Zheng Junli facts for kids

Quick facts for kids Zheng Junli
Born	(1911-12-06)December 6, 1911 Shanghai, China
Died	April 23, 1969(1969-04-23) (aged 57)
Occupation	Film director, actor
Chinese name
Traditional Chinese	鄭君里
Simplified Chinese	郑君里
Transcriptions Standard Mandarin Hanyu Pinyin Zhèng Jūnlǐ

Zheng Junli (born December 6, 1911 – died April 23, 1969) was a famous Chinese actor and director. He was born in Shanghai and became very well-known during a special time for Chinese movies. His films like The Spring River Flows East and Crows and Sparrows are still seen as classic movies today. Sadly, he faced many difficulties during the Cultural Revolution and passed away while in prison.

Early Life and Career in China

Zheng Junli grew up in a family that didn't have much money. They often had problems with people they owed money to. Even when he was young, he loved reading and performing. He left junior high school early to join the "Nanguo Art School." There, he studied acting under a famous person named Tian Han.

Becoming a Film Star

In the 1930s, Zheng Junli worked as an actor for the Lianhua Film Company. This was a big movie studio. He played many different parts. One of his most famous roles was Yu Haichou in the movie New Women. He acted alongside a very popular actress named Ruan Lingyu.

Directing Classic Films

After the war between China and Japan, Zheng Junli started to focus more on directing movies. He co-directed The Spring River Flows East in 1947 with Cai Chusheng. This film became a huge success. He also directed Crows and Sparrows in 1948, which was a movie that showed problems with the government at the time, the Kuomintang. In 1957, Crows and Sparrows won an award for being an "Excellent Movie."

Life in New China

Zheng Junli was happy when the new government, led by the Communist Party of China (CPC), was formed. As a director who supported the new ideas, he benefited at first. He and his family moved to a much nicer home in Shanghai.

Challenges with Filmmaking

In 1951, Zheng Junli made a movie called The Married Couple. It was about a government official who left his wife from his village to marry someone new in the city. The movie was meant to show how some officials might be tempted by city life. However, this movie was not allowed to be shown to the public.

Zheng Junli was also part of a group that supported making a film called The Life of Wu Xun. This movie later received strong criticism from the government. Zheng felt bad about this. His own film, The Married Couple, was also criticized around this time, which put a lot of pressure on him.

Making Films with Political Messages

To criticize The Life of Wu Xun, some government officials looked for other historical figures. They found Song Jingshi, a leader of a peasant uprising. They wanted to make a movie about Song Jingshi to show him as a true revolutionary. However, there was a problem: in real history, Song Jingshi eventually gave up to the Qing Dynasty. For the movie, he had to be shown as a hero who never gave up.

Zheng Junli and another director, Sun Yu, worked on the script. They decided to show Song's surrender as a clever plan, not a real giving up. Many famous actors wanted to be in the movie. But even with these changes, the movie was only shown for a short time after it was finished. The film that was supposed to fix past "political mistakes" ended up being banned too.

Later Successes and Difficulties

After these challenges, Zheng Junli directed two movies about famous historical figures: Nie Er and Lin Zexu. Both starred Zhao Dan and were very popular. These films helped Zheng feel better about his work.

Sadly, Zheng Junli faced very harsh treatment during the Cultural Revolution. He was put in prison and passed away there in 1969.

He was an important person in the film world. He was a representative for Shanghai and a member of several film and theater groups in China.

Thoughts on Film and Acting

Zheng Junli spent a lot of time translating and writing books about movies and plays. Some of his published works include The Birth of a Role and Voice-over.

He felt that his own acting wasn't good enough. So, he worked very hard to learn more about acting theories. He started by trying to translate a book called Acting: The First Six Lessons by Richard Boleslavsky. Even though his English wasn't great because he hadn't finished junior high, he was very determined. He used an English dictionary to translate and then checked his work with a Russian-English dictionary to fix any mistakes. This helped him improve his English a lot.

Zheng Junli was also the first person to bring the acting ideas of Constantin Stanislavski to China. Stanislavski's books were in Russian, so Zheng used a Russian-English dictionary to translate them into Chinese through English. His translation of Stanislavski's An Actor Prepares, which he worked on with Zhang Min, was the first complete book about acting in plays in China.

Zheng also wrote a book called Art History of World's Movies. At a time when people in China were afraid to compare films from Western countries with those from the Soviet Union, Zheng's book was a big step forward. It looked at movies from all over the world in a broad way.

Selected Filmography

As director

As actor