AN AMOROUS HISTORY OF SHANGHAI AND HONG KONG CINEMA

From the 1920s, the emerging Chinese film industry centred on Shanghai, which also had a fast-developing public film culture with over 50 movie theatres by the beginning of the 1930s. An Amorous History of the Silver Screen 1931 (dir: Cheng Bugao) takes its audience behind the scenes of early studio film production through the story of a woman who moves from prostitution to cinema stardom. The film combines drama and documentary, and provides extraordinary insight into film production in 1930s Shanghai, including a tour of Mingxing studio. The Mingxing Film Company, founded in 1922, was the first fully-fledged mainland Chinese film studio. After the Japanese invaded Manchuria in 1931 and bombed Shanghai in early 1932, the film industry rushed to promote national and progressive values. With the rise of left-wing cinema, Mingxing found itself displaced from centre stage notably by the establishment of the Lianhua Company, which became the leading progressive studio of the 1930s. Symphony of Lianhua 1937 is a rarely seen showcase of short films by eight directors, many of whom later worked in Hong Kong.

In its early years in China, as elsewhere, cinema frequently focused on the perils and pleasures of modern urban life. In the first decades of Chinese cinema, the city represented the cultural and economic aspirations of the nation but also the degradation of rural virtue and the social ravages of unbridled capitalism. Literary adaptations, both popular and progressive, joined realist dramas showing women’s struggles to work and keep their families together in the face of men’s moral foibles. Social debate on the ‘New Woman’ and her place in the public sphere, which raged through the 1920s to 1940s in Shanghai, engendered new cinematic characters who updated social roles in the modern city; women played out allegories of the nation, transcending their economic and social circumstances through sheer determination.

Romance of a Fruit Peddler aka Labourer’s Love (Laogong Zhi Aiqing aka Zhi Guo Yuan) 1922 All ages
6.00pm Friday 2 March, introduced by Zhang Jianyong, Vice Director, China Film Archive / Cinema A / Live musical accompaniment / Bookings essential. Telephone: (07) 3840 7159

35MM, 29 MINS, B. & W., SILENT, CHINA, MANDARIN INTERTITLES (ENGLISH SUBTITLES) / DIRECTOR: ZHANG SHICHUAN / SCRIPT: ZHENG ZHENGQIU / CINEMATOGRAPHY: ZHANG WEITAO / CAST: ZHENG ZHEGU, YU YING, ZHENG ZHENGQUI / PRODUCTION COMPANY: MINGXING (STAR) FILM COMPANY / PRINT SOURCE/RIGHTS: CHINA FILM ARCHIVE

A romantic comedy of social mobility, Romance of a Fruit Peddler caricatures feudal and patriarchal control of marriage and the family in the story of a carpenter-turned-fruit seller winning the hand of the daughter of a doctor. The film’s director Zhang Shichuan (1889–1953) and writer Zheng Zhengqiu (1885–1935) collaborated on over 200 films, moving from comic shorts to more popular long features in this period of transition from cinema as spectacle to narrative cinema. Key figures in early Chinese cinema, they made their first short film, The Difficult Couple, with the Asia Company of American entrepreneur Benjamin Brodsky in 1912. A decade later, they set up Mingxing Film Company, making Romance of a Fruit Peddler the same year. Mingxing concentrated on stories about family life in changing society, promoting traditional values in a similar manner to ‘Mandarin Duck and Butterfly’ literature — a romantic, populist literature from which many stories were adapted in early Chinese cinema. Mingxing employed ‘Butterfly’ authors as screenwriters but also supported progressive education through film. Romance of a Fruit Peddler may also be influenced in its critique of feudal marriage arrangements by the anti-traditionalist May Fourth Movement. Originating in 1919 as a mass anti-imperialist protest, which also promoted anti-feudalism, nationalism and the liberation of the individual, the ensuing cultural movement explored new and progressive styles and subjects.

A String of Pearls (Yichuan Zhenzhu) 1926 All ages
7.30pm Friday 2 March, introduced by Zhang Jianyong, Vice Director, China Film Archive / Cinema A / Live musical accompaniment / Bookings essential. Telephone: (07) 3840 7159

35MM, 102 MINS, B. & W., SILENT, CHINA, MANDARIN INTERTITLES (ENGLISH SUBTITLES) / DIRECTOR: LI ZEYUAN / SCRIPT: HOU YAO / ORIGINAL STORY (SHORT): GUY DE MAUPASSANT / CINEMATOGRAPHY: CHENG PEILIN / CAST: LEI XIADIAN, LIU HANJUN, LIU JIQUN, ZHAI QIQI, XING SHAOMEI / PRODUCTION COMPANY: CHANGCHENG (GREAT WALL) FILM COMPANY / PRINT SOURCE/RIGHTS: CHINA FILM ARCHIVE

Hou Yao’s well-crafted script for A String of Pearls draws on Guy de Maupassant’s short story ‘The diamond necklace’ 1884. In Maupassant’s story, a woman loses a borrowed diamond necklace when she accompanies her husband to a ball, and the debt incurred by the loss sends the young couple into poverty. In this film adaptation, a pearl necklace is worn to a Lantern Festival party in Shanghai. The translation of foreign literature flourished in the late Qing period, giving rise to cinematic adaptations of world literature alongside adaptations of Chinese literature and opera stories. Film historian Zhang Zhen describes the film as a melodrama about ‘commodity circulation and desire’. The desire for a commodity also translates the desire to take part in the increasing social and economic mobility of modern urban life. Flashbacks and parallel editing heighten the narrative tension. In an extraordinary stop-motion animation sequence, the thread and beads used by the impoverished wife, who mends clothes to help pay off the necklace, form the ideographs for misfortune. The neon signs and shops along Nanjing Road in Shanghai stand in for the temptations of consumption and modernity.

