Chinese Revolutionary Cinema: Propaganda, Aesthetics and Internationalism 1949–1966 9781788318914, 9781786734341

Table of contents :
Cover
Author Biography
Title Page
Copyright
Contents
List of Illustrations
Acknowledgements
Introduction
The Soviet Turn in Chinese Film Discourse
The Missing Years: 1949–66
State Propaganda and Aesthetic Experiment
Internationalism
Translation in Film Theory and Criticism
1 Propaganda and Film Aesthetics
The Visual Age of Propaganda in the Interwar Period
The Rectification Campaign (1951–2)
The First Five-Year Plan (1953–7)
The Hundred Flowers Campaign (1956–7)
The Great Leap Forward Campaign (1958–61)
The Blooming and Contending of 1961–2
2 Literature on Screen: Recasting Classical Hollywood Narration in Family Melodrama
Recasting Classical Hollywood Narration in Chinese Literary Terms: The Case of Xia Yan
This Life of Mine
‘The New Year’s Sacrifice’: May Fourth Critical Realism
The New Year’s Sacrifice: A Family Melodrama
Re-narrativisation and Temporality
Heterosexual Romance and Family
Orchestrating Melodramatic Pathos
The Controversy of Xianglin Sao’s Resistance
Revolutionary Family
3 Translating Soviet Montage
‘Too Strange’: Translating the Riddle of Montage
The Revolutionary Allure of Soviet Directors: Sergei Eisenstein and Vsevolod Pudovkin
Reinventing Montage: The Rhetoric of Simplicity
Shot Division as Re-Creation
Attractions
Montage and Revolutionary Songs
Comparative Montage and ‘Subjectified Sound’: The Case of Nie Er
Internal Montage: Superimposition, Memory-Making and Leitmotif
Empty Shots and the Relay of Gazes
Romance and Reunion
4 Socialist Glamour: The Socialist Star Craze, Stanislavski's System and Cinematic Iconography of the Gaze
The 1962 Socialist Star Craze
Star Discourse in Republican Shanghai Cinema
Translating Stanislavski’s System: An Actor’s Self-Cultivation
Age Matters: Casting for an Iconic Role Model
Tiyan and Tixian: Experience, Embodiment and Exemplification
Cinematic Iconography of the Gaze: The Illuminating Eye
Capturing Glamour: Painting with Light
Female Icons, Femininity and Matriarchy
5 Visions of Internationalism in Chinese Film Journals
Internationalism
Lean to One Side: From Dubbing to Sino – Soviet Co-Production
Celebrating Soviet Film Weeks and the October Revolution in Chinese Film Journals
Film Art Translations
International Cinema
Chinese Cinema
Redefining Red Friendship: Post-Bandung Afro – Asian – Latin American Solidarity
Asian Film Weeks and Afro – Asian Film Festivals
Sino – Albanian Co-Production
Advertising Chinese Cinema: The Multi-Language Film Journal China’s Screen
Conclusion
Notes
Glossary
Filmography
Bibliography
Index
Plates

Citation preview

Jessica Ka Yee Chan is Assistant Professor of Chinese Studies at the University of Richmond, USA. She has published in the East Asian Journal of Popular Culture, the Journal of Chinese Cinemas, Modern Chinese Literature and Culture, and The Opera Quarterly.

‘A long-awaited book that sheds new light on revolutionary Chinese cinema. Eloquently written, it opens our eyes not only to these films’ politics, but also to their forms and artistry.’ – Victor Fan, Senior Lecturer in Film Studies, King’s College London

‘Chinese Revolutionary Cinema is based on meticulous research and insightful analysis. Avoiding Cold War rhetoric, Chan brilliantly shows how Maoist cinema interacted with Hollywood and Soviet paradigms, as it adapted melodramatic structures, montage theory, and star promotion to the revolutionary cause.’ – Yomi Braester, Byron W. and Alice L. Lockwood Professor in the Humanities, University of Washington, USA

Chinese Revolutionary Cinema Propaganda, Aesthetics and Internationalism 1949–1966 Jessica Ka Yee Chan

For my parents

Published in 2019 by I.B.Tauris & Co. Ltd London • New York www.ibtauris.com Copyright q 2019 Jessica Ka Yee Chan The right of Jessica Ka Yee Chan to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by the author in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in a review, this book, or any part thereof, may not be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher. Every attempt has been made to gain permission for the use of the images in this book. Any omissions will be rectified in future editions. References to websites were correct at the time of writing. International Library of the Moving Image 48 ISBN: 978 1 78831 190 8 eISBN: 978 1 78672 434 2 ePDF: 978 1 78673 434 1 A full CIP record for this book is available from the British Library A full CIP record is available from the Library of Congress Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: available Typeset in Minion Pro by OKS Prepress Services, Chennai, India Printed and bound by CPI Group (UK) Ltd, Croydon, CR0 4YY

Contents List of Illustrations Acknowledgements

viii xii

Introduction The Soviet Turn in Chinese Film Discourse The Missing Years: 1949–66 State Propaganda and Aesthetic Experiment Internationalism Translation in Film Theory and Criticism

1 3 8 13 18 21

1

Propaganda and Film Aesthetics The Visual Age of Propaganda in the Interwar Period The Rectification Campaign (1951–2) The First Five-Year Plan (1953–7) The Hundred Flowers Campaign (1956–7) The Great Leap Forward Campaign (1958–61) The Blooming and Contending of 1961–2

23 24 32 36 40 46 49

2

Literature on Screen: Recasting Classical Hollywood Narration in Family Melodrama Recasting Classical Hollywood Narration in Chinese Literary Terms: The Case of Xia Yan This Life of Mine ‘The New Year’s Sacrifice’: May Fourth Critical Realism The New Year’s Sacrifice: A Family Melodrama Re-narrativisation and Temporality Heterosexual Romance and Family Orchestrating Melodramatic Pathos The Controversy of Xianglin Sao’s Resistance Revolutionary Family

v

54 55 62 65 68 70 72 74 78 81

Chinese Revolutionary Cinema 3

4

5

Translating Soviet Montage ‘Too Strange’: Translating the Riddle of Montage The Revolutionary Allure of Soviet Directors: Sergei Eisenstein and Vsevolod Pudovkin Reinventing Montage: The Rhetoric of Simplicity Shot Division as Re-Creation Attractions Montage and Revolutionary Songs Comparative Montage and ‘Subjectified Sound’: The Case of Nie Er Internal Montage: Superimposition, Memory-Making and Leitmotif Empty Shots and the Relay of Gazes Romance and Reunion Socialist Glamour: The Socialist Star Craze, Stanislavski's System and Cinematic Iconography of the Gaze The 1962 Socialist Star Craze Star Discourse in Republican Shanghai Cinema Translating Stanislavski’s System: An Actor’s Self-Cultivation Age Matters: Casting for an Iconic Role Model Tiyan and Tixian: Experience, Embodiment and Exemplification Cinematic Iconography of the Gaze: The Illuminating Eye Capturing Glamour: Painting with Light Female Icons, Femininity and Matriarchy Visions of Internationalism in Chinese Film Journals Internationalism Lean to One Side: From Dubbing to Sino – Soviet Co-Production Celebrating Soviet Film Weeks and the October Revolution in Chinese Film Journals Film Art Translations vi

87 89 92 97 102 104 105 106 108 110 113

119 120 124 127 129 133 138 141 144 147 149 152 157 159

Contents International Cinema Chinese Cinema Redefining Red Friendship: Post-Bandung Afro –Asian – Latin American Solidarity Asian Film Weeks and Afro – Asian Film Festivals Sino –Albanian Co-Production Advertising Chinese Cinema: The Multi-Language Film Journal China’s Screen

160 160 161 163 165 166

Conclusion

173

Notes Glossary Filmography Bibliography Index

180 215 222 225 237

vii

List of Illustrations Tables Table 2.1 Principles of classical Hollywood narration that characterise American cinema from 1917 to 1960.

58

Table 3.1 Pudovkin’s and Eisenstein’s categories of montage.

93

Table 3.2 Ji Zhifeng’s Mengtaiqi jiqiao qiantan (A Brief Introduction to Montage Techniques) (1962) is divided into nine sections, which together establish montage as a general term for all editing methods. 102 Table 4.1 Major principles of Stanislavski’s system.

135

Figures Figure 2.1 The physical act of turning the pages, accompanied by the off-screen voice of the protagonist – narrator, functions as a cinematic punctuation that divides the film into sequences. This Life of Mine (1950).

62

Figure 2.2 The final shot of This Life of Mine (1950).

64

Figure 2.3–2.4 Xianglin Sao’s transformation from hostility to awakened love to the establishment of a family is conveyed in eight shots with elliptical editing. The New Year’s Sacrifice (1956).

74

Figure 2.5 The 1956 film adaptation of ‘The New Year’s Sacrifice’, the first colour narrative film (caise gushipian) in the PRC, offered an unprecedented immediacy in visualising Ah Mao’s melodramatic death.

77

Figure 2.6 Appearing five times during the New Year celebrations in the film, the fish used for the ancestral offering functions as a moral symbol and a reminder of Xianglin Sao’s plight. The New Year’s Sacrifice (1956).

78

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List of Illustrations Figure 2.7 The film adaptation’s most controversial sequence: Xianglin Sao in a frenzy, violently hacking away the temple threshold with a cleaver. This sequence, absent in the original literary text, led contemporary audiences to debate the interpretation of Xianglin Sao’s character. The New Year’s Sacrifice (1956). 79 Figure 2.8 The added scene at the threshold of the temple was seen by some critics as a politically motivated violation of the short story’s realism, while director Xia Yan and lead actress Bai Yang said it depicted Xianglin Sao’s impulsive emotional explosion. The New Year’s Sacrifice (1956).

79

Figure 3.1 A contrast montage sequence that establishes parallel actions in The New Woman (1934).

96

Figure 3.2 A split-screen montage sequence that establishes contrast as well as parallel actions. The New Woman (1934).

96

Figure 3.3 Shi Dongshan considered the mass slaughter sequence in Eisenstein’s Strike (1925) an example of contrastive editing.

100

Figure 3.4 Ji Zhifeng illustrated the correlation between shot distance and emotional intensity as a curve, which he called the curve of ‘emotional development’. The shorter the shot distance, the higher the emotional intensity. The X-axis labels read (from left to right): long shot, medium shot, medium close-up shot, medium shot and long shot. Courtesy of the Chinese University of Hong Kong Library.

103

Figure 3.5 Fast cutting is combined with a revolutionary song in a montage sequence in Gate Number Six (1952).

105

Figure 3.6 A montage sequence in Nie Er (1959) that distorts temporal– spatial order to re-create a historical continuity that represents revolutionary struggle.

107

Figure 3.7 The use of internal montage in Stage Sisters (1965).

109

Figure 3.8 Relay of gazes in a montage sequence in Pudovkin’s Storm Over Asia (1928).

110

ix

Chinese Revolutionary Cinema Figure 3.9 Relay of gazes from the lead character to supporting characters to passionate onlookers in a montage sequence in Zhao Yiman (1950).

111

Figure 3.10 Relay of gazes and empty shots in a montage sequence in Sea Hawk (1959). 112 Figure 3.11 An illustration of an establishing shot and a shot/reverse shot that crosses the axis of action in Ji Zhifeng’s Mengtaiqi jiqiao qiantan (A Brief Introduction to Montage Techniques) (1962). Courtesy of the Chinese University of Hong Kong Library.

114

Figure 3.12 The use of shot/reverse shot to orchestrate kisses and physical embrace in a reunion witnessed by Stalin in The Fall of Berlin (1949).

114

Figure 3.13 The relay of gazes in Sea Hawk (1959) points to an off-screen space with a defined diegetic object, presenting the hero and the national flag as the heroine’s (and the ideal audience’s) twinned objects of desire.

115

Figure 3.14 Neither relayed through other major or supporting characters nor punctuated by empty shots, Qionghua’s gaze becomes properly socialist as she leaps to political consciousness as a Party member in The Red Detachment of Women (1961).

116

Figure 5.1 The Chinese film journal Film Art (Dianying yishu) (issue 1, 1961) highlighted this shot as a ‘touching’ (dongrende) moment of solidarity in the Sino – Soviet co-production Wind from the East (1959).

155

Figure 5.2 Multinational representatives from the Comintern joining hands in Moscow. Wind from the East (1959).

155

Figure 5.3 Wang Demin demonstrates that he can read and translate Soviet revolutionary slogans, outsmarting his teacher and brother in arms Matveyev, who struggles with Chinese. Wind from the East (1959).

157

x

List of Illustrations Figure 5.4 An illustrated map of Premier Zhou Enlai’s visits to Albania, Burma, Ceylon, Pakistan and ten countries in Africa, constructing a ‘glittering arc’ of friendship. Courtesy of the Chinese University of Hong Kong Library.

168

Plates Plate 1 The cinematic technique of ‘dotting the dragon’s eyes’ in Song of Youth (1959). Plate 2 Low-contrast, soft frontal lighting is used to emphasise femininity and Ruan Lingyu’s delicacy of complexion in The Goddess (1934). Plate 3 A glamorous ‘halo’ effect created by natural backlight in Song of Youth (1959). Plate 4 The use of backlight enhances glamour, as if light is emanating from the socialist icon. Song of Youth (1959). Plate 5 Lin Daojing’s glistening eyes shine due to the cinematic technique of ‘dotting the dragon’s eyes’. Song of Youth (1959). Plate 6 Qionghua’s fiery agitation is enhanced by the use of lighting. The Red Detachment of Women (1961). Plate 7 Orchestrated by montage, the socialist realist gaze and performative gestures are part of socialist iconography. The Red Detachment of Women (1961).

xi

Acknowledgements I am grateful for the support and generosity of many who invested in me and this project. The Harold Leonard Memorial Fellowship in Film Study from the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities and several travel grants and summer fellowships from the University of Richmond provided critical support in the research and writing of this project. I thank Kathleen Skerrett and Patrice Rankine, Deans of the School of Arts and Sciences at the University of Richmond, for their support of this publication through a subvention. Many colleagues generously offered their time and critical eye as this ‘baggy monster’ took shape and acquired a life of its own. This project benefited immensely from constructive audience feedback at Colby College, Macalester College, Penn State University, St. Olaf College, the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, the University of Minnesota, the University of Richmond, the University of Wisconsin, River Falls and Washington University in St. Louis. In particular, I would like to thank Rosemary Roberts and Li Li Peters, organisers of ‘The Making and Remaking of China’s Red Classics’ symposium at the University of Queensland, Australia, for creating the stimulating and collegial workshop where I tested some early ideas that eventually found their way into this book. I also thank the following colleagues, some of whom I have yet to meet, for their incisive criticism, suggestions and assistance: Jonathan Abel, Kim Besio, Timothy Brennan, Tina Mai Chen, Xiaomei Chen, Robert Chi, Rossen Djagalov, Daisy Yan Du, Kirk Denton, Gengsong Gao, Li Guo, Eric Hayot, Robert Hegel, Calvin Hui, Austin Jersild, Jennifer Kapczynski, Richard King, Fiona Law, Steven Lee, Yan Li, Song Hwee Lim, Elizabeth McGuire, Elidor M€ehilli, Eric Mok, Lissa Schneider-Rebozo, Marc Robinson, Shuang Shen, Julie de Sherbinin, Gaylyn Studlar, Xiaobing Tang, Nicolai Volland, Ban Wang, Yiman Wang, Zheng Wang, Zhuoyi Wang, Ankeney Weitz, Chuen-Fung Wong, Xin Yang, Yu Zhang and Mao Zheng. The anonymous reviewers’ sense of precision and perfection was indispensible to the completion of this book. Any oversights are my own.

xii

Acknowledgements The support staff at the Universities Service Centre for China Studies at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, the Fung Ping Shan Library at the University of Hong Kong, the Shanghai Library and the Boatwright Memorial Library at the University of Richmond kindly provided assistance in locating periodicals and rare books. My editor, Maddy Hamey-Thomas, saw the potential of this project at an early stage and always trusted that I can deliver. My copy editor, Tedra Osell, knew what I wanted to say and put it more beautifully and forcefully than I did. I thank Alison Britton for her patience and attention to details in polishing my work. I could always count on David Campbell and Melissa Foster and her team when it came to images and final production. Parts of chapter 3 appear in modified form in ‘Translating “Montage”: The Discreet Attractions of Soviet Montage for Chinese Revolutionary Cinema,’ Journal of Chinese Cinemas 5, no. 3 (2011): 197–218, reprinted by permission of Taylor & Francis. At the University of Richmond, Kathleen Skerrett reminded me of my ‘Russian roots’ in a department that represents internationalism. For that, I thank her and the many colleagues who have helped me to navigate university life: Dixon Abreu, Julie Baker, Tom Bonfiglio, Kathrin Bower, Abigail Cheever, Michele Cox, Monti Datta, Olivier Delers, Molly Fair, Jane Geaney, Libby Gruner, Mimi Hanaoka, Yvonne Howell, Kasongo Kapanga, Francoise Ravaux-Kirkpatrick, Sara Pappas, the late Paul Porterfield, Lidia Radi, Sharon Scinicariello, Rania Sweis and Vincent Wang. Youli Sun and his team at Peking University were always on call to provide support in moments of crisis. My students Bryan Carapucci, Marcin Jerzewski and Virginia Sun continue to inspire, motivate and assist me by volunteering as research assistants or co-translators. This book began as a dissertation at the University of Minnesota under the supervision of my long-time mentor, Jason McGrath. Writing a book was not part of the plan, but Jason somehow convinced me that this book had chosen me, and his integrity and dry humour gave me the right mindset for the many challenges I continue to face. Alice Lovejoy, Shaden Tageldin and Ann Waltner, with their intellectual breadth and acumen, shaped this book in important ways. Joseph R. Allen, a mastermind behind the scene, is a coach I cannot live without. Thank you for choosing this book among the many that could have been chosen. I would not have chosen writing as a profession without the encouragement of Walter Hatch and Sheila McCarthy, who instilled in me

xiii

Chinese Revolutionary Cinema a sense of rhythm and witnessed my transformation from a mute to someone with a voice. I am grateful for my small community of joggers, potters, and family and friends: Carole Evans, Jim Laney, Brian Farmer, Mary Gardner-Stanley, Tim Hamilton, Natasha Kudriavtseva, Lorenza Marcin, Jessica Rock, Teresa Theesfeld, Laura Wen, Lizt Wong, my parents, and my sisters Vanessa, Sandy, Juliana and Elaine. I thank my mother, especially, for telling me stories of revolution. This book is dedicated to my parents.

xiv

Introduction

Mao Zedong, the chairman of the Chinese Communist Party, initiated the mass campaign ‘Follow the Examples of Comrade Lei Feng’ in 1963, creating fictional People’s Liberation Army soldier Lei Feng, a perfectly self-disciplined socialist hero, for everyday mass emulation. A cursory look at the film Lei Feng (Dong Zhaoqi, 1964) gives us a sense of the everyday version of heroism that permeated popular discourse at the time. The film chronicles Lei Feng’s good deeds: volunteering at a construction site in a school, escorting an elderly woman and her grandson on a rainy day, donating money to a village and sending money to his comrade’s sick mother. Approaching the end of the film, Lei Feng donates 100 yuan (his monthly stipend is 6 yuan) to a village that is recovering from a flood, but the head of the village refuses to accept the donation and asks Lei Feng to send the money to his family instead. Lei Feng, an orphan who has no biological family ties, begins to tear up as he hears the word ‘family’: Lei Feng: Village chief:

Lei Feng:

Family? What? You don’t have a family? [followed by a close-up shot of Lei Feng’s scars, which remind him of his family’s suffering before liberation] No. I have a family. The Party and Chairman Mao are my parents. The People’s Commune is my family. All of China is my family. Now that my family here is affected by the flood, I have the right and responsibility to help my family. Please accept my donation [. . .] What parent wouldn’t accept a son’s good will?

1

Chinese Revolutionary Cinema No longer an orphan, Lei Feng feels a new sense of belonging, underscoring the ubiquitous presence of the Party and Mao as the film’s ideological and moral anchor. The film’s transitions are sprinkled with Mao’s quotations and Lei Feng’s reading notes, promoting the nationwide study of Mao’s works. The film’s Lei Feng embodies the socialist work ethic. He studies Mao’s works religiously. He has no romantic love life. His good deeds are too perfect to be true. In a diegetic voiceover, he explains: ‘In the eyes of the Party, I am forever a little child. Yet, in the eyes of children, I have already become an adult.’ In popular discourse, Lei Feng was constructed as a role model, an exemplary socialist citizen, a legendary hero who died young, and an orphan dependent on the nurturing love of the Party and Mao. The cinematic construction of Lei Feng, model citizen, presented a heroic ideal that prefigured the even more radical sense of heroism promulgated during the Cultural Revolution (1966 –76). This book tells the story of how this heightened sense of revolutionary heroism evolved in a body of work that I call ‘Chinese revolutionary cinema’. These fictional films, produced during the ‘Seventeen Years’ (1949 –66), celebrate the creation of heroes and heroines that represented the Mao era (1949 – 76). In their study of 1930s Stalinist propaganda, Kevin M. F. Platt and David Brandenberger highlight the persistent effort by the Soviet state to rewrite narratives of heroism. Stories about Old Bolsheviks, Red Army commanders, industrial shock workers, champion agricultural labourers and historic figures from the pre-revolutionary period such as Ivan the Terrible, Peter the Great, Aleksandr Nevskii, Aleksandr Pushkin, Mikhail Lermontov and Lev Tolstoi, were rewritten and appropriated to adapt to the ideological needs of the Stalinist state.1 Heroic tales were used to inspire and rally ‘by example’ because they provided a ‘common narrative – a story of identity – that the entire society could relate to’.2 On a similar trajectory, Laikwan Pang, in her study of creative production during the Cultural Revolution, suggests ‘cloning’ as a metaphor to describe the creative process (as well as the subversive potential) of copying, emulating and reimagining heroic and exemplary figures that embodied the ideals of the Chinese revolutionary state.3 Despite differences in disciplinary and geographical focus, these scholars suggest the central role heroic narratives played in subject formation and shaping mass consciousness in socialist propaganda states.

2

Introduction ‘Propaganda’, stripped of its Cold War pejorative connotations, is used in this study as a neutral term, referring to the mass dissemination of ideological, religious, cultural and artistic forms that reinforce the hegemony of the state, religious institutions or transnational capitalism. As a propaganda state, the newly established People’s Republic was heavily invested in testing and stretching the limits and possibilities of cinema through a series of aesthetic experiments devoted to telling heroic tales on screen. During the Seventeen Years of 1949–66, multiple radical aesthetic campaigns and experiments were carried out through trial and error to create a revolutionary aesthetics of heroism. Each chapter of this book deals with an aesthetic experiment that redefined a major aspect of fiction film-making: screenwriting, cinematography or acting. The revolutionary aesthetics of heroism created by film artists working under the auspices of the state was not only transformational, experimental and visionary, but also simultaneously national, international and socialist in style and scope. These aesthetic experiments transformed the relationship between the state and film artists. The state created the pressure-cooker conditions under which the artists’ creativity thrived or withered, while the artists provided the insights, expertise and skills without which the state could not have sustained its aesthetic experiments. The revolutionary aesthetics of heroism is national in form, and socialist and internationalist in spirit. Chinese film-makers’ selective appropriation of the film languages of Hollywood and the Soviet avantgarde made Chinese works accessible to a domestic (including the illiterate peasantry) and international audience. Film discourse in Chinese film journals articulated visions of socialist internationalism and China’s selfimage in the context of world cinema. As Chinese film-makers (many of whom also served as cultural bureaucrats) creatively manoeuvred between Hollywood, the legacy of the Soviet avant-garde, global star culture of the 1960s and the rise of Third Cinema in the post-Bandung anti-colonial movements, they communicated a revolutionary aesthetics of heroism that could potentially serve as an alternative aesthetic in world cinema. This study traces the evolution of that alternative aesthetic.

The Soviet Turn in Chinese Film Discourse The period known as the ‘Seventeen Years’ after the establishment of the People’s Republic in 1949 was a time of abundant film production under

3

Chinese Revolutionary Cinema the communist regime. The period witnessed one of the most daring aesthetic and political experiments in film history. As early as 1942, Mao Zedong, quoting Vladimir Lenin, described proletarian literature and art as ‘cogs and wheels’ in the revolutionary machine.4 After the establishment of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) in 1949, the Communist Party’s immediate priority was to nationalise the film industry and produce films that would serve socialist ideals and win the hearts of its people. Film, as a form of education and entertainment, was given the social mission of moulding Chinese citizens into new socialist subjects. Films produced during the Seventeen Years, prior to the Cultural Revolution, were generically diverse: animation, comedy, documentary, newsreels, opera and science education. These genres vary in theme and aesthetics and deserve separate studies, which have begun appearing in recent years.5 Here, I examine the evolution of a revolutionary aesthetic in a body of fiction films that feature revolutions and evoke a heightened sense of heroism.6 This group of films is aesthetically and thematically unified. Featuring narratives of revolution and heroism, they appropriate classical Hollywood narration and Soviet montage and employ stars and cultural icons to facilitate audience identification and emulation. The roots of Chinese revolutionary film can be traced back to the early 1930s, when socially progressive and revolutionary films such as Daybreak (Sun Yu, 1933) were made to expose social ills and express support for the revolution. Those films were retrospectively associated with the left-wing cinema movement that began in the same period, marked by the Japanese invasion of Manchuria (1931) and the Second Sino-Japanese War (1937 –45). The year 1932 marked the re-establishment of Sino –Soviet relations by the Guomindang (GMD) government, followed by burgeoning translation of Soviet literature and film theory. Storm Over Asia (Потомок Чингис-Хана) (Vsevolod Pudovkin, 1928) was the first Soviet feature film screened for public viewing in China in 1931, followed by the public screening of The Road to Life (Путe€ вка в жизнь) (Nikolai Ekk, 1931) in 1933.7 Based in semi-colonial Shanghai in a market dominated by Hollywood movies, many left-wing film-makers such as Hong Shen, Shen Xiling, Sun Yu, Xia Yan, Yuan Muzhi and Zheng Junli were sympathetic to the Soviet films introduced into China in the 1930s. The turn to Soviet ideas and aesthetics was not an isolated event after 1949; it has its beginnings in the 1930s as a response to imperialism and the Russian Revolution of 1917.

4

Introduction The aesthetic experiment in film production during the Seventeen Years continued and evolved out of the modernisation project initiated with the May Fourth movement, an early twentieth-century cultural movement in response to imperialism. As Paul Clark suggests, film was ‘the dominant artistic mode in the continuing May Fourth meditation on the condition of modern China.’8 To understand Chinese revolutionary film from the Seventeen Years, one must trace the continuities and discontinuities of Chinese film-making as part of the modernisation project since the Republican era (1911 – 49). Confining Chinese revolutionary film strictly within the historical period of the Seventeen Years, as has often been done, poses interpretive problems. As Yomi Braester and Tina Mai Chen suggest, the ‘assumptions that socialist film is categorically different from films produced in other political and ideological contexts also mean that studies tend to treat PRC film separately from pre-1949 Chinese film.’9 Braester and Chen call for a ‘historiographical rethinking of the relationship between pre- and post1949 history’ and highlight film as not merely reflecting but also participating in ‘articulating Chinese socialism and the PRC as a nation state’.10 Miriam Hansen explores early Shanghai cinema under the framework of ‘vernacular modernism’ to refer to ‘the diversity of ways in which Hollywood cinema was translated and reconfigured in local and translocal contexts of reception.’11 On the same trajectory, Zhang Zhen, using the framework of ‘vernacular modernism’, traces the beginnings of early Chinese cinema and its entanglements with Hollywood cinema in semi-colonial Shanghai.12 However, little attention has been paid to the Soviet presence as a competing alternative to Hollywood in Chinese film history. This study traces the Soviet presence in Chinese film history throughout the Seventeen Years as an alternative historiography of Chinese film. Beginning in the early 1930s, Soviet Russia was seen by many Chinese left-wing film-makers as providing the answer to questions that confronted Chinese cinema. Despite the brute political fact of Russian imperialism in China, the October Revolution in 1917 excited many Chinese intellectuals and film-makers, who perceived in literature and film an affinity between China and Soviet Russia that allowed them to circumvent politics and refashion perceived similarities aesthetically. This refashioning did not mean aesthetics was insulated from politics; rather, aesthetics was an

5

Chinese Revolutionary Cinema ideological arena that allowed another kind of politics to be manifested and represented. The affinity with Soviet Russia fashioned by Chinese intellectuals and film-makers was cultural and aesthetic. The translation and introduction of Soviet films to China allowed Chinese artists to construct and represent that aesthetic affinity. The public screening of the Soviet film The Road to Life (Путe€ вка в жизнь) (Nikolai Ekk, 1931) in Shanghai in 1933 was enthusiastically welcomed by many Chinese film-makers, who wrote extensive commentaries and held a discussion session on the film. Set in Moscow in 1923, The Road to Life is about a group of orphaned railway workers in the Soviet Union. A group of orphans-turned-criminals are arrested by the police and later assigned to the task of building railroads for the new country. When the railroads are successfully completed, one of the most courageous workers is murdered by an enemy from their previous criminal life. The film ends with the train running on the new railroads, transporting the corpse to the celebration venue. The advertising poster for The Road to Life suggests the attractions of the Soviet film. The poster calls the film ‘an illustration of Soviet Russia’s successful Five-Year Plan’ and ‘a people’s film with a heroic and pedagogical mission’.13 The middle of the poster features a child’s smiling face, surrounded by four slogans in big fonts: ‘A kind teacher who encourages production’, ‘A reference for reforming society’, ‘No ladies’ thighs!’ and ‘No gentlemen’s top hats!’14 The bottom of the poster says: ‘A vital, powerful and stimulating film’.15 The terms ‘pedagogical mission’, ‘teacher’, and ‘reference’, juxtaposed against the absence of ‘ladies’ thighs’ and ‘gentlemen’s top hats’, evoke the tensions between the ‘hard’ and ‘soft’ appeals of film, and between education and entertainment.16 In his commentary on The Road to Life, Xia Yan (under the pen name Huang Zibu) described how the film allowed its audience to ‘experience a breath of fresh air’: We had been spoiled by the sentimentalism and pornography of Euro – American film. In contrast, Soviet film is a breath of fresh air (kongqi). Soviet film depicts neither intellect nor psychological states (as in literature), but uses gesture to move the audience and convey the kinaesthetic force (li) of human activity. What excites our souls are the force and will of the collective. The new has replaced the old; healthy and direct emotions have replaced our

6

Introduction depressed and desolate mood. Look – construction vs. destruction, vitality vs. deterioration, health vs. sickness, exaltation vs. lamentation, resolution vs. resignation, happiness vs. sorrow. How sharp are the contrasts!17

Xia Yan perceived a ‘fresh’ and indefinable ‘air’ in Soviet cinema; a refreshing, healthy alternative to the domination of Euro – American film. The sharp contrasts he asserted between Soviet film and Euro – American film (deterioration and decay vs. construction and vitality) rhetorically reinforce the sense of hope and optimism of the October Revolution. In Xia Yan’s eyes, the October Revolution was a landmark event in human history, a source of excitement and inspiration: ‘Fifteen years ago, the country that covers one-sixth of the world embarked on a change that human history has never experienced before.’18 Film commentaries like this function as a cultural rhetoric fashioning political, cultural and aesthetic affinity with Soviet cinema. The attractions of The Road to Life, Xia Yan explained, lay not only in its healthy content, but also in its form: gestures and montage create a kinaesthetic force of the collective. Tactile gestures ‘touch’ ( jiechu) the audience; gestures as a kind of emotional infection affects spectators at the level of the senses.19 Speaking of gestures that convey the kinaesthetic force of human activity, he refers to montages that create the kinaesthetic movement and force of the collective. Li, which can be translated as ‘force’, ‘power’, ‘strength’ and ‘energy’, lies at the core of the film’s attraction. Similarly, Chen Liting spoke of the ‘beauty of force’ (li de mei) in The Road to Life.20 Jin Yan described the film as ‘simple but forceful’ ( jiandan er youli).21 Shen Xiling said that ‘the power (liliang) of the film has enveloped my whole body and soul.’22 The beauty of force, as Cheng Bugao poignantly put it, is intimately tied to the cinematic depiction of the collective: What human beings possess is strength (li). The film mobilises this strength and channels it into positive creation and construction. Using the power of the collective for the livelihood of the collective and to guide the life of the collective – this is truly a ‘road to life’.23

The highly acclaimed Soviet film was also a metaphorical ‘road to life’ for contemporary Chinese cinema. Hong Shen and Zheng Boqi (under the pen

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Chinese Revolutionary Cinema name Xi Naifang), for instance, argued that ‘Soviet cinema not only offers the Chinese audience new and healthy entertainment, but also points out a suitable path for the Chinese film industry.’24 In a similar fashion, Zhang Shichuan noted that The Road to Life gives the Chinese film industry ‘a new model’.25 The ‘new type’ (dianxing), according to Zhang, was a cinema with a pedagogical mission: ‘Soviet cinema carries the important mission of educating the society. American film, in contrast, is nothing more than a “sedative”.’26 The pedagogical focus of Soviet cinema provided Chinese cinema an alternative to the ‘sedative’ nature of Euro –American film and its system of representation, which offered ‘individual hedonism’, ‘hero worship’, ‘champagne’ and ‘ladies’.27 Yet though pedagogy was considered a high priority, it was by no means the only priority of Chinese cinema.28 In a later essay, ‘On the Pedagogical Value of Soviet Film’ (1948), Xia Yan construed pedagogy and pleasure as complementary benefits of his filmwatching experience: ‘I’m being educated. I’m touched. Therefore, spiritually, I’m enjoying true entertainment.’29 Xia Yan spoke of a cinematic attraction that is sensual, educational and pleasurable – an attraction Chinese revolutionary film continued to strive for during the Seventeen Years. Soviet cinema was conceived as a model and a reference, providing answers to many questions confronting Chinese cinema in the Republican era: the tension between entertainment and education and the domination of Hollywood movies in semi-colonial Shanghai. The fashioning of an aesthetic affinity with Soviet cinema was accompanied by public screenings of Soviet films and translations of Soviet film theory. Xia Yan introduced Soviet montage theory to China by translating Vsevolod Pudovkin’s The Film Director and Film Material (Кинорежиссер и киноматериал) (1926) in collaboration with Zheng Boqi in 1933, as discussed in Chapter Three. Zheng Junli translated Constantin Stanislavski’s An Actor Prepares (Yanyuan ziwo xiuyang) (1936), though publication was interrupted by World War II and it was not published in China until 1943 (discussed in Chapter Four).

