A Centennial Review of Chinese Cinema
Yingjin Zhang (Universidad California, San Diego)
Introduction: Chinese Cinema
Since its first attempt at short feature with Conquering Jun Mountain (1905) in Beijing
during the final years of China's last dynasty, Chinese cinema has gone a long way to
reach its present status as a significant player in international cinema. Like its
counterparts elsewhere in the world, Chinese cinema started with fascination with new
visual technology, developed from a cluster of family businesses to a market of
competing studios and theaters, survived war devastation and government interference,
and has enriched cinematic arts with ingenious narrative and visual inventions. Now
near its own centennial celebration, Chinese cinema has regularly received top awards
at international film festivals, and the phenomenal success of Ang Lee's Crouching
Tiger, Hidden Dragon (1999) is just one example.
But Ang Lee's film, a coproduction of the U. S. China, Hong Kong, and Taiwan, raises
a question: what is meant by "Chinese cinema" in the era of globalization? Addressing
this discussion elsewhere, I would remind the reader that in current academic practice
"Chinese cinema" includes films produced in mainland China, Hong Kong, and Taiwan,
as well as those in the Chinese language or dialogue directed by the Chinese diaspora if
"transnational" is added to the term. Ideally, a centennial review of Chinese cinema
should include all these aspects, but the limited space allocated to this essay allows for
only a consideration of the mainland production in the twentieth century, leaving
interested readers to pursue Hong Kong and Taiwan cinemas elsewhere. Since the
majority of recent surveys of Chinese cinema have covered areas of politics and
aesthetics (as referenced in the notes throughout this essay), I will focus more on
industry and mention arts, ideology, and politics along the way, thus implementing a
slightly different perspective in this essay.
Early Cinema: Exhibition and Production, 1890s-1920s
Right after its invention, cinema was introduced to China in the late 1890s by French,
American, and Spanish showmen, as they rented venues such as teahouse, restaurant,
theater, and skating rink to show short movies amidst Chinese variety shows or as
interludes to featured operas. Old habits of theatre attendance such as chatting, eating,
and drinking continued in early film exhibition, and the audience watched films as the
exotic spectacles of "Western shadowplays." It was not until 1908 that a cinema
exclusively for film exhibition was built in Shanghai by Antonio Ramos, a Spaniard
who would gradually build a theatre chain in the city in subsequent years.
Film production started in China with documentary filmmaking, as Thomas Edison
reportedly had dispatched a photographer to China as early as 1898. In addition to
exhibiting shorts in a big tent along Shanghai streets, an Italian expatriate named A. E.
Louros also made documentaries in China, and so did the French company Pathé in the
late 1900s. The Chinese participation in production was not far behind. A sideline
product from a Beijing photography shop in 1905, Conquering Jun Mountain was based
on an existing Peking opera episode performed by a leading actor, who ensured the
film's popularity because opera fans always loved to watch their favorite actor and could
now afford the cheaper movie tickets. As if by coincidence, the opera movie as a
distinguished Chinese genre came into being. But a more conscientious effort at feature
production did not materialize until 1912, when Zhang Shichuan and Zheng Zhengqiu
cooperated with the Americans in charge of the Asia Company (set up by Benjamin
Brasky in 1909) and produced The Difficult Couple, a comic short ridiculing elaborate
Chinese wedding rituals. Like Conquering Jun Mountain, Difficult Couple projected
ethnic culture as spectacles, thereby foregrounding an exhibitionist mode connected to
both traditional theater and compatible with "cinema of attractions" elsewhere in the
early decades.
The cooperation between Zhang Shichuan and Zheng Zhengqiu resumed in 1922, when
they and two other friends founded the Mingxing (Star) Company in Shanghai with the
money they had initially raised for stock speculations. Indeed, film production was
often treated as speculation in the 1920s, as a succession of small companies made a
single film, grabbed profits, and closed shop. A famous example was the first Chinese
long feature, Yan Ruisheng (1921), a 10-reeler based on a sensational Shanghai case in
which a renowned courtesan was murdered for money in 1920. The film managed to
open at the Embassy Theatre, a first-run Shanghai cinema normally screening foreign
features. In comparison, Mingxing's comic shorts were not very successful, so Zhang
and Zheng produced their 8-reeler, Zhang Xinsheng (1922), based on a real-life
patricidal case, which unfortunately ran into censorship problems. Only until 1923,
when Orphan Rescues Grandfather became an exceptional success, did Mingxing secure
its position as an industry leader in early cinema.
Mingxing specialized in the family drama, a kind of story about the tribulations of life
in a changing society that tended to glorify Confucian virtues such as female chastity
and filial piety. Mingxing's emphasis on traditional ideologies thus situated the studio
closer to "butterfly literature"--a type of popular urban fiction steeped in conservatism-than to May Fourth literature, the latter known for its radical anti-traditionalism.
Although Mingxing recruited butterfly writers such as Bao Tianxiao, it is important to
remember that it did not oppose the concept of enlightenment. Indeed, Zheng Zhengqiu
dedicated his career to moral education through popular entertainment, but he believed
that enlightenment could be achieved only step by step, at a level accessible to the
average audience.
