Source: wechat official account: Jiubian has been authorized to reprint
I didn’t have anything to do last weekend. I watched “old cannon” again. I was surprised to find that the performance was very good.
What is said here is not the film itself, nor the artistry, but it shows very clearly the life state of a “rogue” decades ago after he grew old. It is a bit stubborn, a bit sad, and a bit funny.
Many people don’t understand what happened to the “old cannon” sixth master played by Feng Xiaogang in the past. He said that he was a big brother of the underworld, which was obviously different from him. Moreover, there was no underworld in that era; It seems that he is more than a gangster.
To be blunt, Feng Xiaogang is playing a small leader of a “secondary hooligan”.
This is not easy to understand. You may think that rogues are still stratified? Of course, there are always grades. For example, the gangster gang of the second generation of officials played by Wu Yifan in the film is obviously a high-level gangster now, driving millions of modified cars or limited edition luxury cars and soaking up girls of good quality. It is also a place where people gather at ordinary times and spend money like water.
Corresponding to them are the hooligans who touch people’s wallets at the beginning of the TV series, the young people with iron bars and hammers brought by Zhang Hanyu, and the “social shaker” with full body tights and Doudou shoes. Usually, they may ride an Yadi electric vehicle and occupy the chain stores or small shops in urban and rural areas. Going back several decades, the original sixth master was part of the “social shake”.
The film is about the enmity between the sixth master and the gangsters of the second generation of officials. It gives people the impression that the sixth master was once a powerful man, but now the times have changed, and he has become an old antique and incompatible with the society. The sixth master was Xiaofei (the one played by Wu Yifan) when he was old, or the two people were people in different periods.
In fact, six brothers was a non mainstream in the era when he was a powerful man.
In the film, the sixth master is 60 years old. The film was released in 2015. What he misses most is the glorious years when he was 20 years old. That is to say, about 40 years back, which happened to be in the late 1970s and early 1980s.
When people think of the hoodlums and hooligans of that era, they immediately think of sunny days and blood romance. They think that the sixth master is the old hoodlums of various ministries and commissions and military academies who wore military coats. In fact, they are wrong.
The “courtyard children” we often talk about is easy to be mistaken for ordinary people in Beijing. In fact, it is not. It is the version of the second generation of officials driving millions of luxury cars in the film “thirteen young people” forty years ago. Of course, each small group is composed of a high-level children and a group of people who are not so high, but they are indeed of the same class. The iconic models of these people are those of Liu Ye in blood romance. They are bicycles (equivalent to sports cars 40 years ago) and military overcoats (actually a standard military uniform distributed to officers by the general). They may take out their sabres when fighting.
Wang Shuo said in “ferocity of animals” that the children in the army compound do not deal with people who have no identity. How can they distinguish between those who have no identity? The main thing is this outfit, because this thing was not bought at that time, but distributed. If there is no background, you can’t get it.
Moreover, officers of different classes have completely different styles. The army has undergone several changes of clothing. When children grow up, they wear their own clothes. Other children can roughly know each other’s origins by looking at each other’s outfits.
A very small number of people have joined their ranks. Once it is discovered that his parents do not have any official posts, people will ignore him. Moreover, due to the general lack of nutrition at that time, the people’s height was generally low and their appearance was not good. However, the children of the courtyard were often tall and majestic, which was very easy to distinguish. The representative was Jiang Wen. Now, Jiang Wen has no feeling. They stood out from the crowd in that era. Their height and appearance were completely different from ordinary people.
In their equipment, the military coat is easy to understand. What about the saber?
When Japan surrendered, it was intended to surrender to the national army. However, there were almost no troops of the central army of the national army to the north of the Yangtze River. Then our army launched a counterattack, and some Japanese surrendered to our army. Therefore, the command sabres came to our army. Many officers of our army at that time had Japanese command sabres in their hands. In addition, they also obtained numerous bayonets on Japanese rifles. After the founding of new China, Later, these sabres and spikes became the status symbols of the children of the courtyard.
In the 1960s and 1970s, hooligans fought, rode bicycles, wore military overcoats, and held sabres and March 8th Army stabs (that is, the bayonet of the Japanese rifle, the Japanese rifle is called “March 8th rifle”, so the army stab is called the March 8th Army stab). With this equipment, they are the children of the army compound. And those who carry bricks, iron bars and chains are ordinary people’s gangsters, and the sixth master is obviously the latter.