The Missing Years: 1949 –66 The Seventeen Years of abundant film production under the communist regime in China have been called the ‘missing years’ in the historiography 8

Introduction of Chinese cinema in English-language scholarship. Currently there is only one book-length study in English that is exclusively devoted to Chinese cinema in the socialist era: Zhuoyi Wang’s Revolutionary Cycles in Chinese Cinema, 1951 – 1979.30 Why is film production from the Seventeen Years under-researched in English-language scholarship? One cannot answer this question without mapping the institutionalisation of film studies in the 1970s and 1980s as an academic discipline in North America and Europe, and the canonisation, translation and anthologisation of film theory as it entered the university curriculum. Soviet montage theory and Bazinian realism, canonised in the West, became two major strands of film theory. By the 1970s and 1980s, when film studies were institutionalised as an academic discipline, many Soviet-era films (especially from the Stalin era) and archival materials had been made available for research and translation into English.31 However, the same cannot be said of Chinese film produced during the Seventeen Years, which was deemed ‘poisonous’ and banned during the Cultural Revolution. Many Chinese films produced during the Seventeen Years were inaccessible to the West in the 1970s, when film studies began to emerge as an academic discipline. After Mao’s death in 1976, film studies began to emerge as an academic discipline in China during the ‘Reform and Opening’ era of the 1980s. The Chinese films that first gained international and scholarly attention were not the ‘Red Classics’ from the socialist era, but ‘fifth-generation films’ of the 1980s, which favoured the use of long shots, long takes and bold colours as a new form of post-socialist realism, in contrast to the socialist realism endorsed in previous decades. In the 1980s, as China reopened to the West (especially the United States and western Europe), Bazinian film theories were once again translated into Chinese, and Hollywood and European art films began to be imported, shaping the consciousness of a new generation of film-makers. These ‘fifth-generation’ film-makers, such as Chen Kaige and Zhang Yimou, who graduated from the Beijing Film Academy in 1982, subverted the film language of the socialist era and experimented with new techniques in Yellow Earth (1984) and Red Sorghum (1988) respectively. Winning major awards at international film festivals, the fifth-generation film-makers’ international acclaim spurred English scholarship, the most representative of which is Rey Chow’s Primitive Passions: Visuality, Sexuality, Ethnography, and Contemporary

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Chinese Revolutionary Cinema Chinese Cinema.32 Moreover, though the visual and archival materials of post-1980s post-socialist cinema remain more accessible to scholars in both China and the West, films and criticism from the silent era have become increasingly available in the digital age, and the millennium has begun to see the production of critical studies of the silent era. The most exemplary of these is Zhang Zhen’s An Amorous History of the Silver Screen: Shanghai Cinema 1896– 1937.33 Yet despite the burgeoning study of early cinema in semi-colonial Shanghai and post-socialist cinema, the Seventeen Years can still be described by scholars like Braester and Chen as ‘missing years’ due to a dearth in scholarship in both Chinese and English.34 Archival materials and films deemed ‘poisonous’ during the Cultural Revolution remain difficult to access, not to mention the tendency to associate films from the Seventeen Years with propaganda, seen as a malevolent form of persuasion. There remains a lack of historical and critical distance from what many refer to as a historical trauma. The Cultural Revolution and the Seventeen Years preceding it have been lumped together as a historical aberration and abnormality. Recent work is beginning to challenge this omission. As Braester and Chen have pointed out, conceiving of Chinese cinema from 1949 to 1979 as a missing period ‘risks defining it in negative terms: lacklustre compared to old Shanghai movies and the post socialist avant-garde; its creativity politically repressed; and its revolutionary fervour as foreign to Western audiences as to market-minded contemporary Chinese audiences.’35 In their introduction to a special journal issue (2011) dedicated to this era of mainland Chinese cinema, they explicate the reasons for this critical oversight in scholarship: Jian Heyan, in his recent History of Chinese Film Concepts (2010), puts his finger on an important factor: the early, productive years of the PRC were later bundled together with the Cultural Revolution, which many Chinese would like to forget. The harsh repression during the Cultural Revolution was projected onto the earlier period, despite its output of excellent movies. Similar dynamics, we may argue, influenced reception in the West. Rooted in area studies, China scholars had a hard time reconciling between Maoist totalitarianism and the flourishing of revolutionary art. It was

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Introduction convenient to believe that ‘brainwashed’ artists working under strict control could produce nothing good.36

This study demonstrates that chronology and periodisation have their limits. Far from being an abnormality and a rupture in history, the Seventeen Years continued the Soviet turn in Chinese film discourse from the Republican era and the May Fourth modernisation project initiated by intellectuals who, since the Mao era, had had to work under the auspices of the state. They were censored and repressed, but intellectuals were also rewarded when their creativity found its way out. The revolutionary fervour that characterised the Seventeen Years may seem less foreign to us if we discern its investment in socialist star culture, part of the global star culture of the 1960s. With the disappearance of the free market, socialist actors had new status as state employees, but they still had to compete for visibility and acting opportunities, and to deter aging: a camera face still mattered. What we think we know about film culture in the Seventeen Years is just the tip of the iceberg. Significant and serious scholarship on Chinese socialist cinema has only just begun. Recent years have produced special issues, an increasing number of journal articles that explore the period, and two book-length studies: Zhuoyi Wang’s Revolutionary Cycles in Chinese Cinema 1951 – 1979 and Cai Xiang’s Revolution and its Narratives: China’s Socialist Literary and Cultural Imaginaries, 1949 – 1966.37 One especially noteworthy effort is Ban Wang’s treatment of pleasure and desire in Chinese revolutionary film. Wang highlights the sublimation of romance to higher political goals and argues that romance and ideology worked hand-in-hand in Chinese revolutionary film to lure spectators into an aestheticised politics.38 Addressing film method, Chris Berry considers Chinese cinema during the Seventeen Years as pedagogical cinema, pointing out that it drew heavily upon classical Hollywood narrative methods – for instance, the use of narrative causality, goal-oriented protagonists, narrative suspension for metatextual analysis, elliptical montage sequences, and shot/reverse-shot patterns – for pedagogical, rather than libidinal, purposes.39 Stephanie Donald’s idea of the ‘socialist realist gaze’, a gaze projected to an offscreen space, provides a critical language for analysing Chinese socialist film and Soviet film.40 Equally important is Tina Mai Chen’s historical

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Chinese Revolutionary Cinema research on the circulation and dubbing of Soviet film in China during the Seventeen Years.41 In the last few years, there have also been innovative efforts to explore under-researched genres of Chinese socialist cinema. Highly informed by the theoretical apparatus of film studies, scholars have combined close reading, archival research and theoretical nuance to complicate our understanding of Chinese socialist cinema. For instance, a 2010 special issue of The Opera Quarterly offers multiple perspectives in reading Chinese opera film from the Seventeen Years and model opera film (yangbanxi) from the Cultural Revolution. In this special issue, Weihong Bao and Xinyu Dong, with theoretical vigour and historical attentiveness, explore Chinese film-makers’ creative negotiation with operatic and cinematic modes of expression.42 Jason McGrath draws on the realist tradition and performance studies in his analysis of Cultural Revolution model opera film.43 On a slightly different trajectory, the spring 2011 special issue of the Journal of Chinese Cinemas features articles on littleknown film genres from the ‘missing years’, such as counter-espionage and science education film (kexue jiaoyupian): Qi Wang uses an interdisciplinary approach to look at architecture and interior design in the historical space of counter-espionage film, while Matthew Johnson situates science education film within China and beyond.44 Collectively, these works search for new theoretical and analytical paradigms that reveal the complexities of Chinese socialist cinema rather than defining it, pejoratively, as mere propaganda. In Chinese language scholarship, there have also been recent noteworthy publications of full-length manuscripts and anthologies on the Seventeen Years. These works, which have emerged in the last two decades, benefit from the anthologies of research documents, memoirs and biographies that have emerged since the 1980s. A few worth mentioning here are Chen Huangmei’s Dangdai Zhongguo dianying (Contemporary Chinese cinema) (1989); Meng Liye’s Xin Zhongguo dianying yishu shigao, 1949 –1959 (A history of new China’s film art) (2002); Qi Xiaoping’s Xianghua ducao: hongse niandai de dianying mingyun (Fragrant flowers and poisonous weeds: the fate of films during the red years) (2006); and Zhongguo dianying yanjiu ziliao, 1949 –1979 (Research materials on Chinese cinema) (2006) and Mao Zedong shidai de renmin dianying (People’s film in the Mao era) (2010), both by Wu Di, who also writes

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Introduction under the pen name Qi Zhi.45 Additionally, Hong Hong’s Sulian yingxiang yu Zhongguo shiqinian dianying (Soviet influence and Chinese cinema from the seventeen years) (2008) situates Chinese cinema in the historical context of Sino – Soviet exchange during the Seventeen Years.46 The serious scholarship that has emerged both within and outside the PRC in the last few years accompanies increasing public awareness of, and renewed interest in, the ‘missing period’. Chinese socialist films are viewed, as Braester and Chen suggest, with nostalgia by Chinese audiences.47 The edited volume Red Legacies in China: Cultural Afterlives of the Communist Revolution considers the communist revolution not as a historical abnormality but as an event with manifestations in contemporary cultural life.48 Digital media have made films accessible to a wide audience, encouraging research, classroom use and even popular viewing both within and outside China: in the 2009 New York Film Festival, the Film Society of Lincoln Center screened an unprecedented series called ‘(Re)Inventing China: A New Cinema for a New Society, 1949 –1966.’49 In a similar fashion, the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, in a 2009 celebration of the sixtieth anniversary of the establishment of the People’s Republic of China, organised a film series called ‘The People’s Republic of Cinema’ that featured both revolutionary and postrevolutionary films.50 The new scholarship on the Seventeen Years constitutes a major step in reassessing forgotten archives and historical trauma. Yet much work remains to be done. Zhuoyi Wang’s Revolutionary Cycles in Chinese Cinema, the first comprehensive domestic history of Chinese socialist cinema in English language scholarship, challenges the assumption that Chinese cinema in the Mao era was a homogeneous body of film texts produced for an unthinking collective by a propagandistic machine.51 This book goes one step further, exploring the dialectical relationship between state propaganda and aesthetic experiment and discussing the implication of this relationship for internationalism and film theory in world cinema.

State Propaganda and Aesthetic Experiment In his study of the Soviet Union as the world’s first propaganda state, Brandenberger uses the term ‘propaganda state’ to denote ‘political systems that distinguish themselves by their co-option and harnessing of 13

Chinese Revolutionary Cinema mass culture, educational institutions and the press for the purpose of popular indoctrination.’52 This top-down governing paradigm was a revolutionary proposal advanced by the Bolsheviks in the aftermath of 1917. A defining characteristic of propaganda states is the state’s investment in culture. Propaganda states foreground the stewardship of culture because culture is power: ‘the sphere of culture and ideology was the sphere of legitimation of the state [. . .] The process of legitimation required using refined techniques for manipulating mass consciousness.’53 In the age of mechanical reproduction, film in particular was chosen as a malleable visual and aural tool for shaping popular beliefs, attitudes and behaviour, as evidenced by the amount of time propaganda state leaders like Stalin and Mao spent reviewing books, film scripts and plays. In the Soviet Union, the propaganda state’s investment in culture and aesthetics constituted what Katerina Clark calls the ‘Great Experiment’, undertaken by a generation of intellectuals who in the 1920s sought to create ‘a truly revolutionary culture’.54 The great experiment continued into the 1930s with a ‘cultural turn’: ‘Culture became an area where in the 1930s the rival states and rival world systems of Europe began to compete for the right to be considered the true leader of the continent.’55 As a propaganda state, the Soviet Union under Stalin sought to create a national aesthetic and to rebuild Moscow into ‘the center of a new, transnational imperial formation of some kind, a “Rome”.’56 Clark’s analytic paradigm of the Soviet experiment in revolutionary culture and national aesthetic provides critical insights for this study. The PRC, also a propaganda state, was equally invested in culture. Mao’s various political campaigns took place in the realm of culture and aesthetics, as discussed in Chapter One. The 1951 campaign against The Life of Wu Xun (Sun Yu, 1951), the first nationwide mass campaign initiated by Mao himself as ultimate censor and textual authority, was a campaign to denounce the politically incorrect film and to target private film studio artists in nationalising the film industry under the state’s control.57 The ensuing campaigns throughout the Seventeen Years – the Rectification Campaign (1951–2), the First Five-Year Plan (1953 –7), the Hundred Flowers Campaign (1956 –7) and the Great Leap Forward Campaign (1958 –61) – developed a new socialist culture of film criticism, one that included self-criticism and ideological remoulding of film artists. These campaigns also articulated quantitative and qualitative goals for

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Introduction aesthetic experiments in screenwriting, cinematography, screen acting and the representation of heroic characters. Striving for world recognition and a leadership role in the socialist bloc and the Third World, the PRC as a propaganda state sought to create a national aesthetic that was revolutionary, socialist and international. It is important to recognise that propaganda states’ top-down governing paradigm was not monolithic. Nor was state propaganda solely directed to the goal of delivering political messages for mass manipulation. As Clark and Evgeny Dobrenko emphasise, the intelligentsia was not an extrasystemic category. Intellectuals, some of whom also served as cultural bureaucrats, served an intermediary role between Party leadership and the populace at large: they were implicated in the workings of the state, which ‘not only “repressed” them but also rewarded them’.58 As I shall demonstrate, the state and intellectuals were in a mutually dependent position in articulating and executing a series of aesthetic experiments. The state provided the directives, funding and resources, whereas intellectuals offered expertise, experience and creativity. Some intellectuals were condemned and committed suicide (Stalin’s Purge is a historical precedent in the world’s first propaganda state); some self-corrected and remoulded themselves according to the ideological needs of the time, successfully manoeuvring between contradictory forces at home and in the world. Zhuoyi Wang’s meticulous study of the dramatic shifts in revolutionary campaigns, or what he calls ‘revolutionary cycles’, reveals the diverse individual calculations and conflicting agendas of film artists, audiences, critics, bureaucrats and Party authorities as they negotiated and competed for power and meaning. Similarly, Pang’s study of the Cultural Revolution complicates our understanding of state manipulation: ‘the making of the propaganda involved much contestation and negotiation.’59 Pang further notes that producing and reproducing propaganda (for example, writing and reading big-character wall posters [dazibao]) ‘involved not only the delivery of political messages but also the sharing of aesthetic skills and judgment’.60 In fact, aesthetic skills and judgement carried the same weight as political correctness and judgement as early as 1949, when Mao Dun laid out the problem of unification between the political nature (zhengzhi xing) and aesthetic nature (yishu xing) of literature and art: ‘Is the former or the latter more valuable? It is not a matter of whether politics or aesthetics is more important. It is a matter of how to measure aesthetic value.’61

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Chinese Revolutionary Cinema This study demonstrates that the political campaigns unleashed in the Seventeen Years were also aesthetic experiments, heavily invested in producing, measuring and claiming aesthetic value. Intellectuals and film artists, as specialists and bureaucrats walking a fine line between politics and aesthetics, were part of that experiment and discourse.62 Each chapter of this book explores how various aesthetic experiments of Chinese revolutionary cinema stretched and reimagined cinematic possibilities. Chapter One explains the dialectical tension between propaganda and film aesthetics and shows how they were forcefully melded in a series of political campaigns that were also aesthetic experiments. Through trial and error, the state’s grip on aesthetics tightened and loosened in alternating periods of control that demanded strict intellectual orthodoxy and political relaxation that encouraged creativity. The fusing of propaganda and film aesthetics, which exist in tension, constitutes a major twentieth-century aesthetic experiment, recalling both Walter Benjamin’s notion of the aestheticisation of political life and the Soviet avant-garde experiment in honing aesthetic sensibilities for political purposes. Chapter Two discusses aesthetic experiments in screenwriting. Many Chinese revolutionary films, including the Red Classics, have literary origins. Film adaptation of literature is a consistent and dominant mode of revolutionary film-making: revolutionary in the sense that film adaptations not only revolutionised literature and its literariness, but also revolutionised the family as a literary trope and an organised social unit. Beginning with the May Fourth Movement, literature fixated on the family as a microcosm of the nation, a site of tension between tradition and modernity, and a source of oppression for women. This focus on the family continued after 1949 in the cinematic genre of family melodrama, which negotiated with a legacy of family melodrama from the Shanghai filmmaking tradition. Chapter Two presents close readings of This Life of Mine (Shi Hui, 1950), The New Year’s Sacrifice (Sang Hu, 1956) and Revolutionary Family (Shui Hua, 1961), family melodramas that are also socialist film adaptations of literature. Adapting literature to film involved rethinking screenwriting and recasting classical Hollywood narration in Chinese literary terms, so this chapter also explores how incorporating classical Hollywood narration, heterosexual romance and melodrama facilitated socialist propagation of heteronormative romance and family.

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Introduction Chapter Three turns to the aesthetic experiment in cinematography. For cinema invested in generating kinaesthetic force and provoking the senses for revolutionary action, montage had immense potential for persuasion and provocation. As a cinematic method that puts together images from different temporal and spatial contexts, montage evoked the memory and romance of revolution. In a period of intense engagement with Soviet montage film theory from 1949 to 1962, Chinese film-makers demystified the inscrutability of montage, which was often associated with the Soviet avant-garde of the 1920s, in an effort to broaden its scope to include all film editing methods, including Hollywood continuity editing. Through close reading of critical discourses and selected films, this chapter discusses how montage was creatively reinvented to cinematically construct a collective subject. Chapter Four deals with the aesthetic experiment in screen acting. The year 1962 was a glamorous moment of star culture on a global scale. Although star culture functions differently in a capitalist system than in a socialist one, with different vocabularies – the former associated with commodity fetishism, the latter with political propaganda – the two kinds of star culture intersect in many ways. The cinematic production of glamour in Chinese revolutionary cinema packaged youth, beauty and femininity in socialist terms. Gendered discourse on casting and screen acting redefined femininity and created female icons of sexual morality. Though one might assume that star discourse was eliminated after the establishment of the PRC in 1949, in fact star discourse, which had its roots in Republican Shanghai cinema, survived in socialist China, in a different form and with a different vocabulary. The radical transformation of star discourse peaked in 1962, when the state-sponsored nationwide promotion of ‘22 outstanding screen actors’ (or colloquially, ‘22 big movie stars’) created a vogue for movie stars. The socialist star craze was cut short by the Poisonous Weeds Campaign in 1964, but its brief intense popularity reveals the deep roots of star discourse and the discourse on screen acting, traceable back to the early 1950s when Stanislavski’s system was adopted as an ethical basis for actors’ training and political cultivation. Chapter Five turns to the rhetoric of internationalism in Chinese film journals, which articulated and propagated internationalist visions in the shifting terrain of the Cold War, when competing strands of socialist and liberal internationalisms emerged within and beyond the socialist bloc in

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Chinese Revolutionary Cinema the wake of decolonisation. Striving for world recognition and a socialist and Third World leadership role, the PRC as a propaganda state was heavily invested in developing visions of internationalism and the emancipatory potential of cinema as an integral part of its aesthetic experiment. Key to understanding cinema’s revolutionary potential was the rhetoric of ‘solidarity’ in creating an anti-colonial imaginary that boosted socialist China’s image at home and abroad. Chinese film journals extensively covered film festivals, film delegations, film theories and films from abroad, constructing an ideal socialist and non-socialist audience with an international subjectivity and worldview that were explicitly anticolonial and anti-imperialist. In doing so, Chinese film journals remapped world cinematic space, shifting its centre of gravity from the ‘West’ to the ‘East’ and eventually to Asia, Africa and Latin America after the Sino – Soviet split in the 1960s.

Internationalism In studying socialist film culture, an international perspective is indispensable. Socialist propaganda states, far from being xenophobic, pursued cultural appropriation of various kinds in order to make their cultures recognised by the world. As Katerina Clark observes, when the Soviet Union was perceived as the most self-enclosed, it was ironically the most outward-looking: ‘Paradoxically, even as the Soviet Union became an increasingly closed society, it simultaneously became more involved with foreign trends.’63 Clark calls the Soviet openness to Western European culture a kind of cosmopolitanism.64 On a similar trajectory, Nicolai Volland considers Chinese socialist literature of the 1950s as an example of ‘socialist cosmopolitanism’, mapping the literary exchange and translation of foreign literature in what he calls the four concentric circles of the Chinese literary universe: the Soviet Union at the core, encircled by socialist countries in Eastern Europe and Asia, then the Third World, with progressive literature from Western Europe and the United States on the periphery.65 Primarily focused on literature, these studies both explore the outward-looking nature of the socialist project in building a socialist culture. In discussing the ideological and political permutations of the term ‘internationalism’, this book seeks to complement and complicate overlapping sensibilities of internationalism, cosmopolitanism and nationalism at the height of the Cold War.

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Introduction In particular, given China’s ties to the Soviet Union and its unravelling new ties with Asian, African and Latin American countries after the Bandung Conference in 1955, consideration of internationalism is crucial to putting Chinese revolutionary cinema in perspective. Chinese film journals articulated visions of internationalism in two major movements: learning from the Soviet ‘elder brother’ in accordance with the policy of ‘leaning to one side’ after 1949, and envisioning Afro – Asian –Latin American solidarity in the post-Bandung era after the Sino – Soviet split in the 1960s. After the Sino – Soviet split, the PRC asserted itself as the socialist bloc and Third World leader, against the Soviet Union and the United States in peaceful coexistence. Creating a Chinese revolutionary film aesthetic was part of the self-positioning of the Chinese film establishment in opposing the West during the Cold War. However, in contrast to the logic of Cold War binarism, creating a Chinese revolutionary film aesthetic meant not an open refusal to adopt the enemies’ cinematic conventions, but translation and tacit appropriation of them. Although Hollywood movies were officially eliminated in the PRC after 1951 and Soviet socialist realism was no longer officially endorsed after Khrushchev’s de-Stalinisation, subtle forms of classical Hollywood narration, Soviet montage and Stanislavski’s system persisted in Chinese revolutionary film, as Chinese film-makers appropriated them to create a revolutionary aesthetic of heroism as an alternative aesthetic in world cinema. Creating this Chinese revolutionary film aesthetic was an aesthetic experiment with highly political implications. During the Seventeen Years, film production was a way of demonstrating the young PRC’s artistic heritage and potential for technological development. Film was a visual showcase, making the nation’s culture recognised by the world. Film, because of its mechanical reproducibility, became a privileged aesthetic form for propaganda. The indexicality, reproducibility, and visual and audio capacity of the filmic medium rendered the immediacy of art to the masses effectively. In ‘The Work of Art in the Age of its Technological Reproducibility’, Walter Benjamin suggested that technological reproducibility shatters the aura of art – originality, authenticity and ‘here-andnow’ – and opens up possibilities of bringing art to the masses.66 In his 1942 talks on literature and art at the Yan’an forum, Mao explained that revolutionary art should serve the masses: ‘Since our literature and art are

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Chinese Revolutionary Cinema basically for the workers, peasants, and soldiers, “popularization” means to popularize among the workers, peasants, and soldiers, and “raising standards” means to advance from their present level.’67 Mao answered the important question of whom art should serve by signifying new concern for a rural mass audience. How to make film accessible, pedagogical and pleasurable for that audience? As simple as the question may seem, it involved radically rethinking what constitutes cinematic attraction and reformulating film method, from screenwriting to cinematography to screen acting. The rethinking and reformulation of those theoretical and technical issues negotiated foreign cinematic precedents with Chinese aesthetic traditions, creating a full-blown revolutionary film aesthetic. Chinese revolutionary film represents an alternative aesthetic. It is an alternative to the hegemonic cultural form of Hollywood cinema that travelled in the name of the global. The strongest resistance against the hegemony of Hollywood was staged by proponents of Third Cinema that began in the late 1960s. Written in 1969 by Fernando Solanas and Octavio Getino, ‘Towards a Third Cinema’ put forward the tenets of the Latin American film movement and articulated decolonisation in the 1960s as a ‘new historical situation’: ‘Ten years of the Cuban Revolution, the Vietnamese struggle, and the development of a worldwide liberation movement whose driving force is to be found in the Third World countries.’68 As a movement against neo-colonialism and capitalism, Third Cinema included the Cuban documentary film movement and underground or semi-public showings of cinema such as ‘pamphlet films, didactic films, report films, essay films, witness-bearing films’, and other documentary and educational films in Third World countries such as Argentina, Chile and Uruguay.69 The idea of ‘third cinema’ was directly opposed to ‘first cinema’; that is, Hollywood entertainment film: ‘The 35 mm camera, 24 frames per second, arc lights, and a commercial place of exhibition for audiences were conceived not to gratuitously transmit any ideology, but to satisfy, in the first place, the cultural and surplus value needs of a specific ideology, of a specific worldview: that of US finance capital.’70 Solanas and Getino criticised first cinema as a ‘surplus value cinema’ for capital accumulation.71 According to them, first cinema, as a form of consumer good and entertainment, played the ‘acculturating role of the colonization of taste and consciousness’.72 Third cinema, as opposed to first cinema,

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Introduction employed film for political ends and resisted the separation of politics and art. In contrast to ‘second cinema’, European art film or auteur film, third cinema was not ‘a vehicle for personal expression’, but a ‘collective revolutionary activism’ and a ‘cinema of liberation’.73 To broaden the historical and theoretical scope of the alternative aesthetic to Hollywood cinema at the height of the anti-colonial movements in the 1960s, this study recognises third cinema as a frame of reference, rather than subsuming Chinese revolutionary cinema under it. Chinese revolutionary cinema was implicated in the framework of first, second and third cinema at a time when anti-colonial movements and post-Bandung Third World solidarity were at their height in the 1960s. Like third cinema, Chinese revolutionary cinema was oriented against Hollywood cinema and away from European auteur cinema. Yet Chinese revolutionary cinema cannot be subsumed under the third cinema movement. Instead, it should be situated along the spectrum of alternative aesthetic that resisted or deviated from Hollywood cinema, despite its tacit appropriation of certain Hollywood conventions for different ends.74

Translation in Film Theory and Criticism In his illuminative study, Cinema Babel: Translating Global Cinema, Markus Nornes places translation at the centre of cinema, whose history is ‘one of endless border struggles’.75 Echoing Lawrence Venuti’s contestation of the invisibility of translation as a derivative and secondary activity, Nornes redefines translation as a form of authorship and scholarship in the domain of film theory and criticism.76 Victor Fan’s Cinema Approaching Reality: Locating Chinese Film Theory, a pioneering effort to create a comparative dialogue between Euro –American film theory and Chinese film theory, locates the ontology of Chinese cinema by tracing the itinerancies of key terms such as bizhen (approaching reality), yishi (consciousness) and xieyi (sketching ideation).77 Yet little attention is paid to the discussion of film theory during the Seventeen Years. By critically examining the translation, circulation and dissemination of Euro – American film theories in China during the Seventeen Years, and looking at how Soviet montage and Stanislavski’s realist acting system were introduced into China through the work of translation, my study fills an important gap in the global circulation of film theory.

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Chinese Revolutionary Cinema As Nornes puts it, ‘the global volume of translation is marked by inequity when broken down by language group.’78 The inaccessibility of film theories and criticisms that originate from areas not traditionally included in the canon, due to language barriers and power inequality, results in a unidirectional translation traffic: from Euro –America to East Asia, rather than the other way around. I aim to uncover the ways that Chinese translators and film critics entered a historical dialogue with other canonical texts and played off against one another, acquiring cultural capital and displacing previous conventions and current competitors in world cinema. When Nornes suggests that ‘the inability to access the original actually amplified the translation’s transformative power’, he asserts that linguistic distance actually allows translators and film critics creative and interpretative space in making an intervention in the global circulation of ideas.79 Mistranslation or misprision, then, can be creative, productive and transformative: this is what happened in the translation and reception of Soviet montage in China. The invention of film in the last decade of the nineteenth century gave rise to multiple modernities in the twentieth century. As technology, in the words of Andrew Jones, ‘traveled roughly at the speed of the steamships that plied colonial trade routes’ from the Western metropolis to the semicolony of Shanghai, many Chinese film-makers were preoccupied with the question of catching up with the West because of the perceived belatedness of China’s modernisation.80 One response to that perceived belatedness was the struggle to create a national cinema in order to negotiate the presence of the foreign, often through translation and appropriation of other cinematic modes. By looking at how Chinese film-makers and critics actively engaged with various film theories, aesthetic trends and cinematic precedents in both theory and practice, this book interrogates the dissemination of the canon of film theory and the ways in which Chinese film history is intimately connected to what we know as film history today. Highly informed by international film theory, Chinese film-makers who were active during the Seventeen Years were not passive recipients of film theory, but active participants in rereading, redefining and reinventing some of the major theoretical issues and film methods in international film discourse.