Just as family dramas dominated the screen in the first half of the 1920s, family
operations characterized several early studios. Dan Duyu, for instance, established the
Shanghai Photoplay Company in Shanghai in 1920 and employed his relatives. Dan cast
Yin Mingzhu, an illustrious Shanghai socialite, in Sea Oath (1921), an urban romance
featuring sentimentalism and modern fashions. Yin soon became a star and married Dan
in 1926. A gifted painter of portraits of beauties featured in commercial calendar
posters, Dan made sure that his films were always rich in visual quality. What was
amazing about him was that he had acquired film skills all by himself, serving as
director, screenwriter, cinematographer, lighting man, editor and laboratory worker all
at once. Apart from his versatility, Dan was exceptional because the majority of
filmmakers at the time were affiliated with the stage (either operas or spoken dramas).
Another noted family studio was the Tianyi (Unique) Company, founded by the Shaw
(Shao) brothers in Shanghai in 1925. Like Zheng Zhengqiu, Shao Zuiweng had
experience managing a Shanghai stage. But contrary to the trendy features on
contemporary issues produced by Mingxing and other studios like the Great Wall-Lily
and Minxin (employing artists like Shi Dongshan, Hou Yao, and Bu Wancang), Tianyi
developed its brand name by adapting Chinese folk tales, myths, and legends already
popular among audiences. What further distinguished Tianyi from its competitors was
its early investment in Southeast Asia, signing deals with exhibitors and building its
own theater chain--an investment that paid off immediately. Their two-part White Snake
(1926) broke all records of Chinese films in Southeast Asia, and this kind of overseas
success was crucial to Shanghai studios because the majority of movie theaters in China
were owned by the foreigners and showed mostly foreign films.
Tianyi's success engendered a fierce competition in Shanghai to produce costume
dramas, the kind of historical films that initially aimed to correct the tendency of
"feminization" in contemporary urban films by displaying the incredible feats of ancient
heroes and immortals. Since little or no location shooting was required, costumes and
props were readily available from theater troupes, and undereducated Chinese overseas
were eager to watch their familiar stories on screen, making costume dramas was a
lucrative business in the mid-1920s. Mini trends rushed out one after another, from
historical films to martial arts pictures to films about immortals and demons. Mingxing's
18-part martial arts picture, The Burning of Red Lotus Temple (1928-31), set a record
of serial production in China.
For critics, the martial arts pictures might still convey a sense of justice by righting the
wrongs in an idealized fictional world, but images of immortals and demons--captured
by trick cameras and revered by the audience--were not only escapist and superstitious
but detrimental to the industry's finance. The increased prices of film stocks forced
small companies to use cheap material and rush their unpolished products to the market,
and the overproduction of costume dramas gave the overseas exhibitors the advantage to
cut purchasing prices. All this compounded to drive the majority of companies to
bankruptcy. From 179 film companies listed in 1927, the number nose-dived to twenty
in 1928, and fewer than a dozen were in business by 1930.
In general, film production in the 1920s was market-driven and relatively free from
government interference because regional warlords had divided the country and the
KMT did not establish its central government in Nanjing until 1927. However, since the
exhibition sector was under the foreign control and there was no horizontal or vertical
integration in the industry, the prospect for Chinese cinema was rather dim. A few
visionary producers were aware of the situation and attempted to build Chinese
exhibition networks, but it required a great deal of time and money, which was in short
supply while cinema approached the sound era at the same time and the world headed
toward economic depression.
National Cinema: Industry and Ideology, 1930s-1940s
Several fundamental changes occurred in the early 1930s. First, the KMT government
asserted its power by cracking down on martial arts pictures and strictly policing films'
ideological content. Second, a "national cinema" movement briefly united producers
and exhibitors and brought new looks to the screen and new audiences to theaters.
Third, the emergent leftists successfully launched ideological film criticism,
maneuvered through cracks in the censorship system, and produced leftist films
exposing class exploitation, national crisis, and social evils. All these changes were
interrelated, and all responded to the issues of modernity and nationalism.
The government's ban on the martial arts pictures was meant to curtail the widespread
superstition and promote modern images of China--a nationalistic project of modernity
that resulted in skirmishes with Hollywood over the latter's offensive portrayals of the
Chinese. In this respect the government found a perfect ally in Luo Mingyou, the owner
of a successful theater chain who ventured to film production by organizing a giant
enterprise, the Lianhua Company (United Photoplay Service), in 1930. Lianhua had the
support of major Chinese theater-chain owners and producers and re-organized former
companies such as the Great Wall-Lily and Minxin into its branch studios in Shanghai
and Hong Kong. With its popular slogan to "revive national cinema," Lianhua recruited
directors like Sun Yu and Cai Chusheng and produced a number of films attractive to
urban intellectuals who had been turned off by the martial arts pictures in the late 1920s.
Although many of the Lianhua releases were still bathed in Confucian ethics, such as
Song of China (1935), films like Three Modern Women (1933) and New Woman
(1934) highlighted the spirit of social intervention related to the May Fourth tradition.
