Troubled Laughter

After the end of the Cultural Revolution,China's political road implemented‘Bring order out of chaos',and leaders corrected the idea of taking the road of ‘Left-leaning road'.Especially after the Third Plenary Session of the Eleventh Central Committee,the film culture creation in our country has changed qualitatively compared with before.No matter the story plot,characterization and artistic expression methods,they all strive to express the theme of ‘reflection'.This period is called the ‘Thaw period' of Chinese films.For a movie,the shaping of characters is very important.‘Distress' is the norm of characters in movies during the ‘Thaw period'.The research of this thesis mainly involves the film creation of the third and fourth generation directors.For example,Narrow Street directed by Yang Yanjin in 1981,Troubed Laughter directed by Yang Yanjin in 1979,Evening Rain directed by Wu Yigong in 1980,The Herdsman directed by Xie Jin in 1982,Tear-Stain directed by Li Wenhua in 1979,The Thrill of Life directed by Teng Wenji in 1979,etc.The film reflect the scars of the Cultural Revolution depending on film semiotics,philosophy and psychology and many other theories through the above these films to analysis of characteristics of the director in shaping the characters in the film.The sufferings of the characters in the film can be divided into three types: the bitterness of loneliness,the bitterness of being forced and the bitterness of self-contradiction.For the bitterness of loneliness,which no one can tell or understand.For the bitterness of being forced due to the limitation of one's own behavior.The bitterness caused by the conflict between form,environment and policy and one's own ideas is the bitterness of self-contradiction.These three kinds of sufferings indicated that the wrong national policy has caused great troubles to the people's lives.The director used the method of showing ‘trauma' to make the audience reflect from the movie.In the characterization of ‘Distressed people',the opposite of ‘distress' is the expression of ‘laughter' at the characters.The ‘laughter' of the characters in the movie can also be divided into the following two types:sad smile and joyful smile.There are three main types of sad smile:the character's mockery of his own situation,the ridicule of others and try to show happiness when one is sad.And joyful smile comes from belief and hope,frustration and perfection,personality and emotion,etc.The purpose of sad smile is to satirize reality and express sorrow,and joyful smile is a symbol of human nature to stick to faith and keep hope.The movie truly shows the life of the common people in Cultural Revolution in front of the audience when ‘bitterness' and ‘laughter' appear on a character at the same time.In the previous literature on the movie research during the ‘Thaw period',the research on the characters in distress mainly focuses on the excavation of the character's pain,less on the analysis of the character's laughter,and even less on the comprehensive,full and thorough attention.This article fills in this gap and gives the audience a multi-angle understanding of the images of people from all walks of life under the background of the Cultural Revolution,which is convenient for the creation and research of related films in the future.