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1 Propaganda and Film Aesthetics

A Newsweek article published on 30 September, 1957, ‘Red China’s Big Push’, demonstrates how Chinese film was portrayed by the American media during the Cold War. The article was illustrated with a film still featuring a Chinese soldier loading his gun, captioned ‘A Chinese Communist movie: In Asia, the movies are Redder than ever’.1 ‘Red’ movies as ‘an instrument of political propaganda’ were ‘socialist’ and ‘antiAmerican’: ‘Almost all Communist movies exalt China’s “socialist” experiment and many carry a pointed anti-American message.’2 While the language and visual representation of the article reinforced the idea of ‘Red’ as socialist, militant and anti-American, a worried undertone of competition and crisis permeated the text. American movies were ‘losing out’ to those made by the Chinese in the burgeoning Southeast Asian market: ‘In Cambodia [. . .] Peking’s movies have moved into second place in popularity, close behind the Indian films that have dominated the market for years. The traditional runners-up, French and American films are now farther behind than ever.’3 The article described the ‘Reds’ as ‘pushing hard’ and ‘winning an important ideological battle’.4 During the interwar period and throughout the Cold War, the highly contested and historically contingent term ‘propaganda’ was often mobilised to describe the art of the enemy other. In her study of the development of propaganda film theory in wartime Chongqing (1937 –45), 23

Chinese Revolutionary Cinema Weihong Bao points out that the ‘othering’ of propaganda was partly a Cold War construction: Propaganda is probably the worst nightmare of cinema and media, popularly conceived as manipulations of mass affect and public opinions, a terrifying brainwashing in support of authoritarian rules. Yet propaganda should not be considered a distinct genre belonging to enemy others or a nightmarish past, the concept of which is a postwar construction during the Cold War era [. . .] Instead of relishing the radical promise of cinema as an antithesis of propaganda, we should be mindful of the dialectical relationship between them.5

Propaganda is often seen as an ideological weapon mobilised by the propaganda state; but it should also be understood as an aesthetic experiment, involving trial and error and critical and theoretical evaluation by intellectuals and film-makers who also served as cultural bureaucrats. Between 1949 and 1966, various campaigns were initiated as part of the Chinese propaganda state’s aesthetic experiment: the Rectification Campaign (1951–2), the First Five-Year Plan (1953–7), the Hundred Flowers Campaign (1956–7) and the Great Leap Forward Campaign (1958–61). At the heart of these campaigns, aesthetic experiments in screenwriting, cinematography, screen acting and the representation of heroic characters were proposed, discussed and vehemently debated in Party speeches, conferences, discussion sessions and film journals. In these campaigns, a new socialist culture of film criticism that included self-criticism and the ideological remoulding of film artists emerged, together with a new socialist film theory that negotiated the relationship between aesthetics and politics.

The Visual Age of Propaganda in the Interwar Period Is it possible to trace and locate a theory of propaganda film? An emerging key term in Chinese film studies, ‘propaganda film’ queries the relationship between propaganda and film aesthetics. Matthew Johnson defines it broadly, as referring to ‘all films produced by the state, particularly during the era of high socialism’; institutionally speaking, the film industry was part of the wider ‘propaganda system’.6 For instance, film censorship was

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Propaganda and Film Aesthetics undertaken by the Film Bureau, the Ministry of Culture and the Propaganda Department of the CCP Central Committee.7 ‘Propaganda’ thus refers to the institutional context for a wide range of artistic and filmmaking activities related to ideological education.8 It is in this sense, Johnson notes, that the term is employed most widely by researchers and cultural observers today. Propaganda film theory in Chinese cinema can, however, be traced back to Lu Xun’s 1930 translation of the Japanese Marxist film critic Iwasaki Akira’s ‘Film as a Tool of Propaganda and Provocation’ (宣傳、煽 動手段としての映畫, a chapter of Iwasaki’s 1931 work Film and Capitalism). Lu Xun critiqued Hollywood cinema as hegemonic, capitalist and commercial propaganda that reinforced colonial subjugation and dependency on transnational capitalism. Likewise, Iwasaki’s chapter title drew attention to the interdependent relationship between propaganda and provocation.9 In Chinese, the term xuanchuan refers not only to propaganda, but also to publicity and advertising. In the afterword to his translation, Lu Xun pointed to the circulation of Hollywood movies and their advertising phrases in semi-colonial Shanghai: Every day in Shanghai newspapers, there are two gigantic film advertisements, bragging about their casts of over ten thousand actors and budgets of several millions – ‘flirtation, romance, seduction, sex, humour, love, passion, adventure, bravery, knight errantry, gods and ghosts [. . .] the biggest blockbusters of all time’ – as if one would die with regret if one didn’t make it to the movies.10

At stake was not only money (the concentration of the means of mechanical reproduction in the hands of colonial powers and transnational capital), but also representation and reception, as seductive and provocative advertising language and images restructured spectatorial desire and reinforced colonial subjugation: Having watched a war film about a ‘valorous knight errant’, one unconsciously admires the martial look of the master and cannot help but remain a lackey. Having watched a ‘very flirtatious and romantic’ blockbuster, one is aroused by the sexy bodies of young women and cannot help but feel inferior – though it is possible to console oneself by chasing after a white Russian prostitute.11

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Chinese Revolutionary Cinema Lu Xun drew attention to the corporeal effects of advertising phrases to dramatise how film enacted civilisational competition in flesh and blood. War films reinforced unconscious admiration of the master, whereas romance fed sexual desire and reinforced the inferiority of the Chinese. In an interesting rhetorical move, Lu Xun described cinematic affect in racial, civilisational and gendered terms and spoke of the power of Hollywood movies to release and restructure repressed desire in a way that is pleasurable and seductive to the senses. In doing so, Lu Xun echoed Iwasaki’s description of film as a ‘tool of propaganda and provocation’. Lu Xun saw this tool of propaganda and provocation as being in the hands of the ‘propertied class’ (youchan jieji) in the politically and economically hegemonic capitalist world order dominated by the United States.12 The very choice of translation suggests Lu Xun’s interest in film as an ideological form perpetuating the economic and cultural hegemony of capitaldriven Hollywood cinema. Iwasaki, a prominent Japanese film-maker and film critic who organised the Proletarian Filmmaker’s League (Prokino) in 1929, was the ‘house theorist’ at Prokino, with a stake in theory and a ‘desire to stress its inextricable connection to practice’.13 Activists from Prokino often filmed demonstrations and strikes and screened their work illegally in Japan. Film and Capitalism was Iwasaki’s second book, intended for those with an interest in proletarian culture. The chapter ‘Film as a Tool of Propaganda and Provocation’ was published separately in Shinko geijutsu in 1930, a year before the publication of Film and Capitalism. In translating Iwasaki’s essay, Lu Xun redirected Iwasaki’s Marxist critique of film to his local audience in Shanghai. Lu Xun considered the circulation of Hollywood movies in semi-colonial Shanghai as first and foremost a problem of political economy. Accordingly, he retitled his translation ‘Modern Film and the Bourgeoisie’ (Xiandai dianying yu youchan jieji) and added an afterword targeting the consumption of Hollywood movies in semi-colonial Shanghai by ‘petty urbanites’ (xiao shimin) – a broadly and vaguely defined social class whose emergence intersected with the rise of cinema as a new mass medium in Shanghai and beyond. According to Zhang Zhen, xiao shimin included traditional and modern non-agrarian workers, small merchants, an emerging class of white-collar workers, and the petty bourgeoisie: The majority of them occupying lower or lower-middle class positions are xiao or ‘petty’ because of their non-elite socio-economic

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Propaganda and Film Aesthetics status (not, however, at the bottom of society), young age (often because of their immigrant origins) and limited education and outlook (yet endowed with a measure of cosmopolitan spirit).14

Some of the May Fourth intellectuals regarded petty urbanites as an ‘anarchic social body corrupted by both “feudal” values (because of the rural origin of many migrants) and modern evils of the city’, because petty urbanities were both ‘fostered and exploited by consumerism’.15 In his afterword, Lu Xun called attention to the mutual dependence between petty urbanites and Hollywood movies in semi-colonial Shanghai: the latter articulated spectatorial desire, while the former facilitated American capital accumulation. In official Chinese historiography, Lu Xun’s translation and afterword are canonised as important works of film criticism in the left-wing cinema movement. Xia Yan described Lu Xun as a pioneer who had the ‘prescience’ to see the intricate link between imperialism, capitalism and film.16 Similarly, Hong Dao, writing in 1956, applauded Lu Xun’s ‘rare foresight’ and described his translation and afterword as the earliest and most important works of film criticism.17 Writing in 1979, Gu Yuanqing and Gao Jinxian called Lu Xun a ‘heroic revolutionary, thinker, and writer’, who made an ‘irrefutable contribution to Chinese cinema’.18 In singling out Lu Xun’s translation, my intention is not to resuscitate Lu Xun as a forerunner of the left-wing cinema movement, as the official historiography suggests; rather, my intent is to situate his translation and film criticism within interwar Marxism and the international discourse on film and capitalism in the age of mechanical reproduction. For Lu Xun, the appeal of Iwasaki’s essay lies in its poignant observation of the specificity of film as a medium due to its immediacy, international reach and popular appeal in the age of mechanical reproduction. Iwasaki described film as an ‘international text’ (kokusai-teki katsuji) because he considered film a ‘new print technology’ that ‘imprints moving pictures on celluloid’.19 In his translation, Lu Xun retained the Japanese kanji in Chinese: guoji de huozi. Huozi can be translated as ‘movable type’ (a system of printing and typography that uses movable type to reproduce elements of a document) or ‘moving script’, denoting film as a new medium comparable to and yet distinct from verbal and written language. As Lu Xun translates: Instead of transmitting concepts to readers, the moving script transmits concepts using image and motion. Because of the

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Chinese Revolutionary Cinema immediacy of the visual, the moving script is the most popular and the most impressive form. It is an international moving script because of the principle absence of language.20

The adjective ‘moving’ captures what Iwasaki described as the motion, immediacy, straightforwardness and even transparency of film in making images appeal at the level of the senses, overcoming the mediation of verbal or written languages as well as their untranslatability. To Iwasaki, the international reach and popular appeal of the moving image were particularly well-suited to propagating imperial ideology in maintaining a capitalist world order. Iwasaki described the American Civil War film The Birth of a Nation (D.W. Griffith, 1915) as a ‘double deception’, a ‘hypnotising pill’ that promulgated the ‘dignity of the national flag’ and ‘individual heroism’ to the petty bourgeoisie, who willingly paid for deceptive and hypnotic entertainment at the movie theatre.21 He considered film a highly malleable ideological form in the hands of the economic and cultural hegemon: ‘The massive audience that film has control over, and the immediacy and international reach of film, mean that film, in terms of both quantity and quality, is a superb tool for mass propaganda and provocation.’22 Like Iwasaki and many of his other contemporaries, Lu Xun considered film an ideological and economic tool due to its international reach and mass appeal. Lu Xun’s critique of Hollywood cinema as a form of capitalist and commercial propaganda within consumer culture was published during the interwar period, when post-Russian Revolution Soviet aesthetic experiments and Fascist aesthetics (in film, literature, theatre, painting, sculpture, architecture, etc.) alike were part of state propaganda. The twentieth century, in particular the interwar period, was an age of visual propaganda. The interwar period witnessed the rise of totalitarian regimes that organised mass support through political propaganda as a form of aesthetic experiment. Between World Wars I and II and throughout the Cold War, in various national contexts, the highly contested and historically contingent term ‘propaganda’ shared blurry boundaries with art, entertainment, pedagogy and ideology. For instance, Soviet montage, as an avant-garde and modernist aesthetic, served an ideological end in the newly formed communist regime in the 1920s, while fascism represented a ‘third way’ with respect to capitalist and communist development during

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Propaganda and Film Aesthetics the interwar period: ‘the logical outcome of Fascism is an aestheticizing of political life’, as Walter Benjamin put it.23 Fascist aesthetics – the use of aesthetic sensibilities for political purposes – can be understood as part of a larger European formation of totalitarian and political modernism during the interwar years. Fascist propaganda’s power of fascination has been the subject of much study, including a special issue of the Journal of Contemporary History, ‘Fascinating Fascism: The Aesthetics of Fascism’, which explores and reconstructs the operations of what Alice Yaeger Kaplan calls fascism’s ‘binding machine’.24 Within modernist aesthetics, the Italian Fascist regime used aspects of Expressionist angst for its own ideological ends, offering totalitarian versions of Expressionist aesthetics. According to Emily Braun, the Italian fascist regime continued to tolerate Expressionist styles even after its alliance with Nazi Germany in 1939 because it could not negate the modernist legacy which it had openly supported for 20 years. Mario Sironi, for instance, was ‘arguably the most visible of artists working in an Expressionist idiom, and the most demonstrably fascist artist of the period’.25 In both Soviet montage and Italian Expressionism, a modernist aesthetic of distortion and exaggeration is inseparable from the age of mechanical reproduction, which allowed for the deformation, defamiliarisation and remaking of reality in state propaganda. Propaganda states’ co-optation of aesthetics in political life served to remould subjectivity and articulate utopian desire and spirituality. George L. Mosse suggests that the aesthetic of Italian fascism can be understood as a civic or political religion, which makes use of the ‘beauty of holiness’ for the purposes of a revolution in government.26 In ‘Fascist Aesthetics Revisited’, Lutz P. Koepnick suggests that fascism ‘constitutes a phase of capitalist modernization in which the political dimension itself becomes a market item’.27 The politics of fascism should therefore be understood as a form of commodity aesthetics in the visual age of political symbols: ‘An ideological product – the Fu€ hrer, folk community, or whatever – is supplied with a brand name and a trade-mark – the swastika – and a product-image is carefully designed.’28 The interwar period can therefore be understood as a visual age of competing propagandas at the nexus of capitalism, communism and fascism in the age of mechanical reproduction, when film aesthetics, the specificity of aesthetic mediums, and ideology were all under rigorous

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Chinese Revolutionary Cinema discussion. Of particular importance to Chinese film-makers were the ‘anti-colonial energies of the Soviet idea’: [T]he different mapping of influences and conceptual novelties from the interwar period eventually leads us to the forbidding subject of the Russian Revolution. This Revolution [. . .] created a full-blown culture of anti-imperialism for the first time, and it is striking and deeply revealing that the topic has been so carefully avoided in the postcolonial discussion.29

Beginning in the early 1930s, Soviet Russia was conceived by many Chinese left-wing film-makers as having the answers to questions confronting Chinese cinema. The 1933 public screening in Shanghai of the Soviet film The Road to Life (Nikolai Ekk, 1931) was enthusiastically welcomed by many Chinese film-makers. The roots of Chinese revolutionary film include the left-wing cinema movement in the early 1930s, marked by the Japanese invasion of Manchuria (1931) and the Second Sino-Japanese War (1937 – 45). In the midst of civil war between the Nationalist Party and the Communist Party and Japanese invasion, aesthetics increasingly became tied to revolution and national defence. In 1935, the Chinese Communist Party made a series of declarations about resistance against Japanese invasion; in the following year, the Party suggested the slogan ‘national defence literature’ (guofang wenxue), inspiring left-wing writers, film-makers and dramatists to adopt similar slogans such as ‘national defence cinema’ and ‘national defence drama’. The Second Sino-Japanese War divided China into five geopolitical zones and film centres: Japanese-annexed Manchuria, semicolonial Shanghai, the British colony Hong Kong, the communist ‘liberation zone’ in north-west China, and Chongqing, the Nationalist government’s wartime capital in south-west China after its relocation from Nanjing. According to Bao, propaganda theory in the semi-state-run Chongqing wartime resistance cinema from 1937 to 1945 displayed two major trends, both of which amplified the role of media: ‘one positing propaganda as a tool of information, the other conceiving propaganda as an instrument of affect.’30 The former deals with the dissemination of truth claims; the latter the affective impact of aesthetic forms. Beyond the Cold War logic of ‘know thy enemy’, rethinking the historically contingent term ‘propaganda’, with its roots in interwar Marxism and modernism, allows

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Propaganda and Film Aesthetics us to understand state propaganda as first and foremost an aesthetic experiment that sought to achieve maximum affective impact and mass persuasion. The term ‘propaganda film’ expresses the ‘identification of historical connections between the party-state, Maoist cultural policy and filmmaking’.31 After 1949, the Party sought hegemony in political, economic and cultural life by creating a socialist and revolutionary aesthetics. By projecting revolutionary heroism on screen, cinema participated in defining what that socialist and revolutionary aesthetics was. The first three years of the film establishment and its transition to the new regime, from 1949 to 1951, were marked not so much by repression as by collaboration and negotiation between artists (from both the Shanghai and Yan’an film-making traditions) and Party, as the latter had to rely on the former with their specialised skillsets and experience.32 Yuan Muzhi, for instance, was appointed director of the Central Film Bureau. Cai Chusheng and Shi Dongshan served as members of the Film Guidance Executive Committee. A diverse range of films, with various subject matter, were produced and released during the transitional period; it was not until 1952, after the Campaign against The Life of Wu Xun (Sun Yu, 1951) and the Rectification Campaign, that the film industry was nationalised.33 Laikwan Pang argues that the two nationwide campaigns created a ‘new criticism culture’ and a ‘national cultural criticism apparatus’.34 Similarly, Yomi Braester highlights a culture of debate and film criticism as a defining feature of what he calls the ‘cinephilia’ of the 1950s.35 In his discussion of Chinese film theory, Victor Fan has suggested that film criticism took the form of critique and judgement ( pipan) in the Mao era, often as precursors to broader cultural and political critiques and persecutions, but he does not probe into the way film criticism and film theory could emerge from pipan in a new culture of criticism (and self-criticism) rather than being simply repressed.36 In fact, the new culture of criticism and self-criticism that emerged as a result of political campaigns put film aesthetics – especially screenwriting, cinematography and acting – at the heart of intense debate. The political campaigns and aesthetic experiments throughout the Seventeen Years were characterised by alternating moments of tightened control, which demanded strict intellectual orthodoxy, and political relaxation, which directly encouraged creativity. Through trial and error, the Party’s grip on aesthetics alternately tightened and loosened. Filmmakers were critiqued for neglecting ideology and for their petty bourgeois

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Chinese Revolutionary Cinema class standing, said to cloud their aesthetic view in the Rectification Campaign (1951 – 2); but the First Five-Year Plan (1953 –7) and the Hundred Flowers Campaign (1956 –7) unleashed attempts to rescue aesthetics from overt propaganda, an effort best encapsulated by Zhong Dianfei in 1956, with his notion of the equal emphasis on the ideological, aesthetic and box office value of film. Aesthetics was once again put on the back burner amidst the ‘more, faster, better, cheaper’ (duo kuai hao sheng) experimentalism of the Great Leap Forward Campaign (1958 –61), followed by a commercial turn in cinema during the unique Blooming and Contending of 1961 –2 after Zhou Yang advocated ‘walking on two legs’ – conveying ideology through aesthetic forms – in literature and art. Chinese cinema’s forceful melding of propaganda and film aesthetics, which exist in tension, constitutes a major aesthetic experiment in the twentieth century.

The Rectification Campaign (1951 –2) Required to undergo ‘ideological remoulding’ (sixiang gaizao), intellectuals continued to participate in cinema after 1949, as screenwriters, directors and bureaucrats. Through trial and error, they developed a new kind of film theory and criticism that cooperated with the Party’s ideological priorities. The term ‘ideological remoulding’ came from deputy minister of the Propaganda Department of the CCP Central Committee Hu Qiaomu’s November 1951 speech on the Rectification Campaign (wenyi zhengfeng). In the speech, titled ‘Why Artists Should Undergo Ideological Remoulding’, Hu based his ideology on Mao’s Yan’an talks: ‘Comrade Mao pointed out that [. . .] artists should be on the side of workers. Those who are not on the side of workers should diligently remould (gaizao) themselves in order to “move from one class to another class”.’37 It is important to note that this remoulding includes emotional reform. Again quoting Mao, Hu said: ‘We artists from the intellectual class must transform and remould our thoughts and emotions in order for our work to achieve popularity among the masses.’38 Hu’s speech, which initiated the Rectification Campaign, was aimed at artists who had received a ‘bourgeois and petty bourgeois education’.39 These artists, in particular those from the Shanghai film-making tradition, were urged to acquire the perspective of workers, peasants and soldiers (gongnongbing) in order to serve them. Two

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Propaganda and Film Aesthetics days after Hu’s speech, Mao officially endorsed the nationwide Rectification Campaign, which must ‘initiate serious criticism ( piping) and self-criticism (ziwo piping)’ among cultural workers.40 The notions of criticism and self-criticism were predicated on existing flawed ideology (cuowu sixiang), which had to be overcome. For film-makers, the Rectification Campaign and ensuing political campaigns demanded a series of self-corrections that induced them to articulate a new socialist film theory and criticism. The 1951 Rectification Campaign was preceded by the Campaign against The Life of Wu Xun and succeeded by nationalisation of the film industry in 1952. As Zhuoyi Wang has suggested, the campaign against The Life of Wu Xun, often misunderstood as a manifestation of ideological differences between Yan’an-trained artists and Shanghai-based filmmakers, is better understood in terms of the Party’s first and foremost economic priority: to target private film studio artists in nationalising the film industry.41 The critique against The Life of Wu Xun (Sun Yu, 1951) was initiated by Mao himself, and the ensuing Rectification Campaign ensured the integration, centralisation and nationalisation of the film industry by 1952. Criticisms of art and artists, and self-criticisms articulated by artists during the Rectification Campaign, set the stage for the First Five-Year Plan (1953 – 7), which set goals for screenwriting, directing and acting. Part of their ideological remoulding during the Rectification Campaign, artists’ self-criticisms revolved around two issues: class standing and aesthetics. As early as August 1949, Xian Qun, in an essay titled ‘On the Question “Can We Write about the Petty Bourgeoisie”’, talked about the necessity for artists to adopt the perspective of the proletariat, rather than that of the petty bourgeoisie, because art serves workers, peasants and soldiers.42 During the Rectification Campaign, the question raised in Mao’s Yan’an talks in 1942, ‘whom does art serve’, became as important as the question of ‘by whom is art made’. The class standing of artists, especially those from the Shanghai film-making tradition, became the locus of self-examination (ziwo jiancha). In their self-criticisms during the Rectification Campaign, directors from the Shanghai tradition like Cai Chusheng, Lu€ Ban, Shi Dongshan and Zheng Junli recognised their class standing as petty bourgeois intellectuals influenced by Hollywood film-making.

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Chinese Revolutionary Cinema In a self-criticism titled ‘I Recognised my Flawed Ideology’ (1951), L€u Ban, often referred to as the ‘Chinese Chaplin’, admitted his class standing as a petty bourgeois whose creative method was inspired by Hollywood. L€u Ban criticised his film The Lu€ liang Heroes (L€u Ban and Yilin, 1950) for its humorous scene in which Chinese soldiers leave a chamber pot among the landmines for Japanese soldiers to dig up. He regretted the scene, which satisfied the petty urbanite penchant for ‘low-brow entertainment’ (diji quwei), and attributed that tendency to his ‘emphasis on form rather than content, technique rather than ideology’.43 In other words, L€u Ban’s class standing rendered his aesthetic view problematic. Class standing and aesthetic view were also at the centre of Cai Chusheng’s self-criticism, ‘Remould Our Thoughts to Realise Chairman Mao’s Vision of Literature and Art’ (1952). Reflecting on his career, Cai Chusheng wrote: ‘Permeating my oeuvre is petty bourgeois ideology.’44 He expressed regret over the dramatic effects of The Spring River Flows East (Cai Chusheng and Zheng Junli, 1947), which ‘catered to the needs of petty urbanites’: ‘The main flaw of the film is that I instilled my petty bourgeois soul and emotions in the female protagonist, who commits suicide as a socalled “accusation” of society. But in fact what it achieved is a profoundly pessimistic despair.’45 Cai Chusheng found that his earlier evocation of universal values such as ‘sympathy’, ‘humanism’ and ‘human nature’ could not transcend the worldview and aesthetic view of the petty bourgeoisie: ‘All I could achieve was “sympathy” instead of adopting the attitude of the proletariat.’46 Like L€u Ban, Cai Chusheng conceded his films’ Hollywood influences and excessive emphasis on form and technique. In ‘Diligently Remould Myself through Serious Learning’ (1952), Shi Dongshan likewise reflected on his career: ‘Before liberation, the films I directed mostly represent petty bourgeois intellectuals.’47 Shi Dongshan mistook The Spring River Flows East and Myriad of Lights (Shen Fu, 1948) as films for workers, peasants and soldiers, but four years later recognised that they were in fact films for the petty bourgeoisie. He critiqued his earlier essay ‘The Creation of Film Art for Now’ (1949), in which he wrote, If the audience wants to see fights, it doesn’t hurt to have a fight scene. If the audience wants to see special effects and set designs, it doesn’t hurt to have them. If the audience wants to see everyday family life, it doesn’t hurt to show it. As a cultural worker with a

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Propaganda and Film Aesthetics petty bourgeois upbringing, I was quite thoughtful towards petty urbanites!48

Shi Dongshan criticised himself for neglecting ideology, satisfying the tastes of petty urbanites, and excessively portraying romance: ‘I used to insist that we should value aesthetics, and so-called aesthetics [. . .] is mostly techniques such as rhythm, structure, cinematography, and humour etc.’49 At the end of his self-criticism, Shi Dongshan acknowledged that his incorrect class standing and ideological flaws clouded his aesthetic view of film, which should be first and foremost a ‘weapon for mass propaganda and education’.50 Likewise, in ‘I Must Resolutely Remould Myself’ (1952), Zheng Junli admitted that he ‘unconsciously learned Hollywood’s “profit-making” skills’ and created dramatic effects and banal entertainment in films like Crows and Sparrows (Zheng Junli, 1949) and The Spring River Flows East.51 Echoing his collaborator Cai Chusheng, Zheng Junli recognised that his evocation of universal value catered to petty urbanite tastes while trivialising politics. Though The Married Couple (Zheng Junli, 1951), a film about the union between husband (intellectual) and wife (peasant-worker), used the day-to-day domestic life of a couple to convey a serious political theme, the film ended up presenting the couple’s fights over trivialities such as slippers, cigars and spare ribs. As Zheng Junli put it: ‘I want politics (zhengzhi xing) and human touch (renqingwei). I can’t have my cake and eat it too.’52 A common thread of artists’ self-criticisms during the Rectification Campaign is that the unification of ideology and aesthetics is challenging, if not impossible. The underlying tension between ideology and aesthetics was apparent as early as July 1949, when Mao Dun’s report on revolutionary literature and art in the GMD-controlled area explained the pressing problem of unifying the political nature (zhengzhi xing) and aesthetic nature (yishu xing) of literature and art. Mao Dun asked: ‘Is the former or the latter more valuable? It is not a matter of whether politics or aesthetics is more important. It is a matter of how to measure aesthetic value.’53 He found that judgements of artistic value were as much about politics as aesthetics, but suggested that more attention should be given to aesthetics: ‘It is not that there is no politics in our works of art. On the contrary, there is too much of it. What we lack is aesthetics. That is why we have no representative works of art.’54 A month later, Shi Dongshan wrote

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Chinese Revolutionary Cinema that ‘it doesn’t hurt if we combine romance (lian’ai) and revolution (geming)’, an aesthetic view he later rejected during the Rectification Campaign for appealing to petty urbanites.55 In 1950 Chen Bo’er, a Yan’an trained artist working in the Northeast Film Studio, expressed her contrasting concern that ‘some comrades focus on form and technique, but neglect ideology and content’.56 For Chen Bo’er, ‘any form or technique serves to communicate plot and ideology.’57 As these examples and artists’ self-criticisms in the Rectification Campaign collectively demonstrate, political and aesthetic value judgements of film depended on artists’ class standing, the Party’s intention to nationalise private film studios, and the supposed aesthetic inclinations of the new ideal audience (workers, peasants and soldiers) that cinema was to serve. Tensions between ideology and aesthetics persisted through the Rectification Campaign. Criticism and self-criticism not only articulated challenges and tensions, but also anticipated the goals of the First FiveYear Plan.

The First Five-Year Plan (1953 –7) The year 1953 marked the beginning of the First Five-Year Plan and the official adoption of socialist realism at the Second National Assembly of Chinese Literature and Art Workers. The ensuing five years witnessed a burgeoning discourse on screenwriting, cinematography and acting, partly as a result of artists’ ideological remoulding, trial and error, and selfcriticisms in the Rectification Campaign. The problems and goals articulated in this period laid out a blueprint for Chinese cinema for years to come. At the First National Conference on Screenwriting in 1953, Zhou Yang established the priority of film-making under socialist realism: to create ‘pioneering characters as a type’ (xianjin renwu de dianxing).58 According to Zhou Yang, a type (dianxing) represented a social stratum, a class or a group, according to its fundamental qualities. The major problem confronting Chinese cinema, Zhou Yang emphasised, was that ‘writers do not dare to reveal weaknesses in heroic characters (yingxiong renwu)’, which are necessary in representing growth and individuality (gexing), because after all, heroes are not ‘celestial beings’.59 Offering Chapaev (Georgi Vasilyev and Sergei Vasilyev, 1934) as an example of Soviet

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Propaganda and Film Aesthetics socialist realism, Zhou Yang suggested that the growth ‘in political worldview from immaturity to maturity’ revealed heroic characters’ individuality, so that characters are believable when they go through struggle and contradictions.60 Zhou Yang not only emphasised individuality in the representation of heroic characters, but also encouraged writers to write about romance (lian’ai): ‘In our work, whenever we get to emotions (ganqing), we don’t dare to keep going, fearing that petty bourgeois emotions will come through.’61 His relaxed view of individuality, romance and emotion indicated a renewed emphasis on aesthetics, which had been criticised in the Rectification Campaign. In encouraging artists to overcome a ‘formulaic tendency’ in their creative endeavours, Zhou Yang articulated principles for the creation of heroic characters that were to be echoed and further developed by film-makers in the following years.62 Accordingly, Chen Huangmei’s speech ‘On the Question of Screenwriting’ (1954) commented on the lack of good film scripts and the phenomenon of ‘stating a theme’ (shuo zhuti) in screenwriting: ‘Narrate a story, state the theme, and the job is done.’63 Chen Huangmei observed that writers had forgotten about the principle of depicting people in literature and art, so that the heroic characters they created were often ‘without flesh and blood and could not move people’.64 In particular, the actions, speech and emotions of Party leaders and cadres on screen were ‘infallible and completely correct’.65 Chen Huangmei emphasised the need to represent the ‘spiritual features’ ( jingshen mianmao) and psychological activities of heroic characters in work and family life.66 His discussion of romance echoed Zhou Yang: ‘Our films rarely talk about romance (lian’ai). Now we are seeing some progress, but the representation of romance is not good enough. It is dry, boring, and not realistic enough.’67 Chen Huangmei attributed these flat characters and weak film scripts to the Rectification Campaign: ‘During the Rectification Campaign, many people underwent self-criticism. They feel that they still have a lot of petty bourgeois thoughts and emotions. Therefore, they seal off those thoughts and emotions and no longer write about those things anymore.’68 In a later speech, ‘On the Creation of Positive Characters’ (1955), Chen Huangmei again emphasised a neglect of aesthetics, urging artists to take advantage of film as a visual medium for depicting the spiritual features and interior worlds of heroic characters. He lamented a lack of love in heroic characters, some of whom ‘love machines because they themselves

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Chinese Revolutionary Cinema are machines – it is as if they don’t love anybody. They don’t love friends or spouses. They don’t love everyday life because they don’t have everyday life. For instance, positive characters in our films do not have family lives.’69 Chen Huangmei argued that love was necessary to humanise heroic characters: ‘Heroes are just like us – ordinary and real people. They experience difficulties and obstacles in work and life. They experience joy, anger, sorrow and happiness.’70 Defining love correctly was necessary, to differentiate it from petty bourgeoisie emotions; noting that class love (jieji ganqing), friendship (youqing) among comrades, and romance (aiqing) were lacking on screen, Chen Huangmei urged artists to depict exemplary characters’ social labour and social activities, including their everyday and family lives, so that social life and individual life would be unified in representation.71 He noted that a correct kind of love involved ‘sharing a common political outlook’: ‘A couple falls in love as they struggle for their ideals in work and social activities.’72 As shall be seen, Zhou Yang’s and Chen Huangmei’s perspectives on romance and love were to serve as a roadmap for the appropriation of classical Hollywood narration and its dual plot of romance and work in Chinese revolutionary film.73 In his report on the Conference on Screenwriting, Directing, and Acting in Fiction Film in 1955, Cai Chusheng also addressed the formulaic representation of positive characters and the necessity of writing about love: Romance (lian’ai) – the continuation of human life through heterosexual union and procreation – has an important impact in educating young people [. . .] but we are not good at representing it [. . .] Romance is an eternal theme of creative work. One ought to write about it with gusto.74

Cai assigned explicit purposes to romance (lian’ai) – heterosexual union and the formation of family – for the emulation of young audiences. These goals would be reinforced later by Chinese film-makers’ appropriation of classical Hollywood narration in revolutionary film. Going further than Zhou Yang and Chen Huangmei, Cai Chusheng turned his attention to acting, especially the ‘exaggerated overperformance’ and ‘underperformance’ of actors who played positive characters.75 Cai Chusheng acknowledged actors’ learning of Stanislavski’s system in acting troupes in Shanghai and Beijing; however, he observed that most actors are personality actors (bense yanyuan) who played

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Propaganda and Film Aesthetics roles similar to their real-life personalities and relied on their ‘true colours’ (bense).76 Cai Chusheng believed that personality actors were unlikely to have a bright future, and urged them to reject formulaic performances for more nuanced and varied expressions of the interiority (neixin huodong) and spirituality of positive characters. He suggested Chinese actors learn from the best Soviet actors, who ‘have a distinct personality, spiritual feature, tone and gesture every time they play a role’.77 This emphasis on acting and the representation of heroic characters initiated a discourse on screen acting that prefigured the 1962 socialist star craze. As well as calling for the creation of positive characters through acting, the First Five-Year Plan laid out goals for screenwriting. Reviewing film production in 1954, Cai Chusheng noted a lack of both quantity and quality: only 14 fiction films were produced that year.78 Chen Huangmei had set a production target of 12–15 film scripts per year in 1953 (including some accumulated during the Rectification Campaign), but anticipated a script shortage by 1955.79 To broaden films’ subject matter, Chen Huangmei encouraged adaptations of May Fourth literature like Ba Jin’s novel Family (1933). The collective nature of socialist screenwriting, often requiring multiple revisions after review and censorship, was one cause of the script shortage. Chen Huangmei encouraged consultation, discussion and collaboration between screenwriters and bureaucrats and urged screenwriters to insist on their opinions and not fear bureaucratic leadership. Chen Huangmei’s articulation of the tension between bureaucratic leadership and artists’ creative autonomy was echoed by Shi Dongshan that same year. In a 1954 discussion session on shooting scripts, Shi Dongshan claimed that film artists were ‘too eager to propagandise’ (xuanchuan): ‘They overtly propagandised, not paying attention to the way art operates in the unconscious.’80 Like Zhou Yang, Chen Huangmei and Cai Chisheng, Shi Dongshan called for a renewed focus on aesthetics in articulating the First Five-Year Plan, one in which screenwriting would be given as much emphasis as the creation of positive characters. Quoting Soviet director and screenwriter Sergei Gerasimov (whose work was translated and published in the Chinese film journal Film Art Translations), Shi Dongshan elevated the film script as a literary and artistic form: The task of film artists is to make film scripts (dianying juben) as important as a novella or a novel, so that a film script is no longer an

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Chinese Revolutionary Cinema application for film production or a draft for a future film, but the ideological and artistic foundation of a film.81

In fact, a film script was often called a ‘film –literary script’ (dianying wenxue juben) in Chinese. Shi Dongshan elevated the literary quality not only of film scripts, but also of shooting scripts ( fenjingtou juben): ‘There is no need to write a shooting script as an application or a balance sheet, dividing action and dialogue into two sections. Such a shooting script lacks literary quality and cannot inspire actors and workers.’82 A shooting script, or shot division, constituted a second step in screenwriting, integrating a film script with shot division and enhancing the literary and visual quality of a film in its early conception: ‘We expect a shooting script to read like a novel [. . .] Special effects and sound effects should be incorporated into the text of the shooting script with a mood that affects readers.’83 Shi Dongshan advocated integrating dialogue, shot division and special effects in shooting scripts and rejected fragmentation between content and form. His emphasis on the literary and artistic value of film scripts and shooting scripts rescued aesthetics from what he viewed as overt propaganda that had neglected artistic techniques. The problems and goals articulated during the First Five-Year Plan were part of a burgeoning discourse on screenwriting, cinematography and acting during a relaxed political environment that culminated in Hu Feng’s radical proposal to decentralise film-making. In Hu Feng’s ‘Report on the Practice and State of Art and Literature in Recent Years’, also known as the ‘300,000-Word Letter’, he suggested discontinuing national and regional publications such as Wenyi bao, Renmin wenxue and Wenyi yuebao and dissolving central and regional administrative entities and creative units.84 This radical proposal set in motion the Anti-Hu Feng Campaign in 1955, during which Hu Feng was heavily critiqued and arrested; Shi Dongshan, Hu Feng’s close friend, committed suicide during the campaign.