While Lianhua concentrated on silent pictures in the early 1930s, a practice Luo
Mingyou believed would appeal to those theaters that had difficulty making the
transition to sound, Mingxing and Tianyi competed in producing talkies. Interestingly,
Tianyi's conversion to sound gradually altered its tradition in costume dramas because
most sound picture audiences preferred modern subjects. After helping to install sound
systems in 139 theaters in Southeast Asia, Tianyi established its Hong Kong studio in
1934 and started producing Cantonese cinema (a distinction not necessary in the silent
era). Together, these strategic investments secured Tianyi's dominance in the region,
and when the Japanese troops entered central China in 1937, Tianyi quickly terminated
its Shanghai operations and shipped its equipment to Hong Kong, where it eventually
rose to prominence as the Shaw Brothers in the 1950s.
Unlike the market-driven Tianyi, Mingxing soon followed Lianhua in opening its doors
to the leftists, partly because of its financial difficulties and partly because of the vision
of mass education shared between the leftists and the liberal directors like Zheng
Zhengqiu. In the early 1930s, Mingxing was deeply in debt after the martial arts
pictures had been banned, audiences no longer welcomed the butterfly stories, and
conversion to sound exhausted much of their cash flow. Through Hong Shen's
connection, Xia Yan, Yang Hansheng, and a number of other leftists were invited to
contribute screenplays to Mingxing in 1932. The leftists seized this opportunity and
expanded its influence on the progressive directors like Cheng Bugao, and before long
leftist films such as Spring Silkworms (1933) and Wild Torrents (1933) brought fresh
images to the screen. By foregrounding class exploitation and national crisis, leftist
films engaged contemporary social issues and resorted to melodrama to heighten
emotional impact. Zheng Zhengqiu himself directed Twin Sisters (1933), a family
drama about contrastive fates of the rich and the poor, which had a lot in common with
Song of the Fishermen (1934), an acclaimed leftist film Cai Chusheng directed for
Lianhua.
Two new studios were also active in leftist film production. Diantong specialized in
sound pictures such as Plunder of Peach and Plum (1934), and its Children of Troubled
Times (1935) featured "The March of the Volunteers," a theme song that would be
adopted as the national anthem of the People's Republic of China (PRC) decades later.
Yihua, a studio established in 1932 under the guidance of Tian Han, an active leftist,
produced a number of leftist films in 1933. The ideological left-turn in several
companies in 1933 alarmed the KMT right wing, which engineered a much publicized
vandalism of the Yihua studio facilities and increased pressure on film censorship. After
the leftist pullout in 1935, Yihua was taken over by the advocates for "soft film" such as
Huang Jiamo and Liu Na'ou, who produced a kind of entertaining urban light comedy
that ignored sociopolitical issues and indulged in visual treats. The soft film's opposition
to ideological films and criticism provoked immediate counterattacks by the leftists in
major newspapers, and the former's vision of an alternative film aesthetic in line with
the cosmopolitan outlook of Shanghai has been used as a negative example in official
historiography. The leftists, on the other hand, had claimed a number of outstanding
films to their credit, such as Goddess (1934), Big Road (1934), Crossroads (1937), and
Street Angel (1937).
Singing at Midnight (1937), marketed as China's first horror picture, also showed
visible leftist influence, but it was from Xinhua, a company Zhang Shankun founded in
1934 that would rise to preeminence after 1937, when Lianhua and Mingxing had
closed shop. During the resistance war against Japan, Zhang Shankun followed the
prewar Tianyi tradition and produced politically neutral but commercially successful
films in Shanghai, and the chosen genre was costume drama. Some films, like Mulan
Joins the Army (1939), subtly conveyed patriotic sentiments and were extremely
popular. But the Japanese occupation forces quickly pushed Zhang Shankun to make
Eternity (1943), set in the Opium War and supposedly propagating the ideology of the
Great East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere. Also promoting the sphere ideology were the
products from the Manchurian Motion Pictures (Man'ei), a Japanese-controlled studio
located in northeastern China. But Man'ei films rarely made it big in Shanghai or other
occupied regions, except for those featuring Li Xianglan (Yamaguchi Yoshiko), a
Japanese actress passing as Chinese.
During the war, two KMT studios--the Central Film and the China Motion Pictures-were relocated to Chongqing, the wartime capital, and produced several patriotic films,
but the limited film stocks prevented the growth in production. On the other hand, a
large exhibition network was set up as government projection teams toured the
battlefronts with newsreels and documentaries. Before Hong Kong fell to Japan in 1941,
a KMT film office there had helped a group of Shanghai directors produce a few titles
in Mandarin, thus beginning Mandarin cinema that would flourished in postwar Hong
Kong. A small-scale film production team was established in the Communist-controlled
Yan'an area, which shot documentaries and provided training for film personnel.
