"The Story of Police" is directed by Ning Ying and is the second part of her "Beijing Trilogy". It was created in the 1990s. It presents the daily life and work pictures of grassroots police officers in Beijing at that time from a cold, restrained and plain perspective. It is quite visible in terms of content and form. It is an important image text to observe the social appearance and cultural memory in the process of China's urbanization.

　　Documentary style

　　Without judgment, life will be naturally shown

　　In artistic creation, documentary style is a relatively broad concept. Its core revolves around "reality", but it presents a diverse form due to the context of the times and the aesthetic pursuit of creators. Early films were limited by shooting conditions, and they created a "reality" with real scene shooting and natural light effects. The more typical ones were Italian neorealist works. Many people believe that "Police Story" is deeply influenced by this style, which may be closely related to the way the film was filmed and director Ning Ying's experience studying in Italy. But it must be pointed out that the documentary of the shooting method and the documentary in detail cannot be equated with the documentary in style.

　　So how to implement the documentary style? According to director Ning Ying's own statement, her creation usually first selects the subject matter, then determines the form and realizes the style based on the content. As its name suggests, the film "Police Story" tells the story of the life and work of the police. In the film, Ning Ying plays all the roles of non-professional actors, combining long-shot scheduling and natural light effects to show the trivial daily life of the street police station - from dealing with neighborhood disputes to pursuing mad dogs, from holding conferences to resident mediation... It seems very real and objective, as if it is a documentary, but its events and plots are the result of Ning Ying's selective screening and organization from a creative perspective.

　　We usually roughly classify director Ning Ying into the camp of the "fifth generation" director, but the works of the "fifth generation" are generally a grand narrative model, focusing on the nation, country and history. Even if narratives are developed from a personal perspective, they often transcend individuals for metaphors. Ning Ying's creations are very different, she is unique among the "Fifth Generation". Taking "The Story of Police" as an example, the film abandons the narrative model of traditional feature films, does not have a clear "main line", does not deliberately create ups and downs and dramatic conflicts, but instead directly splices the work and life fragments of the protagonist Yang Guoli, and cooperates with the rhythm of moderate tension and proper density, so that each event will unfold naturally and smoothly. The vivid individual police officers and their living environment have become the focus of expression of the film.

　　In the end, when the realistic content of "Police Story" is perfectly unified with the objective recording form, the effect of similar documentary works is achieved. At the same time, the individual appearance reflects society and the times, and finally realizes the Ning Ying-style documentary style - without criticism, only natural presentation and record, seemingly unspoken, but in fact it leaves the audience with sufficient space for thinking. This is the essential feature of the documentary style of "Police Story".

　　Audiovisual language

　　Emphasize "people" and "present"

　　Audio-visual languages ​​such as color, sound, scene type, lens movement, etc. are related to the final presentation of style. Color creation is the audience's first impression of the film. "Police Story" adopts a low saturation color scheme, and the overall color expression is close to daily vision, whether it is the blue-gray brick walls in the alley or the gray winter sky... The overall color of the film is neutral and monotonous, and the natural light effect enhances the sense of reality, making the events in the film appear more objective, plain and daily.

　　It is worth mentioning that 30 years have passed and the film has faded. After 4K exquisite restoration, the video can be presented to us in clearer pictures and more accurate colors. This is also the meaning of restoring the film and screening at the film festival and facing the audience.

　　The film rarely uses close-ups, and uses a lot of medium-scene, panoramic, and long-range shots. While retaining the integrity of the characters' movements, it is closely combined with environmental details to form a narrative distance from the "observer's perspective". For example, at the beginning, the police were patrolling the bungalow area on bicycles and gave a large panoramic view. The front of the camera was a low and dilapidated demolition area, and the back of the camera was a tall building, which was undoubtedly a microcosm of the urbanization process in the 1990s.

　　For this film, the sound combined with photography greatly enhances the "sense of presence". The characters use the mid-scene scenes when having a meeting in the office, and combine the sound of writing and page turning to enhance the immersion of the attendees; while riding a bicycle through the Hu, the panoramic shot follows the characters' movements. The bicycle ringtones, pigeon whistles, and the noise of traffic in the background together outline the city street scene, allowing the audience to wander on the road with the protagonist as a "traveler". Director Ning Ying and restoration expert Li Tao mentioned after the screening of "Police Story" that her shooting techniques have a strong sense of liveness, and the microphone placement is very different from the usual feature films.

　　The use of long shots and fixed camera positions in the film is also very prominent, and the entire film uses only more than 200 shots to complete the narrative. For example, the paragraphs when the police interrogate gamblers are only composed of six shots: "searching the door", "starting the interrogation", "playing cards to demonstrate", "continue interrogation", "colleague interruption", and "continue interrogation", and are mostly shot by two-person fixed cameras. The paragraphs last nearly 12 minutes. The camera calmly observes the development of the incident and refuses subjective guidance.

　　Overall, the camera language of "Police Story" and the daily and lifelike lines of the film make the audience forget the psychological presupposition of "watching movies" and instead participate in the daily life of the police as "the person present".

　　Social Observation

　　Documentary style is closely related to social reality

　　The development of Chinese documentary-style films has always been closely linked to social reality. In the 1930s, the left-wing film movement opened up the realist tradition of Chinese films; in the 1940s, the masterpieces of realism such as "Crows and Sparrows" and "A River of Spring Flowing Eastward" showed the social and contemporary dilemmas at that time; in the "Seventeen Years" (referring to the 17th year after the founding of New China), revolutionary realist creation became the mainstream; in the 1980s, works such as "Life" and "Old Well" showed a real rural society; in the 1990s, the prosperity of Chinese documentary films, Ning Ying's "Beijing Trilogy" ("Find Fun", "Stories of Police" and "Warm Summer") became a typical representative. At the same time, Jia Zhangke, who was the representative of the sixth generation of directors, pointed the camera at the young people in the county, opening up a more personalized perspective of expression in documentary films.

　　Different from Jia Zhangke's documentary perspective that focuses on individual experience, in Ning Ying's documentary films, the characters are attributed to life, and the documentary is to show life itself without any perspective or attitude. At the beginning of her first film "Find Fun", "The First Film of Her Beijing Trilogy", Lao Han formed a Peking Opera activity station with his old fans due to his retirement confusion; at the end, Lao Han, who had a conflict with his fans, squatted on the wall and didn't know where to go, and finally returned to the crowd. "The Story of Police" begins with a conference and ends with a new conference. At the beginning, Yang Guoli teaches the new police how to go deep into the masses and contact the masses; at the end, Yang Guoli was suspended for violating discipline by beating people out of control and being suspended for violating discipline. This echo in Ning Ying's movies is not a deliberate artistic treatment, but a coincidence of events.

　　Everyone may have some helplessness in their lives, but in the end they have to continue to face life - this natural and true presentation may be the most moving part of Ning Ying's documentary-style movies. (Yang Ge)

[Editor in charge: Tang Wei]