits in their own country.
Evergreen's Ever-Star, Yang Li-yin
When Yang Li-yin doesn't stand out on the screen, it's not because she's an ordinary actress, but because she is so absorbed by the parts she plays.
A forceful, dynamic figure on stage, Yang is difficult to identify from one film to the next because she inhabits her screen characters rather than conferring her own presence on them.
Not that her characters blend into the background—far from it. Even in her first screen appearance (as an extra along with her high school class in Chinese Women Soldier, playing "the girl who forgot her hat") she attracted some attention. "In that scene," she laughs, "you can't miss me," adding that "sometimes, when there are too many people, you can't see yourself, so I sometimes deliberately try to make myself a little special."
Yang's love of performing and the desire to be "a little special" date back to her early childhood in an "average" family, when she and her sister would stage plays and mimic Taiwanese opera with towels. "Taiwanese opera has flowing sleeves, like Peking opera," she explains. "We just took towels and made them into flowing sleeves. Can't say that it was real authentic or anything." Taiwanese opera was particularly attractive, she added, because "you could make up very beautifully, and then crowds of people would watch you." Just one among the crowd at temple performances of opera troupes when she was little, Yang has been performing with a professional troupe for the past two years or so.
She confided that her first scheduled stage appearance—in third grade, as a sheep in a Christmas pageant—was canceled due to a nosebleed. This first and only such mishap in Yang's acting career was left far behind in later years, and she went on to attend the Peking opera department of the Kuo Kuang School of the Arts. On graduation, about two years ago, Yang entered the Lan Ling Theater Workshop, Taiwan's pioneering and still pre-eminent modern theater group.
In a dramatic change from the codified, stylized gestures of Chinese opera, Lan Ling stressed the psychological approach. Under the direction of Wu Ching-chi, formerly with New York's La MaMa ETC (one of the major forces in contemporary American theater since the '60s), Lan Ling's training incorporates exercises and techniques now common to modern theater groups, but which seemed bizarre and unprecedented in Taiwan at the time.
They were certainly new to Yang: "Previous instructors taught us how to laugh, cry, etc., but never when to use it all. That's technique. Wu Ching-chi rarely taught technique; she would show how to bring something out of yourself." Following the introduction of Lai Sheng-chuan as director, Lan Ling's actors learned to combine psychological preparation with the well-polished skills necessary for effective stage presentation. And all this culminated in last year's Reaching for Stars, a high point in Taiwan's modern theater.
Despite the demands of Lan Ling, Taiwanese opera, and films, Yang manages to squeeze in even more theater work. She's active also in the Children's Theater Workshop ("big kids performing plays for little kids") and the Taipei Theater of the Deaf—both groups organized and directed by Wang Chi-Mei, an instructor at the National Institute of the Arts. And with NIA sophomore Wang Yueh, she teaches a theater class for children at the New Aspect Arts Center.
Theater/cinema fans are mostly unaware that the arts of projection and amplification so necessary on the stage would be jarring within the context of internalized film acting. Consequently, it is indeed a challenge for any actor to succeed at both, as Yang does. Director Hou Hsiao-hsien, who is openly critical of "commercial" actors, has nothing but praise for Yang, a professional by any standard, who has already spent most of her 21 years in the theater.
"Her passion for the performing arts is totally unlike the ordinary actor's," Hou told a movie magazine reporter. "She's completely involved in acting; as a result, her progress has been astounding." Hou personally oversaw her evolution as a screen actress, from The Sandwich Man (1983) in which she co-starred, through The Boys from Fengkuei (a minor part), and Tung Tung's Vacation, (in which she played a mentally ill girl).
In what has been a brief film career so far, Yang has also appeared in a wide variety of additional films: in a brief, scene-stealing cameo as a gambling wife in Yang Te-chang's Taipei Story, in last year's Sha Fu, a film more memorable for its pervasive torpor than anything else; and in a supporting part in Chen Kun-hou's The Most Memorable Season, released last month.
Yang is unequivocating concerning the remarkable naturalism achieved by the performers in her mentor's films: "The realism stems from Hou Hsiao-hsien. Because we're so close to life, we don't feel it's playing a part. So it's more natural."
"What gave me the greatest help," Yang added, "is the easy way he brings you into the scene. Also, his storytelling ability's very strong.
"My first time in a movie was in The Sandwich Man—and I was a total stranger to films. He knew I came from the stage, so he let me act out a previous scene leading to the one I had to play.
"He also doesn't make excessive demands, like some directors, who don't care what your feelings about a role are. They just say, 'Now, you cry,' or tell you to wipe away tears like this (she demonstrates). He never talks like that. You yourself have already entered that role, so even if you can't cry, you're still sad. You can't cry, and he knows it and won't force you to cry or to make the motions of crying. He'll just let you very naturally live your role."
Though Hou is generally reluctant to use the same actors more than once, Yang has appeared in all his major films (and in fact all of the Evergreen films) to date, establishing an unlimited future for herself as a valued character actor, if not a conventional movie star. Her style of acting, her talent and intensity, her ability to breathe life into the most diverse characters—who all become real, not just well-rounded—fit naturally with the growing trend towards realism in Taiwan's new cinema.
One thing is certain: both theatergoers and filmgoers will be seeing Yang for a long time to come. "I can never stop performing," she says. "Whether it's on the stage, on the screen, or anywhere, I couldn't possibly give it up. It's already my life."