Right after the war, a team of Communists transported part of Man'ei equipment out of
Changchun and set up the Northeast Studio in 1946. Later in the year, the KMT
Department of Propaganda confiscated the rest of Man'ei equipment and set up the
Changchun Studio, but major postwar KMT facilities were the Central Film's two
studios in Shanghai and one in Beijing. Ironically, several films critical of KMT
corruption, such as Diary of a Homecoming (1947), came out from these studios,
reflecting the popular mood of disillusionment in the postwar period. But the majority
of the Central Film's releases glorified the KMT images. For example, Code Name
Heaven No. 1 (1947), a spy film, sold 150,000 tickets at the first-run Empress Theater
in Shanghai, compared to 170,000 tickets Gone with the Wind sold when it premiered
in Shanghai in 1947. There is no question that Hollywood dominated the market in
terms of the total numbers of films exhibited, but the Chinese audience, despite
skyrocketing inflation, watched more domestic films in the postwar than in the prewar
period. And this new development boosted postwar film production considerably.
Private companies played a significant role in the postwar boom. Phony Phoenixes
(1947), a Wenhua release of bittersweet urban comedy, became the top performer at the
Grand Theater in Shanghai, selling 165,000 tickets. Wenhua's artistic quality and its
emphasis on human compassion were embodied in Spring in a Small Town (1948), a
psychological film many critics consider to be one of the best in China. Kunlun, another
postwar studio that gathered many prewar leftist artists (such as Cai Chusheng, Shi
Dongsha and Zheng Junli), specialized in social intervention. Spring River Flows East
(1947), a two-part melodrama of wartime family sufferings, swept over Shanghai,
selling 712,874 tickets from October 1947 to January 1948. By depicting the powerless
in solidarity against the evil power, Kunlun's other releases, such as Myriad of Lights
(1948), Three Women (1949), and Crows and Sparrows (1949), exemplified a kind of
critical realism traceable to the prewar social realism.
In general, despite the prolonged war years, Chinese cinema had matured and developed
into a national cinema in the 1930s-1940s--two decades some scholars regard as the
"golden age." Unlike the chaotic market of the 1920s, the 1930s saw systematic efforts
to stabilize the market, integrate production, distribution, and exhibition, and promote
new types of films. Rather than catering to the market demand, the producers allowed
artists to experiment with new genres and styles, and the results were impressive,
bringing Chinese cinema closer to international developments such as modernism,
expression and neorealism on the one hand, and to traditional Chinese aesthetics on the
other. By the end of the 1940s, film was no longer seen as pure visual entertainment,
nor as mere moral preaching; it was an art form in which the artists and the audience
alike confronted and negotiated pressing social issues and imagined various solutions,
be they revolutionary or conservative. It is this relatively free space of imagination and
contestation that would be increasingly narrowed and eventually erased in the
subsequent decades.
Socialist Cinema: Politics and Art, 1950s-1970s
Ironically, Shanghai filmmakers' traditions in humanism and realism--sympathetic with
the suffering people and critical of the KMT regime--became politically suspect in the
socialist period, when the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) had driven to the KMT to
Taiwan in 1949 and wanted to consolidate its power by all means. The CCP confiscated
all KMT facilities and managed three state studios, Northeast (renamed Changchun in
1955), Beijing, and Shanghai; a military studio, known as the August Film since 1956,
was established in Beijing in 1952. The outbreak of the Korean War in 1950
immediately terminated Hollywood's decade-long domination in China, and Soviet and
Eastern European cinemas arrived to fill in the void gradually. The Central Film Bureau
was founded in Beijing as early as December 1949, and the CCP censors supervised all
films from screenplay to postproduction. Screenwriters were assigned to two nationallevel institutes, and their products were allocated to studios in a quota system. At the
beginning, a dozen private studios such as Kunlun and Wenhua could request
screenplays or developed their own. But since Mao Zedong published an editorial in
People's Daily in May 1951 and launched a nationwide campaign criticizing a Kunlun
release, The Life of Wu Xun (1950), private studios could barely survive. By January
1952 Kunlun, Wenhua, and other private studios had to merge under state management,
and a year later they all became part of the Shanghai Studio.
Conceived as an effective propaganda weapon of class struggle, socialist cinema was
devoted to serving workers, peasants, and soldiers, who were to emulate Communist
heroes and martyrs on screen. Intellectuals no longer occupied a privileged position as
source of critical consciousness, but were rather classified as the "petty bourgeois" who
must reform themselves under the CCP guidance and contribute to socialist
construction. Public space and collective spirit replaced private and personal matters,
and all characters were fashioned into certain "types" (e.g., heroes and villains) so as to
stage clear-cut ideological struggles mandated by socialist realism. However,
considerations of "revolutionary romanticism" always superceded those of realism
(socialist or otherwise), because the "real" or historical "truth" was something the CCP
leadership defined from its utopian perspective.
The CCP relentlessly policed ideological message as well as representational modes,
and any ambiguity--not to mention negligence of the party policy--would result in
severe criticism. One of the worse scenarios was the Anti-Rightist Campaign in 1957,
which immediately followed a relaxation phase known as the "Hundred Flowers," a
policy to encourage diversity Mao himself announced in 1956. As part of the reforms
implemented in the Hundred Flowers movement, the national screenplay institutes was
disbanded, and studios could recruit writers and develop their own screenplays,
although the finished films had to clear censors at the Film Bureau and the Ministry of
Culture. Film workers were motivated to air constructive criticism, so many of them
targeted party bureaucracies, distrust of intellectuals, and lack of artistic freedom. A
year later, the Anti-Rightist Campaign effectively silenced dissident voices. The
periodic political interference thus produced a zigzag pattern of development in socialist
cinema.