The Hundred Flowers Campaign (1956 –7) The year 1956 witnessed a worldwide re-evaluation of socialism. Stalin’s death in 1953 and Nikita Khrushchev’s secret speech at the Twentieth Party Congress in 1956 marked the beginning of the thaw and

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Propaganda and Film Aesthetics de-Stalinisation in the Soviet Union, where repression and censorship were relaxed. The looser political environment served as a backdrop for Mao to launch the Hundred Flowers Campaign, ‘letting a hundred flowers bloom and a hundred schools of thought contend’, encouraging open critical expression from film artists in 1956. The Hungarian Uprising in the same year triggered a crisis of socialism worldwide. Domestically, Mao’s campaign revealed tensions, weaknesses and the necessity of reforms, posing challenges to the Party’s centralised control of the film industry. The Hundred Flowers Campaign was to end abruptly, followed by another purge, the Anti-Rightist Campaign, in 1957. Criticism unleashed during the Hundred Flowers Campaign revolved around three major issues: screenwriting and censorship, the changing status of directors, and the changing identity of actors as state employees in a planned economy. The criticism must be understood in the context of a perceived lack of quantity and quality of domestic film, slow production and weak attendance. In November 1956, Wenhui Daily reported that a typical domestic film had an attendance rate of 30 –40 per cent in a city like Shanghai with a population of six million.85 The Daily stated that readers often wrote letters to criticise domestic films for their ‘narrow subject matters, similar plots and formulaic contents’.86 Although film output had progressed since 1954, when 14 fiction films were made, only 36 fiction films were produced in 1956.87 The limited number of films meant that screening schedules offered little variety and diversity, indirectly and inadvertently forcing audiences to watch specific films.88 Weak box office, coupled with the lack of variety and choice, signalled a disconnect between film-makers and the audience. When the film industry was nationalised, film production and distribution were separated. Film-makers and producers were not given data about box office, distribution income or audience reception. As Chen Liting explained, unlike pre-1949 commercial cinema, which considered audience preference so as to recoup costs and profit in a market-driven economy, planned-economy film-making fulfilled production targets: A film studio is more like an administrative unit [. . .] The official approval of a film has nothing to do with audience’s interest. A film acclaimed by officials may not be well received by the audience at all [. . .] The relationship between film-makers and audience is severed.89

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Chinese Revolutionary Cinema Li Xing, manager of the Lingling People’s Cinema in a provincial town in Hunan, remarked that the quality of films about industry and agriculture was so poor that only 49 tickets were sold to workers for the screening of A Heroic Beginning (Zhang Ke, 1954) on International Workers’ Day. Screening of The March Forward (Cheng Yin, 1950) was cancelled because tickets were unsold.90 In an essay that was heavily criticised during the Anti-Rightist Campaign, Zhong Dianfei provocatively said that the audience cinema claims to serve – workers, peasants and soldiers – is an abstraction if there are only a few actual people watching film.91 Zhong Dianfei suggested that there should be equal emphasis on film’s ‘ideological value, aesthetic value and box office value’.92 One major reason for the perceived qualitative and quantitative lacks, and slow production, of domestic film, was bureaucratic censorship of film scripts, which created tensions between screenwriters and bureaucrats. In an essay titled ‘Improve the System for Reviewing Film Scripts’ (1956), Tang Zhenchang laid out the complex process of reviewing film scripts. A film script had to go through seven or eight rounds of revision: from editors to studio leaders to the Film Bureau to directors. Reviewers and censors often had individual preferences, lacking an objective standard.93 Mu Bai shared this view, listing a few ‘commandments’ from the top: a pet dog had to be removed because it was a petty bourgeois plaything; a doctor wearing glasses with black frames was not appropriate; children not knocking on the door or not saying ‘thank you’ showed a lack of courtesy.94 Lao She, in an essay titled ‘Save our Cinema’ (1956), expressed similar concerns: ‘the original 40 per cent of aesthetics has been reduced to less than 10 per cent. A film script therefore slips into nothingness – no language, no plot, no style, no structure.’95 Lao She offered a hypothesis to suggest that a film is no different from a staged lecture: ‘Suppose a couple falls in love, but in a second they turn around and talk about their study, work or world affairs.’96 Shi Hui expressed his vexation as a director: A revised script gives directors a headache: ‘How can I make a film out of it?’ The leader says: ‘It’s not easy to get a script approved. Use it and don’t change anything.’ In front of actors, directors cannot say anything bad about the script. They have no choice but to swallow their frustrations.97

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Propaganda and Film Aesthetics Film artists’ dissatisfaction with review and censorship of scripts pointed to a production mode that centred on executive leadership, under which writers and subject matter for film scripts were organised through executive orders. Executive leadership of production tamed, if not endangered, the status of the auteur and his creative vision. The new production mode created a situation in which bureaucratic laymen managed film specialists, a hierarchical relationship between bureaucrats and directors that limited collaboration and creative freedom. In an essay titled ‘Directors Should be at the Center of Film Production’ (1956), Chen Liting emphasised the core identity of the auteur as the creator of film art: ‘Only directors can foresee the screen image of a film. Only directors can evaluate the individual talent of their crew members and designate tasks accordingly.’98 Chen Liting claimed that artistic creation was unlike industrial production in that it depended on collaboration and communication among directors, screenwriters, actors, technicians and cameramen. Using pre-1949 Chinese cinema and foreign cinema as a yardstick, Chen Liting argued that a sophisticated director had screenwriters he often collaborated with and actors and cameramen he was familiar with.99 Unfortunately, he said, ‘our leaders indiscriminately categorise directors, actors and technicians and select a film script from an executive perspective.’100 Chen Liting described this top-down process as inhibiting directorial initiative, as if directors were to wait for ‘missions’ assigned to them.101 Similarly, in an essay titled ‘Respect the Aesthetic Tradition of Cinema’ (1956), Sun Yu called directors ‘commanders in chief’ who orchestrated screenwriting, acting, cinematography, sound and set design and turned them into an integrated and complete work of art.102 Likewise, Wu Zuguang’s controversial essay, ‘Party, Please Don’t Lead Artistic Work’ (1957) – targeted during the Anti-Rightist Campaign – highlighted the radical change in directors’ identity and status, as well as the dual identity of directors as bureaucrats: ‘Cai Chusheng and I were friends and we often had debates on art. But now he is a head, a leader. I can only execute what he says.’103 Critiques of a new production mode that centred on executive leadership indicated a changing relationship between auteurs and the oneparty state. Directors were stripped of their auteur identities and made the cogs and wheels of state propaganda – yet some of them were given the bureaucratic authority to lead artistic work. The survival and

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Chinese Revolutionary Cinema transformation of individual film-makers’ talents, as shall be seen, were to remain one of the top priorities of state propaganda. This centring of executive leadership in film production had consequences for the identities, not only of directors, but also of actors as state employees in a planned economy. Unlike a market-driven economy where actors competed for work in a free labour market, socialist actors were state employees whose casting opportunities were contingent on the supply and censorship of film scripts. In an essay titled ‘Let Numerous Hidden Jewels Shine’ (1956), Shanggong Yunzhu, an actress from the Shanghai film-making tradition, identified what she saw as the ‘problem of actors’ work’.104 Her notion of work included creative labour and artistic work in the realm of aesthetics: for example, casting, actors’ training and the maintenance of professional identity. Shanggong Yunzhu complained that in the seven years since 1949 most actors in the Shanghai Film Studio, especially actresses, had had only one or two shots on screen or stage appearances: ‘Actors are set aside and their skills are getting rusty.’105 Le Yan from the Beijing Screen Acting Troupe saw the same problem: of 147 actors in the Changchun Screen Acting Troupe, only 40 had regular work. The rest were mostly without work in any given year. The situation for the Beijing Screen Acting Troupe was even worse; like the Shanghai Film Studio, some actors had had only one to two screen appearances since 1949, while some had been set aside since 1952 and others had remained ‘unemployed’ since their first day in the film industry.106 Unlike unemployed actors in a free labour market, who might find alternative employment, socialist actors were state employees and had a regular income, so that their lack of work did not mean loss of income, but rather loss of market value and the erosion of their professional identity as actors. An existential crisis of being employed but without work hit many actors, who understood their lack of fulfilment as stemming from a bureaucratic lack of respect and understanding of actors’ work. Hence, although the shortage of film scripts was a contributing factor to the lack of work opportunities for actors, actors pointed to the lack of understanding and trust from leadership as the root of their problem. Shanggong Yunzhu considered the shortage of film scripts a symptom of this underlying issue: ‘Leaders do not pay attention to actors’ lack of work. They do not treat it as a problem that is wasting away an artist’s creative life and youth.’107 Actresses’ creative youth was a particular concern in casting

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Propaganda and Film Aesthetics decisions, though Han Fei, a comedic actor who moved from Hong Kong to Shanghai in 1952, expressed similar concerns: ‘As an actor, being away from stage and screen means losing my source of life. It is hard to live through idle days.’108 Actors’ lack of fulfilment reflected the lack of work opportunities, but it also resulted from a lack of understanding, respect and trust from the leadership. Sun Jinglu, a screen actress with stage experience, recalled that a leader from her troupe was shocked to learn that she had performed in Sunrise (1936), a drama written by Cao Yu. Sun Jinglu asked: ‘Our leaders are so unfamiliar with our actors. How can they allocate work for us?’109 Leaders’ unfamiliarity with and mistrust of actors’ experience haunted Shanggong Yunzhu, who spoke of an unhealthy assumption that actors from the old society did not have the ability to create new characters.110 Using the film For Peace (Huang Zuolin, 1956) as an example, Sun Jinglu noted that actors playing antagonists were not named in the opening credits of films.111 These frustrations express a shared desire for more visibility and screen opportunities, and recognition of actors’ work and experience. Even actors who had the opportunity to work found screen roles boxed in. Le Yan commented on the formulaic roles available: ‘[An actor’s] roles have the same flavour. Even the plots are the same. Therefore, s/he has no choice but to show a heroic face. What s/he worries about is that [. . .] s/he will forever have this face only.’112 Le Yan asked, ‘If people have labelled and limited what’s not even on screen yet, what’s left for actors to create?’113 Where Cai Chusheng spoke of the weakness of personality actors in 1955, Le Yan expressed a need of actors to act outside the box just a year later. The criticism unleashed during the Hundred Flowers Campaign revealed these disconnects between bureaucratic leadership, film artists (directors, screenwriters and actors), and the audience. Zhong Dianfei’s idea of ‘box office value’ and Wu Zuguang’s critique of Party leadership were targeted during the Anti-Rightist Campaign in 1957, in which Shi Hui, like Shi Dongshan in response to the Anti-Hu Feng Campaign, committed suicide. The campaign that was to follow – the Great Leap Forward Campaign (1958 –61) – continued to confront the problems of screenwriting, the changing identities of directors and actors and the struggle to determine the ideological, aesthetic and box office values of film.

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Chinese Revolutionary Cinema

The Great Leap Forward Campaign (1958–61) The Great Leap Forward Campaign (GLF), an ambitious socialist experiment, set targets for rapid industrialisation and collectivisation. Film production was part of the campaign. A new genre called ‘documentarystyle art film’ ( jiluxing yishupian) emerged, embodying the new utopianism. Under the slogan ‘more, faster, better, cheaper’ (duo kuai hao sheng), 103 fiction films (including 49 documentary-style art films) were produced in 1958, 2.5 times more than in 1957.114 Reflecting on the progress in film production, Xia Yan commented that the first two years of the GLF surpassed total film output since 1949: 180 fiction films had been produced since the GLF began, compared to 171 films from 1949 to 1957. Average production time for films shortened from one year to five months or less during the GLF. The average production cost of a black-and-white film decreased in 1956 –8, from RMB$ 200,000 to RMB$ 110,000; a documentary-style art film cost as little as RMB$ 57,000.115 Most of the machines and equipment for film production (except for film negatives) were made domestically in the PRC rather than imported. Along with setting production targets, the Ministry of Culture set targets for film screening and attendance, proposing 4 million film screenings to an audience of 3 billion in 1958.116 The ministry targeted a 20 per cent increase in film screenings by projection teams and a 12 per cent increase in theatrical screenings.117 In 1957 –8, the number of projection units increased by 25 per cent, from 9,965 to 12,374.118 The economic and ideological rationale of the GLF in film production was to popularise film and enhance its capacity to reach the masses, propagating the heroic feats and myths of the campaign. Behind the encouraging numbers was the new genre, created to capture the fervour of the GLF. According to Chen Huangmei, the purpose of documentary-style art films was to quickly capture and reflect the new reality.119 Low budget, short length and concision allowed quick production for a mass audience. For Yuan Wenshu, documentary-style art films were characterised by ‘simplicity and rawness’ because they were based on real stories of the GLF without excessive polishing or fictional elements.120 As a form of mass education, documentary-style art films served to ‘propagate (chuanbo) heroic feats’.121 Subject matter included heavy industry, factories, railroad construction, the people’s commune and

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Propaganda and Film Aesthetics the people’s liberation army. Huang Baomei (Xie Jin, 1958), for instance, is a documentary-style art film based on the real life of a textile factory worker.122 Although the genre used a documentary style typical of newsreels, onlocation shooting was not a must. Characterisation and fictional plots were common. In terms of style and method, Cai Chusheng described documentary-style art film as an ‘independent genre situated between fiction and documentary’.123 The guiding principle of the new genre was to combine ‘revolutionary realism and revolutionary romanticism’, proposed by Mao in 1958. The slogan replaced socialist realism that had been adopted since 1953, when Sino –Soviet relations were strong. Chen Huangmei emphasised that documentary-style art films should ‘reflect revolutionary hope for transformation and revolutionary romanticism’.124 The new slogan and film style captured the experimental, futuristic and utopian rhetoric of the GLF.125 Qi Zhi (Wu Di) uses the term ‘experimentalists’ (shiyanpai) to refer to those who advocated unprecedented socialist experiments like the GLF.126 The radicalness of the GLF experiment in film production lies in its complete mobilisation to maximise output, production speed and ideological impact. The ideological priorities of propaganda came to the forefront. GLF stories invested in simple plots, heroic characters and heroic feats with a politically motivated claim to truth. As Cai Chusheng put it, the ‘direct, immediate and strong political effects’ of documentary-style art film set it apart from other genres.127 The Hundred Flowers Campaign had unleashed a desire for progressive reform via return to the past (the pre1949 Shanghai film-making tradition) during a period of political relaxation. The GLF, in contrast, set off a radical and revolutionary experiment during a period of tightened control.128 Notwithstanding the stylistic innovations of films created during the GLF, aesthetics were temporarily neglected in the fervour to churn out documentary-style art films, which were half of the fiction film output in 1958. In experimenting with this new genre, popularisation ran counter to raising standards. Increased film production and bigger projection teams were intended to boost attendance and popularise film among the ideal audience (peasants, workers and soldiers). However, increased quantity was achieved at the cost of quality. In his 1958 report on ‘gift presentation films’ (xianli pian) for the tenth anniversary of the establishment of the

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Chinese Revolutionary Cinema PRC, Xia Yan noted that ‘our recent works have no problems politically [. . .] but [do] have flaws in aesthetics.’129 His call to ‘pay attention to quality’ must be understood in the context of the Party’s request to produce seven films of ‘high ideological and aesthetic value’ for the national celebration.130 Quoting Deng Xiaoping, Xia Yan considered gift presentation films as a means to ‘introduce and propagate (xuanchuan) to the world the Chinese revolution and socialist construction’.131 To better achieve this goal, Xia Yan reintroduced the importance of aesthetics, emphasising that ‘aesthetics and politics can’t be separated’.132 A few months later in March 1959, the Ministry of Culture announced that annual film output was on a par with the Soviet Union (which produced 103 fiction films in 1958) and proposed slowing down film production because the country’s infrastructure, equipment and projection units could not keep pace with the exponential increase in film output.133 By 1959, the general consensus of film-makers and bureaucrats alike was that aesthetics and film quality had been neglected in the midst of experimentalism. Together with the Film Bureau’s 1959 report on raising artistic quality, Zhou Enlai’s ‘two legs’ speech recognised the weaknesses of documentarystyle art films, laid out future principles for film-making, and anticipated potential problems confronting the film industry. In his speech, Zhou Enlai advocated ‘walking on two legs’ in literature and art: ‘Ideology should lead, but that doesn’t mean that aesthetics is not important. Ideology is conveyed through aesthetic forms.’134 In combining revolutionary realism and revolutionary romanticism, ‘idealism and romanticism should lead’ because art was dry without a sense of idealism.135 Zhou Enlai’s formulation – ‘walking on two legs’ – and its emphasis on revolutionary romanticism was to serve as a guiding principle for an aesthetics of heroism that culminated after the GLF. The Film Bureau endorsed the policy of ‘walking on two legs’ in its ‘Report on Raising Artistic Quality’ (1959), highlighting the tendency in producing documentary-style art films to ‘neglect quality for quantity’ and ‘aesthetics for politics’.136 The bureau identified a number of problems with the new genre: ‘superficial pursuit of quantity’, ‘overly tight production schedules’, ‘violation of artistic norms’ and a ‘bureaucratic mode of production’.137 These problems were expressed in timekeeping slogans such as ‘every second counts’ in film studios, and in big character posters where discussions of film scripts took place.138 They led to narrow subject matter

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Propaganda and Film Aesthetics and monotonous and repetitive forms that lacked originality, style and technique, weakening their impact on the masses.139 The Film Bureau advised slowing down film production to pursue higher quality, proposing a projected annual output of about 70 films in the next two to three years.140 Along with bringing aesthetics back into the picture, the Film Bureau anticipated a manpower shortage and the need to nurture a new crop of talent within an emerging generational shift in the film industry. The bureau voiced concern for a lack of successors: there were no more than ten competent screenwriters and no more than 60 promising directors in the country.141 Cinematographers, set designers and sound-recording technicians were scarce, and there was a lack of make-up artists and fashion designers. The Film Bureau noted that the average age of actors in the Shanghai Film Studio was 37.142 Also echoing Zhou Enlai’s ‘walking on two legs’, in 1960 Xia Yan specifically called for representing pioneering characters in an essay titled ‘We Must Raise the Quality of Film Art’. According to Xia Yan, most documentary-style art films were limited by representing real stories and did not ‘condense, fictionalise and concentrate on the typical’.143 Xia Yan highlighted The Red Detachment of Women (Xie Jin, 1961) as exceptional in its successfully fictionalised female lead, Wu Qionghua: Qionghua [. . .] has character. She is such a strong-willed and rebellious peasant young woman. Filled with class hatred, she is determined to join the revolution. Her personality is distinct and touching. The film catches the audience’s attention because of this character.144

Xia Yan also applauded a number of films that were well-received internationally: The White-Haired Girl (Wang Bin and Shui Hua, 1950), The New Year’s Sacrifice (Sang Hu, 1956), Lin Zexu (Zheng Junli, 1959), Nie Er (Zheng Junli, 1959) and Five Golden Flowers (Wang Jiayi, 1959). Notably, some of these films represent idealised heroic characters, a type that was to become commonplace following the GLF.

The Blooming and Contending of 1961–2 Reflecting on the development of Chinese cinema since 1949, Xia Yan also noted that in various campaigns – the Campaign against The Life of Wu 49

Chinese Revolutionary Cinema Xun, the Rectification Campaign, the Anti-Hu Feng Campaign, the Hundred Flowers Campaign, the Anti-Rightist Campaign and the Great Leap Forward – the film industry had been in a ‘two-line struggle between aesthetics and politics’.145 This struggle had its highs and lows and alternated periods of relaxation and radicalness. A period of relaxation and re-evaluation took place in 1961 –2: some of the policies of the Hundred Flowers Period were reinstated after the disastrous famine that caused the death of roughly 30 million during the GLF.146 Many conferences and discussions on film were held in 1961, resulting in a number of drafted documents and directives published in 1962. In the years after the GLF a revolutionary aesthetics of heroism blossomed, reaching its height in the short-lived 1962 socialist star craze: the result of years of experimentation in screenwriting, cinematography and acting. Conferences and discussions held in 1961 responded to many of the unresolved problems voiced in the Hundred Flowers Campaign: the challenges of screenwriting under censorship, the identities of directors and actors, and the tensions between ideology and aesthetics. At a conference at the Beijing Film Studio in 1961, Chen Huangmei argued: ‘From now on, we should tighten the grip on politics and lessen it on aesthetics.’147 Loosening the grip on aesthetics, like Zhou Enlai’s ‘walking on two legs’, would guide the formulation of new objectives and policies. During another discussion session at the Beijing Film Studio and the August First Film Studio, Chen Huangmei tackled the problems of screenwriting, directing and acting head on, arguing that what determined the success of a film was not subject matter or theme, but character. Assigning subject matter or theme from above put the cart before the horse. Chen Huangmei encouraged screenwriters to prioritise the screen image of their characters and the conflicts and contradictions their characters dealt with.148 Even minor subject matter could reveal a profound message. Using Five Golden Flowers and The Red Detachment of Women as examples, Chen Huangmei argued that romance (lian’ai) was an important subject because ‘it cultivates socialist moral values (daodeguan) among our young people.’149 Like many who voiced similar concerns during the Hundred Flowers Campaign, Chen Huangmei argued for reducing the multiple levels of censorship on film scripts and encouraged cinematic adaptations of literature, from classical to the May Fourth period to contemporary.

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Propaganda and Film Aesthetics Chen Huangmei brought directors and actors, who had been marginalised due to bureaucratic interference with creative work, back to the centre of film production. He did not shy away from terms such as ‘master’ (dashi) and ‘star’ (mingxing), associated with art cinema and Hollywood entertainment: ‘Of course we shouldn’t encourage labels such as “master” and “star”, but as comrade Zhou Yang says [. . .] an outstanding work requires outstanding talent.’150 Chen Huangmei recognised the talent of individual directors, auteurs whose style is the result of experience. He emphasised that filming scripts fell under the role of the director, as ‘the centre of film production’.151 If encouraging directors to produce outstanding work meant raising standards and film quality, nurturing actors would ensure popularity among the film-going audience. Chen Huangmei extended his emphasis on individual talent, saying: ‘We should nurture our proletarian masters and proletarian stars.’152 Although he disapproved of the way capitalist societies sought after stars, Chen Huangmei advocated tapping into the reputation and trust that an actor had established among the audience. He lamented that Tian Hua’s debut on screen in The White-Haired Girl was quickly forgotten, with Tian waiting eight years for a new screen image in Daughter of the Party (Lin Nong, 1958). Chen Huangmei’s concern that the ‘audience’s impression would fade’ reflected actors’ lack of star status.153 He saw a need to capitalise on an actor’s successful debut, to continue investing in the actor in order to establish a proletarian star. Chen Huangmei saw outstanding talent as a sign of an aesthetic peak, asking rhetorically: ‘In the last 11 years, how many outstanding talents have we nurtured?’154 Offering Xie Fang’s popularity in Japan after her debut as Lin Daojing in Song of Youth (Cui Wei and Chen Huaikai, 1959) as an example, Chen Huangmei highlighted the importance of youthfulness: ‘If we set aside this actress [Xie Fang] for a year or two, she will be forgotten [. . .] Her youth will be gone.’155 Youth, femininity and the importance of a fresh face were to become crucial elements of the 1962 socialist star craze. In the years after the GLF, a period of relative political relaxation, both Party and film industry would reach for aesthetic heights. Within the Seventeen Years from 1949 to 1966, prior to the Cultural Revolution, there were two periods of political relaxation – the Hundred Flowers Campaign (1956 –7) and the Blooming and Contending of 1961 – 2 – during which film criticism and film theory emerged, as bureaucrats, film-makers and critics articulated critiques and suggestions. In June 1961,

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Chinese Revolutionary Cinema the Ministry of Culture and the Propaganda Department of the CCP Central Committee organised the National Discussion Plenum on Artistic Work and the National Conference on Fiction Film, also known as the Xinqiao Conference, held in the Xinqiao Hotel at the Chongwenmen intersection in Beijing. Its objective was to reinstate some of the agendas and policies of the Hundred Flowers Campaign. Discussions and speeches at the Xinqiao Conference focused on aesthetics, resulting in the drafting of ‘Thirty-two Articles on Film’ (also called ‘Opinions on Strengthening the Leadership of the Creation and Production of Art Films’) and ‘Eight Articles in Literature and Art’ by the Ministry of Culture, in 1961 and 1962 respectively.156 At the Xinqiao Conference, Zhou Enlai re-emphasised the political question of ‘whom to serve’, adding the aesthetic question of ‘how to serve’. Zhou Enlai encouraged the use of aesthetic form to serve workers, peasants and soldiers, who ‘seek entertainment and relaxation’ in film.157 He argued that film, as a form of propaganda, should be both ‘educational’ and ‘entertaining’.158 At the Xinqiao conference, Zhou Yang suggested ‘four excellences’ as objectives: ‘excellent story, excellent actors, excellent cinematography and excellent music’.159 He spoke of these four excellences as expectations of the audience. Cai Chusheng supported the objectives because they addressed the audience experience. He described film watching as first and foremost a sensual (ganxing) experience, followed by rational (lixing) understanding that would influence thoughts and behaviour.160 For Cai Chusheng, the director’s task was to bring these aspects together, like a conductor in an orchestra: ‘The four excellences are achieved under the orchestration of the director.’161 The concept of the four excellences responded to audiences’ aesthetic expectations; it also brought directors back to the table as the architects of cinematic success. Along with placing directors at the centre of film production, the Xinqiao Conference spotlighted actors. Zhou Yang talked about the need for ‘stars’ and the phenomenon of star adulation: ‘Foreigners talk about “craze” (kuangre). Some cinephiles are drawn to a film because of a particular actor. We should discover and nurture actors who have such drawing power.’162 The Xinqiao Conference re-emphasised the power of aesthetics to attract audiences and maximise the ideological, entertainment and box office values of film. This recognition, as Zhuoyi Wang suggests,

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Propaganda and Film Aesthetics constituted a ‘commercial turn’ in cinema that was partly inspired by cinema in capitalist societies.163 Cai Xiang suggests that the early 1960s witnessed a crisis of socialism: the establishment of urban-centred socialist culture, emerging middle-class and consumer culture and value identification with the West together generated political anxiety, which would set off another rectification in 1964 before the onset of the Cultural Revolution.164 The Rectification Campaign focussed on class standing and ideologically remoulding film artists before nationalising the film industry. The First Five-Year Plan and the ensuing campaigns, however, centred on aesthetic form: screenwriting (of both literary and shooting scripts), cinematography and acting in the representation of heroic characters. These aesthetically-centred campaigns changed the relationships between the state, bureaucrats and film artists. From 1949, periods of political radicalness and relaxation had alternated; they would continue to do so through 1966, as the state tightened and loosened its grip on aesthetics and the creative autonomy of film artists. Dialectical tensions and co-optation between political propaganda and film aesthetics were consistent throughout the Seventeen Years, culminating in the ideas of ‘walking on two legs’ and ‘a combination of revolutionary realism and revolutionary romanticism’. The GLF’s reassessment of low-budget documentary-style art films was followed by a commercial turn in the early 1960s, during which revolutionary fiction film reached an aesthetic peak, propagating revolutionary heroism. The following chapters look more closely at aesthetic discourse and experiments in screenwriting, montage and acting, tracing the evolution of a heightened sense of revolutionary heroism in Chinese revolutionary film.

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2 Literature on Screen: Recasting Classical Hollywood Narration in Family Melodrama

Many Chinese revolutionary films, including the ‘Red Classics’, have literary origins: Song of Youth (Cui Wei and Chen Huaikai, 1959), Revolutionary Family (Shui Hua, 1961), Li Shuangshuang (Lu Ren, 1962) and Red Crag (Shui Hua, 1965) are notable examples. Sometimes debuted as series in newspapers, these original works began as ‘people’s literature’, enjoyed immense popularity, and were carefully selected, revised and censored for film adaptation. Film adaptations of literature were a consistent and dominant mode of revolutionary film-making: they revolutionised literature and literariness along with their reconception of ‘family’ as both literary trope and organised social unit. The trajectory of socialist film adaptations of May Fourth literature and post-1949 ‘people’s literature’ created a genre of family melodrama in which the dissolution, creation, and maintenance of family was a central theme. Early socialist film adaptations responded to the legacies of May Fourth literature as source materials; later socialist film invested in post-1949 ‘people’s literature’ derived from biographies and life experiences in the countryside. This shift in revolutionary temporality, from the past to the present, created cinematic prototypes and icons of the bygone feudal era and the new socialist era.