In the film, it is mentioned many times that brother six has a sabre, and the “stuffy three” played by Zhang Hanyu has two rusty army spikes. It is obvious that both of them were good fighters in those years. In the conflict with the children of the courtyard, I don’t know whether they found it or captured it. Anyway, master six has a sabre and stuffy three has an army spike.
However, I tend to think it should be captured. Maybe it was because of the capture of such “ancient magic soldiers” that the sixth master established his position among the hooligans. The following picture is taken by me in the film. It is obvious that Zhang Hanyu is holding a Japanese army bayonet. It is usually wrapped in a newspaper and pinned to the back of the waist. It is only taken out when fighting. The symbol of this bayonet is the hook on the handle. You can see it carefully:
That hook can hang things:
At that time, there was a question. Why did you often fight?
There’s no reason. It’s mainly that I have nothing to do. I just fooled around all day. At that time, unlike now, there were countless nightclubs and I could play in car shops. At that time, the main entertainment activities were watching movies, eating at Laomo (that is, Moscow western restaurant), skating in the North Sea in winter, or chatting in the sun in front of Wangfujing. There were many people and few places, and hormones burst, often because “what are you looking at?”, Or talking up girls and so on, until the police or the militia come and arrest them all.
The conflicts in the movie “old cannon” are also caused by girls. Obviously, they are a response to the fights of gangsters decades ago. These gangsters have never had any lofty ideals. Their purpose has always been to eat, drink and have fun with women. The conflicts between them basically revolve around these things. Have you seen blood romance? At the beginning, two groups of children in the courtyard fight. The reason for the fight is that one group suspects the other group of “photographing” the girls in the general building of their courtyard.
After the fight was caught, those with backgrounds came out quickly, while those without backgrounds stayed inside until they had served their sentences. This is why sixth master became an old cannon. Obviously, he could not get out of prison quickly, so he had to stay inside until he became a professional.
Xu Qing recalls with infinite nostalgic eyes that at the beginning, the sixth master singled out dozens of people with a sabre. If you were afraid, you would be afraid. After all, seeing a brother who is not a member of the courtyard waving a magic suit that does not belong to him in any case, it gives people the impression that when you hit a strange guy, you met a man level leader. Hurry to the side.
The intensity of this kind of fighting is constantly decreasing. At the peak, it was the period described at the beginning of the three bodies. Later, more and more attention was paid to formalism. The two sides fought and brought a group of people to the scene. Generally speaking, when they saw too many people on the other side, the side with few people would directly break up. In the future, they would not be shabby when talking. They said that there were too many people on the other side and they did not talk about martial ethics.
In the film, Feng Xiaogang fought several battles. The chains he used to hold on his bicycle were very consistent with his identity. Later, he wanted to fight the “last battle”. So he put on an army coat, carried a sabre on his back and rode a bicycle. When I saw the film for the first time, a little friend asked me why Feng Xiaogang wanted to Cosplay Japanese. I explained to him that his modeling was not Japanese, but the children of the military compound in COS, That was the dream of the sixth master all his life. At the last stage of his life, he finally played it again.
In the film, the sixth master keeps saying that he “stresses the rules”. It is easy to make people think that it was an era with rules. In fact, it is very bullshit. What rules a rogue can have has always been his imagination. You can remember a segment. The sixth master is skating in the North Sea while listening to Shan Tianfang’s storytelling. There is also a plot, that is, the little yamen played by Wu Yifan is watching Xiao Li’s flying knife. This is very realistic, Because the hooligans are generally interested in popular books such as the three chivalrous men and five righteous men and the heroes of the Sui and Tang Dynasties, and after reading them, they imagine a chivalrous world. In that world, everyone has a weak sense of righteousness, and naturally, the different things from them are selectively ignored. This hobby has directly led to two generations of hooligans, young and old, to cherish each other.
Not surprisingly, in another 40 years, the old gangsters at that time will recall 2022 and say that it was an era of “rules”.
Then came the reform and opening-up. Some of the children of the courtyard gate continued to be officials, and some caught up with the trend and made a quick profit in business. Another part of them went to the literary and art circles, such as Jiang Wen and Ma Weidu’s Huayi Brothers. This is why there are many big people in the “Beijing circle” now.
Six brothers, the common people’s hooligans, have three life paths:
One is the “foreign fire”. In the movie, Feng Xiaogang went to meet a rich brother. He was busy talking about business and had no time to talk nonsense with him. He was angry.
