Chinese Cinema,1930s

Lecture 9

Year indicates the year Japan gained control

Shanghai

• First Opium War (1839-1942)– British forces occupy the city– Treaty of Nanjing (1942)• Treaty with Qing Dynasty (1644-1911) results in the

opening of trading ports for international trade

• China’s semi-colonial status– Subsequent treaties negotiated on unfavorable

terms allow foreign nations (U.S., France, Britain) to govern and administer territories of Shanghai

1930s: Shaghai International Settlement (U.S. plus British Territories); French concession to the southwest

Shanghai International

Settlement and French Concession

The Bund, ca. 1928

The Bund, as it may have appeared in the 1940s

Shanghai International Settlement, 1930s

British Armored Car, Shanghai International Settlement, 1932

The Gardens (Huangpu Park) in the Shanghai International Settlement

Postcard, Nanjing Road, Shanghai International Settlement, 1930s

Modernity

• Technology• Transportation—trains, planes, automobiles• Communication• Capitalist production (i.e. division of labor,

etc.)• industrialization

Shanghai: Symbol of Chinese ModernityBanking, Finance, Trans portation

• Modern transportation and communications• By 1921, 20 of 27 most important banks were

headquartered in Shanghai• By 1935, there were 109 banks in Shanghai• By 1935, Shanghai’s financial market was the third

largest in the world (after New York and London)• Of 1,500 novels appearing in the late Qing period,

2/3 were translated from foreign languages• Shengbao, first major daily Chinese newspaper, was

distributed in Shanghai in 1872

Pre-Revolution Shanghai

Shanghai: Symbol of Chinese ModernityCulture and Communications

• Of 1,500 novels appearing in the late Qing period, 2/3 were translated from foreign languages

• Shengbao, first major daily Chinese newspaper, was distributed in Shanghai in 1872

• Largest publishing houses were established in 1897 and 1912 in Shanghai

• Wenmingxi (civilized drama) born in Shanghai– European origin– 1907: Students put on “Black Slave Cries Out to Heaven”

based on Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin

History of Chinese Cinema

• 1896: first public screenings of imported films from the West in Shanghai

• 1896: Lumiere brothers sent their cameraman to film in Hong Kong

• First Chinese film: Dingjun shan (Conquering Jun Mountain, 1905) filmed by Ren Jungfeng (owner of a photo studio); shot with a French camera bought from a German; featuring popular Beijing Opera Star, Tan Xingpei

Tan Xinpei (1847-1917): Beijing Opera Star

History of Chinese Film• Film Exhibition was dominated by foreign interests (90%

foreign)– b/t 1896-1937: 5,000 films were shown, most of which were

foreign– 8 U.S. film companies established distribution systems in China– By the end of the 1920s: most films shown were American

including The Three Muskateers, Robin Hood (with Douglas Fairbanks), The Big Parade, Way down East (with Lilian Gish of Broken Blossoms); Chaplin, Keaton were popular in China

• Ordinary Chinese did not see American films b/c/ they cost 4 times the price of admission to national product (30-50 cents)

• Many directors, cinematographers, and technicians were trained abroad (in the U.S. or France)

History of Chinese Cinema• From 1905-early 1930s: business and

profitability were the main preoccupations– 1925: 175 film companies in the major cities (141

were in Shanghai– Early 1930s main companies: Mingxing (est. 1922);

Tianyi (est. 1925); Lianhua• 3 main genres:– Martial arts– Confucian morality tales (ex: the Orphan Saves his

Grandson)– Love stories

Audiences for Domestic Products

• These films were aimed at popular audiences. A contemporary observer, Harriet Sergeant, claimed that the Shanghai studios “aimed to attract the ordinary man and woman on Nanking Road who has never read a Lu Xun essay or appreciated a woodblock print… Any rickshaw-puller or factory worker could have told you about Shanghai films. Film succeeded where the novel, essay, woodblock print failed. It reached in the heart of the worker.”

Ex: Laborer’s Love (a.k.a Romance of a Fruit Peddler), d. Zhang Shichuan, w. Zheng Zhengqui (founders of Mingxing Company), 1922 (22 minutes)

Earliest Surviving Chinese Film

Emergence of Chinese Nationalism, 1930s

• May Fourth Movement (1919)—turning point, intellectuals turn to the left– Begins with student protest against imperialism and the

unfavorable terms of the Treaty of Versailles– Dissatisfaction leads to establishment of the Chinese

Communist Party (CCP) in 1921• 1931: Japanese invasion of Manchuria• 1932: Japanese attack on Shanghai• 1937-1945: Japanese occupation of Shanghai during

the Second Sino-Japanese War

A Break with the Past: Chinese Cinema, 1930s

• Confrontation b/t Nationalist government (Kuomintang Party-KMP) and the Chinese Communist Party

• The Political Parties enter cultural scene– CCP organizes the Leftwing Dramatist League of China,

leading to “Left Wing Film Movement”– KMP exerts censorship and spawns the Nationalist Film

Movement• Shift away from commercial considerations to

political-didactic ones

Left Wing Film Movement, 1932-1937

• Alliance between profit seeking film companies like Mingxing, Lianhua, Tianyi AND leftwing screenwriters backed by the CCP

• Subject to censorship by the KMP government– Censored by producer– Censored by director– Censored by the state• At the screenplay stage• After production

Left Wing Film Movement, 1932-1937• Narrative structure is melodramatic, indebted to

Hollywood– Conflicts between good and evil– Goodness and unrecognized virtue are first unrecognized and

then recognized and rewarded• Stories are contemporary, daily life

– Centered on the poor and working class• Film style: traditional, continuity editing; eliciting diegetic

absorption• Mode of Production: industrial, profit-seeking methods

like Hollywood• Politics: not as radical as one might expect; exposing social

ills merely; anti-imperialism and anti-fedualism