Old Shanghai Film Weekend

Our upcoming weekend of old Shanghai film fun (June 3-5 2016) will include a visit to the Shanghai Film Museum, a trip to see the old Shanghai sets at the Shanghai Chedun Film Park, but the heart of it all are the screenings and discussions of movies from the golden age of Shanghai film. Linda Johnson (bio below), an expert on the history of Shanghai film, curated the films for the weekend and will lead the discussions. Thanks to Linda for providing these illuminating film write-ups!

For the Schedule & Ticket Information, click Film Weekend Schedule & Tickets

Friday June 3, 7pm / RMB 100 members, RMB 150 nonmembers (for other ticket options, including weekend and day tickets, see above) /374 Shaanxi Nan Lu/Fuxing Xi Lu

FILM: Lagong Zhi Aiqing or Labourer’s Love (1922)

Directed by Zhang Shichuan / Written by Zheng Zhenqiu

Cast: Zheng Zhegu (the carpenter), Zheng Zhenqiu (Dr. Zhu) and Yu Ying (Miss Zhu) / Produced by Mingxing Film Co.

Labourer’s Love premiered at the Olympic Theatre (renamed Embassy in 1926) near the Shanghai racecourse on Bubbling Well Road in October 1922 and is believed to be the oldest surviving film made by a Chinese film company. It was the first film made by the Mingxing Film Company, a name that was to become synonymous with Shanghai’s Golden Age of Film, and was directed and written by its co-founders, Zhang Shichuan and Zheng Zhenqiu (“the founding father of Chinese film”).

Seen in the literature as a combination of a ‘cinema of attractions’ and ‘a cinema of narrative integration’, Labourer’s Love tells the story of a young fruit seller’s attempts to woo his sweetheart. Comedy was a pre-eminent genre in short films of this period, enhanced by audience fascination with movement on a screen. Its comedic effect came from the filming techniques whilst the somewhat simple narrative was made effective by the details included in each scene. Close-ups and superimposition are used, and a significant piece of sophisticated editing: a piece of fruit thrown by one person in one shot is caught by another in the next, not always with the same trajectory. It was this fascination with movement and variable speed that engaged the Shanghai audience of the day, the same fascination that created the popularity of Charlie Chaplin and the early Mickey Mouse shorts.

Labourer’s Love also displays the beginnings of the significance of Shanghai’s particular architecture in Shanghai film, specifically the distinctively Shanghainese mode of representation appears through the context of the small and intimate spaces within the urban laneways, rather than the commercial thoroughfares of the city, a contrast that carried narratives of modernism and the struggle to make the city modern outside of colonialism.

Saturday June 4, 2pm / RMB 200 members/RMB 250 nonmembers (for 2 films) For all ticket options, including weekend and day tickets: Film Weekend Schedule & Tickets/ Kathleen’s Waitan, 200 Huangpu Lu. RSVP: info@historic-shanghai.com

FILM: Shennu or Goddess (1934)

Directed by Wu Yonggang / Written by Wu Yonggang / Cinematography by Hong Weilie /Produced by Lianhua Film Studio

Cast: Ruan Lingyu, Zhang Zhizhi, Li Keng

In probably her most famous role, Ruan Lingyu portrays a young mother, forced by her circumstances to work as a streetwalker, struggles to support her son in Shanghai. Using prostitution as a metaphor of the degradation and oppression within 1930s Shanghai, the film separates Ruan Lingyu’s outdoor, streetwalking life from her protective role as a self-sacrificing, loving mother inside her lane house. As these two worlds collide and she strikes out against injustice, director Wu Yonggang puts the blame for her undoing firmly on society whilst preserving traditional patriarchal values.

This film reveals many of the essential characteristics of China’s 1930s silent films, impacted by changes in the social and political climate of the time – and of course,  Ruan Lingyu, with her mastery of silent acting technique, was the epitome of a silent movie star. Chiang Kai-Shek’s regime brought censorship into film, and the melodramas of leftist studios, like Lianhua, became infused with political meaning. Filmmaking itself had reached a much more professional level in terms of technique and equipment, and in both of these films the directors use cinematic artistry through close-ups, jarring camera angles and abrupt transitions to deliver their message. Finally, Shanghai takes on a particular role in the films of this period and as a sleepless, modern city it is cast as the site of social injustice, while Ruan Lingyu essentially became in the public eye the modern Chinese woman: strong, independent, self-assured and opposing social prejudice.

Saturday June 4, 4pm/RMB 200 members/RMB 250 nonmembers (includes 2 films). For all ticket options, including weekend and day tickets: Film Weekend Schedule & Tickets Kathleen’s Waitan, 200 Huangpu Lu. RSVP: info@historic-shanghai.com

FILM: Ye Meigui, Wild Rose (1932)

Directed by Sun Yu / Produced by Lianhua Film Company

Cast: Wang Renmei (Xiao Feng), Jin Yan (Jiang Bo), Zhang Zhizhi (Xiao Feng’s father), Zheng Junli (Little Li)

As films incorporated sound, film companies turned to song and dance troupes to find their new talent. Wang Renmei was one of the first of this new breed of actresses for the Talkies: those who could speak Mandarin, trained in stage performance.

