Zhao Dan is an outstanding performing artist with great achievement in China. In his several decades of art career, Zhao Dan ever acted in 35 feature films, portraying a series of brilliant artistic images. As a result, he enjoys the reputations of a talent in Chinese film area as well as the people’s artist famous at home and abroad. During the period when you come to learn Mandarin in China, you may be told that the earliest excellent works of Zhao Dan were Shi Zi Jie Tou and Ma Lu Tian Shi which were filmed in 1936 and 1937 respectively.
In the firm named Shi Zi Jie Tou, Zhao Dan acts as an unemployed college student Lao Zhao. Since the experience and the characteristics of this role are very similar with that of Zhao Dan, he performed it very smoothly and very vividly. The image of the intellectual of being naïve, honest, warm-hearted and pure was vividly showed on the screen. However, in the film Ma Lu Tian Shi, he performs as a young trumpeter, portraying the characteristics of being kind, warm and pure and honest.
When it came to the period around 1940, he acted in the film Crow and Sparrow, symbolizing his performing art becoming mature. The boss Mr. Xiao he acted in this film is a fatuous person but think himself clever, weak but pretends to be strong, being shortsighted but puffed with ambition. He does nothing every day and regard inquiring things and spreading to the others as pleasure. In the performance of Zhao Dan, the characteristics of this figure are showed lifelike, portraying the image of the insensitive people who live in the bottom of the society.
When it came to the 1950s and the 1960s, the art of Zhao Dan was still famous and popular. In the three films name Li Shizhen, Lin Zexu and Nie Er, he successfully shaped the images of three historical figures, reaching the peak of the performing art in China at that time. If the students who are learning Mandarin Chinese are interested, they can go to watch those films to witness the performing art of Zhao Dan.
The three heroes in the three films mentioned above have different styles but Zhao Dan managed to present them so vividly, showing the high performing technique. In all, the images he portrayed are welcomed by the general public because of the distinctive features, becoming the immortal images in Chinese films field.