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Literature on Screen Adapting literature into film involved rethinking screenwriting and recasting classical Hollywood narration in Chinese literary terms. The literary obsession, following the May Fourth Movement, with ‘family’ – as microcosm of the nation, site of tension between tradition and modernity, and source of oppression for women – continued after 1949 in the cinematic genre of family melodrama, which negotiated with the Shanghai film-making tradition of family melodrama. In selecting the following family melodramas, which are also socialist film adaptations of literature, for close reading – This Life of Mine (Shi Hui, 1950), The New Year’s Sacrifice (Sang Hu, 1956) and Revolutionary Family (Shui Hua, 1961) – I explore how incorporating classical Hollywood narration, heterosexual romance (or the lack thereof) and melodrama facilitated the socialist propagation of work and family and the construction of a ‘family’ made up of nation and Party.1 As mass entertainment and education, a revolutionary family melodrama like Revolutionary Family offered a narrative resolution that overcame the traces of negativity in May Fourth literature.

Recasting Classical Hollywood Narration in Chinese Literary Terms: The Case of Xia Yan In her study of wenyi (letters and arts) and the branding of early Chinese film, Emily Yueh-yu Yeh has brought attention to the ‘symbiotic linkage of literature and film’, specifically the crossover between the early Chinese film industry and ‘Mandarin Ducks and Butterfly’ literature, with a poignant question: ‘In what way was literature used to help brand cinema?’2 Yeh notes that in the 1920s, writers like Xu Zhuodai and Bing Xin emphasised the literary qualities of intertitles and advocated the film script as a piece of wenyi work – a loan word from the Japanese bungei, associated with ‘western fiction and concepts of humanism, equality, and freedom’ with cosmopolitan aspirations.3 After 1949, the cinematic and literary contributions of the Mandarin Ducks and Butterfly School made way for the left-wing revolutionary tradition in orthodox film historiography. Like the early Chinese film industry, the communist regime was invested in using literature to brand cinema, albeit in socialist and revolutionary terms. When the mid-1950s saw a shortage of film

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Chinese Revolutionary Cinema scripts, pre-1949 revolutionary literature and May Fourth literature provided ideas, plots and characters. The 1950 film adaptations of Lao She’s novella This Life of Mine (1937) and Mao Dun’s novel Corrosion (1941) are typical early socialist film adaptations, characterised by the prominence of script and dialogue. May Fourth and pre-1949 revolutionary literature provided raw material for creating readily reproducible cinematic prototypes. Adapting literature on screen established and rewrote the literary canon for the Party’s ideological needs. Like the Soviet effort to establish Maxim Gorky as the father of socialist realism with the film adaptation The Gorky Trilogy: My Childhood, My Apprenticeship, and My Universities (Mark Donskoi, 1938) – widely advertised and well-received in China in 1950 – the Chinese communist regime adapted Lu Xun’s short story ‘The New Year’s Sacrifice’ (1924) on screen in 1956, fashioning Lu Xun as a revolutionary writer and the father of modern Chinese literature. Literature cannot come to life in film adaptation without a successful screenwriter. As a screenwriter, film critic and translator who traversed revolutionary cinema and its May Fourth antecedents, including the short story tradition and legacy of Republican era film-making, Xia Yan played a pivotal role in redefining screenwriting after the 1949 establishment of the PRC.4 Xia Yan’s speech on screenwriting, later published as A Few Questions about Screenwriting (Xie dianying juben de jige wenti), at the Beijing Film Academy in 1958 is one of the first systematic attempts to lay out the basic principles of screenwriting in Chinese cinema. The speech can be read as his theory of screenwriting, drawn from nearly three decades of practice as a screenwriter since the 1930s. In Xia Yan’s speech, Chinese literary conventions were reinstated to accommodate classical Hollywood narration. This discursive move, asserting long-standing Chinese literary tradition, allowed Xia Yan to adapt classical Hollywood narration without openly endorsing the Hollywood film establishment; at the same time, he legitimised screenwriting as a film art with a literary heritage. Xia Yan listed the following motivations for his 1958 speech: (1) inadequate training in screenwriting at film institutes; (2) concerns about the quality of Chinese film; (3) ‘grammatical mistakes’ in Chinese film and its lack of purpose in the use of technique; and (4) the lack of a systematic theory of screenwriting.5 The deficiencies he observed in training, quality,

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Literature on Screen purpose and theory spurred his formulation of a coherent set of screenwriting principles. Xia Yan turned to Chinese literary tradition, specifically the novel (xiaoshuo), to establish the specificity of the filmic medium and its artistic proximity to the novel. He suggested that film resembled novels rather than stage drama because it could overcome constraints of time and space: ‘From the perspective of screenwriting, film resembles a novel rather than a play, because plays are limited by the three walls on stage.’6 The artistic aspirations of film and novels were not bounded by the theatrical stage. Xia Yan also argued for the specificity and supremacy of film over both stage drama and the novel, in terms of its expressive method and reproducibility. Xia Yan explained that film, integrated with technology, had a unique expressive method. For instance, a film could visually depict how a character climbs a mountain with tracking, panning and close-up shots. In contrast, the same action could only be expressed in stage drama by dialogue: ‘Having climbed this far, I’m simply exhausted!’7 Film overcame the constraints of the stage, where actors exaggerated their expressions and movements for the sake of the audience sitting in the last row of the theatre. Film, unlike stage drama, could employ camera movements and shot ranges – close-ups, medium shots and long shots – so that the entire audience could see clearly from every angle. Along with asserting film’s unique expressive method, Xia Yan emphasised its reproducibility and popular appeal, which other artistic forms could not surpass. A well-known novel could reach several hundred thousand to several million educated readers; but a film could reach an audience of millions among the working masses.8 Because of its reproducibility and unique method of expression, distinct from stage drama and the novel, film was a powerful medium, harnessed by screenwriters such as Xia Yan. Yet in establishing the specificity and superiority of the filmic medium compared to other artistic forms, Xia Yan nonetheless drew from the Chinese literary tradition to establish screenwriting as an art. His theory reimagined Chinese literary conventions to accommodate classical Hollywood narration. At the same time, classical Hollywood narration was recast and explained in Chinese literary terms. The reinstatement of Chinese literary conventions allowed Xia Yan to identify those conventions with classical Hollywood narrative techniques in order to maintain the clarity and comprehensibility of narrative film for a rural mass audience.

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Chinese Revolutionary Cinema A few words about classical Hollywood narration and its influence on Chinese cinema are necessary here. The principles of Hollywood narration can be summarised in terms of narrative structure, editing and the logic of spectatorship. Here I largely follow the concept of classical Hollywood narration that characterises American cinema from 1917 to 1960, as outlined by David Bordwell (Table 2.1). The influx and popularity of Hollywood movies in semi-colonial Shanghai since the 1910s demonstrated that Hollywood cinema as a culture industry influenced Shanghai cinema. By the 1930s, Shanghai filmmakers had mastered the narrative principles and stylistic devices of

Table 2.1 Principles of classical Hollywood narration that characterise American cinema from 1917 to 1960. Narrative structure (1) Classical Hollywood narration builds a plausible fictional world, where events have a logical chain of cause and effect (narrative causality) with a high degree of resolution. (2) Classical Hollywood narration ‘tends to be only moderately self-conscious’ and ‘seldom acknowledges its own address to the audience’.9 (3) Classical Hollywood narration is characterised by a goal-oriented protagonist who is situated in a dual plot of heterosexual romance and work. (4) Classical Hollywood narration establishes ‘an initial state of affairs which gets violated and which must then be set right’.10 Editing (1) Classical Hollywood narration ‘strives for utmost denotative clarity from moment to moment’ by ‘making each shot the logical outcome of its predecessor and reorienting the spectators through repeated setups’.11 (2) Classical Hollywood narration is characterised by continuity editing. Cutting is made invisible so that the audience can read the film without conscious effort, achieved by conventions such as the 180-degree rule, match on action, the eyeline match and the shot/reverse shot, which establishes relationships and relays of looks. Spectatorship (1) Spectators construct story time and space ‘according to schemata, cues and hypothesis-framing’.12 (2) Spectators suspend their disbelief in the fictional world. (3) Spectators are manipulated to identify with key characters with close-ups.

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Literature on Screen classical Hollywood narration. Xia Yan mentioned the many Hollywood films he saw when he first entered the Chinese film industry, as a screenwriter in the silent era: When I first entered the film industry, there were no formal film scripts. There were only two words in what we called a ‘scene description’ (mubiao): ‘entrance’ and ‘departure’. It was in the silent era, when dialogues were not written in film scripts. Actors improvised according to the directors’ demands and guidance [. . .] There were very few books on film and I couldn’t read Russian. What I read was translated from Japanese and English. Watching film was the primary way for me to learn.13

As a screenwriter for the silent film Spring Silkworms (Cheng Bugao, 1933), adapted from Mao Dun’s original 1932 novella, Xia Yan wrote the story of Old Tongbao’s family and its downfall in accordance with the popular genre of family melodrama by using classical Hollywood narrative technique. The film adaptation uses chronological narration to depict the family’s rearing of silkworms, which is intertwined with and dependent on seasonal change as well as the struggling rural and national economy of the 1930s. Echoing a Chinese saying, ‘the whole year’s work depends on a good start in spring’, the film begins in springtime, not long after the Qingming Festival. It proceeds chronologically through the stages of production: hatching, feeding, cocooning and harvesting. Running out of mulberry leaves, and the closure of silk factories due to Japanese invasion and competition from foreign-owned silk processing plants, function as narrative deadlines typical of classical Hollywood narration and melodrama. The former forces Old Tongbao to take a loan and go into debt; the latter forces him to sell his harvest at a loss. Each step of silk production propels the narrative forward chronologically, while setbacks derail the sale of the harvest as a narrative resolution to the family melodrama. The film adaptation of Spring Silkworms employed continuity editing to portray the delicate day-to-day growth of the silkworms from larvae, feeding on mulberry leaves on trays, to silkworms spinning silken cocoons on twigs. Although the film is predominantly about one family’s superstition and work ethic in a rural economy, marital strife and heterosexual romance form a subplot that conveys the plight of women 59

Chinese Revolutionary Cinema and generational conflict, as the young characters question the superstitious and stubborn behaviour of the old. Xia Yan’s experience of screenwriting for film adaptation in the leftwing Shanghai film-making tradition made him an ideal candidate for screenwriting socialist film adaptations such as The New Year’s Sacrifice, The Lin Family Shop (Shui Hua, 1959) and Revolutionary Family. In his 1958 speech on screenwriting, he highlighted the importance of conciseness and clarity in chronological narration, the prominence of the protagonist and the maintenance of continuity. Xia Yan emphasised film as a one-time experience – unlike literature, where one can flip the page and re-read from the beginning. Therefore, clarity was especially important in screenwriting.14 He described film as the most ‘concise’ ( jinglian) art, the purpose of which had to be made ‘clear’ and ‘explicit’ for the audience.15 Xia Yan’s vision of clarity in filmic narration implicitly subscribed to classical Hollywood principles, while at the same time explicitly turning to the Chinese literary tradition for theoretical guidance: ‘Chinese poetry, fiction, and drama have common characteristics: beginnings and ends, clear narration and clear layers.’16 Reverse narration, Xia Yan said, would confuse the rural mass audience. Chronological narration was facilitated by voice-over narration, which supplied story background in the opening of a film. Xia Yan traced this literary convention to Peking opera and Yuan drama: ‘In Peking opera and Yuan drama, fumo represents the voice of the author and tells the summary of the story.’17 In the 1956 film adaptation of Lu Xun’s short story ‘The New Year’s Sacrifice’, screen written by Xia Yan, an extra-diegetic narrative voice introduces the protagonist Xianglin Sao. Like classical Hollywood narration, which seldom acknowledges its own address to the audience except at the beginning and ending of a film, Xia Yan encouraged explicit address to the audience in a film’s opening, in order to maximise clarity and comprehensibility. In accord with classical Hollywood narration featuring goal-oriented protagonists, Xia Yan suggested that the filmic image of the protagonist had to be ‘distinct’ (xianming), so as to arouse audience interest.18 He argued that in film, the protagonist must appear first – in contrast to Chinese drama, where supporting characters could appear first. The beginning of a film had to introduce the social backgrounds of and

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Literature on Screen relationships between characters with maximum clarity. Xia Yan used the Chinese term ruxi, which literally means ‘being immersed in the play’, to describe how a film should strive for its audience’s diegetic absorption and suspension of disbelief.19 Film should ‘very quickly arouse curiosity in the audience’ so that from the beginning ‘a question mark appears in the audience’s mind’.20 He offered the example of the Soviet film Chapaev (Georgi Vasilyev and Sergei Vasilyev, 1934) as a successful film opening that created a distinct image of the protagonist: the eponymous hero Chapaev is shown in the film’s outset as a leader, fighting courageously. In Revolutionary Family, for which Xia Yan wrote the screenplay, the revolutionary heroine Zhou Lian appears in the opening of the film, with a distinct screen image, as the protagonist and storyteller. Echoing classical Hollywood narration’s establishment of ‘an initial state of affairs that is violated and must then be set right’, Xia Yan used the Chinese literary terms ‘qi’ (opening), ‘cheng’ (development), ‘zhuan’ (turn) and ‘he’ (resolution) to describe the flow of narrative film.21 For instance, in Spring Silkworms, each production step corresponded to the chronological structure of qi, cheng, zhuan and he in Chinese literature. He emphasised narrative causality and continuity with the literary metaphor of ‘needlework’ (zhenxian), which joined together paragraphs, chapters, scenes and sequences.22 Xia Yan compared ‘sequences’ in film to units and divisions in other literary genres: chapters (zhanghui) in the novel, turning points (zhuanzhe) in opera (xiqu), or acts (mu) in modern drama (xiandaiju). He considered the ‘paragraph’ the closest equivalent to ‘sequence’ – a term he did not translate but retained in the English original – describing a sequence as ‘a chronological order’ (shunxu), ‘a paragraph that connects’.23 He valued continuity (xianjie) between sequences and suggested that sequences in narrative film should be organised according to the chronological development of plot. At the most basic level, Xia Yan explained, a fade-in or fade-out functioned as cinematic punctuation, dividing a film into sequences. The theory of screenwriting found in Xia Yan’s 1958 speech implicitly recast classical Hollywood narration in Chinese literary terms, while explicitly asserting the importance of Chinese literary tradition and its related arts such as opera and drama. These rhetorical and theoretical moves allowed Xia Yan to synthesise classical Hollywood narration and Chinese literary convention without openly subscribing to the former.

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This Life of Mine Given its engineered popularity and canonical status, the 1950 film adaptation of Lao She’s novella This Life of Mine (1937) is a suitable point of departure for examining the representation of family in early socialist film adaptations of literature. This Life of Mine achieved the best box office of the eight films released during the New Year holiday in 1950. The film demonstrates characteristics of classical Hollywood narration: chronological narration, a prominent protagonist and continuity editing. Yet though its narrative structure is largely chronological, This Life of Mine begins with an explicit address to the audience in the form of a first-person reverse narration to maximise clarity and retain the literary quality of the original. Like the novella, the film begins with the protagonist’s reminiscence of his life. The prominent voice of the protagonist– narrator is spoken over the filmed act of flipping the pages, which functions throughout the film as a cinematic punctuation that divides the film into sequences (Figure 2.1). The literary quality and aura of written words are transformed and made comprehensible through voice-over narration and direct address to the audience.

Figure 2.1 The physical act of turning the pages, accompanied by the off-screen voice of the protagonist –narrator, functions as a cinematic punctuation that divides the film into sequences.

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Literature on Screen This Life of Mine strives for clarity in its opening by presenting a distinct image of a protagonist in crisis. Its combination of voice-over narration and medium shots compels the audience to identify with the goal-oriented protagonist, who tells his stories as the narrative unfolds. Because of the first-person reverse narration in the opening of the film, a question mark appears in the mind of the audience and propels the narrative forward: What is ‘this life of mine’ that the protagonist wants to tell? In adapting the forms of classical Hollywood narration, the narrative of This Life of Mine undergoes considerable modification. Unlike the dual plot of heterosexual romance and work typical of classical Hollywood narration, This Life of Mine alternates between the protagonist’s work and family life. Succeeding the opening first-person reverse narration, the chronological development of the protagonist’s work and family life follows the plot of the original novella, telling of the young protagonist’s happy days when he first entered the police profession, a respectable occupation that provided him a stable income and job satisfaction. The film adaptation continues with the protagonist’s witnessing of the Boxer Rebellion, the fall of the Qing Dynasty, the April Fifth movement, the Japanese invasion and the Civil War between the Communist Party and the Nationalist Party (the Japanese invasion and Civil War are absent in the original novella). Yet no change of government brings peace or prosperity. Ironically, the protagonist, a policeman whose duty is to maintain law and order, can do nothing but turn a blind eye to corruption and violence throughout decades of turmoil. The film adaptation creates a dramatic turning point that is absent in the novella: the protagonist’s daughter is captured by the Japanese military, after which the protagonist lets his son, Haifu, join the Communist army to avenge the misdeed. At the film’s end, the protagonist is imprisoned by the Nationalists, after which he becomes homeless, walking in the snow in his final moments. Unlike the novella, in which Haifu dies of illness, the film comes to a resolution with a final shot of Haifu holding a flag in victory, over which is superimposed a map of China (Figure 2.2). The addition of this dramatic turning point, the young woman’s capture, activates anger and instils in the audience a sense of urgency and crisis, thereby facilitating diegetic absorption. It also allows the narrative to take on new political and familial value: Haifu’s commitment to the communist cause in order to

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Figure 2.2 The final shot of This Life of Mine (1950).

avenge his sister’s capture by the Japanese becomes the key to narrative resolution, which the novella lacks. Replacing the fallen protagonist/head of the family, the Party becomes Haifu’s implied new family. This Life of Mine also employs stylistic devices typical of classical Hollywood narration to address pedagogical concerns such as class conflicts. The film portrays disparities between rich and poor through graphic match cuts: in a sequence where Mr. Qin’s wife complains about the lack of good shoes in the city, a graphic match between a medium shot of a table full of shoes and a medium shot of a worn-out shoe depicts the disjunction between upper-class luxury and the day-to-day reality of the poor. A sequence where Mr. Qin buys his wife a Japanese perfume is immediately succeeded by three close-up shots of a child buyer’s hand as she lays down 30 yuan on the table. The graphic match between Mr. Qin’s purchase of the perfume and the child buyer’s purchase of a baby from a poor and desperate mother establishes equivalence in monetary value but disparity in use value and exchange value. In these two examples, graphic match not only allows scenes to move seamlessly from one to another in

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Literature on Screen continuity, but also communicates class contradictions and heightens dramatic effects. Selective adherence to classical Hollywood narration and continuity editing in This Life of Mine chronicle the downfall of the male protagonist as the family head. Although the film adaptation, like the novella, does not include heterosexual romance as a subplot, its addition of a dramatic turning point (the capture of the daughter), class conflicts, and moral polarisation fulfil the entertainment and pedagogical priorities of film adaptations produced after 1949.

‘The New Year’s Sacrifice’: May Fourth Critical Realism Lu Xun’s short story ‘The New Year’s Sacrifice’ (1924), a canonical work of May Fourth literature, was adapted in 1956 into a film directed by Sang Hu to commemorate the twentieth anniversary of Lu Xun’s death.24 Xia Yan and Sang Hu, the film’s screenwriter and director, described The New Year’s Sacrifice as a serious and glorious ‘political mission’.25 A contemporary commentary titled ‘The Film Script is Good; the Film is Good Too’ in Renmin ribao (People’s Daily) described the film as ‘a courageous and successful creation’ that creates ‘visual pleasure’, turning the literary work into ‘a visible filmic image’ while retaining ‘fidelity to the original’.26 This brief commentary, published as an endorsement of the film just three days after the national commemoration of Lu Xun’s death, provides a glimpse into the aesthetics and politics of film adaptation after 1949, when the creation of revolutionary art for the masses and the construction of Lu Xun’s legacy became persistent concerns of the Party. The 1956 film adaptation was not the first adaptation of Lu Xun’s original short story. Ten years earlier, in 1946, ‘The New Year’s Sacrifice’ had been adapted into a yueju (Shaoxing opera) by theatre director Nan Wei, becoming a milestone in yueju reform. In 1948 Nan Wei adapted Lu Xun’s short story again, into the yueju film Xianglin Sao, starring the original cast of yueju actors, with Xianglin Sao played by Yuan Xuefen.27 In speaking of his work writing the screenplay for the 1956 film, Xia Yan recalled that because ‘The New Year’s Sacrifice’ had been adapted into different media several times, he could draw from previous successes and 65

Chinese Revolutionary Cinema failures.28 Xia Yan therefore ‘courageously’ accepted the ‘mission’ of writing the script for the 1956 film adaptation of ‘The New Year’s Sacrifice’.29 Lu Xun’s original short story was initially a work of May Fourth critical realism. Here, the multivalent and highly contested term ‘realism’ refers to aesthetic experiments often carried out in the name of revolution, a mode of storytelling and an historically contingent evaluative process. The term ‘critical realism’ refers to Lu Xun’s early experimentation with the short story by representing and mediating social reality through the ironic stance of the mediating narrator, a hallmark of his short stories in Call to Arms (1923) and Hesitation (1925), also written in the May Fourth era. The struggle for realism was emblematic of China’s entry into modernity. Realism was a continuous thread in revolutionary artistic consciousness from the time of the May Fourth literary revolution. The May Fourth movement gave rise not only to the use of the vernacular as the medium of literary expression, but also to the translation of foreign texts that sparked experimentation with Western literary forms like realism. As Theodore Huters has suggested, realism was construed and perceived as a successive stage in an evolutionary progression of genres from classicism to romanticism; thus ‘realism became a token of faith that Chinese literature was moving forward along the universal path pioneered by Western literary practice’.30 Realism as an aesthetic experiment therefore promised a kind of social evolution and functioned as a currency accepted by what Pascale Casanova describes as the ‘world republic of letters’ dominated by the European West.31 The success of realism as a tool of social reform in the West, Huters further notes, became a model for the May Fourth intellectuals’ search for a literature that would critically engage with social reality. Realism was appealing for May Fourth intellectuals because it was believed to function as a critical window on social reality and a force for social betterment. Lu Xun, one of the pioneers of the May Fourth literary revolution, experimented with the realist short story to awaken the nation from feudal practices that produced oppressions of various kinds. The victimisation of peasants, the dissolution of family and the role of the intellectual became the persistent concerns of Lu Xun’s realist short stories. One of the most distinctive features of Lu Xun’s critical realism was his use of ironic and ambivalent narrators to highlight the limits of realism in mediating social reality. Marston Anderson has suggested that Lu Xun was

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Literature on Screen conscious of the limits of realism, and offered in his stories ‘a critique of his own method and of the realist project’: ‘the realist narrative, by imitating at a formal level the relation of the oppressor to the oppressed, is captive to the logic of that oppression and ends by merely reproducing it [my emphasis].’32 In other words, the lack of overt authorial intervention characteristic of realist narrative reproduces oppression rather than eliminating it. Similarly, David Der-wei Wang describes Lu Xun’s narratorial position as that of a ‘frustrated realist’ who worked within the limits of realism as a critical tool.33 Central to both scholars’ discussions of the limits of realism in representing reality is Lu Xun’s highly self-conscious use of the narratorial position to problematise historical agency and any possibilities of positive moral actions on the part of the intellectuals as a class. The mediating narrator ‘I’ in ‘The New Year’s Sacrifice’ provides an example of the critical realism Lu Xun engenders. The story begins with the narrator’s return to Lu’s town and his confrontation with Xianglin Sao, a middle-aged maid cast out by the Lu family, who questions the narrator about whether or not Hell exists. The narrative continues with the narrator’s evasion of the former maid’s question and his eventual comfort in having avoided her question with the equivocation, ‘can’t say for sure’ (shuobuqing). However, the news of Xianglin Sao’s death leaves the narrator feeling somewhat guilty, and he begins to tell readers her full story, from deceased husband to her escape to the Lu family, from second marriage to the unfortunate death of her second husband and son and ultimately her own downfall and death. The narrative ends with the narrator feeling quite at ease, amidst the sounds of the New Year celebration. The equivocal position of Lu Xun’s ineffectual narrator –bystander throws into doubt the possibility of sympathy on the part of storytellers, listeners and readers. At stake are the usefulness of storytelling and literature in mediating social reality. The crux of ‘The New Year’s Sacrifice’ lies in the ironic position of the narrator who, in the process of storytelling, gradually shirks responsibility and in the end detaches himself from Xianglin Sao’s tragedy: ‘wrapped in this medley of sound, relaxed and at ease, the doubt which had preyed on me from dawn to early night was swept clean away by the atmosphere of celebration [. . .]’34 The narrator feels like a ‘complete fool’ and ‘hesitates’ when confronted with Xianglin Sao’s question about the existence of Hell, and his answer that one ‘can’t

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Chinese Revolutionary Cinema say for sure’ is, he says, a ‘most useful phrase’: ‘by simply concluding with this phrase “can’t say for sure”, one can free oneself of all responsibility.’35 Lu Xun’s use of a non-heroic protagonist and a non-heroic narrator, his gradual unveiling of what is concealed, and the concealment of fictionality by the absence of overt authorial intervention gave the text formal characteristics typical of nineteenth-century European realism.36 However, the narrator’s non-intervention and moral vacillations also implicate the text as an accomplice in reproducing social injustice, revealing the limits of realism in mediating and acting upon social reality to cure social ills. As Anderson suggests: [T]he ‘I’ who narrates her [Xianglin Sao’s] story is not in any direct sense responsible for her sufferings (he remains peripheral to the plot), but he has the power that she lacks to vocalize her grief, and has done so forcibly for the reader. Yet his failure to go one step further and use his power to grant meaning to her story makes him, the text implies, a guilty accomplice of the superstition-ridden society that has produced her tragedy.37

Indeed, the narrator’s act of storytelling reproduces the victimisation of Xianglin Sao. As Xianglin Sao repeats her story over and over again, dialogised by the narrator in reminiscence – ‘I was really stupid, really’ – the narrator cynically reproduces her misery: ‘she probably did not realise that her story, after having been turned over and tasted by people for so many days, had long since become stale, only exciting disgust and contempt.’38 The narrator’s recreation of the former maid’s voice and consciousness vocalises and repeats her plight, only to reproduce and perpetuate it in his own voice and consciousness. Lu Xun’s creation of multiple consciousnesses, complex narration, and refusal to provide an authoritative voice allowed him to establish an ironic, critical distance, to articulate the failure and negativity at the heart of his realist project. The text was thereby given a highly critical and self-reflexive quality: a critical realism.

The New Year’s Sacrifice: A Family Melodrama Along with being an aesthetic experiment and a mode of storytelling, realism is also a historically contingent evaluative process. It shapes, 68

Literature on Screen produces and sustains specific aesthetic values and practices reinforced by institutions and individuals. Hence, in ‘Contingencies of Value’, Barbara Herrnstein Smith suggests that ‘every literary work is a product of a complex evaluative feedback loop.’39 Artistic creation functions as ‘a paradigm of evaluative activity’ that constitutes value judgements, cultural policy and acts of evaluation that are explicitly or implicitly ideologically motivated.40 The contingent variability and mutability of the term ‘realism’ as a labelling of cultural productions, including film, reveal the historically contingent evaluative process at work from the May Fourth era to the Mao era. As Huters suggests: What seems to be a commonsensical category ‘realism’ kept escaping its ostensibly evident definition and revealing its subsets and eventual permutations – critical realism, social realism, proletarian realism, and romantic realism – taken as a whole to serve to discount the notion that realism could ever have constituted a discursive category stable enough to provide a source of positive intellectual guidance.41

The 1930s and 1940s witnessed an emerging discourse on revolutionary literature and the creation of proletarian literature and art.42 In Mao’s talk at the Yan’an Forum on Literature and Art in 1942, he extolled and canonised Lu Xun as ‘the sage of new China’, but implicitly rejected Lu Xun’s satirical style of writing, which favoured ambiguity and irony: The style of the essay should not simply be like Lu Xun’s. Here we can shout at the top of our voices and have no need for veiled and roundabout expressions, which are hard for the people to understand [. . .] We are not opposed to satire in general, what we must abolish is the abuse of satire.43

In the talk, Mao attributed historical agency to proletarian literature and art, the ‘cogs and wheels’ of the revolutionary cause, which should not stop at exposing dark forces but rather go one step further to extol revolutionary struggles and ‘help the masses to propel history forward’.44 Mao’s passionate belief in historical agency implicitly opposed the ambivalent and passive stance of the mediating narrators that were a bedrock of Lu Xun’s critical realism.

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Chinese Revolutionary Cinema Hence, socialist film adaptation of pre-1949 literature such as This Life of Mine and ‘The New Year’s Sacrifice’ can be seen as a politically motivated aesthetic experiment that stretched the limits of May Fourth critical realism and social realism.45 As a consistent and dominant mode of revolutionary film-making after 1949, socialist adaptations sought to revolutionise literature by radically challenging the very notion of literariness and the value attached to it, which is posited on literacy. As a screenwriter, Xia Yan strove for popularisation (tongsuhua) because his targeted audience was no longer readers from the intellectual class but spectators from the general working masses.46 Notwithstanding the goal of popularisation, Xia Yan saw fidelity to the original as one of his missions. Yet though adaptation is different from writing an original, Xia Yan described adaptation as ‘creative labour’.47 Using the three-hour-long film adaptation of War and Peace (King Vidor, 1956) as an example, he highlighted the necessity to ‘select’, ‘extract’ and ‘crystallise’ the essence of the literary original: ‘Sometimes one has to exaggerate, reduce or supplement the original in order to turn it into an audio and visual form.’48 It is through the addition, deletion and modification of details that the film adaptation popularised the character Xianglin Sao as a feudal icon while claiming fidelity to the original.

Re-narrativisation and Temporality As family melodrama, The New Year’s Sacrifice took on entirely new clarity, simplicity and force that were absent in the original short story. In keeping with classical Hollywood narration, the film adaptation replaced Lu Xun’s ambivalent narrator with chronological omniscient narration. Additionally, the film incorporated heterosexual romance and melodramatic shocks that fulfilled the entertainment and pedagogical demands of revolutionary cinema. Like This Life of Mine, The New Year’s Sacrifice largely followed the method of classical Hollywood narration, presenting a logical chain of cause and effect with a high degree of narrative resolution. The New Year’s Sacrifice replaced the complex and ambivalent narrative voice in Lu Xun’s original text with a straightforward chronological narration in the celebratory voice of History. This chronological narration gave the film a new sense of clarity, rhetoricity and positivity, in line with the aesthetic

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Literature on Screen needs articulated in Mao’s talk in 1942. In the film adaptation, ‘complex narrative modes were abandoned for the sake of a more readily comprehensible exposition reminiscent of traditional storytelling.’49 The film opens with the passionate voice of an extra-diegetic filmic narratorstoryteller, who gives the story of Xianglin Sao a positive beginning and a positive ending. The New Year’s Sacrifice tells Xiangling Sao’s story using chronological diegetic time, but the narrator’s voice in the opening and ending of the film retrospectively places the events in a bygone feudal temporality, therefore propelling history forward. The film adaptation’s voice-over narration begins with an explicit address to the audience. The omniscient voice of History declares that ‘this story happened some forty years ago when the 1911 Revolution took place, a time absent in the memories of the young.’ Whereas Lu Xun’s narrator speaks of and with Xianglin Sao through dialogisation (hence his simultaneous involvement with and evasion of Xianglin Sao’s tragedy, and the resulting ironic and ambivalent stance), the film’s narrator is oriented to Xianglin Sao from the external, neutral, objective and omniscient position of History. The opening of the film adaptation presents a distinct image of the young, energetic and healthy Xianglin Sao: a protagonist in keeping with classical Hollywood narrative. The film offers a straightforward and chronological exposition of Xianglin Sao’s kidnapping, second marriage and downfall. Xianglin Sao’s misery is not actually depicted until the end of the film, as she faces the camera and asks if Hell exists. The narrator’s evasion in Lu Xun’s text – ‘can’t say for sure’ – is completely removed, replaced by the sympathetic voice of the filmic narrator, mourning and extolling ‘Xianglin Sao, honest and hardworking,’ who ‘after much suffering and humiliation, fell over and died miserably.’ The film narrator then rejoices: ‘This happened over forty years ago. It happened long ago. We should be happy that times like that are gone for good! Such things have gone forever!’ The voice-over narration gives a positive conclusion to an otherwise tragic story, ending the film with a high degree of narrative resolution. By declaring ‘such things have gone forever’, the voice in the film adaptation takes the spectators from one moral order (feudal and prerevolutionary) to another – a leap of faith to the revolutionary present and implicitly utopian future. In keeping with Mao’s formulation of the goals of proletarian literature and art, the authoritative voice of the film’s narrator

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Chinese Revolutionary Cinema transforms the failure and negativity of Lu Xun’s text into positivity. It propels history forward by reconstituting the feudal past as a foreverbygone temporality. Smith has suggested that ‘we make texts timeless by suppressing their temporality’, but it is perhaps more proper to say that we make texts timeless by rewriting and reconstituting their temporality.50 By changing the literary mode into a cinematic mode of direct address to the audience, the film adaptation gives the story a sense of optimism and a positive tone free of the irony of Lu Xun’s narrator.