Wild Rose, written specifically for Wang Renmei, was her first starring role. Director Sun Yu remained  wedded to the “true character” standard of acting, and cast her to play her 17-year old self, which involved not just being herself but conforming to prevailing ideas about young women as genuine (zhen), natural (ziran) and innocent (tianzhen). For these traits to be ‘true character’ they had to fit the actress off-stage as well as on-stage: she needed to appear in print media as the person she played.

Perfectly cast as a barefoot goose girl who goes on to inspire a band of Shanghai revolutionaries, her refreshingly natural performance, her athletic body and her attractive features embodied the spirit of the new “modern beauty.” Wild Rose is one of the many films of the era that focused on the clash between traditional values and modern lifestyle in Shanghai, by charting the movement from countryside into the urban environment.

Credited with discovering Wang Renmei, the ‘poet director’ Sun Yu was American trained, a core-director of the prestigious Lianhua Film Company and was responsible for many of the great films of the period, including Daybreak, Tianming (1933), Little Toys Xiao Wanyi (1933), Queen of Sport Tiyu Hueng Hou (1934).

Sunday June 5, 2pm / RMB 200/250 (includes 2 films). For all ticket options, including weekend and day tickets:Film Weekend Schedule & Tickets. Kathleen’s Waitan, 200 Huangpu Lu. RSVP: info@historic-shanghai.com

Yi Jiang Chun Shui Xiang Dong Liu, The Spring River Flows East (Part 1: Eight Years of Separation & Chaos & Part 2: The Dawn) (1947)

Directed by Cai Chusheng & Zheng Junli /Written by Cai Chusheng /Produced by The Kunlun Film Company

Cast: Bai Yang (Sufen); Tao Jin (Zhongliang); Shu Xiuwen (Wang Lizhen); Shangguan Yunzhu (He Wenyan); Wu Yi (Sufen’s mother-in-law)

This important epic film was made in two parts, released a few months apart: Eight Years of Separation and Chaos followed by The Dawn. Each followed the lives of a Shanghai couple, Sufen and Zhongliang, through the tumultuous events in China between National Day 1931, after the Japanese invaded Manchuria, and 1945. A phenomenally successful film, it played to record-breaking audiences in Shanghai for almost a year and is now regarded as one of China’s top 100 films ever made. Gone with the Wind was re-released by MGM in Shanghai the same year, selling around 170,000 seats compared to the 713,000 sold for A Spring River Flows East.

In the context of film history, it is a leading example of post-occupation film demonstrating the strength of cast and crew and of a mature industry determined to express the social realities of post-war Shanghai. Made at the private Kunlun Film Studio, the film was written and directed by Cai Chusheng and Zheng Junli, leading filmmakers from Shanghai who were veterans of the stage and screen during the pre-war boom, and who were involved in resistance activities for the Nationalists; actresses Bai Yang and Shu Xiuwen were also involved in touring acting troupes for the Resistance.

Likened to Gone with the Wind, the film follows the lives of Zhongliang and Sufen as they meet, marry, get separated by war and meet again in very changed circumstances. The first part begins in a factory in Shanghai where Zhongliang is a teacher and an ardent patriot organising a fund raising gala for resistance forces and Sufen is an adoring student and worker. They marry and espouse traditional family values, having a child before full-scale war breaks out when Zhongliang joins the Red Cross and endures the harshness of war. Sufen leaves Shanghai to live with Zhongliang’s parents in the countryside where she has her own experiences with the Japanese. The first part ends with Sufen returned to Shanghai living in poverty with her son and mother-in-law and Zhongliang in Chongqing, an escaped prisoner-of-war with a promise of a new, wealthier life.

The second part is set from beginning to end in 1945 and, as Zhongliang makes his return, in Shanghai. The differences between the two leading characters become more extreme as Zhongliang’s decadence grows and Sufen remains in poverty. Their pasts converge dramatically when they meet again and the film ends with two lines from the Song Dynasty poem, from which the title is taken: ‘How much sorrow can one man have to bear? As much as a river of spring water flowing East.’

As with the other acclaimed films of the post-war period, A Spring River Flows East shows a localised form of patriotism as it gives expression to a particular historical moment in Shanghai. A film informed by film culture of the time, it created an interplay between fiction and reality by taking a fictional romance and investing it with the everyday life struggles of the people living with the aftermath of war. Not simply about taking a leftist or rightist position on Shanghai’s future, this epic film criticises foreign and capitalist influences but, rather than offering ideological solutions, engages in a complex conversation between film culture in Shanghai and modern life.

Linda Johnson

Linda came to live in Shanghai in 1998, after spending 10 years (1986-96) as a Senior Lecturer in Law at Hong Kong University. As an academic in the UK she earned her M.Phil. in Criminology (1982) and Ph.D. in Law & Politics (1991), and since moving to Shanghai has continued to do independent research on aspects of history and culture in Shanghai. In 2001 Linda founded (with her business partner Li Liang) and still runs the Shanghai design store, Madame Mao’s Dowry and through this developed an expertise on Mao Period propaganda, which prompted her research on other aspects of media, including Mao Period photography and the history of Shanghai Film. She has recently completed an MA in Museum Studies and wrote her dissertation on the Shanghai Film Museum. She has convened the Royal Asiatic Society Film Club since 2011 and has presented talks on the history of Shanghai Film, Post-war Shanghai Film, Dioramas at the Shanghai Film Museum and Art Deco in Shanghai Film. In 2015 she presented a talk and film extracts on Art Deco and Shanghai Film at the World Art Deco Congress hosted by Historic Shanghai.