The sheer unpredictability of the party policy at any given time compelled artists to
choose ideologically safer genres, such as revolutionary history, war, opera movies,
ethnic minority, and literary adaptation. The White-Haired Girl (1950), a classic text of
class struggle, proved immensely popular and reached six million viewers nationwide
(including those serviced by a growing number of projection teams touring the rural and
mountainous areas). From Victory to Victory (1952), a war film staging large-scale
battles between the CCP and the KMT, survived rounds of ideological scrutiny and was
screened over and over until a color remake was released in 1974. Liang Shanbo and
Zhu Yingtai (1954), an opera movie based on a popular Chinese legend about two
lovers reunited in death, showed at some West European film festivals with great
success and exerted an immediate impact on the trendy opera movies in Hong Kong and
Taiwan. Five Golden Flowers (1959), an ethnic minority film, provided a rare chance
for the audience to relish exotic costumes, dances, songs, and romantic love offered in
the pretext of glorifying socialist construction in remote regions. New Year's Sacrifice
(1957), an adaptation of a May Fourth masterpiece by Lu Xun, was among a few
attempts to reconnect pre-socialist film tradition consistently marginalized by the CCP
leadership.
In the early 1960s, films depicting intellectuals often became the targets of criticism, but
seasoned filmmakers managed to produce a number of quality films, such as Third
Sister Liu (1960), Red Detachment of Women (1960) and Stage Sisters (1965). By
1966, more than fifty films were officially censured, including City Without Night
(1957), a drama about a capitalist's transformation in socialist China, Nie Er (1959), a
biographical picture on a key figure in the leftist film, and The Lin Family Shop (1959),
an adaptation of a May Fourth masterpiece. A record of zero feature production from
1967 to 1969 was a direct result of the total negation of the achievements of the first
seventeen years of socialist cinema during the Cultural Revolution. Mao's wife Jiang
Qing, who had enjoyed publicity as a Shanghai film actress in the mid-1930s but who
had kept a low profile after her marriage to Mao, sponsored the filming of the eight
revolutionary model plays (modern Peking operas and ballets). Released from 1970 on,
these films strictly obeyed Jiang's principle of "three prominences": "give prominence to
positive characters among all the characters, to heroes among the positive characters, to
the principal hero among the heroes." This principle was translated into a set of
formulaic film techniques, dictating that the hero must be located at the center of the
frame, shot from a low angle, bathed in bright light and warm colors, and appear always
larger than the villain, who were treated in exactly opposite terms.
Jiang's next step was the color remakes of a few black-and-white films she had
approved, and most of them were war films that partially addressed the exigency of
China's growing tension with the Soviet Union. Jiang's third step was to produce new
features that attacked her political opponents and propagated her brand of ultra-leftist
ideology. Breaking with Old Ideas (1975) was such an example, but these films did not
help Jiang that much, because shortly after Mao's death in 1976 the CCP liberals
arrested Jiang and other members of the "Gang of Four." In the remainder of the 1970s,
several films renounced the atrocities committed by the Gang of Four, but did it in
formulaic fashions similar to the model plays. The thirtieth anniversary of the PRC in
1979 brought in certain changes in cinematic styles and genres, but major breakthroughs
occurred in the 1980s.
During the socialist period, politics reigned supreme over art, and party ideology
penetrated everyday life. The planned economy eliminated all market functions. A
single state corporation and its provincial branches distributed all films approved by the
Film Bureau, theaters showed films as allocated to them, the audience had little effects
on production policy, and studios no longer developed distinctive styles or competitive
edges. In short, box-office revenues were rarely of concern to artists, cadres, and
workers, all of them salaried state employees. The mercurial political environment, on
the other hand, compelled artists to choose safe subjects and methods, and many of
them cultivated flexible styles and expanded officially sanctioned "national
characteristics," particularly in genres such as ethnic minority, opera movies, and
animations. But in general, like cinema itself, the artists were reduced to mere
functionaries in the revolutionary machinery, especially during the Cultural Revolution.
Postsocialist Cinema: Culture and History, 1980s-1990s
The 1980s started with the new CCP policy of open door and economic reform. The
relaxation of ideological control resulted in increased artistic freedom and a steady
growth of feature production. From eighty-four in 1980 (compared to forty-four in
1978), the annual features remained consistently around 110 or above from 1981 to
1996, with 166 in 1992 as the highest. Audiences loved films as their preferred form of
entertainment in the early 1980s. For instance, The In-Laws (1981), a family drama
about the changing social behaviors, sold over 4,000 prints in its first year, and by the
end of its second year, the film reached 600 million audiences nationwide. Annual
movie attendance was at an all-time high, reaching 25 billion in 1984, the year when the
nationwide exhibition revenues stood at 1.3 billion.