Amorous History of the Silver Screen (Yinmu Yanshi) 1931 All ages
4.30pm Saturday 3 March, introduced by Chen Biqiang, Senior Research Fellow, China Film Archive / Cinema A / Live musical accompaniment

35MM, 52 MINS (INCOMPLETE), B. & W., SILENT, CHINA, MANDARIN INTERTITLES (ENGLISH SUBTITLES) / DIRECTOR: CHENG BUGAO / SCRIPT: ZHENG ZHENGQUI / CINEMATOGRAPHY: DONG KEYI / CAST: XUAN JINGLIN, XIA PEIZHEN, WANG ZHENGXIN, TAN ZHIYUAN / PRODUCTION COMPANY: MINGXING (STAR) FILM COMPANY / PRINT SOURCE/RIGHTS: CHINA FILM ARCHIVE

Originally an eighteen-reel, two-part feature, only the second part of the film still exists. The missing introduction shows the rise from prostitution to stardom of Wang Fengzhen (Xuan Jinglin), then her withdrawal from acting when she becomes a concubine. We pick up the story when her domestic situation palls and she returns to the screen, leaving her unfaithful lover and reigniting her career. Documentary-style footage showcasing the bustling Mingxing studios — presented as a fantasy land of sets, lighting and special effects — is inserted within a drama of social mobility and glamour. The biography of actress Xuan Jinglin is embedded in the film's documentary romance. She was given her first cinematic role by co-founder of Mingxing, Zhang Shichuan, while working as a prostitute for a brothel from which the company bought her freedom. Amorous History of the Silver ScreenAmorous History of the Silver Screen is a self-conscious reflection on film production and the Shanghai star system. Its exploration of subjectivity and cinematic language is clearly modernist in impulse; Lianhua produced a similarly self-conscious film in the same year, Two Stars in the Milky Way (Yinghan Shuangxing) was made after her return to the studio when her relationship with a businessman ended. One of nine silent films produced in 1931 by eminent pre-war studio Mingxing, 1931.

Pink Dream (Fenhongse de Meng) 1932 All ages
1.00pm Sunday 4 March, introduced by Chen Biqiang, Senior Research Fellow, China Film Archive / Cinema A / Live musical accompaniment & electronic subtitling

35MM, 83 MINS, B. & W., SILENT, CHINA, MANDARIN INTERTITLES / DIRECTOR/SCRIPT: CAI CHUSHENG / CINEMATOGRAPHY: ZHOU KE / CAST: GAO ZHANFEI, ZHENG JUNLI, TAN YING, XUE LINGXIAN, LIU JIQUN / PRODUCTION COMPANY: LIANHUA FILM COMPANY (UNITED PHOTOPLAY SERVICE) / PRINT SOURCE/RIGHTS: CHINA FILM ARCHIVE

A writer works on a novel while his wife teaches to support the family. He dreams of following a famous socialite into the life of Shanghai dance halls, luxury and seduction, but eventually rejects his ‘pink dream’. Although the film is critical of decadent urban lifestyles, director Cai Chusheng was criticised for glamorising European culture, particularly in the inclusion of many dance hall scenes. Pink Dream was one of his first films as a director, made after he joined the Lianhua Film Company in 1931, and he went on to explore progressive subjects including changing gender roles. After the Japanese invasion of Shanghai in 1937, Cai moved to Hong Kong and made Orphan Island Paradise 1939, about life in occupied Shanghai. When the Japanese took Hong Kong in 1941, he went to Chongqing, returning to Shanghai after the war.

Symphony of Lianhua (Lianhua Jiaoxiangqu) 1937 All ages
1.00pm Sunday 4 March, introduced by Chen Biqiang, Senior Research Fellow, China Film Archive / Cinema A

35MM, 91 MINS, B. & W., MONO, CHINA, MANDARIN (ENGLISH SUBTITLES) / DIRECTORS: SITU HUIMIN, FEI MU, TAN YOULIU, HE MENGFU, ZHU SHILIN, SHEN FU, SUN YU, CAI CHUSHENG (AN OMNIBUS FILM OF EIGHT SHORTS) / SCRIPTS: CAI CHUSHENG, FEI MU, TAN YOULIU, HE MENGFU, ZHU SHILIN, SHEN FU, SUN YU / CAST: MEI LI, CHEN YANYAN, LI ZHUOZHUO, LIU QIONG, ZHENG JUNLI, LUO PENG, LI QING, LI LILI, LIU JIQUN, YIN XIUQIN, WANG CILONG / PRODUCTION COMPANY: LIANHUA FILM COMPANY (UNITED PHOTOPLAY SERVICE) / PRINT SOURCE/RIGHTS: CHINA FILM ARCHIVE

The Lianhua Film Company became the leading progressive studio of the 1930s. Symphony of Lianhua 1937 is a rarely seen showcase of short films by eight directors, many of whom later worked in Hong Kong. Cai Chusheng’s Five Little Brothers is an early cinematic exploration of children’s lives and Zhu Shilin’s contribution is one of the first Chinese horror films. Other films range from comedy to social realism. Fei Mu’s evocation of a young girl’s dreams parallels German Expressionist explorations and is his only surviving short film — only four of his films are still in existence, although he made almost 20. Fei Mu went on to direct Springtime in a Small Town 1948, a masterpiece of psychological cinema considered one of the greatest Chinese films of all time, then moved to Hong Kong in 1949. In Si-Tu Huimin’s Two Mao, a portrait of the disparity between rich and poor in Shanghai, Jiang Qing (later, Mao’s wife) plays a small part. She later had the film withdrawn from circulation as she did not wish people to know she had acted in Shanghai before the war.

AN AMOROUS HISTORY OF SHANGHAI AND HONG KONG CINEMA