Heterosexual Romance and Family Film adaptations transform the textuality of their original literary texts into a new sensuality, made possible by the filmic medium. By indulging spectators in the heterosexual romance typical of classical Hollywood narration, a number of Chinese film adaptations took on an entirely new entertainment and family value that was absent in their originals. Director Sang Hu’s collaboration with Zhang Ailing in making Long Live the Wife (1947), and his opera film Liang Shanbo and Zhu Yingtai (1954), entertainingly represented romance and marriage on the movie screen. The New Year’s Sacrifice was not an exception in representing romantic love; many Chinese films produced at the time did so. Family (Chen Xihe and Ye Ming, 1956), adapted from Ba Jin’s historical novel Family (1933), was another notable socialist adaptation in the cinematic genre of family melodrama. The film is as much about the dissolution of the extended Gao family as it is about the tragic love stories of Jue Xin, his wife Rui Jue, Cousin Mei, Jue Hui and the maid Ming Feng, whose interactions, aspirations and mental struggles take up much of the narrative. Family is filled with sequences that portray couples in love: rowing in a boat, picking plum blossoms, holding hands and hugging. It takes place between 1916 and 1920, during the May Fourth period, when ideas about free love and resistance against arranged marriage emerged. Later revolutionary films such as Nie Er (Zheng Junli, 1959), Five Golden Flowers (Wang Jiayi, 1959) and The Red Detachment of Women (Xie Jin, 1961) are now well-known for their dual plots of romance and work (as will be discussed in subsequent chapters). Here, I continue the discussion of The New Year’s Sacrifice with a close reading of how the film indulges spectators in heterosexual romance, facilitating the

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Literature on Screen formation and dissolution of family on a narrative level within the family melodrama. One of the major enrichments of plot and character development in The New Year’s Sacrifice was its expansion of the heterosexual romance and marriage typical of classical Hollywood narration. Unlike the literary text, which told the story of Xianglin Sao’s second marriage with He Laoliu in the voices of Old Mrs. Wei and Xianglin Sao herself, the film rendered the performance of He Laoliu on screen, giving him gentle gestures and a soft demeanour: a sympathetic image that is absent in the literary text. Sang Hu, the film’s director, romanticised He Laoliu as someone who ‘awakens the love hidden in the soul of Xianglin Sao’, so much so that the commentary in Renmin ribao described the morning after the blind marriage scene as ‘a most beautiful and touching scene’ that portrayed He Laoliu’s ‘love, sympathy and intimate concern for Xianglin Sao’.51 Although some contemporary critics argued that the film adaptation ‘destroyed the realism’ of the original short story, with He Laoliu ‘distorted’ into a romantic and ‘gentlemanly’ character, Li Chenglie argued otherwise, asking rhetorically: ‘why isn’t love permitted among villagers and manual laborers?’52 This debate reveals the ways in which the film adaptation transgressed the original literary text by rewriting Xianglin Sao’s second marriage as family melodrama. He Laoliu’s visual presence is significant, for a male figure not only fulfils the narrative requirement of heterosexual romance and family life, but also makes possible Xianglin Sao’s tragedy as the victimised widow of a patriarchal feudal society. He Laoliu is a crucial figure in the film’s moral universe: without him, the tragedy of Xianglin Sao could not be realised. Their romance is depicted subtly, with minimal ornamentation, and is immediately sublimated to the higher narrative motive. For example, in one scene, the injured and weak Xianglin Sao changes from hostility to appreciation at the sight of He Laoliu, who gently and sympathetically offers her a bowl of water. The viewer sees ‘the hidden love awakening in her soul’, as Sang Hu puts it.53 The transition is conveyed through a series of shot/reverse shots and close-ups, typical Hollywood editing techniques used to convey oneon-one conversation, combat or romantic relationships (Figure 2.3). Immediately following this sequence in which the seed of love is sown is another, indirectly conveying Xianglin Sao’s pregnancy. In the initial shot

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Figure 2.3– 2.4 Xianglin Sao’s transformation from hostility to awakened love to the establishment of a family is conveyed in eight shots with elliptical editing.

of the new sequence, the couple’s manual labour is depicted in a shining and positive light. As Xianglin Sao is about to throw up, the camera cuts to the troubled He Laoliu who hesitates, slowly realises and says with a joyful smile: ‘well [. . .] you [. . .]’ The camera then cuts to Xianglin Sao with an embarrassed yet happy smile. Immediately following this is a shot of a baby crying (Figure 2.4). Together, the two sequences show the whole transition from Xianglin Sao’s hostility to awakened love to the establishment of a family. This transformation is conveyed in just eight shots with elliptical editing. Hollywood conventions of heterosexual romance and ‘invisible’ continuity editing were creatively adapted to provide ‘just enough’ romantic enticement for the spectators, while narratively the romance (lian’ai) was directed to explicit goals: heterosexual union and the formation of family.54

Orchestrating Melodramatic Pathos The May Fourth Movement’s focus on family as national microcosm, site of historic tension, and source of women’s oppression continued after 1949 in the cinematic genre of family melodrama, negotiating with the legacy of family melodrama from the Shanghai film-making tradition. A cursory look at film titles – Family, The Lin Family Shop and Revolutionary Family – suggests the persistent theme of family in socialist film adaptations of literature. As Xiao Liu suggests in her study of The Red Detachment of Women as revolutionary melodrama, the 74

Literature on Screen film’s historical precedent, 1930s leftist films, often ‘infuse[d] progressive political messages into popular melodramatic forms’ that drew heavily on the Buddhist notion of retribution, Mandarin Duck and Butterfly urban popular fiction, sensational crime stories and the discourse on Wenyi.55 The New Year’s Sacrifice also created melodramatic moments to accentuate class conflicts and stir spectators into pathos, thereby creating a moral universe of victims and villains. My use of the term ‘melodrama’ is not intended to define Chinese revolutionary cinema in terms of a narrative mode that originated in the context of the French Revolution and its aftermath. Rather, I use the term more broadly, to indicate a mode that accommodates a heterogeneity of local expressions. Recent re-evaluation of melodrama as a cinematic mode has expunged the pejorative connotations – moral polarisation and strong emotionalism – formerly associated with the term, recuperating it as a ‘perpetually modernizing form’, ‘an evolving mode of storytelling crucial to the establishment of moral good’ and a fundamental mode in mainstream cinema.56 Linda Williams goes so far as to suggest that ‘realism serves the melodrama of pathos and action.’57 The melodramatic mode serves to locate and articulate what Peter Brooks calls ‘the moral occult’; that is, ‘the domain of operative spiritual values which is both indicated within and masked by the surface of reality.’58 In this sense, melodrama refers to a high dramatisation of social existence that stirs spectators into pathos so as to unveil the realm of latent moral meanings. Moral polarisation and ‘indulgence’ in strong emotionalism are means of heightening the dramatisation of social existence, unveiling the surface reality that masks the moral occult to reveal the realm of spiritual reality and latent moral meanings. The melodramatic mode in cinema can therefore be considered ‘a system of punctuation’, in Thomas Elsaesser’s words, that orchestrates emotional ups and downs and gives expressive colours to the story line.59 Both Elsaesser and Williams suggest that the melodramatic mode effectively renders patterns of social existence – domination, exploitation, morality, gender and class consciousness – in compelling visual forms of pathos and action, making them performable through a system of gesture, demeanour and musical accompaniment. In socialist film adaptations of literature, the melodramatic mode was put into use to create a moral anchor. Mao asserted that ‘life as reflected in

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Chinese Revolutionary Cinema works of literature and art can and ought to be on a higher plane, more intense, more concentrated and more typical.’60 Melodrama, as a cinematic mode that dramatises social existence and intensifies emotions to unveil latent moral meanings, served as a highly malleable mode for the rhetorical demands of a revolutionary aesthetics that aimed to expose class enemies, extol revolutionary struggle, and propel history forward and upward to a higher moral plane. In The New Year’s Sacrifice, the romance between Xianglin Sao and He Laoliu, conveyed mainly through elliptical editing, serves a higher melodramatic motif: the parallel deaths of Xianglin Sao’s husband and son. Their deaths occur almost simultaneously after a debt collector threatens to take their house, pushing Xianglin Sao’s misery to extremes and dramatising the tragic narrative turn. One of the most melodramatic moments of the film, the intrusion of the debt collector, is absent in the literary text. In the film, it functions not only to introduce the type of unambiguous class enemy typical of revolutionary cinema, but also to provide a deadline typical of classical Hollywood narration. As He Laoliu struggles on his sickbed, the off-screen diegetic voice warns, ‘there are wolves’, triggering a series of melodramatic moments that culminate in the death of Xianglin Sao’s son, Ah Mao – who is eaten by the wolves. Frequent frontal close-ups of Xianglin Sao at different camera angles during the search for her son in the deep forest, together with audio renderings of echoes and wind, agitate the spectators while literally enlarging and intensifying the actress Bai Yang’s facial expressions. Commenting on her acting in the film, Bai Yang explained that since Xianglin Sao was a reticent woman, she conveyed Xianglin Sao’s emotions through the eyes rather than verbally.61 Similarly, Sang Hu spoke of strengthening the image (xingxianggan) and action (dongzuoxing) of his characters, especially when the characters were not speaking.62 The series of close-ups are particularly suited to capturing Bai Yang’s facial performance and creating melodramatic moments. The scene of Ah Mao’s death culminates in three consecutive and highly melodramatic shots: (1) a medium shot of Xianglin Sao holding Ah Mao’s shoes; (2) a shot of bloodstains in the woods; (3) a close-up of Xianglin Sao’s shocked face, accompanied by extra-diegetic instrumental sounds that dramatise the shock (Figure 2.5). The sophisticated use of close-up, sound recording and naturalistic colour photography, along with

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Figure 2.5 The 1956 film adaptation of ‘The New Year’s Sacrifice’, the first colour narrative film (caise gushipian) in the PRC, offered an unprecedented immediacy in visualising Ah Mao’s melodramatic death.

Bai Yang’s facial performance, gives the film a compelling visual and emotional force. It is also notable that prior to filming, Bai Yang listened to the stories of the women in the village and learned how to carry heavy loads in order to imagine and situate herself in the life of Xianglin Sao. Bai explained that learning from peasant women, like her childhood experience of living as an orphan in her nanny’s house, informed her acting. She described the key to acting as ‘merging with the character in the illusionary realm as if the illusionary realm is becoming the realm of the “real”.’63 Her facial performance, informed by her study of village peasants, is accentuated by close-ups, extra-diegetic music and naturalistic colour photography, all of which give the film a melodramatic quality. The film’s revision of the original literary text accentuates Xianglin Sao’s plight by rendering it as multiple shocks succeeding one after another. Again, this heightens the melodramatic mode, in which unlikely coincidence is a hallmark. In the literary text, the death of Xianglin Sao’s husband and son do not occur simultaneously; the film makes the deaths parallel for melodramatic effect. After finding her son’s body, Xianglin Sao returns home only to discover that her husband is dead too. Her discovery of her husband’s corpse is once again accompanied by extra-diegetic instrumental sounds that underscore her shock. Dramatising the Chinese saying, ‘disaster never comes alone’, the deaths of the patriarch and son leave Xianglin Sao widowed and childless: completely outside the organised social unit of family. The film’s melodramatic renderings of the original text are further manifested in two other key scenes that, like the deaths, accentuate Xianglin Sao’s plight by creating multiple shocks. The original story did

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Figure 2.6 Appearing five times during the New Year celebrations in the film, the fish used for the ancestral offering functions as a moral symbol and a reminder of Xianglin Sao’s plight.

not depict the circumstances under which Xianglin Sao is rejected by the Lu family, but the film adaptation created a dramatic circumstance to show why Xianglin Sao was kicked out of the house. In the film, Xianglin Sao donates a year’s salary to build a threshold in the temple, in the hope that by letting everyone in the community trample on her, she can redeem her sin of being a widow who brings disasters. But she is fired by the Lu family during the New Year preparation after she lays her hands on the fish intended as an ancestral offering. Xianglin Sao drops the fish the moment Master Lu shouts: ‘It is no use for you even to donate one hundred strings [to the temple]! You will never redeem your sin!’ The scene is rendered in a close-up shot of Master Lu as he shouts at Xianglin Sao. The camera then cuts to a medium shot of Xianglin Sao’s colourless face, succeeded by a shot of the fish belly up, a sign of death, after Xianglin Sao drops it on the floor (Figure 2.6). The fish used for the ancestral offering, like Ah Mao’s abandoned shoe, functions as a moral symbol and a reminder of Xianglin Sao’s plight. Appearing five times during the New Year celebrations in the film, each time it reappears the fish serves both as a narrative trope recalling the days when Xianglin Sao could take part in the New Year preparation and as a marker of her present downfall.

The Controversy of Xianglin Sao’s Resistance The film’s most controversial scene, right after she is fired and drops the fish, led contemporary audiences to debate the interpretation of Xianglin Sao’s character. Although unquestionably victimised, Xianglin Sao’s character in the film demonstrates new resonance through resistance and rebellion. 78

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Figure 2.7 The film adaptation’s most controversial sequence: Xianglin Sao in a frenzy, violently hacking away the temple threshold with a cleaver. This sequence, absent in the original literary text, led contemporary audiences to debate the interpretation of Xianglin Sao’s character.

After being fired by Master Lu, the hopeless Xianglin Sao is depicted alone in the kitchen where she questions, doubtfully: ‘Can’t even the Buddha save me?’ The film then cuts to a shot of a kitchen cleaver on the chopping board, followed by a close-up shot of Xianglin Sao’s facial expression switching from doubt to resolution and a close-up shot of her hand firmly holding the cleaver. Immediately after this shot, we see Xianglin Sao in a frenzy, violently hacking away the temple threshold with the cleaver (Figure 2.7). These four shots forcefully punctuate and orchestrate the melodramatic shock of her tragedy by emphasising Xianglin Sao’s immediate transition from hopelessness and doubt to resolute revenge against religious authority. When the caretaker of the temple tries to stop Xianglin Sao by asking, ‘how could you provoke the Buddha?’ Xianglin Sao is portrayed in a lowangle medium shot as she responds, ‘the Buddha!’ The shot is then dramatically and rhythmically intercut with three low angle shots of the temple gods, again accompanied by extra-diegetic instrumental sounds, emphasising superstition and false authority (Figure 2.8).

Figure 2.8 The added scene at the threshold of the temple was seen by some critics as a politically motivated violation of the short story’s realism, while director Xia Yan and lead actress Bai Yang said it depicted Xianglin Sao’s impulsive emotional explosion.

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Chinese Revolutionary Cinema The scene at the threshold of the temple was not in the original literary text. It was added on the spur of the moment by yueju director Nan Wei for the yueju film Xianglin Sao. Yuan Xuefen (the yueju actress playing Xianglin Sao) agreed to the scene for the sake of ‘voicing the audience’s frustrations’ – though initially hesitant about the decision, as she later recalled. Yuan felt that the addition of that scene made the film ‘superficial in terms of its message’.64 Xia Yan, however, recollected that every time he watched the scene, he was stirred and did not feel that anything was awkward or out of sync with Xianglin Sao’s character.65 Xia Yan therefore retained the scene in his script for the 1956 film adaptation. On its release, film critic Lin Zhihao described the scene at the threshold as ‘unrealistic’, for it implies ‘a break with religious authority’ – a break with an ideology that has thousands of years of history.66 Lin asserted that the scene violated the development of Xianglin Sao’s character and that her break with religious authority was inconsistent with her question about the existence of the soul after death. In response to criticism like Lin’s, which saw the added scene as a politically motivated violation of the short story’s realism, Xia Yan, quoting Lu Xun’s original text, argued that Xianglin Sao is a defiant character despite her weakness and superstition: But Xianglin Sao is quite a character (chuge) [. . .] We go-betweens, madam, see a great deal. When widows remarry, some cry and shout, some threaten to commit suicide, some won’t go through the ceremony after they have been carried to the man’s house, and some even smash the wedding candlesticks. But Xianglin Sao was extraordinary (yihu xunchang).67

Similarly, film critic Li Chenglie argued that Xianglin Sao was a strongly resisting character, as seen in her early escape and later resistance to second marriage. Li went so far as to suggest that Xianglin Sao’s hacking of the threshold was a continuation of that resistance.68 Xia Yan described that action as an ‘emotional explosion out of extreme disappointment and pain’, differing in nature from a rational awakening leading to a break with religious authority.69 Similarly, Bai Yang described Xianglin Sao as a complex character who seemed weak but was also strong, as evidenced by her early escape and resistance to her second marriage. Master Lu’s words ‘you will never redeem your sin’ shattered her spiritual pillar, Bai Yang 80

Literature on Screen argued, and hacking the threshold ‘is an impulsive act rather than a rational enlightenment’.70 While both takes on Xianglin Sao’s character claimed fidelity to the original short story, clearly the subtleties of her personality offered new interpretative possibilities because of the melodramatic shocks the film registered. Whether Xianglin Sao is defiant and resistant is of secondary importance to the way Xia Yan’s aesthetic experiment in screenwriting gave her a complex cinematic afterlife. Through re-narrativisation and the incorporation of heterosexual romance and melodramatic shocks, the 1956 film adaptation eliminated the ambivalence, negativity and failure that lie at the heart of Lu Xun’s critical realism. To recall the commentary in Renmin ribao, what was considered as ‘retaining fidelity to the original’ can be read as a significant rewriting and even transgression of the original. The ambivalence, complexity and self-reflexive quality of the original literary text were lost in transferral to a different ideological system, replaced by a new positivity, sensuality and rhetoricity specific to the filmic text. In the name of fidelity, the film adaptation displaced the literary conventions of the original, rewriting the text as a family melodrama in the filmic medium, redefining the character Xianglin Sao as a prototype of pre-revolutionary society and remaking Lu Xun into a revolutionary writer.

Revolutionary Family Xia Yan also served as a screenwriter for Revolutionary Family (1961), another socialist film adaptation in the cinematic genre of family melodrama. Unlike earlier adaptations that had adopted May Fourth and pre-1949 revolutionary literature as source materials, Revolutionary Family turned to post-1949 ‘people’s literature’, typically derived from biographical memoirs and life experiences set in the countryside. In her study of this early Maoist ‘people’s literature’, Krista Van Fleit Hang suggests that ‘most narratives, after being deemed politically correct, took on second, third, and fourth lives in different forms. These travelling narratives were so effective that the revision of stories in at least one form was the norm of cultural production.’71 Her observation holds true for Revolutionary Family, adapted from Tao Cheng’s autobiography My Family (Wode yijia, 1958).

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Chinese Revolutionary Cinema Tao Cheng (1893 – 1986) was a woman from Changsha, Hunan. In 1911, she was married to a young student, Ouyang Meisheng, through arranged marriage. Although she had never received formal education, Tao participated in underground work for the Communist Party with her husband in Wuhan and Shanghai starting in 1927. In 1928, Tao’s husband died from illness and overwork. The widowed Tao raised six children to become revolutionaries; her eldest son died during a mission in 1930. After 1949, Tao continued to work in various administrations, ministries and courts. In 1956, with the encouragement of Xie Juezai, Tao orally narrated her autobiography for publication by the Workers’ Press in 1958. Six million copies of My Family were printed, and it was widely circulated. Tao’s story was adapted into a film in 1961, directed by Shui Hua in his second collaboration (following The Lin Family Shop) with screenwriter Xia Yan. Revolutionary Family replaced the extra-diegetic voice-over narration of earlier socialist film adaptations with a first-person narrator: an endearing granny tells the story of her family, shown in flashback, to a group of children. Unlike This Life of Mine, in which the old male protagonist unhappily recalls his family story, Revolutionary Family offered a distinct and positive screen image of a female family head. Played by Yu Lan, the heart-warming grandmotherly Zhou Lian became the screen persona of autobiographer Tao Cheng, whose personal experience and real-life story lent authenticity to a film invested in the truth value of the Party’s role as family. Through the figure of the grandmother, the oral tradition of storytelling replaces the literary act of flipping the pages. The film’s pedagogical priority, to mould its ideal audience into revolutionary subjects, is captured in the group of children encircling the maternal and nurturing figure while taking in her story about the Party. For the first few minutes of the film Zhou Lian’s story is told in the form of a flashback. Chronological narration takes over, loosely following the organisation of the original autobiography and the structure of classical Hollywood narration: Zhou Lian’s marriage to Jiang Meiqing is followed by their establishment of a nuclear family with three children (Liqun, Xiaolian and Xiaoqing), and family life (rather than heterosexual romance) and the couple’s underground work form a dual plot. Work and family are mutually interdependent, demonstrating the coexistence of the socialist work ethic and the family ethic. In revolutionising the family as a social

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Literature on Screen unit, the film incorporates two major melodramatic shocks: the deaths of father Jiang Meiqing and eldest son Liqun for the greater revolutionary cause. The tragic death of the male family head does not dissolve the family (as it did in The New Year’s Sacrifice); instead, it leaves behind a revolutionary legacy to be carried on by the single mother and living children. On a narrative level, the death of the father Jiang Meiqing allows single mother Zhou Lian, with the help of her teenage son and daughter, to step in as breadwinner and moral anchor, reconfiguring the nuclear family into a revolutionary family under the Party’s wing. After Jiang Meiqing’s death, the family moves to Shanghai, losing all connexion with the Party. The teenage son and daughter, Liqun and Xiaolian, volunteer to take up the breadwinner role by working in a factory while single mother Zhou Lian stays home to take care of the youngest son, Xiaoqing. This new division of labour within the singly parented nuclear family allows the teenage son and daughter to seek and develop a new support network that, through a melodramatic coincidence, returns the family to the Party’s guidance. Liqun’s coincidental encounter with a union leader at the factory brings the narrative full circle: the family finds an old friend of his father, and by extension, the Party. From this point onwards, the Party takes on the role of benefactor – father to the displaced family. Liquin’s eventual melodramatic death as a revolutionary martyr demonstrates the way the socialist work ethic overcomes biological kinship to form a new socialist family ethic. In a second melodramatic scene, Zhou Lian and her soon-to-be-executed eldest son encounter each other in prison, but refuse to admit their mother – son relationship so as not to betray the Party. In the end, Zhou Lian is rescued by her colleagues and the film ends with a family reunion between Zhou Lian and her two remaining children, Xiaolian and Xiaoqing, who go on to become revolutionaries in Yan’an. The film closes on the appealing face of Zhou Lian, maternal storyteller and revolutionary heroine, who passes on her story to the ideal audience: the Party’s offspring and potential revolutionary subjects. In her analysis of The Red Detachment of Women as revolutionary melodrama, Xiao Liu suggests that the ‘nonkinship-based sisterhood’ between Qionghua and Honglian reflects the ‘imaginary’ of a revolutionary family ‘based on collective labour [in] a new regime of morality and human relations’.72 In a similar vein, Revolutionary Family offers an imaginary of a revolutionary family with a socialist work and family ethic that transcends

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Chinese Revolutionary Cinema biological kinship. As Liu argues, the role of ‘family’ in earlier 1930s Shanghai melodrama films was ambivalent: ‘on one hand, the disintegration and alienation of kinship becomes the most pathetic accusation against social disparity; but on the other hand, the proposal of kinship as the resolution to social conflicts is problematic.’73 For instance, although Twin Sisters (Zheng Zhengqiu, 1933) employed the narrative trope of twin sisters who have been split from each other for many years as a protest against social disparity, the final family reunion as a narrative resolution is a return to the status quo. This Life of Mine, one of the first socialist film adaptations of May Fourth and pre-1949 revolutionary literature, challenged the closure in the original literary text by offering Haifu an implicit new home and family in the communist army. The New Year’s Sacrifice redefined Xianglin Sao as a feudal icon in a forever-bygone era. Family, on the other hand, retained author Ba Jin’s accusation against family and the feudal system. This protest is most vehemently voiced by the character Jue Hui, who says, ‘I hate this family’ and ‘I want to shout my accusation.’ The film ends with Jue Hui’s principled decision to leave his family for an implied greater cause: ‘I must get out among the people and do something.’ These socialist film adaptations negotiated with May Fourth discourse and the Shanghai legacy of family melodrama by offering an alternative socialist imaginary of family. Unlike classical Hollywood narration, which features a dual plot of heterosexual romance and work, the family melodramas discussed in this chapter featured a dual plot of family and work. The work ethic that propelled these narratives forward often led to frustration and exploitation: in Spring Silkworms, Old Tongbao’s rural superstition and work ethic are out of touch with the political and economic reality of China in the 1930s. The protagonists in This Life of Mine and The New Year’s Sacrifice finally find disappointment, not fulfilment, in their work. In The Lin Family Shop, the shop owner’s work ethic leads to a situation where ‘the big fish eats the small fish [and] the small fish eats the shrimps.’74 Unlike these, Revolutionary Family idealises a new socialist work ethic that is also a family ethic: the greatest fulfilment lies in work for the Party, with its vast support network serving as a family. In line with Mao’s propagation of the ‘combination of revolutionary realism and revolutionary romanticism’ in 1958, Revolutionary Family

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Literature on Screen created Zhou Lian as a socialist model citizen – in sharp contrast to Xianglin Sao’s portrayal as a literary and cinematic icon of the prerevolutionary era.75 The fact that the screen image of Zhou Lian corresponded to real-life Party member and author Tao Cheng not only lent authenticity to the film, but also represented a temporal shift to contemporaneity in the genre of family melodrama. The revolutionary romanticism of Revolutionary Family lies in its idealisation of male martyrdom and focus on women as survivors, single mothers and potential revolutionaries – like teenage daughter Xiaolian. This moral and political investment in the maternal and nurturing roles of women went hand-inhand with the representation of the Party and its vast network of support as male figures of authority, whose presence filled the void left by the death of father Jiang Meiqing.76 The shift in revolutionary temporality away from the past can also be seen in Li Shuangshuang, an adaptation of Li Zhun’s The Short Biography of Li Shuangshuang, published in series in People’s Literature in 1960. As part of the Great Leap Forward Campaign, Li Zhun, like many artists, experienced rural life, living in the home of a female team leader in a village in Henan. Li’s experience among the female peasantry allowed him to witness the so-called socialist transformation of rural life, which became the inspiration for his serial novella. The Short Biography of Li Shuangshuang became an instant success and caught the attention of director Lu Ren, who invited Li to serve as a screenwriter for the film. In the early 1960s, revolutionary heroism was attributed to the quotidian and the everyday. Unlike earlier family melodramas that had incorporated melodramatic shocks and tragic climaxes, Li Shuangshuang focused on everyday marital conflict as a microcosm of underlying tensions and contradictions in the rural economy. Echoing the popular saying ‘women hold up half the sky’, Li Shuangshuang portrayed its outspoken eponymous protagonist as a good woman, good wife and good mother. The film depicts marital strife in the daily routine between Li Shuangshuang and her husband Sun Xiwang in order to reflect conflicting ideologies and work ethics among the peasantry. Employing chronological narration with a dual plot of family and work, the film presents day-to-day misconduct, mismanagement, tensions and arguments between the couple and among villagers, succeeded by the husband Sun Xiwang’s gradual self-correction of his behaviour and the resulting

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Chinese Revolutionary Cinema reconciliation between husband and wife. At one point in the film, Li Shuangshuang unassumingly says that ‘the Party is our family member’. The happy ending of the film presents Li Shuangshuang as a model that her husband, the village and the audience learn from. The incorporation of classical Hollywood narrative technique – especially chronological narration and heterosexual romance – in Chinese literary and socialist terms had profound implications for the ideological, aesthetic and entertainment values of film adaptations of literature. Chronological narration with a high degree of positive narrative resolution replaced the ambivalence and negativity that had characterised May Fourth critical realism. Heterosexual romance became the foundation of the socialist goal and imaginary of marriage, procreation and family for which the Party served as a spiritual pillar. The genre of family melodrama was therefore suitable for propagating the socialist work ethic, morality and family values. Where May Fourth literature had often depicted family dissolution and the tragic prototypes of displaced widows, socialist film adaptations of that literature transformed the generic conventions of family melodrama to turn victimised women into revolutionary icons. The socialist investment in femininity and love of the Party were embodied in the maternal figures of revolutionary heroines, fulfilling Mao’s ideological and aesthetic principle of ‘a combination of revolutionary realism and revolutionary romanticism’. After World War II, various realisms developed at a historical juncture: neorealism in postwar Italy, socialist realism as communist aesthetic, and classical Hollywood cinema. André Bazin pointed to the rise of neorealism as ‘a moment of particularly overt ideological conflict in cinema’, one in which, Italian neorealism and Hollywood cinema were opposites: ‘Italian neorealism embodies the idea of culture as critique’, whereas ‘Hollywood cinema presents itself as the epitome of entertainment, not necessarily mindless but not particularly political, compliant and not resistant, escapist and not engaged.’77 Socialist realism and ‘a combination of revolutionary realism and revolutionary romanticism’ in Chinese cinema sought to offer political and ideological education along with entertainment. The aesthetic experiment in screenwriting after 1949 created an alternative realism, in dialogue and competition with other realisms in different historical and ideological contexts.

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3 Translating Soviet Montage

The term ‘Soviet montage’ refers to the wave of experimentation in film method that flourished in Soviet Russia in the 1920s. Its most important figures included Lev Kuleshov (the Kuleshov experiment), Sergei Eisenstein (the montage of attractions), Dziga Vertov (The Man with a Movie Camera) and Vsevolod Pudovkin (Storm Over Asia), men whose directorial work or film theory and criticism would become part of the standard canon in film studies. Soviet montage theory would become synonymous with avant-garde and modernist aesthetics, along with other early twentieth-century artistic movements like Dadaism, futurism and surrealism. Although different directors advocated different aspects of Soviet montage, all of them acknowledged film’s formal malleability: the way editorial rearrangement of shots (film negatives) allows for defamiliarisation or estrangement (остранение). For Dziga Vertov, montage allowed the camera eye (кино глаз) to perceive reality differently, creating what he called ‘film truth’ (кино правда). Sergei Eisenstein pushed the limit of film form to forcefully manipulate audience emotions through the ‘montage of attractions’, a technique that gave montage immense potential as an aesthetic experiment and as a form of propaganda and persuasion. This chapter primarily examines the ways Eisenstein and Pudovkin were received and read in China after 1949. Rather than discounting their 87

Chinese Revolutionary Cinema revolutionary allure, I look at how Eisenstein’s and Pudovkin’s different formulations of montage were accorded authority in China through the work of translation at a time when ideas branded as ‘Soviet style’ were eagerly received, sometimes with ideological modifications according to the needs of the time. Soviet montage held discreet attractions for Chinese revolutionary cinema, which was invested in provoking the senses through propaganda. In her study of Chinese opera film in the 1950s and the early 1960s, Weihong Bao has described the period’s critical debates as ‘unparalleled’: ‘Few moments in the history of Chinese film criticism have been so intensely focused on questions of form and medium’, including the ascending prominence of Soviet montage theory and publication of several major works of film theory.1 As the film term ‘montage’ underwent translation and crossed into another cinematic system, in a different temporal and spatial context, it underwent a number of linguistic and cinematic transformations. The theoretical permutations of ‘montage’ as it was translated and introduced into China beginning in the early 1930s, and the resulting film practices as Chinese film-makers continued to re-read, redefine and reinvent it after 1949, were significant developments in Chinese cinema and international film theory. These developments can reframe our understanding of the methods, forms and impact of revolutionary cinema. In the 1930s, their sense of the revolutionary potential and allure of Soviet montage led Chinese film-makers to attach a mysterious aura to the Chinese transliteration mengtaiqi 蒙太奇, which literally means ‘veil (is) too strange’. During the later period of intense engagement with international film theory, from 1949 to 1962, Chinese film-makers would demystify the inscrutability of montage, broadening it into a synonym for film editing generally, including both Soviet montage and Hollywood continuity editing. This discursive move would allow Chinese film-makers and cultural authorities to implicitly accept, aspire to and traverse Hollywood continuity editing and Soviet montage – without openly capitulating to the ideological enemies those systems might have signified politically. Close reading of critical discourses and selected films shows ‘montage’ being reconceived and deployed for the particular goal of cinematically constructing a collective subject. This cinematic creation was often achieved through montage that orchestrated climactic moments.