Like no other periods in Chinese cinema, the 1980s saw three generations of filmmakers
actively at work. Those making films in the socialist period, now labeled as the Third
Generation (such as Cheng Yin, Ling Zifeng, and Shui Hua), returned to their favorite
genres like revolutionary history and literary adaptation. Among them, Xie Jin rose to
prominence with his controversial political melodramas of human suffering. He
criticized the Anti-Rightist Campaign in The Legend of Tianyun Mountain (1980) and
exposed the persecution of innocent people during the Cultural Revolution in Hibiscus
Town (1986).
Those who studied films but did not get a chance to direct before 1966--labeled as the
Fourth Generation (such as Xie Fei, Huang Jianzhong, and Zheng Dongtian)--were most
active in the 1980s. Unlike their predecessors who specialize in revolutionary heroes
and "typical" characters, the middle-aged directors concentrated on human emotions,
delighted in ordinary folk's everyday experience, and conscientiously explored different
cinematic styles. For example, after revealing the brutality of the Cultural Revolution,
Narrow Street (1981) suspends the illusion by providing several possible endings to the
blind protagonist. The kind of modernist technique Narrow Street explored was very
much in the mind of the Fourth Generation, some of whom taught at the Beijing Film
Academy and enthusiastically participated in discussions of film aesthetic and theory
newly introduced from the West. Thematically, a large number of films from the early
1980s confront the previously taboo subject of heterosexual love, and female sexuality
thus became a hot topic, as in A Girl from Hunan (1986). Another noteworthy
development was the prominence of dozen women directors in the 1980s, such as
Huang Shuqin and Zhang Nuanxin. While Sacrificed Youth (1985) foregrounds female
consciousness by exploring a new concept of femininity in a minority region, Woman
Demon Human (1987) endorses female subjectivity by depicting an opera actress' career
of playing a male demon on stage.
The filmmakers who brought Chinese cinema to international attention are those who
graduated from the Beijing Film Academy in 1982, better known as the Fifth
Generation, whose members include Chen Kaige and Zhang Yimou. They began by
challenging the myths of Communist revolution in One and Eight (1984) and Yellow
Earth (1984), two films that intentionally blur the distinction between heroes and
villains and the instantaneous success of Communist propaganda. But the breakthroughs
the Fifth Generation achieved are cinematic as much ideological. Just as the
breathtaking scenes of the loess plateau in Yellow Earth conveys an awesome sense of
the depths of cultural tradition, so does the scenery of Tibetan culture and nature in
Horse Thief (1986) compel the viewer to contemplate the unknown meaning of life and
religion. These films, along with others like Evening Bell (1988), feature minimal plot,
scanty dialogue and diegetic music, natural lighting, and out-of-proportion frame
composition, thereby presenting the visuals as the principal means of decoding meaning
and narrative.
The Fifth Generation was faulted for their obsession with modernist aesthetics at the
expense of the box-office. But since Red Sorghum (1988) won the Golden Bear at the
Berlin Film Festival, many young directors have changed their styles to meet the
international demand for ethnic cultural elements, glossy visuals, and polished narrative.
No longer avant-garde, these award-winning films include Raise the Red Lantern
(1991), Farewell My Concubine (1993), Ermo (1994), and Red Firecracker, Green
Firecracker (1994). One exception to the turn to the "global popular" among the Fifth
Generation is Tian Zhuangzhuang, who was banned from directing immediately after
The Blue Kite (1993), a political melodrama that refuses to heal the traumas of
Communist revolution.
In the mid-1990s, Tian turned to sponsor a new group of directors--sometimes described
as the Sixth Generation--who had graduated in the late 1980s and embarked on their
careers at a time when the state studios could no longer afford experimental films in the
wake of economic reform. Now fully responsible for their own financial wellbeing,
many studios switched to entertainment films, especially those in the genres of martial
arts, thrillers, and comedies. But the film market has shrunk miserably since the record
high's in the mid-1980s, as audiences now have access to other forms of entertainment.
In the early 1990s, state studios routinely co-produced films with Hong Kong
companies, providing facilities and manpower to generate the much-needed cash.
Given this inhospitable situation, the Sixth Generation had two options for directing:
either go underground on their own with no hope of public release or raise money and
purchase studio labels for their releases. In the early 1990s, He Jianjun, Wang
Xiaoshuai, and Zhang Yuan chose the first option and directed The Days (1993), Red
Beads (1993), and Beijing Bastards (1993). Hailed as examples of "outlawed"
filmmaking, films like these were regularly "smuggled" out of China and screened at
international film festivals. A number of other young directors, such as Ah Nian, Guan
Hu, and Lu Xuechang chose the second option and patiently waited for the censors to
approve their debuts, which came out in the mid-1990s.