At that time, it was relatively easy to get rich in Beijing. At that time, there was nothing and nothing in China. As long as you import something from abroad, you can make money and get rich quickly. You can even go to Japan to buy some old equipment, and after you return home, you can produce whatever you want. As long as you can produce it, you can sell it. But ordinary people lack access and money. It happens that there are many of these two things in Beijing. You may not be able to attach to the real big guy, but you can attach to the big guy’s younger brother’s younger brother.
This wealth effect is diffuse. At first, it belongs to those who have access and privileges, but they can’t carry the imported goods themselves, can they? So there will be a team. As the business grows larger and larger, people in the team will have younger brothers. These younger brothers will muddle along, save some money, and then go out to work alone. Their younger brothers understand that they will continue to split up and work alone, and spread from Beijing to North China, From North China to the whole country, early rogues could easily turn over if they did dirty work with their masters. This process lasted for more than 30 years. As long as their brains were flexible, those early players would be rich.
This is also why there is a very funny picture. Later, the educated youths and land hooligans who returned to the city mainly made a fortune. When the port was opened, they had no job and could only do business. In the expanding commercial society, as long as you are not too stupid, you can always make some money.
And at that time, employees and civil servants of state-owned enterprises disdained to do those things, just as civil servants now disdain to go to large factories for hundreds of thousands of dollars a year, because who knows how long you can earn this money.
However, later, those state-owned enterprise workers and even civil servants could not bear to go into the sea when they saw that their annual wages could not compare with other people’s one day, and a large-scale tide of going into the sea appeared. In 1988, there was an upsurge of “all the people engaged in business” and a folk song, “one billion people fell down to 900 million, and another 100 million were looking for”.
In 1992, at that time, 10 million people went to work without pay, that is, the establishment was reserved for them, but they were not paid. If they could not break out, they could return to the previous factory. Maybe some friends have doubts about the figure of 10 million. Are there really so many? Yes, this is the official data. At that time, almost all the city people were in state-owned enterprises.
People like Yanghuo obviously didn’t have a job at first. Later, they found an opportunity to do business. After making money, they began to buy a machine to make paper. Later, they made a lot of money by doing sulfite.
The second is the brother who stands pancakes and fruits. This is a normal development process for ordinary people. He has no courage and capital, dare not gamble and dare not venture. He worked as an auto repairman. Later, he stood pancakes and fruits, and achieved nothing in his life. In his later years, a pancake and fruit stand and the urban management fought. Of course, there are other brothers, most of whom are not very good, such as those who set up stalls and those who do odd jobs in supermarkets.
The last one is Zhang Hanyu’s “stuffy three”, who has never changed his career and insists on being a gangster. He often goes to the Bureau in his fifties and 60s and has no family. The sixth master in the film should be in the same situation as stuffy three. The only advantage is that he gets married later and has a small house. However, he is stubborn all his life. He doesn’t do anything serious. He wants a career but has no career. He wants a family but has no family. His son doesn’t like him.
However, this is relatively rare, because there were several hard blows. At that time, it was difficult for those with deep criminal records to survive those iron fist attacks.
In the movie, Xu Qing played a funny role, “big brother’s Woman”, who never married and revolved around the old rascal. In reality, I dare not say that there is no such person. However, most of these women have completely changed their faces at the age of 30. They think that they used to be a sb and think that the rascal is cool. Then they find an honest person to live.
Of course, there are indeed some women who will not marry for their whole lives and will hang around these big brothers all their lives. It is only that the big brother is not the sixth master, but the group of people who originally wore military coats.
Generally speaking, I think the film is very good, because it is very realistic as a whole, and depicts the life of a rogue who has never integrated into society and life. When I was in the urban-rural fringe, I often wondered what those people who looked like “Kunshan Longge” would look like if they were not stabbed to death. This film gives an answer to a certain extent.
The title of the article says that the film is the elegy of “old hooligans” rather than “old hooligans”. There is still a difference. After all, you will never see a hooligan who wears an army coat, likes skating and loves samurai sword in life. This is something belonging to that era. The era is over, and this group of people is over, so that when the film is made, most people can not understand what the descriptions in it are saying.
You can’t understand it. Anyway, their era is over. The old guns are going to have fun. They don’t work well when they are young. They have medical insurance when they are old. Fortunately, they live in the new era.
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