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Translating Soviet Montage The attractions that montage generated in Chinese revolutionary film were visual, aural, kinaesthetic, political and even erotic, with spectatorial implications larger than, and different from, either the ‘montage of attractions’ (монтаж аттракционов) formulated by Eisenstein or the ‘cinema of attractions’ suggested in Tom Gunning’s writings on early cinema. Stephanie Donald and Ban Wang have discussed, respectively, the cinematic construction of a collective subject through the creation of the ‘socialist realist gaze’ and the sublimation of private desire; yet not much has been said about film method per se.2 Jason McGrath has supplemented the sublimation thesis by looking at how genre conventions of classical Hollywood heteronormative romance are deployed to facilitate sublimation. He has suggested that while fiction films during the Seventeen Years mostly follow classical Hollywood narration, they were also filled with ‘rhetorical flourishes reminiscent of early Soviet montage’.3 Those rhetorical flourishes were the result of Chinese film-makers’ longstanding efforts, beginning in the 1930s, in experimenting with and perfecting the use of montage.4 As a cinematic method that put together images from different temporal and spatial contexts, montage was deployed in Chinese revolutionary cinema to showcase the success of revolution for mass persuasion, and to evoke the memory, romance and heroics of revolution. Although Soviet montage was no longer openly promoted once the Sino – Soviet split emerged in the mid-1950s, its attractions would be re-created by a renewed use of montage that combined continuity editing (for chronological development of plot) with Soviet montage. Both techniques served to attract, provoke and persuade spectators at the level of the senses with clarity, simplicity and forcefulness. In the hands of Chinese film-makers, montage would be taken in a new direction to create a revolutionary aesthetics that renegotiated the position of Chinese cinema vis-
a-vis the world.

‘Too Strange’: Translating the Riddle of Montage ‘Montage’, as an imported foreign word, a theoretical notion and a film method, befuddled many in the Chinese film industry. The current widely accepted Chinese translation of the term ‘montage’ is in fact a

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Chinese Revolutionary Cinema transliteration (and a creative translation) that approaches the sound of the original: mengtaiqi 蒙太奇. Interestingly, this transliteration is a phonetic and semantic pun in Chinese. The first character, meng 蒙, literally means ‘veiled’ or ‘clouded’, whereas the second and the third characters, tai-qi 太奇, mean ‘too strange’, ‘too extraordinary’ or ‘too marvellous’. The transliteration creates a new meaning in Chinese that is absent in the French original – ‘veil (is) too strange’ – attaching to it a mysterious aura and an alluring sound.5 It is not entirely clear who first translated the term ‘montage’ into Chinese with such creativity and mischievousness. Even Cheng Bugao, one of China’s first directors, could not recall the origins of the translated term in his memoirs. Describing himself as one among the many directors who used to consider montage ‘magical’ (shenqi), Cheng Bugao referred to montage as a ‘riddle’ and an ‘unsolved mystery’, for which ‘no one could give a simple and clear definition’.6 A look at left-wing dramatist and director Hong Shen’s A Dictionary of Film Terms (1935), China’s first such specialised dictionary, gives us some clues to how ‘montage’ acquired its strangeness as a result of translation. The size of a coffee-table book, Hong Shen’s dictionary succinctly defined over 700 foreign film terms in Chinese, with a separate English and Chinese index at the end. Foreign (mostly English) film terms ranging from ‘movie’ (huodong yingpian) to ‘dolly shot’ (tuila jingtou) and ‘close-up’ (texie) were translated into Chinese, with the English original supplied next to the Chinese translations. The French term ‘montage’ is introduced at the end of chapter 23, ‘The director’. ‘Montage’, conceived as a technique employed at the director’s discretion, is translated as jiegou (structure) and transliterated as mengdaqi 蒙达奇: Mengdaqi 蒙达奇 is the transliteration of the French term montage [original in French]. Translated into English, the word means ‘mounting’ [original in English] or ‘setting’ [original in English] – more or less equivalent to ‘construction’ [original in English]. Hence, it doesn’t hurt to translate it as jiegou 结构 (structure).7

It is notable that the transliteration listed in Hong Shen’s dictionary, mengdaqi 蒙达奇 – phonetically similar to the currently accepted mengtaiqi 蒙太奇 – literally means ‘veiled (to the point of) reaching strange’, conveying the core idea of strangeness (qi) associated with montage.

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Translating Soviet Montage The transliteration mengtaiqi would gradually win over the indirect translation jiegou (through the mediation of English as the vehicular language) as the established translation of the term ‘montage’: a victory of phonetic sound over meaning. Jiegou, lacking both the appealing subtext of strangeness and an attractive sound, was too mundane to live on as a term. The acquired strangeness and extraordinariness of the term mengtaiqi had to do with the foreignness, even untranslatability, of ‘montage’ as a newly imported theory and method in China in the early 1930s, as well as with Chinese left-wing film-makers’ fascination with the revolutionary promise of Soviet montage. The foreignness, untranslatability and lack of a Chinese equivalent for the term were apparent in the 1933 translation of Pudovkin’s The Film Director and Film Material (Кинорежиссер и киноматериал) (Dianying daoyan lun) (1926).8 Throughout their translation, left-wing screenwriters Xia Yan and Zheng Boqi rendered montage in the French original, retaining its foreign flavour and untranslatability. Nothing could better accentuate the foreignness, strangeness and untranslatability of the original term than leaving the foreign letters untranslated. However, Xia Yan and Zheng Boqi did attach the French term montage to the Chinese adjectival and adverbial modifier de di 的地, creating a halfFrench and half-Chinese neologism: montage-dedi. The newly formed adverb literally embodied the linguistic encounter between languages as well as the encounter between different cinematic systems. As Lydia Liu has explained, translation is a process that takes place in ‘the zone of hypothetical equivalence’: One does not translate between equivalents; rather, one creates tropes of equivalence in the middle zone of translation between the host and guest languages. This zone of hypothetical equivalence, which is occupied by neologistic imagination and the super-sign, becomes the very ground for change.9

The historicity of translation, and the power inequality that constitutes the work of translation, can be seen throughout the continuous effort of translating foreign film terms that circulated as cultural currency in the Chinese market in semi-colonial Shanghai in the 1910s. Highly conscious of the peripheral position of Chinese cinema in relation to Hollywood cinema after World War I, Xia Yan and Zheng Boqi

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Chinese Revolutionary Cinema established a discourse on film-making by translating Soviet works on montage as a counterforce against the domination of Hollywood cinema. Chinese film-makers’ enthusiastic response to Soviet montage coincided with the left-wing cinema movement, whose representatives perceived Soviet cinema as offering a new path for Chinese cinema. Xia Yan’s and Zheng Boqi’s translation of Pudovkin was one of two pathbreaking events marking the beginning of Soviet influence on Chinese cinema; the other was the 1931 public screening of Pudovkin’s 1928 film, Storm Over Asia (Потомок Чингис-хана).10 Xia Yan described Soviet cinema as a ‘progressive’ and ‘socialist’ cinema that pointed China to ‘the path of realism’.11 Beginning in 1932, after the restoration of relations between the Nationalist Party and the Soviet Union, there were further efforts to introduce the Chinese audience to Soviet directors like Eisenstein and Pudovkin. The 1930s also witnessed a surge in film reviews and articles about the attractions of Soviet cinema, its pedagogical value and cinematic novelty. It is not surprising that under such circumstances, news of Soviet montage as a revolutionary idea and a formal experiment began to circulate widely, with the term gradually acquiring its unusual attractions. From montage to mengdaqi 蒙达奇 and jiegou 结构, and the eventual phonetic and semantic twist to mengtaiqi 蒙太奇, the birth of a new phonetic phrase conveying a newly acquired strangeness helped set the stage for a number of important Chinese cinematic innovations.

The Revolutionary Allure of Soviet Directors: Sergei Eisenstein and Vsevolod Pudovkin The French word montage simply means ‘editing’ in a general sense; that is, how shots are put together to make up a film. Chinese translators, left-wing film-makers and critics in the 1930s and 1940s, however, were primarily interested in Soviet montage as a formal experiment in the strict sense. In a series of articles published in the early 1940s, Shen Fengwei, a Chinese film critic, selectively delineated various categories of montage formulated by Eisenstein and Pudovkin (Table 3.1).12 Shen yoked Eisenstein and Pudovkin as representatives of Soviet montage at the expense of further discussion of the disagreements between the two directors: 92

Translating Soviet Montage Table 3.1

Pudovkin’s and Eisenstein’s categories of montage.

Vsevolod Pudovkin I. Constructive montage ( jiegouxing mengtaiqi 结构性蒙太奇) a) Montage of a scene (changjing mengtaiqi 场景蒙太奇) b) Montage of an episode (duanluo mengtaiqi 段落蒙太奇) c) Montage of a script (quanju mengtaiqi 全剧蒙太奇) II. Comparative montage (guanxide mengtaiqi 关系的蒙太奇): a) Contrast (duibifa 对比法) b) Parallel action ( pingxingfa 平行法) c) Simile (xiangzhengfa 像征法) d) Simultaneity (tongshi jinxingfa 同时进行法) e) Leitmotif (chongfu jiazhongfa 重复加重法) Sergei Eisenstein Metric montage (changduan mengtaiqi 长短蒙太奇) Rhythmic montage (yunl€u mengtaiqi 韵律蒙太奇) Tonal montage (gediao mengtaiqi 格调蒙太奇) Overtonal montage (chaogediao mengtaiqi 超格调蒙太奇) Intellectual montage (maodun mengtaiqi 矛盾蒙太奇)

We know that montage originated in France, but it is the most developed in Russia [. . .] Some people describe montage as the ‘Russian editing style’ (eguoshi jianjie). Obviously, this description is not correct. Montage is not merely editing. Nevertheless, the term ‘Russian editing style’ draws our attention to Russia and its two directors – Pudovkin and Eisenstein.13

Shen makes two intentional choices here. First, although montage, as a term, is said to have originated in France, Shen associates ‘montage’ as a specialised film method with Russia, where it blossomed.14 Second, Eisenstein and Pudovkin are singled out as its masters. Amy Sargeant has suggested two reasons why, despite their differences, Pudovkin and Eisenstein have often been brought together under the term ‘Soviet montage’: Soviet silent films continued to be popular among foreign audiences well into the sound period because of their ‘revolutionary’ aura, and ‘[a]lthough Kuleshov, Pudovkin and Eisenstein elect to practice montage differently, true to type as a Soviet “school”, in the 1920s at least, they agree that editing is the technique by which film distinguishes itself.’15 93

Chinese Revolutionary Cinema The formally and politically revolutionary aura of Soviet montage explains why Eisenstein and Pudovkin were coupled by Shen, who selectively introduced montage from the Soviet Union, the birthplace of revolution, to the Chinese public. Given the canonical place that Eisenstein’s and Pudovkin’s formulations of montage occupied in Chinese reception of Soviet montage, Eisenstein’s phrase, ‘montage of attractions’, and Pudovkin’s ‘montage as series’, provide a point of departure and terminological framework for this chapter.16 Eisenstein’s montage of attractions consists of rapid alternation between sets of shots that are independent of one another, generating collision and giving rise to an idea not necessarily present in the shots at the denotative level; and collision of shots as a result of fast cutting and unusual camera angles, defamiliarising norms of time and space. Pudovkin’s montage as series refers to the unrolling of an event through a series of fragments (a narrative following a given course with maximum continuity and minimal disruptions from non-diegetic inserts). Pudovkin’s comparative montage (contrast, parallel actions, simile, simultaneity and leitmotif) was a refinement of D. W. Griffith’s basic editing, one that achieved narrative economy and diegetic contiguity. The five kinds of comparative montage categorised by Pudovkin in ‘The Film Script (The Theory of the Script)’ would be reiterated by Shen and other film critics beginning in the 1940s and throughout the 1950s:17 (1) Contrast (контраст): To illustrate how a contrast can force viewers to make comparisons between two activities, Pudovkin offered the example of a contrasting comparison between the plight of a starving man and the senseless gluttony of a rich man, established by individual shots within scenes. (2) Parallel action (параллелизм): Pudovkin used the example of the impending execution of a strike leader and his drunken boss looking at his watch in a restaurant to illustrate how ‘two thematically unconnected actions are linked together and proceed in parallel.’18 (3) Simile (уподобление): A simile conveys an abstract concept without intertitles. For instance, in the final scene of Strike (Eisenstein, 1925), a series of shots that alternate between the shooting down of the workers and the slaughtering of a bull convey brutality with vividness and intensity.

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Translating Soviet Montage (4) Simultaneity (одновременность): To illustrate the ‘simultaneous rapid development of two actions, with the outcome of one depending on the other’, Pudovkin used the example of the ending of D. W. Griffith’s Intolerance (1916), composed of a series of shots rapidly alternating between the impending execution of a worker and his wife trying to catch up with the governor’s train in order to obtain a pardon for him.19 (5) Leitmotif (напоминание): A device of reiteration that emphasises a main idea of the script: for instance, the recurring shot of a bell in the Church in an anti-religious script to convey the hypocrisy of the Church. It is notable that Pudovkin’s categorisation of comparative montage was favoured over Eisenstein’s montage methods, which were deemed ‘esoteric’: ‘Practically speaking, Eisenstein’s theory is too broad and esoteric. It is difficult to apply and comprehend.’20 Taking into account Eisenstein’s labelling as a formalist in the Soviet Union by the 1930s, Chinese film critics who appreciated Eisenstein’s film art began to reevaluate his films with a critical eye. Their positive attitude towards Pudovkin, sometimes referred to as the ‘Russian Griffith’ (because of Pudovkin’s explicit acknowledgement of D. W. Griffith’s editing style, upon which he developed his montage methods), is not surprising, given the popularity of Hollywood movies in semi-colonial Shanghai beginning in the 1910s.21 By the 1930s, Republican Shanghai cinema had mastered the close-up, crosscutting and comparative montage refined by Griffith (in the classical continuity system), Pudovkin and others, and had creatively put those methods to use.22 For example, the left-wing film-maker Cai Chusheng mobilised montage for political criticism in The New Woman (1934). While the story of The New Woman largely adheres to classical Hollywood narration as the tragedy of the protagonist Wei Ming unfolds, there are specific moments when the use of montage intervenes in the narrative flow and heightens its affective intensity. In the scene where Wei Ming dances with her suitor, for example, a contrast montage sequence juxtaposes close-up shots of dancing feet with shots of the labourers’ feet, framed by a clock, establishing parallel actions in a shared temporality (Figure 3.1). The combination of similarity in form (the circular frame) and contrast in

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Figure 3.1 A contrast montage sequence that establishes parallel actions in The New Woman (1934).

meaning points to class contradictions.23 Here, montage creates a third meaning through the collision of two images framed by a clock. The contrast montage sequence is later followed by a split-screen montage sequence (montage within a frame), in which Cai Chusheng unified temporally and spatially disconnected images, depicting teacher and students singing a revolutionary song on one corner of the screen while the rest of the screen depicts the colonial architecture on the Bund in Shanghai (Figure 3.2). Through the use of the split screen, the two unrelated events are linked together and proceed in parallel. As well as paralleling the actions, the split-screen montage sequence most

Figure 3.2 A split-screen montage sequence that establishes contrast as well as parallel actions.

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Translating Soviet Montage importantly establishes a contrast through the singing of a revolutionary song against the backdrop of semi-colonial Shanghai. At its inception in Soviet Russia, sound was conceived by both Eisenstein and Pudovkin as a distraction from the visual and thus an inhibitor of the aesthetic and ideological functions of montage; however, in The New Woman, situated on the threshold of the sound era in Chinese cinema, sound elevates the affective intensity of montage with clarity and forcefulness.24 Despite the versatility of Chinese film-makers in creatively combining classical Hollywood narration with Soviet montage, Shen nonetheless perceived shortcomings relative to foreign (primarily Western) cinematic counterparts: ‘What is it that we lack? The reason why we are not able to separate film from stage drama is that we are not using montage well enough.’25 Here, montage is conceived as a cinematic means of expression and a cinematic currency with the potential to enable Chinese cinema to overcome its deficiencies. Yet rather than calling for a wholesale subscription to Soviet montage, Shen advocated selective theoretical and practical adoption and modification of Soviet montage: ‘If possible, we should improve and supplement montage in terms of theory or technique.’26 Importantly, Shen’s statement is not concerned with authenticity, originality or fidelity to certain conceptions of montage. This pragmatic attitude, a first step towards unveiling the mystery of montage, was accompanied by his call for Chinese cinema to innovate: ‘Now that film is an independent art, we should walk a new path. This new path may be “montage”, or maybe not. Nonetheless, a new path is absolutely necessary.’27 Shen’s attempt to move past the enigma of montage was to be echoed by later film-makers, who took up the task of reinventing montage after 1949.

Reinventing Montage: The Rhetoric of Simplicity As Bao has pointed out, montage, understood as a key mode of cinematic expression, was ‘part and parcel of the institutionalization of cinema, when theories of montage and realism gained currency just as the film industry in the People’s Republic was solidifying’.28 The eventful year of 1953 witnessed the institution of the First Five-Year Plan, under which film theory was considered one of the three major targets of ‘film construction’. Socialist realism, officially endorsed by Zhou Yang as ‘the road of advance

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Chinese Revolutionary Cinema for Chinese literature’, would become the banner under which study of Soviet film theories and techniques took place.29 That same year, a Chinese study group of 20 film artists and technicians travelled to Moscow to learn about various practices in the Soviet film industry for a year, and Eisenstein’s The Film Sense (Dianying yishu sijiang) was translated into Chinese.30 By the second half of the 1950s, discussions of montage had become theoretically sophisticated, resulting in several major translations and anthologies on Soviet montage as well as publications about montage, editing and the specificity of the filmic medium. For instance, Shi Dongshan’s Dianying yishu zai biaoxian xingshi shang de jige tedian (Several Characteristics of the Cinematic Means of Expression) (1958), Zhang Junxiang’s Guanyu dianying de teshu biaoxian shouduan (On the Specific Means of Cinematic Expression) (1959) and Xia Yan’s 1958 speech on screenwriting at the Beijing Film Academy (later published in 1978 as Xie dianying juben de jige wenti) all highlighted film’s artistic specificity and construed montage as a fundamental means of cinematic expression.31 Publications on montage continued to flourish in the early 1960s: Eisenstein’s and Pudovkin’s selected writings were anthologised in two volumes in 1962, concurrent with the publication of Ji Zhifeng’s Mengtaiqi jiqiao qiantan (A Brief Introduction to Montage Techniques).32 Briefly outlined here, the burgeoning publications on film theory and practice in the 1950s and 1960s constituted a sophisticated film discourse, notwithstanding the rhetoric of simplicity often used to characterise cinematic production during the Seventeen Years. The reinvention of montage was in fact heavily invested in the rhetoric of simplicity, in accordance with the talks at the Yan’an Forum on Literature and Art in 1942 in which Mao had explicitly advocated popularisation over raising artistic standards. In the 1950s, Xia Yan highlighted accessibility and simplicity as guiding principles to understanding and practising montage: ‘Montage in Chinese film can be more accessible ( pingyi), from the perspective of the masses (qunzhong guandian). Our principle should be accessibility for the majority.’33 Similarly, Shi Dongshan considered comprehensibility a priority in film editing: ‘The basic technique of editing is, first, striving for comprehensibility for the audience. Second, maximising the fundamental strength of cinema.’34 Yet though accessibility, simplicity

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Translating Soviet Montage and comprehensibility were often emphasised in Chinese discourse on montage, one must keep in mind that the rhetoric of simplicity is itself artistically sophisticated. The reinvention of montage operated on a complex social and aesthetic agenda with deep concerns for spectatorship. Chinese film-makers, working under the auspices of the state, sought to create for its targeted audience a revolutionary aesthetics: simultaneously accessible and attractive, pedagogical and pleasurable to the eye. Rather than taking the rhetoric of simplicity at face value and thereby labelling Chinese revolutionary film as a simple form of mass propaganda, we can and should reconceive it as a cinema that strove to be accessible, pedagogical and popular. The first step by which Chinese film-makers and cultural authorities redefined montage was to debunk its mystery by keeping a theoretical distance from Soviet directors. This strategic discursive move was in part necessitated by international politics. Chinese film-makers and critics became highly conscious of the dangers of formalism and aestheticism from the mid-1950s onwards, as the Sino – Soviet split emerged, followed by the Hundred Flowers Campaign and the Anti-Rightist Campaign, opening up debates on the nationalisation of cinema. As a result of these shifts, Chinese film-makers gradually distanced themselves from the Soviet directors they had embraced in previous decades. The prefaces and postscripts to anthologies served as a framing discourse and regulatory force to contain, repackage and relabel Soviet montage theories that continued to circulate in the PRC after the Sino – Soviet split. For instance, Eisenstein and even the less esoteric Pudovkin were perceived by Zhang Junxiang as masters who had followed the wrong path: ‘Today, nobody is obsessed with form or considers the organisation of shots as the only method of film-making. Nonetheless, there was a period when masters like Eisenstein and Pudovkin followed the wrong path.’35 Zhang rejected earlier exaggerations of the artistic value of montage in sayings such as ‘an individual shot is lifeless’, ‘film is born on the editing table’ and ‘the director’s materials are film negatives’.36 Similarly, Qi Zhou, the translator of Eisenstein’s The Film Sense, described Eisenstein as a genius director who nonetheless ‘gave in to the temptations of formalism’ and ‘lost the connexion with life’, reminding his Chinese readers of the need to carefully ‘select’ and ‘digest’ what was beneficial to them.37 The official policy of

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Chinese Revolutionary Cinema ‘leaning to one side’ was revisited as the Sino – Soviet split emerged, resulting in a more critical reception of Soviet masterpieces. This more selective approach to Eisenstein’s and Pudovkin’s works reveals the contingency of their original reception and the various ways in which they were claimed, used and revised by the work of translation and the canonisation of film theories. The second step by which Chinese film-makers and cultural authorities reinvented montage was to redefine the term’s scope to encompass all film editing methods, thus returning to the original meaning of the French word. This discursive move gave Chinese film-makers the freedom to creatively manoeuvre between Hollywood continuity editing and Soviet montage without explicitly endorsing or wholly adopting either. Shi Dongshan, one of the most prominent Chinese film-makers who contributed to the rethinking of montage, explained the two approaches to montage in the history of Chinese cinema. The first approach considered montage ‘mysterious’ and ‘incomprehensible’, whereas the second approach took a ‘narrow view’, emphasising the contrastive effects of montage that, according to Shi Dongshan, were the hallmark of Eisenstein’s montage of attractions.38 Shi Dongshan rejected the narrow approach, insisting that continuity and contrast should be united rather than oppositional. He defined lianxu de gouchengfa (continuity editing) as an editing method that broke down shots according to the development of plot; duili de gouchengfa (contrastive editing) included Eisenstein’s montage of attractions, which juxtaposed shots depicting one phenomenon with non-diegetic inserts depicting another to produce contrast, conflict and collision that stimulate the audience’s thinking. Shi Dongshan pointed to the mass slaughter sequence in Eisenstein’s Strike (1925), which juxtaposes non-diegetic inserts of a butchered bull and shots of the slaughtered masses, as an example of contrastive editing (Figure 3.3).

Figure 3.3 Shi Dongshan considered the mass slaughter sequence in Eisenstein’s Strike (1925) an example of contrastive editing.

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Translating Soviet Montage Shi Dongshan went on to say that defining montage narrowly, confining it to contrastive editing, would be the same as ‘adopting the view and tone of formalism’.39 Montage should include ‘all editing techniques, whether they belong to continuity editing or contrastive editing’,40 especially since Soviet cinema, like many other cinemas, ‘uses continuity as the basic editing method’.41 Like Shi Dongshan, Xia Yan favoured continuity for clarity and comprehensibility. An outstanding montage, according to Xia Yan, was ‘in accord with reason, sensibility, actual life and visual logic’.42 Xia Yan highlighted the complications of luan (chaos) and tiao (jumps) – chaotic narration, chaotic plot, chaotic frames and chaotic directions – in the use of montage in Chinese cinema. He looked to Pudovkin for theoretical guidance, offering ‘a good quote from Pudovkin: “Generally speaking, the basic demand of film is to direct the audience’s attention to the chronological development of plot.”’43 Xia Yan’s emphasis on chronological narration and continuity is best expressed in his explanation of the term fenjingtou juben (shooting script): ‘In English, a shooting script is called “continuity” [original in English]. The word comes from the verb “continue”, and the meaning of “continue” includes “to connect” and “to go on”.’44 In favouring clarity, chronology and continuity, Shi Dongshan and Xia Yan implicitly leant towards Hollywood continuity editing for the sake of accessibility and comprehensibility by a wide audience. To reinvent montage as a general term for all film editing methods, Chinese film-makers and critics such as Ji Zhifeng, Shi Dongshan, Xia Yan and Zhang Junxiang redefined its scope to include four aspects of film editing: the structure and composition of individual frames, the editing of shots, sound (as constitutive of montage), and montage as a method that creates continuity and contrast. Ji Zhifeng redefined and re-codified montage as a general term for all film editing methods in an illustrated reader-friendly manual, Mengtaiqi jiqiao qiantan (A Brief Introduction to Montage Techniques) (1962) (Table 3.2). In the introduction, Ji Zhifeng, like his counterparts Shi Dongshan and Xia Yan, broadened the scope of montage to include ‘all the techniques related to the arrangement of shots and sound composition’, though the ‘editing of shots’ is ‘the foundation of montage’.45 Chinese film-makers’ mid-century redefinition of montage as a synonym for ‘film editing methods’ facilitated the creative adaptation of Hollywood and Soviet methods in creating Chinese revolutionary cinema.

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Chinese Revolutionary Cinema Table 3.2 Ji Zhifeng’s Mengtaiqi jiqiao qiantan (A Brief Introduction to Montage Techniques) (1962) is divided into nine sections, which together establish montage as a general term for all editing methods. 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9.

Shot distance and scenic development Change in camera angle and unity of direction Juxtaposition of image and match of composition Division of segments and pauses between frames Main actions and fluency of editing Length of shots and pace of emotional infection The use of non-diegetic sound The use of subjective sound The use of combined sounds

Shot Division as Re-Creation Chinese film-makers like Shi Dongshan began by defining their terms, revisiting the basic principles of shot division in montage: ‘What is called “editing” ( jianjie) actually belongs to the category of shot division ( fen jingtou) (there are many people who are confused by the concept). That is because the editing of shots in narrative films is determined by shot division.’46 Shot division and the writing of a shooting script, described by Cheng Bugao as a ‘re-creation’ (zai chuangzuo), were developed into a specialised and collaborative method during the Seventeen Years, when all films produced were based on shooting scripts written after multiple discussions and revisions.47 Shot division was the second step in the process of film production, right after the writing of a literary script (wenxue juben). Cheng Bugao’s word, ‘re-creation’, described shot division as the reinvention of a literary script in its filmic form, one that required a reconception of the script in terms of shot distance, camera angle, length of shots, division of segments, pausing and sound. In short, shot division and the writing of a shooting script involved rethinking film as a visual medium. Shen Fengwei, writing in the 1940s, thought Chinese cinema ‘lacked’ this specificity of medium: I used to ask a few foreign experts what they thought of Chinese film. They all said that ‘Chinese film seems too close to stage drama (wutaiju).’ Such an answer is earnest, but it is also a euphemism.

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Translating Soviet Montage They may as well say that Chinese film lacks the specificity of the filmic medium.48

Zhang Junxiang’s redefinition conceived montage as the grammar of film, a grammar that enabled Chinese cinema to overcome a ‘lack of actions, excessive dialogue and oral narration, and [overly] complex structure’.49 In Mengtaiqi jiqiao qiantan, Ji Zhifeng opened by discussing shot distance and camera angle. He illustrated the correlation between shot distance and emotional intensity as a curve: the shorter the shot distance, the higher the emotional intensity (Figure 3.4). According to Ji, a close-up would yield more intense emotions and facilitate audience identification with the characters on screen, an explanation that echoed Pudovkin’s appraisal of Griffith’s refinement of the close-up as a crucial component of montage. Correlating shot distance and emotional intensity would become the basis for engineering climactic moments in Chinese revolutionary film. Ji Zhifeng also explained that camera angle worked hand-in-hand with shot distance to create the visual image (shijue xingxiang) of a fictional character. High-angle shots were typically used to depict villains and class

Figure 3.4 Ji Zhifeng illustrated the correlation between shot distance and emotional intensity as a curve, which he called the curve of ‘emotional development’. The shorter the shot distance, the higher the emotional intensity. The X-axis labels read (from left to right): long shot, medium shot, medium close-up shot, medium shot and long shot. Courtesy of the Chinese University of Hong Kong Library.

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Attractions Despite the discursive move away from Soviet montage, its discreet attractions persisted in subtle forms in Chinese revolutionary film. Although contemporary critics felt the need to broaden the meaning of montage from 1949 onwards, they nonetheless retained the term. And indeed, montage can be seen in Chinese revolutionary cinema, recognised as a highly self-conscious cinematic technique that creates attractions at climactic moments. Those visual, aural, kinaesthetic, political and even erotic attractions facilitated audience identification with a collective revolutionary subject and the Party. My use of the word ‘attractions’ intentionally establishes a dialogue with Eisenstein’s ‘montage of attractions’ and the ‘cinema of attractions’ analysed by Tom Gunning in his writings on early cinema. Gunning’s term helps us understand the exhibitionist quality of early cinema, before the integration of narrative from 1906 onwards. According to Gunning, the act of showing and exhibiting (such as the recurring look at the camera by actors) ‘incites visual curiosity’ and ‘supplies pleasure’ to an audience fascinated by the potential of the new medium.50 Gunning, too, takes the term ‘attractions’ from Eisenstein, in his case because of the latter’s emphasis on direct stimulation rather than diegetic absorption. In the context of Chinese revolutionary cinema, montage sequences accompanied by revolutionary songs functioned as direct stimulation integrated into diegetic absorption – for instance, in the way sound augments the affective intensity of montage in The New Woman. Montage sequences of this sort heightened dramatic, emotional and ideological persuasion, creating experiential moments of sight and sound in the midst 104

Translating Soviet Montage of the cinematic narrative that facilitate diegetic absorption. This is one of the primary attractions of Chinese revolutionary cinema, which was premised on direct stimulus and persuasion rather than the intellectual leap generated by Eisenstein’s montage of attractions.

Montage and Revolutionary Songs In the early socialist revolutionary film Gate Number Six (L€u Ban, 1952), a film about the success of a workers’ strike, fast cutting, combined with a montage sequence accompanied by revolutionary song, generates a visually and aurally provocative kinaesthetic rhythm. The montage sequence is characterised by quick editing with manifold shot ranges and camera positions that defamiliarise, exhibit and glorify physical labour as a joyous collective endeavour (Figure 3.5). As a result of the rapid succession of individual smiling faces and bodies in medium shots, spectators are stitched into the diegesis with little choice in what they see. As David Bordwell has suggested in the context of historical –materialist narration: ‘Rapid editing is the most self-conscious effort of the rhetorical narration to control the pace of hypothesis formation.’51 Combined with the forceful rhythm generated by the theme song, fast cutting maximises the narrative economy and diegetic contiguity central to Pudovkin’s ‘montage as series’

Figure 3.5 Fast cutting is combined with a revolutionary song in a montage sequence in Gate Number Six (1952).

