The House Of 72 Tenants,The Cantonese Culture And Imprint Of The Times In It

This article focuses on the movie The House of 72 Tenants which produced by Pearl River Film Company in1963,studies its process of “Cantonizing” from a comedy to a movie,then researches the Cantonese cultural character in that movie,and explore the historical marking in special era expressed by the movie.Chapter one is the movie’s general situation.The first period tells its main story and its information behind the scenes.The second period discourses the historical background when the movie was produced,then talks about the crisis happened in the making process of this Mainland-HK co-produce film.Chapter two is about the specific process of the movie’s “Cantonization”.Its first period analyzes how the dialogue was translated into Cantonese,discourses the popular language,slang,foreign words,some words with Cantonese character which were added into the dialogue,investigates the Cantonese culture inside.The second period analyzes the special landmarks and objects in Guangzhou,combines with the content of last period,investigates the pragmatic character inside Cantonese culture showed by movie.The third period compares lady Han’s image in movie with the ones in comedy,discovers the Cantonese woman’s character expressed by movie.Chapter three is the article ’ s focus,analyzes the different historical marking in this movie.Its first period analyzes how the movie tells its impression to Guangzhou before 1949 by researching “xiao yao gong” and other contents related to it in movie plot.Studying whether such impression accorded with actual image of old Guangzhou by combining the method of Communication with unscrambling and reading old newspapers before 1949.Its second period analyzes the differences between movie ’ s ending and the comedy ’ s,investigates the new characterization,relationship and story in movie,discovers the ideological reasons of those changes with theory of filmology and semeiology.Studying how the trend of thought in specific era influences the producing of movie.A movie comes from life and goes beyond it.We can not only discover its artistic and cultural value,but also find out its historical value,then understand the society,culture,economy and politics in specific time.It is valuable to pay attention to study The House of 72 Tenants,because this movie spreed Cantonese culture,reflected history of Guangzhou before 1949,and some Chinese ideology in 1950 s and 1960 s.