In many ways, the new directors intentionally challenge the aesthetics of the Fifth
Generation. Instead of abstract reflection on or exhibitionist display of Chinese culture
and history, the Sixth Generation prefers images and motifs expressive of their personal
feelings of alienation, anguish, and anger at the status quo, such as abortion, alcoholism,
drug, sex, violence, as well as rock music, their favored genre. Apart from emphasizing
youth subculture, a relatively new subject in Chinese cinema, the Sixth Generation
pursues the kind of screen images they perceived as more realistic, more "truthful" to
everyday life than the films of the previous generations. In the late 1990s, their search
for "truths" culminated in a documentary style concentrating on the life of the marginal
figures, such as alcoholics, gays, and prisoners, as exemplified in Zhang Yuan's works
like Seventeen Years (1999). An even younger group (including Wang Quan'an and Lou
Ye) came to the scene with cinematic tour de force like Lunar Eclipse (1999) and The
Suzhou River (2000), both exploring cinematic doublings in the urban labyrinth with
rich visuals and intriguing plots.
Conclusion: Transnational Cinema
In the beginning years of the new millennium, Chinese cinema consists of these major
types: alternative film, art film, commercial film, and leitmotif film. Alternative films
are represented by the Sixth Generation and emerging directors who produce outside the
studio system and whose works, such as Platform >(2000), are exhibited at the
international film festivals beyond the knowledge of most Chinese audiences. Art films,
such as Shadow Magic (2000) and Beijing Bicycle (2001), are increasingly funded by
private sources or overseas money, released both in China and elsewhere, and usually
intended for prestige as much as for profits. Commercial films are basically market-
driven productions, and the "New Year Picture" is a new subcategory for entertaining
films timed for release in the holiday season from late December (Christmas) to early
February (the Chinese New Year). Since the late 1990s, Feng Xiaogang's comedies like
A Sigh (2000) have consistently scored the top box-office scores, so competitive with
Hollywood that Columbia invested in Feng's Big Shot's Funeral (2001), a hilarious
comedy about an aging American director shooting a film in Beijing's Forbidden City.
The leitmotif films are those heavily subsided by the state, which typically glorify
certain key events in Communist revolution and socialist accomplishments. Except for
films about major battles, the leitmotif films have recently attracted established directors
such as Wu Ziniu, whose participation--as in The National Anthem (1999)--has
enriched the range of cinematic expressions in this otherwise rigid propaganda category.
In general, all types of films mentioned above feature certain kind of transnational
connections in financing, casting, marketing, and narrative or visual construction. Coproductions have been an effective mean of sharing risks and maximizing returns, and
Zhang Yimou and many others benefited tremendously from such joint investments in
the early to mid-1990s. For instance, of 146 films released in 1995, 35 (or 24 percent)
were coproductions (chiefly with Hong Kong). However, due to the new policy
requiring that most of post-production work be done in the mainland, the number of coproductions dropped to about ten in 1996, out of a total of 110. From there the annual
production nose-dived from 88 in 1997 to 37 in 1998 and about 40 in 1999. Cheap
pirated VCD's (video compact disks), rundown exhibition venues, relatively expensive
ticket prices, and low production values in domestic films are frequently blamed for the
declining numbers of movie attendance. From 1997 to 1999, 70 percent of Chinesemade films failed to recover their production costs, which averaged around three million
yuan. The "giant pictures"--Hollywood blockbusters like Titanic--imported to China
since October 1994 on the 50-50 split box-office arrangement and limited at ten each
year--also take the blame. But as more Hollywood films are due to enter the Chinese
market now that China has joined the World Trade Organization (WTO), the prospect of
Chinese cinema is far from rosy.
Nevertheless, in the new millennium, more new talents have emerged, and more private
sources seem willing to invest in film projects. Calls for reforms in the distribution and
exhibition sectors as well as for the loosening of film censorship have become more
frequent as the WTO pressure increases. In 2002, the state is experimenting with a new
system of competing theater chains in exhibition at the provincial level. Together with
the recently integrated film corporations in production (as in Beijing and Shanghai),
such measures indicate the trend of consolidation as a means of safeguarding the
"national cinema" and confronting the imminent Hollywood dominance in the Chinese
market. In the meantime, Hollywood has chosen cooperation and coproduction (as in
the case of Big Shot's Funer) as a short-term strategy to test uncharted waters. With
Hollywood's investment in Chinese commercial fares and Europe's in Chinese
"underground" art films, Chinese cinema has indeed outgrown its "national" boundary
and has turned transnational in the new millennium.
Notes on Distributors and Other Sources
British Film Institute (BFI), 21 Stephen Street, London W1P 1PL, UK, 20-7255-1444
Celluloid Dream (CD), International Sales, Pierre Menaham, 331-4970-0987
Cheng & Tsui Company (CT), 25 West Street, Boston, MA 02111, 1-800-554-1963,
FAX: (617) 426-3669
China Film Imports and Exports Company (CFIE), Facets Video, 1517 West Fullerton
Avenue, Chicago, IL 60614, (800) 331-6197, FAX (773) 929-5437
Fox Lorber Associates Inc. (FL), 419 Park Avenue South, 20th Floor, New York, NY
10016, (212) 686-6777, FAX: (212) 545-9931
Greg Lewis, Department of History, 1205 University Circle, Weber State University,
Ogden, UT 84408-1205, (801) 626-6707, FAX: (801) 626-7613, glewis@weber.edu
Kino International Company, 333 W 39 Street, Suite 503, New York, NY 10018, 1-800562-3330, (212) 629-6880, FAX: (212) 714-0871, filmrentals@kino.com,
Nan Hai Video (NH), 510 Broadway, Suite 300, Millbrae, CA 94030, (415) 2592100/2121, FAX: (415) 259-2108,
New Yorker Films (NY), 16 West 61st Street, New York, NY 10023, (212) 247-6110,
FAX: (212) 307-7855,
Pacific Film Archives (PFA), 2575 Bancroft Way, University of California, Berkeley,
CA 94720
Selected Chinese Films
(All titles below carry English subtitles and are available for purchase unless otherwise
indicated.)
