Volume 2: The crown and the hat are all over the capital, and the spirit is full of energy and enter the foggy city Chapter 5: Be original
Subtitle of this chapter: I told you, Comrade Wallace is Scottish!
"Famine Orphans..." The film master read out the name, and Mr. Griffith looked at the dedication again, "For 4114 Irish Girls?"
"Famine Orphans, also known as Famine Orphans in Chinese, was filmed in 1921 and is the second film produced by DreamWorks. This is an epic film based entirely on real history, telling the tragic experiences of young women during the Great Famine in Ireland in the 19th century."
"It has two versions, silent and talkie, both directed by film master David Griffith, and written by Yuan Yanshu. The main characters are played by Hollywood actresses such as Lillian Gish, Dorothy Gish (Lillian's sister), Eva Hentel (Eva Chandler's stage name), Marlene Dietrich, Pearl White (Chinese translation: White Pearl), and Luois Brooks.. "
"Orphans of Famine caused a sensation in the United States and the world at that time, and grossed $3 million.The filming cost was 100 million US dollars, and it earned nearly 30 million US dollars in North America alone. "
"What does this mean? Calculated based on the average movie ticket price of two dollars at the time, 15 million people went to the cinema to watch this movie, while the U.S. population in 1921 was only 100 million. This broke the box office record of Griffith's The Birth of a Nation, which was 10 million dollars. However, this record was soon broken by DreamWorks itself."
"Since 1845, potato late blight has swept Ireland, a country whose staple food is potatoes, triggering the largest famine in Irish history. By 1852, within seven years, the population of Ireland under British rule had dropped by nearly two million, a quarter of the total population! In addition to those who died of starvation and disease, this number also includes about one million Irish people who emigrated overseas due to the famine."
"At that time, Ireland was still under British rule, while Britain was at its peak during the Victorian era and had completed the Industrial Revolution, becoming a recognized world factory. Britain was at the forefront of the world in terms of colonies, political systems, economic development, and other aspects. It was a huge colonial empire that owned nearly a quarter of the earth's land and nearly a quarter of the world's population. Britain was a symbol of prosperity, development, and civilization at that time, and its national strength was at the forefront of the world."
"Even four years before the Great Famine, Britain went to great lengths to launch the First Opium War by sending warships from India in order to open the door to China. At the same time, Britain was fully preparing for the first World Expo in human history. However, they remained indifferent to the unprecedented famine in Ireland, allowing the disaster to spread and the bodies of the Irish people to be scattered all over the land."
"By 1848, Ireland had been ravaged by a terrible famine for more than three years, with the death toll from the famine approaching one million, one-fifth of whom died in poor workhouses. The workhouses were overcrowded, the environment was poor, and diseases such as typhoid, cholera, and scurvy were rampant. Earl Grey, then Secretary of State for the Colonies, decided to send girls from Irish workhouses to Australia. He hoped that this plan would achieve multiple goals at once: young girls could be free from starvation and live in a new land; the originally crowded workhouse environment could be alleviated; and Australia, which had been a penal colony for decades, was in short supply of women and urgently needed young women to reproduce, work, and take care of the housework."
"In 1848, the first ship carrying Irish girls arrived in Australia. Between 1848 and 1850, 4,114 Irish women were sent to Australia. Most of them were between 14 and 20 years old. After several months of turbulence on the sea, they arrived in Sydney, Melbourne and Adelaide, bidding farewell to their homeland full of suffering and welcoming an unknown fate in a foreign land."
"Girls were recruited from workhouses where at least one parent had died, or were abandoned and living on the streets. To be selected, the girls had to be young, single, obedient, healthy and immune to smallpox. They were referred to in Australian records as 'famine orphans'."
"At that time, many Irish people fled to North America due to famine. The poor people took the cheapest ships to cross the Atlantic. The conditions of these ships were extremely poor, providing only a small amount of water, food and space for passengers. The mortality rate of passengers was often as high as 30%. Compared with their compatriots going to North America, the famine orphans were much luckier on their journey. Thanks to the close supervision of government agencies such as the Irish Poor Law Commission in Dublin, the Colonial Land and Immigration Commission in London and the Australian authorities, as well as years of experience in transporting criminals to Australia, the mortality rate of orphans on the voyage was less than one percent."
"However, the arrival of the orphans triggered strong hostility from the local Australian residents..."
"The artistic and commercial success of "Orphans of Famine" is obvious to all. It established David Griffith's lofty status in the history of world cinema, and also made DreamWorks, which had only produced two films, become the world's . The greater impact was that this film led to a surge in anti-British sentiment among the American people, and relations between the United States and Commonwealth countries (mainly Britain and Australia) deteriorated rapidly."
"So much so that after the Pearl Harbor incident, a large number of people in the United States only agreed with President Roosevelt's declaration of war on Japan, and were unwilling to become Britain's ally in fighting the two major Axis powers, the Third Reich and Italy. In order to comply with public opinion, President Roosevelt also declared war on all Axis powers, but had to delay his military deployment in Europe."
"Beep, beep, S value increased by 40%, entering the 90% high alert area..."
"Ding ding ding, since this script is original to the host, the S value is reduced by 20%."
That’s right, this “Orphan of Famine” is actually an original script by our Master Yuan!
He did not do nothing in the past two months, eating and waiting for death all day and messing around with the triangular relationship between China, the United States and Germany. Instead, he racked his brains to conceive this movie, which was later called the "super tearjerker". And just as he expected, "Orphans of Famine" set off an anti-British frenzy in America and even the world!
Well, it’s not that Yuan Yanshu doesn’t want to copy, the problem is that he can’t copy it!
Speaking of movies that stir up anti-British sentiment, there is a movie called Braveheart, but the protagonist William Wallace is Scottish. This is of course inappropriate.
As for the Irish themselves, they have never made a movie about the Irish famine, and there are even very few novels. Even James Joyce, who is known as the greatest writer in Irish history, only wrote stream-of-consciousness novels such as "Ulysses".
By the way, this novel is now being serialized in the American magazine "Little Review". And because of publishing "Ulysses", "Little Review" will soon be sued by the New York City government for publishing obscene works and be convicted...
There was no other choice, so Master Yuan, a Serbian, had to take action himself to help the Irish recall their miserable history.
