By Brian Hu

U.S. distributor Cinema Epoch has taken the initiative to make 1930s Shanghai cinema known to American audiences. But a new problem emerges: where does one begin?

For years now, pre-1949 Shanghai cinema has been practically impossible to commercially acquire in the United States with English subtitles. But in a mere six months, the independent distributor Cinema Epoch has single-handedly transformed the market, bringing nearly all of the famous Shanghai films of the 1930s and 40s to region 1 DVD. They began with an obscure choice, the 1927 visual delight Romance of the Western Chamber. In my review of the DVD, I celebrated Cinema Epoch's eclectic release for going beyond the canonical left-wing cinema that Shanghai cinema is best known for.

But in the months that followed, Cinema Epoch unleashed one canonical title after another, and frankly, I couldn't be happier.* Finally, some of the most famous titles in Chinese film history are more than merely titles, but actual films -- and fantastic ones at that -- available to view and study. And finally, directors such as Sun Yu, Cai Chusheng, and Fei Mu, and stars such as Ruan Lingyu, Zhou Xuan, and Butterfly Wu, are now more than mere names, but artists whose contributions are as visible as their international contemporaries Jean Renoir, Frank Borzage, and Marlene Dietrich.

The question for the uninitiated then is: where to start? Cinema Epoch's catalog now contains 12 classics whose titles are mostly unfamiliar to the average cinephile. So for the curious, I've prepared a viewing list of must-sees and more.

Required Viewings

1. Street Angel (Yuan Muzhi, 1937)

Start with the classic of classics. Spring in a Small Town may be called the best Chinese film of all time, but Street Angel is more tender and accessible. It was the first early Shanghai film I'd seen, and that first experience has stayed with me as an exceptionally vivid memory. Partly, it was the music, which includes the classic "Song of the Four Seasons" among others; partly it was the great visual style, which includes the famous opening city scene whose marvelous use of editing and sound has been compared with Eisenstein's films; but without a doubt, the film's most memorable asset is its legendary lead actress Zhou Xuan, who was still in her teens when she starred in Street Angel. Already a popular chanteuse, the film propelled her to superstardom where she would remain as one of Chinese cinema's biggest names throughout the 1930s and 40s.

Unlike many films of the time, Street Angel knows how to make the politics flow naturally from the drama. The misadventures of the urban underclass mix comedy with allegory, glamour with feminism. As such, it encapsulates many of the elements that made the 1930s and 40s Shanghai cinema so successful: music, comedy, sexiness, social relevance.

2. The Big Road (Sun Yu, 1934)

For anyone interested in early Shanghai cinema, no director is more essential than Sun Yu, the Western-educated auteur whose many classics defined the period of Japanese occupation in China. Superficially, films like The Big Road (aka The Highway) are anti-Japanese at its most vulgar. But Sun Yu's films are extraordinary because they exhibit an independent spirit that shouldn't be reduced to any political movement. The Big Road may be about the patriotic struggles of average workers standing up against Japanese aggression, but what makes the political drama work is Sun's ability to create memorable characters (like the feisty go-getter played by Li Lili) and incorporate sound and music, in particular the title song. The Big Road is Shanghai cinema at its most impassioned.

3. The Goddess (Wu Yonggang, 1934)

Meanwhile, Shanghai cinema at its most emotionally charged is The Goddess, starring the immortal actress Ruan Lingyu. This is the only film on my list that isn't released by Cinema Epoch, but I include it here, not only because it is absolutely essential viewing, but also because many don't realize that it has for years now been available on a great DVD with English intertitles from the San Francisco Silent Film Festival. The Goddess is a classic Chinese melodrama of social justice. Ruan plays the most saintly of classic screen women: the steadfast young single mother who is forced into prostitution to feed and educate her son. Ruan avoids the clichés of the role to give her most famous and heart-wrenching performance, illuminating the underworld of pimps, johns, and corruption with elegance and might.

 
4. Spring in a Small Town (Fei Mu, 1948)

Frequently named the greatest of all Chinese films, Spring in a Small Town is as lyrical and quietly heart-breaking a testament to the post-war psyche as anything from Italian neorealism. But comparing it with a film like De Sica's The Bicycle Thief (also from 1948) would be unfair, because stylistically, Spring in a Small Town is no neorealist film. While it contains some famous use of war-torn locations, Fei Mu's film is poetic -- almost ethereal -- because of the insularity of the world it depicts. We could attribute this quality to the film's "Chinese-ness" -- think of tales of royal courts, or dramas of inns and brothels, like Hou Hsiao-hsien's Flowers of Shanghai. Indeed, the brilliance of Fei Mu's film (aside from the unique use of voiceover) is the way it makes an old family compound as degraded and deteriorated as a dusty old inn; pre-war glory is now but a crooked ghost town. The war-battered buildings and stray weeds seem to engulf the humans struggling to survive as a moral family unit after the war. Like a stage play, the film creates great drama and tension with few players: one can count the total number of characters on one hand. But there's no denying that Spring in a Small Town's peerless blend of image and sound is pure cinema.

