Ruan Lingyu is the most celebrated actress of the golden age of Chinese cinema. She often played women struggling to come to terms with love, work and survival in the modern city. Hong Kong, Shanghai: Cinema Cities presents six of her films from the 1930s, including Love and Duty 1931 (dir: Bu Wancang), her earliest surviving film, of which a print was discovered in Uruguay in 1994. Director Bu Wancang, an admirer of Douglas Fairbanks and DW Griffith, draws on American styles and techniques to tell a tragic story of arranged marriage and forbidden love. After starring in 29 films between 1926 and 1935, Ruan Lingyu committed suicide at the age of 24 when her fame was at its peak — 300 000 people followed her coffin through the streets of Shanghai. Her celebrated film The Goddess was remade in Hong Kong in 1938 as Rouge Tears with another Chinese superstar, Hu Die (Butterfly Wu), in the leading role. For Stanley Kwan's exploration of the life of Ruan Lingyu, Center Stage 1992, Maggie Cheung was cast as the great early Shanghai actress. Her performance won the Silver Bear in Berlin.
Strong women characters are a ubiquitous presence in Chinese cinematic explorations of national identity and the emergence of modern social configurations, although these women are often types: the middle-class housewife, the model worker, the prostitute and the professional or ‘New Woman’. Women’s participation in the film industry in the golden age was largely circumscribed — they were actors rather than directors or scriptwriters. Chinese film historian Shuqin Cui points to:
. . . how early film production frames women’s problems to signify the need for national awakening while using star images to attract audiences; [and] how socialist cinema presents woman as either a victim of class oppression or a beneficiary of national liberation.
In The Goddess, Ruan Lingyu plays a devoted mother who is driven into prostitution to support her son. The opening sequence moves from the bright lights of Shanghai by night to a domestic setting with mother and child, then back to the crowded streets — the baby is in bed and the mother goes to work. Ruan experienced extreme poverty in her childhood. Her widowed mother worked hard to send her child to an elite school. Although worshiped on the screen, Ruan dealt with prejudice in her private life as, at the time in China, film stars were widely regarded as being of loose morals.
Love and Duty (Lian’ai yu Yiwu) 1931 All ages
6.00pm Sunday 4 March, introduced by Chen Biqiang, Senior Research Fellow, China Film Archive / Cinema A / Live musical accompaniment
35MM, 152 MINS, B. & W., SILENT, CHINA, MANDARIN INTERTITLES (ENGLISH SUBTITLES) / DIRECTOR: BU WANCANG / PRODUCER: LI MINWEI / SCRIPT: ZHU SHILIN / ORIGINAL STORY (NOVEL): S ROSEN (HO RO-SE) / CINEMATOGRAPHY: HUANG SHAOFEN / CAST: RUAN LINGYU, JIN YAN, CHEN YANYAN, LI YING / PRODUCTION COMPANY: LIANHUA FILM COMPANY (UNITED PHOTOPLAY SERVICE) / PRINT SOURCE/RIGHTS: CHINESE TAIPEI FILM ARCHIVE
Bu Wancang’s second collaboration with Ruan Lingyu, after directing her 1926 debut Husband and Wife in Name (Guaming De Fuqi), pairs her with famous Korean actor Jin Yan, who plays her forbidden love. Bu directed the popular movie couple in four more films in the following two years. Love and Duty tells the story of Yang Naifan (Ruan Lingyu) who escapes from her arranged marriage to reunite with her first forbidden love Li Zuyi (Jin Yan), then finds herself trapped in poverty and misery. She pays dearly for breaking with feudal tradition and can only conceive of a drastic solution to save her children from disgrace. The film features superb cinematography by Huang Shaofen. Love and Duty was one of the first films produced by the progressive Lianhua Film Company, established in 1930 by Li Minwei — a pioneer of Hong Kong cinema who had moved his first company, Minxin, to Shanghai in 1926 — and Luo Mingyou, who owned and ran an extensive network of movie theatres. Lianhua continued to make silent films well into the 1930s, as many cinemas were not yet equipped for sound. Bu Wancang worked first as a cameraman then a director and producer at Mingxing Film Company. After moving to Lianhua in 1931 he came to prominence with Love and Duty. During the period from 1937 to 1941, called the ‘Orphan Island’ period because the international settlements remained independent of Japanese occupation, Bu directed historical dramas with nationalist themes. When the Japanese took over all of Shanghai, he made a number of propaganda films — including The Opium War 1943 — that criticised European imperialism and promoted a regional economic sphere. Bu was criticised after the war for working with the Japanese and moved to Hong Kong in 1948, directing the epic Soul of China for Yung Hwa Film Company and setting up the Taishan Film Company.
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