Structure And Expression: The Commentary On Feng Xiaogang's Films

Feng Xiaogang, one of the most influential directors in today's China, has become a famous "director brand". Feng Xiaogang makes use of private and foreign capital to make commercial films and keeps creating incredible legends of gross, which provides a different successful example for lots of anxious Chinese film makers who are in struggle. Therefore, based on the analysis of the process of his film's rise and various contexts, this thesis attempts to reveal the unique charm of this famous film brand and its success secret from three aspects of filmic text: the structure of developed image, the narrative structure and the cultural structure with the hope that it could offer some ideas for the present Chinese film creation and development.This thesis is divided into five parts. The first part is the introduction which first briefly describes the rising process of Feng Xiaogang's film then focuses on various contexts of his film's rise, further pointing out the fact that the great market opportunity is its social context, the prosperity of citizen culture its cultural context and the controversy between the commercialization of films and the artistry of films its ideological context. The second part analyzes the structure of developed image of his films, namely the audio-visual language, mainly from three aspects:the simple conventional cinema scenes, the star-strategy that is to make the film wonderful because of Ge You and the vulgar dialogues which is of Beijing-characteristic humor. The third part discusses the narrative structure. It points out that his movies whose ending is always happy are partial of those common but humorous stories of little people, sad or happy. Feng Xiaogang likes to employ the art of stereotype as American commercial films do. He also dramatizes the plot to achieve the effect of mass carnival. Meanwhile, this part indicates that Feng Xiaogang starts his narrative transformation after the film The Mobile Phone, from comedy to tragedy then to serious play. The fourth part analyzes the cultural structure of his movies. It tells that his films have experienced the theme transformation from dream's realization to redemption as well as the transition from deconstructing the orthodox consciousness to reconstructing the humanistic spirit. The fifth part is the conclusion. This part first summarizes the features of the films of Feng Xiaogang, and then points out the practical significance of his films to Chinese film.