The Blue Kite (Lan fengzheng), dir. Tian Zhuangzhuang, 1993; VHS: Kino, Laser:
Facets
Beijing Bastards (Beijing zazhong), dir. Zhang Yuan, 1993; VHS: BFI
Beijing Bicycle (Shiqisui de danche), dir. Wang Xiaoshuai, 2001; DVD & VHS:
Amazon.com
Breaking with Old Ideas (Juelie), dir. Li Wenhua, 1975; VHS: NH
The City That Never Sleeps (Buye cheng), dir. Tang Xiaodan, 1957; VHS: Greg Lewis
Crossroads (Shizi jietou), dir. Shen Xiling, 1937; VHS: NH (no subtitles), print: PFA
(not for circulation)
Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (Wohu canglong), dir. Ang Lee, 1999; DVD & VHS:
Amazon.com
Crows and Sparrows (Wuya yu maque), dir. Zheng Junli et al., b/w, 1949; VHS:
Amazon.com., FL, NH
The Days (Dong Chun de rizi), dir. Wang Xiaoshuai, 1993, b/w; VHS: BFI
Ermo (Ermo), dir. Zhou Xiaowen, 1994; VHS subtitled or dubbed: Amazon.com
Evening Bell (Wanzhong), dir. Wu Ziniu, 1988; VHS: NH
Farewell My Concubine (Bawang bieji), dir. Chen Kaige, 1993; DVD & VHS:
Amazon.com
Five Golden Flowers (Wuduo jinhua), dir. Wang Jiayi, 1959; VHS: NH
A Girl from Hunan (Xiangnü Xiaoxiao), dir. Xie Fei, 1986; VHS: NH
Hibiscus Town (Furong zhen), dir. Xie Jin, 1986; VHS: NH
Horse Thief (Daoma zei), dir. Tian Zhuangzhuang, 1986; VHS: CT, FL, NH
The Lin Family Shop (Linjia puzi), dir. Shui Hua, 1959; VHS: NH
Myriad of Lights (Wanjia denghou), dir. Shen Fu, 1948; VHS: NH
New Year's Sacrifice (Zhufu), dir. Sang Hu, 1957; VHS: NH
Plunder of Peach and Plum (Tao li jie), dir. Ying Yunwei, 1934, b/w; VHS: NH
Raise the Red Lantern (Dahong denglong gaogao gua), dir. Zhang Yimou, 1991; DVD
& VHS: Amazon.com
Red Firecracker, Green Firecracker (Paoda shuangdeng), dir. He Ping, 1994; DVD &
VHS: Amazon.com
Red Detachment of Women (Hongse niangzi jun), dir. Xie Jin, 1960; VHS: NH
Red Sorghum (Hong gaoliang), dir. Zhang Yimou, 1988; VHS: Facets, print: NY
Sacrificed Youth (Qingchun ji), dir. Zhang Nuanxin, 1985; VHS: CT
Shadow Magic (Xiyang jing), dir. Ann Hu, 2000; DVD & VHS: Amazon.com
Seventeen Years (Guonian huijia), dir. Zhang Yuan, 1999; print: CD
Song of China (Tianlun), dir. Fei Mu with Luo Mingyou, 1935, b/w, silent; VHS: Facets
Spring in a Small Town (Xiaocheng zhichun), dir. Fei Mu, 1948, b/w; VHS: NH (no
subtitles, but the translated film script available at: Spring River Flows East (Yijiang
chunshui xiangdong liu), dir. Cai Chusheng, Zheng Junli, 1947, b/w; VHS: NH (no
subtitles), PFA (not for circulation)
Stage Sisters (Wutai jiemei), dir. Xie Jin, 1964; VHS: FL, NH
Street Angel (Malu tianshi), dir. Yuan Muzhi, 1937, b/w; VHS: NH (no subtitles, but
the translated film script available at:), print: PFA (not for circulation)
The Suzhou River (Suzhou he), dir. Lou Ye, 2000; DVD & VHS: Amazon.com
Third Sister Liu (Liu sanjie), dir. Su Li, 1960; VHS: NH
This Life of Mine (Wo zhe yibeizi), dir. Shi Hui, 1950, b/w; VHS: NH
Three Women (Liren xing), dir. Chen Liting, 1949, b/w; VHS: NH
Woman Demon Human (Ren gui qing), dir. Huang Shuqin, 1989; VHS: NH
Yellow Earth (Huang tudi), dir. Chen Kaige, 1984; VHS: Facets, FL, NH, print: CFIE