5. Spring River Flows East (Cai Chusheng and Zheng Junli, 1947)

Like Spring in a Small Town, this epic drama is post-war Shanghai cinema in top form. But if Spring in a Small Town subtly plasters its melodrama on the decaying architecture of pre-war affluence, Spring River Flows East unabashedly wears its melodrama in every facet of the narrative. No short synopsis can do justice to this 3+ hour tale of family transformation following the invasion of Japan. The film is a grand combination of left-wing social consciousness and pre-May 4th romantic traditions. As a result, it has endured as one of Chinese cinema's most beloved works. The final sequence of the film, in which family and class collide on the bloody banks of Shanghai, leaves me floored every time.

6. Song at Midnight (Maxu Weibang, 1937)

Song at Midnight has been called Chinese cinema's first horror film -- and indeed it has scenes frightening enough to justify that claim -- but it's so much more. Roughly inspired by The Phantom of the Opera, Song at Midnight is a bizarre gothic tale as grotesque as the mysterious figure at the center of the story. Director Maxu Weibang (a similarly mysterious figure) adapts the familiar romantic tale to fit the (literal) scars of revolution in 20th century China. The film's many songs are fantastic, but what makes the film so convincingly romantic and moving is the way the use of songs so perfectly fits the narrative's conflicted attitude toward musical and personal expression in a world of social change. The film was remade in 1995 as The Phantom Lover, starring Leslie Cheung, but the original remains so much more weirdly provocative.

Extra Credit

7. Crossroads (Shen Xiling, 1937)

Like Street Angel, Crossroads is a light romantic comedy about young adults trying to make it in Shanghai, despite the weight of society and its woes imposing their will upon its inhabitants. Yet the film is never preachy: the idea of strangers coincidentally coming together in the crossroads of the modern city has a certain optimism about life and love that goes beyond simple patriotism.

8. Queen of Sports (Sun Yu, 1934)

Once again, Sun Yu proves that his left-wing sensibilities are best served by a keen eye for modern life and its comedic rhythms. This time, his call for national progress comes in the form of the female body: athletic and able, but also enchantingly beautiful. In the case of Queen of Sports, that comes in the frame of actress Lili Li in her signature role -- and signature short-shorts.

9. Romance of the Western Chamber (Hou Yao, 1927)

This is one of the oldest Chinese films available anywhere, and it provides a rare opportunity to see another side of early Chinese cinema, a side that proves that Chinese audiences of the time responded most of all to cinematic spectacle and bodily pleasures, rather than the stuffy pedantics of "serious messages." But film history has largely written pure pleasure out of early Chinese film, so this important DVD serves as proof that rowdy editing, impressionistic fight scenes, and visual effects are definitely not new developments in Chinese cinema.

10. Twin Sisters (Zheng Zhengqiu, 1933)

Here's another crowd-pleaser. Twin sisters are separated upon birth: one is kept in the countryside and becomes a modest peasant, the other is brought to the city where she ultimately becomes a concubine and shameless drama queen. After the city sister gives birth, she requests a wetnurse with her same blood type; the melodrama is set in motion when the poorer sister is hired for the job. Imagine The Parent Trap as a drama about class, family, and modernity, and replace the freckles with great actress Butterfly Wu (Hu Die) in a dual role. Wu was one of the few Chinese performers in the 1930s to have moderate fame in the U.S., and hopefully the release of this DVD can bring her talents back in the international limelight.

* As grateful as I am that Cinema Epoch has released these masterpieces for English-language audiences, I'm more than a little disappointed by some of the transfers. Spring River Flows East looks the best, while Street Angel and The Queen of Sports are more than passable given their age. But the transfer of Spring in a Small Town (shown above), perhaps the most awaited of all the titles, looks by the far worst, which is unacceptable given that the film was made much later than some of the other films. Because of the muddy whites and greys, you can barely read the opening credit sequence. The physical world of the film, which gives the drama so much of its intensity and power, is washed away in a white blur.

Most embarrassing of all is that the mainland Chinese DVD of the film put out by quickie distributor Bo Ying is far, far superior to the Cinema Epoch edition, as the comparison above attests. You may gain English subtitles in the Cinema Epoch version, but you end up sacrificing the core of the film's artistry. There is no excuse for this.

[Editor's update (Oct. 22, 2007): A representative from Cinema Epoch has just informed me that a cleaner version of Spring in a Small Town is under way. Better yet, it's coming in a three volume box set including 20 films, slated for a February 2008 release.]

Published: Friday, October 19, 2007