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Chinese Revolutionary Cinema (the unrolling of an event through a series of fragments) and creates a strong sense of kinaesthetic motion. The orchestration of visual and sound effects through the use of montage creates the impression that, in the words of McGrath, ‘communists have more fun’ – it is ‘precisely through collective action that the individual finds the greatest meaning and fulfillment’.52 The combination of fast cutting and revolutionary song in Gate Number Six’s montage sequence attracts spectators at the level of their senses, glorifying collective labour in its anonymous mass heroes. Chinese revolutionary cinema also made use of Hollywood-style montage sequences to condense the passage of time into a succession of images connected by superimpositions, dissolves and fades. These montage sequences, often accompanied by songs, function as cinematic punctuations, transitions and conclusions. For instance, the montage sequence in the climactic ending of the early socialist revolutionary film The White-Haired Girl, accompanied by a revolutionary song, celebrates the destruction of the villain Wang Shiren’s property, the reunion of the couple and the change of seasons in a concise and rhetorically compelling manner.

Comparative Montage and ‘Subjectified Sound’: The Case of Nie Er Use of comparative montage and sound matured in the late 1950s, as exemplified by the ending of Nie Er (Zheng Junli, 1959), in which crowd scenes and various kinds of comparative montage – contrast, parallel action, simile and leitmotif – coexist in the film’s final moments, culminating in the climax of the song that would become the PRC national anthem. The highly complex montage sequence combines various modes of montage and distorts temporal– spatial order to unify actions in various times and spaces (Figure 3.6). By crosscutting, the sequence creates an illusion that all critical events – long lines of suffering labourers at the prison gate, a mass demonstration in front of the government office, the Japanese army’s execution of Chinese patriots, the capture of Luding Bridge by the communists, a peasant field revolt, and Nie Er at his desk composing ‘March of the Volunteers’ in a flash of inspiration – take place in parallel. From the song’s germination to its completion, the sequence reinforces montage’s capacity to defamiliarise temporal –spatial norms and 106

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Figure 3.6 A montage sequence in Nie Er (1959) that distorts temporal –spatial order to re-create a historical continuity that represents revolutionary struggle.

reconstruct a novel sense of narrative time and space. Pudovkin’s ‘montage as series’ – the unrolling of an event through a series of fragments – was reinvented in the hands of director Zheng Junli, who put together fragments of multiple events to condense and speed up time and re-create the kinaesthetic motion of revolutionary struggle. Nie Er’s rhetorical combination of images taken from the diegetic world not only functions as typical Hollywood-style montage flashbacks, but also ‘allows the narration to present images initially designed to denote fabula information, and then to recall them for connotative purposes’.53 The recurring images of the mass demonstration, the suffering labourers and the heroine Zheng Leidian are reiterated in this sequence to constitute leitmotifs for the film as a whole. The first half of the sequence, depicting suffering and humiliation, is contrasted with the latter half of the sequence, depicting victory. A simile is established between the flare in the field, where the peasants revolt, and the fire of inspiration that Nie Er ignites as he writes at his desk in front of a burning candle, composing the lyrics in ‘March of the Volunteers’: ‘brave the enemy’s fire, march on’. Multiple coexisting modes of comparative montage strengthen the overall ideological and aesthetic goal, defining Nie Er as a revolutionary hero on the cultural front, working simultaneously with the collective, who fight on the military front and heroically sacrifice themselves. Also within this sequence, the enlargement of certain details such as inserts of the music sheets and close-up shots of Nie Er direct viewers’ attention to the subjectivity and creative activity of the composer. 107

Chinese Revolutionary Cinema According to Ji, ‘subjectified sound’ (zhuguanhua yin) referred to the sounds (both diegetic and non-diegetic) generated to convey the subjectivity of revolutionary heroes and heroines. ‘Subjectified sound’ was often combined with montage and ‘subjective shots’ (zhuguan jingtou) of positive characters (zhengmian renwu) to ‘directly convey the psychological actions of characters’.54 The alternation and succession of images in Nie Er’s montage sequence, accompanied by the revolutionary song, create variations of tempo and a constant shifting of emphasis from Nie Er (the hero through whom the audience hears the song) to the fighting army and the collective subject of the masses. The use of ‘subjectified sound’, orchestrated by montage, produces the voice of the collective. As Zhang Junxiang suggested: ‘When the same sound crosses over to a scene in a different time and space but of the same nature, an emphasising effect is created.’55 The musical continuation does not necessarily contradict the content of individual frames; instead it enhances the emotive and persuasive power of individual frames, accumulating through the end of the montage sequence, which culminates in the final completion of the song. The montage sequence, with the aid of revolutionary song, establishes continuity despite and because of its distortion of temporal–spatial order. Without excessive reliance on speech, the use of multiple modes of comparative montage combined with sound allowed director Zheng Junli to cinematically depict a complex network of actions, to construct a historical narrative, and to create a distinct image of the hero for the audience to identify with. The film combined the use of various kinds of comparative montage, accompanied by sound, to convey its revolutionary message with a high degree of conciseness and clarity, ruling out any possibilities for narrative, visual and aural ambiguity.

Internal Montage: Superimposition, Memory-Making and Leitmotif Chinese film-makers also employed superimposition, described by Ji Zhifeng as an ‘internal montage’ (that is, montage within a frame), to arouse revolutionary memories, which function as leitmotifs within filmic narratives. Superimposition depicts two images from different times and spaces through double exposure. In the hands of Chinese directors it became a highly malleable rhetorical device for the purpose of memory-making. 108

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Figure 3.7 The use of internal montage in Stage Sisters (1965).

In Stage Sisters (Xie Jin, 1965), the literary character Xianglin Sao, emblematic of feudal oppression, becomes a leitmotif replicated and cited by montage at a turning point in the film when Chunhua attends an exhibition. The scene begins with a close-up shot of Jiang Bo and Chunhua looking at a woodblock print of Xianglin Sao as Jiang educates Chunhua about Xianglin Sao’s misfortune: ‘She [Xianglin Sao] was widowed twice and people shunned her as a woman who brings misfortune.’ Succeeding this shot is a frontal close-up shot of Chunhua. The camera then slowly tracks into an extreme close-up shot of Chunhua’s teary eyes as she is overwhelmed with emotions. At this critical moment, extra-diegetic music is played simultaneously with a cut to a close-up shot of Xianglin Sao’s face. As the camera tracks in, Xianglin Sao’s face begins to fade, superimposed with Little Chunhua’s face (Figure 3.7). At this point, the extra-diegetic music reaches its climax as the sequence cuts to another extreme frontal close-up shot of Chunhua in tears. Twenty seconds of this 30-second sequence are taken up by Chunhua’s emotional absorption with Xianglin Sao, visualised in a series of alternating close-up shots of their faces. This montage sequence constitutes the climactic moment of the film, in which Chunhua begins to understand the suffering of peasant women as a collective. Xianglin Sao’s highly malleable cinematic image, superimposed with the image of Little Chunhua, constitutes a leitmotif that produces revolutionary memory for mass persuasion, a role it plays within and beyond Stage Sisters: Xianglin Sao, a feudal icon that appeared in multiple media, was repeatedly replicated and cited by montage. This type of repetition and citation through the use of leitmotif indicates the immense rhetorical potential of montage as a highly condensed cinematic language.

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Empty Shots and the Relay of Gazes The orchestration of the relay of gazes through montage constitutes one of the most signatory moments of Chinese revolutionary cinema. Stephanie Donald suggests the term ‘socialist realist gaze’ as a way to understand the cinematic convention used to evoke ‘the romance of revolution and a heroic future’.56 The socialist realist gaze regards an off-screen space rather than a defined diegetic object, signalling a leader’s political consciousness. According to Donald, the socialist realist gaze ‘needs to be shared by the characters and the audience’ in a moment of ‘ecstatic communion’.57 I suggest that the socialist realist gaze was prefigured by the cinematic relay of gazes between lead characters and supporting characters. The relay of gazes was often punctuated by empty shots, which were eventually displaced and replaced by non-diegetic inserts such as Party symbols as components of montage. The collective subject was constructed cinematically by relayed gazes in montage sequences, and the viewing subject was implicated in its visual logic. A precursor to this relaying of gazes can be seen in Pudovkin’s montage sequence in Storm Over Asia (1928), where a crowd of Mongols looks with rapture at a precious fox fur. To arouse the audience’s curiosity, Pudovkin joins together numerous close-up shots of the Mongols, whose gazes are all directed to an off-screen space, presumably the fur’s location (Figure 3.8). Variations in shot distance, camera angle and composition create an aestheticised effect and a pace that intensifies audience curiosity. Pudovkin’s ‘montage as series’ relays the Mongols’ gazes in succession,

Figure 3.8 Relay of gazes in a montage sequence in Pudovkin’s Storm Over Asia (1928).

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Figure 3.9 Relay of gazes from the lead character to supporting characters to passionate onlookers in a montage sequence in Zhao Yiman (1950).

one after another, and hence directs audience attention to the fox fur, the sale of which drives the narration and the ensuing conflict forward. The relay of gazes between characters can be seen in the final moments of the early socialist revolutionary film Zhao Yiman (Sha Meng, 1950). When the heroine Zhao Yiman is about to be executed, there is a relay of gazes from the lead character to the supporting characters to the passionate onlookers behind the prison bars. The relay begins with a medium shot of Zhao looking to an off-screen space as she shouts, ‘Long live the Communist Party!’ followed by two medium close-up shots of supporting characters looking at an off-screen but defined diegetic object, Zhao herself, behind the prison bars. Their gazes are then relayed to the sympathetic onlookers, also gazing into an off-screen space (presumably where Zhao is), in three consecutive medium close-up shots. The relay of gazes then returns to the fearless Zhao, once again looking towards an off-screen space, followed by a close-up shot of a supporting character. The film’s final shot is a medium close-up of Zhao, looking towards the horizon as she fearlessly marches ahead (Figure 3.9). 111

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Figure 3.10 (1959).

Relay of gazes and empty shots in a montage sequence in Sea Hawk

The relay of gazes from Zhao to onlookers and back to Zhao is rhythmically punctuated by montage, relaying in succession a series of static gazes using the eyeline match, a type of cut central to the continuity editing system. The remarkable frontality of the gazes looking up invites and solicits the audience to look up and identify with the collective revolutionary subject, headed by Zhao, in a moment of solidarity. Positioned as the camera’s eye, the spectator performs the act of filling in the blanks and produces for him/herself a third meaning: the fearless Zhao inspires her comrades to become fearless revolutionaries. The relay of gazes freezes the narrative, elevating it to a higher level of emotional intensity. Spectators are drawn into, and implicated in, the chain of gazes, creating an effect in which ‘the gaze of the camera, the spectator and the cinematic subject are ideally brought together in a visual logic.’58 The relay of gazes orchestrated by montage creates this visual logic, by which a collective subject is constructed cinematically. In the later socialist revolutionary film Sea Hawk (Yan Jizhou, 1959), there is a somewhat different handling of the relay of gazes. Sea Hawk’s relay of gazes takes on even greater clarity and forcefulness with shots of the national flag, close-ups of the individual faces of supporting characters and ‘empty shots’ (kongjingtou). In the scene in question, the hero removes the national flag from his sinking warship; his gaze is relayed to his 112

Translating Soviet Montage comrades, whose gazes are projected towards an off-screen space, presumably where the national flag is sinking. The camera depicts in closeups and low-angle shots the supporting characters’ individual faces in a succession of gazes, thereby directing audience attention to the sinking national flag off screen (Figure 3.10). Most importantly, the montage sequence is twice punctuated by empty shots that strengthen its emotional impact. Chinese film-makers used the term ‘empty shots’ to refer to shots that function as pauses ( jianxie) succeeding cinematic climaxes. Ji Zhifeng explained the need for long pauses after a film’s climax so that spectators could ‘calm their emotions’ and ‘use their imagination’ without narrative distractions.59 An empty shot generally depicts only scenery and contains no plot-related actions. It temporarily freezes the narrative and therefore achieves the purpose of pausing. In Sea Hawk’s montage sequence, each empty shot of the sun setting over the ocean lasts for eight seconds, suspending the narrative in a moment of emotional saturation. As a component of montage, these empty shots punctuate the relay of gazes towards the flag as a form of rhetorical emphasis, using silence as a form of persuasion: this particular sequence evokes a solemn mood and a sense of national unity. Empty shots, as an integral component of ‘montage as series’, do not interrupt continuity; they solicit the audience to fill in the blanks following cinematic climaxes by using their affective imagination.

Romance and Reunion The Party gaze was also evoked in Chinese revolutionary film through reunions between heterosexual couples to which the Party is an implied witness. Romance and reunion were often conveyed by the Hollywood convention of shot/reverse-shot editing, a technique thoroughly assimilated in China by the 1960s and included in Ji Zhifeng’s definition of montage (Figure 3.11). When combined with mise-en-sc
ene, lighting and acting, the shot/reverse-shot convention was typically employed to depict one-on-one conversations, combats and romance. The shot/reverse-shot convention was also typical of reunion scenes in Soviet war films like The Fall of Berlin (Mikheil Chiaureli, 1949), which was screened regularly in China throughout the 1950s and warmly embraced by Chinese audiences. The film’s climax, in which a couple is reunited after 113

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Figure 3.11 An illustration of an establishing shot and a shot/reverse shot that crosses the axis of action in Ji Zhifeng’s Mengtaiqi jiqiao qiantan (A Brief Introduction to Montage Techniques) (1962). Courtesy of the Chinese University of Hong Kong Library.

long years of wartime separation, is conveyed through a series of shot/ reverse shots and facial close-ups, all witnessed by Stalin (Figure 3.12). The couple’s kisses and physical embrace are not discouraged, but openly acknowledged by the leader: victory in war allows reunion with loved ones,

Figure 3.12 The use of shot/reverse shot to orchestrate kisses and physical embrace in a reunion witnessed by Stalin in The Fall of Berlin (1949).

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Figure 3.13 The relay of gazes in Sea Hawk (1959) points to an off-screen space with a defined diegetic object, presenting the hero and the national flag as the heroine’s (and the ideal audience’s) twinned objects of desire.

the motherland and the Party. The film’s happy romantic and personal ending does not jeopardise Stalin’s status as leader. Rather, Stalin’s presence heightens the import of the romantic reunion. In Sea Hawk, the climactic ending is also a reunion sequence. The reunion takes place on the ocean, using various camera set-ups to avoid physical intimacy and create an alignment of gazes that would otherwise be produced by the shot/reverse-shot convention. In contrast to The Fall of Berlin, the relay of gazes in Sea Hawk, from the heroine to the hero and his comrades and back to the heroine, point to an off-screen space with a defined diegetic object, presenting the hero and the national flag as twinned objects of desire (Figure 3.13). The national flag in the background symbolises the presence and victory of the Party, without which the hero cannot triumphantly return and reunite with his implied lover, the heroine. In this reunion sequence, the camera set-up on the ocean creates an exchange of gazes typical of the shot/reverse-shot convention, but without any indication of physical touch, at the same time heightening audience identification with the hero, the heroine and the Party. Unlike classical Hollywood narration, in which the dual plot of romance and work achieves closure with love consummated and mission accomplished, Chinese revolutionary cinema resolves the dual plot with mission accomplished through the sublimation of private desire. Recall Ban Wang’s claim about the ‘recycling of the individual’s libidinal energy for revolutionary purposes’; echoing it, McGrath supplements his sublimation thesis by looking at how genre conventions of classical Hollywood heteronormative romance – visual elements of the mise-ensc
ene, shot/reverse-shot editing, close-ups and non-verbal performance

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Figure 3.14 Neither relayed through other major or supporting characters nor punctuated by empty shots, Qionghua’s gaze becomes properly socialist as she leaps to political consciousness as a Party member in The Red Detachment of Women (1961).

cues – are deployed to facilitate sublimation.60 Chinese revolutionary film typically lacks overt physical touch; compare the embraces in The Fall of Berlin with the reuniting couple in Sea Hawk, who stand on two boats separated by a stretch of the sea. In Chinese revolutionary film, romance and reunion are conveyed through shot/reverse-shot editing and camera set-ups, through visual rather than physical connexion, so that a revolutionary goal is accomplished through sublimation. In revolutionary films such as Song of Youth (Cui Wei and Chen Huaikai, 1959) and The Red Detachment of Women (Xie Jin, 1961), however, the narrative trope of martyrdom – the death of a male hero – establishes the surviving female lead character as the custodian of the socialist realist gaze. In The Red Detachment of Women, a montage sequence signals the heroine’s epiphany and leap to political consciousness. At a critical moment in the film, Qionghua, having witnessed the death of her mentor and implied lover, Changqing, encounters the official papers approving her admission to the Party. The sequence cuts to an extreme close-up shot of Qionghua’s gaze, superimposed with Party documents (Figure 3.14). The montage sequence, combined with subjectified sound (the Internationale), visually and aurally evokes her psychological reactions through a highly condensed succession of visual motifs: Party documents and Qionghua’s socialist realist gaze. The montage sequence can also be read as the moment when Qionghua’s libidinal energy is rechannelled and sublimated into political goals – the Party becomes Qionghua’s locus of memory after her mentor (and implied lover) sacrifices himself for a revolutionary cause. Hence, the attractions that the montage sequence creates are in part derived from the

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Translating Soviet Montage unconsummated romance between Qionghua and Changqing.61 Qionghua’s gaze becomes properly socialist because it is neither relayed through other major or supporting characters nor punctuated by empty shots. Instead, her gaze points to an off-screen space without a defined diegetic object, signalling her leap to political consciousness. The document certifying her admission to the Party defines her gaze as one that belongs exclusively to Party members. Since spectators implicated in the visual logic of the relay of gazes are central to the evolution of the socialist realist gaze, I suggest that the use of montage in Chinese revolutionary cinema was premised on the theoretical notion that film viewing is a collective and a participatory experience on a sensual and ideological level. Cinematic attraction, after all, is premised on direct visual and aural stimuli and the reactions of the audience, as Eisenstein underscores in his explications of the montage of attractions: The attraction (аттракцион) has nothing in common with the stunt (трюк) [. . .] In so far as the trick (трик) is absolute and complete within itself (в себе) [original emphasis], it means the direct opposite of the attraction, which is based exclusively on something relative, the reactions of the audience (реакции зрителя).62

In the hands of Chinese film-makers, montage was reinvented to provoke, attract and persuade the audience at the level of the senses, but without the kind of intellectual leap required by the montage of attractions. The formal categories described in this chapter – relay of gazes, comparative montage and the use of revolutionary songs and subjectified sound – help us to understand how Chinese film-makers adapted the montage as series and montage of attractions from Pudovkin and Eisenstein in creating affective moments in Chinese revolutionary films. Their adherence to Hollywood continuity editing and the maintenance of narrative economy and diegetic contiguity allowed Chinese film-makers to strive to make films accessible and comprehensible by a rural mass audience. Their reinvention of montage as an umbrella term for all film editing methods not only served to unveil montage and reduce its strangeness, but also allowed Chinese film-makers and critics to swiftly traverse both Hollywood continuity editing and Soviet montage in repositioning Chinese cinema vis-
a-vis its foreign counterparts.

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Chinese Revolutionary Cinema In her study of film export from the PRC in 1949 –57, Tina Mai Chen calls for rethinking the early years of PRC cinema ‘not as a period of disengagement from world cinemas, but as part of linked political, social, economic and cultural projects within the PRC that brought the national to the international – and vice versa’.63 The riddle of montage and the evolving discourse around it since the 1930s shed light on the ways Chinese film-makers and cultural authorities actively pursued theoretical and practical dialogue with Soviet film theories and other cinematic precedents. Highly informed by international film theory, Chinese revolutionary cinema was not a passive recipient in the dissemination of film theory, but an active participant in rereading (or even creatively misreading), redefining and reinventing montage.

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4 Socialist Glamour: The Socialist Star Craze, Stanislavski’s System and Cinematic Iconography of the Gaze

The year 1962 was a glamorous moment in star culture on a global scale. Audrey Hepburn’s performance in Breakfast at Tiffany’s (Blake Edwards, 1961) made her a twentieth-century fashion icon. Holly GoLightly’s world of things – her little black dress, cat’s-eye sunglasses, necklace and trench coat – became enduring must-haves in women’s wardrobes. In May 1962, the Japanese film magazine Screen featured Hepburn, voted best foreign actress, on its front and back covers.1 But Hollywood wasn’t alone in producing stars: in the same year, Kinema Junpo featured mini photo spreads of 237 Japanese actresses, selecting top Japanese actors and actresses for its ‘star graphics’.2 Star culture also began to emerge in the socialist world. In 1962, China launched its ‘22 Big Movie Stars’, a phenomenon inspired by the Soviet Union. One might assume that Chinese star discourse, which had its roots in Republican Shanghai cinema, had been eliminated after the establishment of the PRC in 1949. In fact, it survived in a different form. Capitalist star culture and socialist star culture function differently, with different vocabularies: the former is associated with commodity fetishism, the latter with political propaganda. Yet the two types intersect in many ways. 119

Chinese Revolutionary Cinema The cinematic production of glamour in Chinese revolutionary film, like that of Hollywood, emphasised youth, beauty and femininity. In both cinemas, gendered discourse on casting and acting redefined femininity through the creation of female icons of sexual morality. Chinese star discourse peaked in 1962 with the state-sponsored nationwide promotion of ‘22 outstanding screen actors’ (colloquially, ‘22 Big Movie Stars’), which created a vogue for movie stars in the PRC. The socialist star craze was to be cut short two years later by the Poisonous Weeds Campaign, but its brief and intense popularity revealed the deep roots of film stars and the artistry of screen actors. The role of the movie star in socialist China can be traced back to the early 1950s, when Stanislavski’s system was adopted as an ethical foundation for actors’ training and political cultivation. Unlike Hollywood star discourse, which is premised on the logic of secrecy and enigma that surrounds an actor’s private life (including scandals), socialist star discourse performed an ethical and ideological function in the PRC.3 A logic of authenticity revolved around socialist actors’ off-screen personae, which were produced in sync with the actors’ on-screen personae and performances as model citizens. In the socialist context, glamour produced through cinematography, lighting and acting tangibly reflected what was often referred to as the socialist ‘spirit’ (jingshen), embodying heroism in actors’ glittering eyes with a symbolising force like that of religious icons, but evoking the sacredness of spiritual communion with the Party. The cinematic and iconic gazes of heroes and heroines were constructed as the locus of glamour, through which spectators gained access to actors’ interiority and therefore to socialist truth.

The 1962 Socialist Star Craze In September 2012, a special exhibition was held at the Chinese National Film Museum in Beijing to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the launch of 22 Big Movie Stars. There are many stories and rumours about the origins of the star-studded list. None of the major newspapers and film magazines of the time published a list, nor did the stars themselves know about it. Veteran actress Tian Hua recalled that one day she was asked by her boss to sit for a professional portrait and therefore had her hair permed

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Socialist Glamour specifically for the photo shoot. It was not until she encountered her own portrait at the theatre that she discovered that she had made it onto an ‘all-star roster’.4 For film-goers and actors alike, the unveiling of the 22 Big Stars was not a red-carpet event. Instead, in spring 1962, posters of 22 well-known actors were mounted at theatres and workers’ clubs throughout the country, replacing posters of Soviet film stars and sparking photo-album printing, sharing and collection nationwide. The 1962 star craze in socialist China seemed at the time to be unintended and inconsequential. In fact, the emergence of the 22 Stars was orchestrated by various powerful forces at a particular historical conjuncture. Those powerful forces blurred the lines between official and unofficial, formal and informal, the Party and film artists, stars and the star-watching/making crowd. The star craze began as a Party decision to replace Soviet stars with Chinese ones. It tapped into a pre-existing star culture, however, which made it a much larger phenomenon. The star-making process unleashed unexpected enthusiasm and creative energies within different levels of society. ‘Stars’ had become a topic of concern in Zhou Yang’s speech at the 1961 National Conference on Fiction Film, held at the Xinqiao Hotel in Beijing. The Xinqiao conference, as discussed in Chapter One, took place at a historical moment of political relaxation, when film production had slowed down after the Great Leap Forward. One critical issue under discussion was film artists’ dissatisfaction with bureaucratic regulation of their creative work. Zhou Yang acknowledged the problem and set goals for improving Chinese film – the four excellences – mentioning, too, the need to train and promote emerging young actors: We are against star-ism, but we need stars. Our most experienced actors, such as Bai Yang, Zhao Dan and Qin Yi, have solid reputations and are undoubtedly our greatest assets, but in the past 12 years, we should have trained new actors who made similar impressions on the audience.5

Zhou Yang called for star-making in the context of a Chinese cinema dominated by aging actors, whose youth was slowly fading in the 1950s (posing problems for typecasting, an issue explored later in this chapter), and a new generation of emerging actors with little experience on the screen.

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Chinese Revolutionary Cinema The Sino –Soviet split created a need to distance Chinese cinema from Soviet models, providing another impetus for star-making. Following his speech at the Xinqiao conference, Zhou Enlai hosted 30 bureaucrats and film artists for a meal in his home. On this informal occasion, Zhou Enlai said, ‘Mounted at our nation’s theatres are posters of 22 Soviet stars. It’s been 12 years since the establishment of our nation, how come we don’t have posters of our own stars? We’d better have our own stars. Comrade Xia Yan, don’t you think so?’6 A week later, the 40th anniversary of the establishment of the Chinese Communist Party provided a day off amidst a tight schedule of conference meetings. Zhou Enlai invited the same group of film artists on a 1st July hiking trip in Fragrant Hills Park and had similar conversations, chatting with the actors as they hiked. When they came to a resting place, he remarked, jokingly: You are all artists. Artists’ reputations are great among the masses. When I rode in the car with Zhang Ruifang and Bai Yang in Chongqing, the film-watching crowd rushed towards them for autographs, leaving me alone. Can you imagine how influential cinema is for the masses?7

Zhou Enlai’s apparently casual remarks were notable for their acknowledgement of the privileged position of actors as sought-after public figures. Again he mused: ‘The Soviet Union and North Korea have People’s Artists. Don’t we need them as well?’8 These provocative observations and rhetorical questions, in official and unofficial settings, signalled Zhou Enlai’s acute awareness of the unique position and untapped potential of highly visible actors. They also demonstrated his cognisance of star culture in world cinema at a time when displaying Soviet posters no longer made sense politically but there were few, if any, Chinese stars on the level of Hollywood or Soviet counterparts. Zhou Enlai’s public speech, followed by a series of behind-the-scenes conversations, blurred the lines between official and unofficial ideas, and between Party officials and film artists like Xia Yan, who also served as bureaucrats. Why did Zhou Enlai expose himself in order to articulate the need for stars, explicitly and implicitly, in official and unofficial settings? Why the extra little pat on Xia Yan’s shoulder? Why bother to hike and chat with actors? The thinking behind his motives is unclear: perhaps he was manoeuvring politically, or perhaps he felt that star-making should 122

Socialist Glamour not be an exclusively top-down process. Appointing stars in the context of film-makers’ dissatisfaction with bureaucratism would seem self-defeating, and using the enemy’s language of star culture in official discourse was likely ideologically dangerous. What we know for certain, though, is that once posters of the 22 Chinese film stars were released and became part of the media’s public discourse, they went viral. A red-carpet event, created as a testing ground, became a prelude to the final 22 Big Stars launch. In 1961, shortly before the creation of the list, People’s Cinema (Dazhong dianying) held a poll for the Hundred Flowers Award (Baihuajiang) to the best actor and actress of the year. In just three months, the poll received more than 100,000 votes, and in April 1962, People’s Daily announced the results. The awards for the best actor, actress and supporting role went, respectively, to Cui Wei, Zhu Xijuan and Chen Qiang (the last two having starred in The Red Detachment of Women [Xie Jin, 1961]). People’s Cinema published the winning actors’ thank-you letters as well as readers’ letters. The actors received their awards at the Hundred Flowers Award ceremony in May 1962 – and the three awardees also became part of the 22 Big Stars. The star craze in the spring of 1962, in the form of nationwide photoalbum printing, sharing and collection, resulted from a combination of Party endorsement, film studio recommendations, bureaucratic approval and individual initiatives. After the Xinqiao Conference, Xia Yan began to get the stars aligned behind the scenes. Based on polls, audience feedback and promotional models from Soviet cinema, the China Film Distribution and Exhibition Corporation proposed to the Ministry of Culture an idea: mounting outsized portraits and posters of the most popular Chinese actors at theatres, playgrounds and other artistic venues around the country.9 Xia Yan approved the proposal and the China Film Distribution and Exhibition Corporation drafted a select list of active actors, sending it to various film studios, most notably the Beijing, Shanghai, Changchun and August First Film Studios, for suggestions. It must be emphasised that the real purpose of the circulated list was hidden from the studios. Studio managers and actors were told that the list was prepared for the purpose of photo shoots, and the four big studios submitted their modified lists to the China Film Distribution and Exhibition Corporation. The list was then forwarded to the Ministry of Culture and Zhou Enlai for final approval. In winter 1961, the China Film

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Chinese Revolutionary Cinema Distribution and Exhibition Corporation requested that the short-listed actors participate in photo shoots, still without informing the studios and selected actors of the purpose of the photography sessions.10 Yet far from being a monolithic top-down Party decision, the starmaking process unleashed unexpected enthusiasm and creative energies at different levels of society. In spring 1962, the first posters of the 22 Stars were mounted at the workers’ club on Guangqumen Outer Street in Beijing, replacing posters of 22 Soviet stars.11 The business-savvy Beijing Art Company, after soliciting the approval of Chen Huangmei, head of the Film Bureau, obtained the original portrait negatives and designed glossy 300 £ 400 pocket albums by adding representative film stills of each star below their portraits. More than 710,000 pocket albums were sold in eight months. Given the strong demand, the China Picture Company created a single image containing the set of individual portraits and offered it for sale nationwide.12 A copy-and-paste printing craze supplied the market with more posters and photo albums, adding local flavours and endless spinoffs. Some presses rearranged the order of stars on their products, and others added additional actors not among the ‘official’ 22 Big Stars, like Five Golden Flowers’ Yang Likun and Hu Die, who had been a star in Republican Shanghai cinema.13 This type of product differentiation is typical of consumer culture. It catered to regional tastes and different segments of local markets, indicating the scope and reach of the star craze that had been set off by the star-watching and star-making crowd. Not a red-carpet event, the launch of 22 Big Stars in 1962 was initially a discreet matter. It became a public craze through the coalescence of multiple forces: Party officials, film artists and bureaucrats, studio managers, the printing press, merchants and, indispensably, the star-watching/making crowd.

Star Discourse in Republican Shanghai Cinema The 1962 socialist star craze resembled the 1930s Republican-era star craze in semi-colonial Shanghai. Awards for best actor and actress had not been unheard of in China: as early as 1933, Jin Yan and Hu Die had been crowned ‘movie king’ and ‘movie queen’ by the magazines Mingxing ribao and Diansheng ribao. The socialist star craze’s roots in the legacy of Republican Shanghai cinema warrant a brief digression; I will focus in

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Socialist Glamour particular on the way female stars in 1930s Shanghai functioned as icons of capitalist modernity and sexual morality. The Hollywood star system required certain conditions in order to emerge. Screen acting had to be legitimised as both art and profession; ‘actor’ had to emerge as as a professional category, as actors rose from anonymity to ‘picture personalities’ with histories of appearances in films and plays and personalities gleaned from those appearances.14 Other conditions included the expansion of an extrafilmic and autonomous discourse that insisted on the actors’ private identities outside of film, including their love lives, sexual scandals and political persuasions, and the construction of a star identity that existed ‘as something of an enigma, something always in the process of being figured out’.15 Hollywood star discourse, as Richard deCordova has explained, was ‘a system of discourse driven by a logic of secrecy’ that ‘light[s] upon the sexual as the ultimate secret’.16 Hence, as both cinematic apparatus and interpretative schema, the star system is ‘closely tied to the constitution and deployment of sexuality in modern times’.17 DeCordova’s interpretative model of the Hollywood star system can also aid our understanding of star discourse in semi-colonial Shanghai, with its thriving capitalist consumer culture and heated debates on modernity and the new woman in the 1930s. Acting was traditionally associated with prostitutes, and China’s earliest screen actresses used pseudonyms before acting was legitimised in the 1930s as both art and profession. In the 1920s, screen actresses were characterised as ‘dangerous women’: ‘degenerate, corrupted, and deceptive “starlets” – amateurs who, like prostitutes, were morally and sexually suspect’.18 The first generation of female picture personalities, women like Wang Hanlun and Yang Naimei, ‘were not recognized and rewarded for acting well, but rather for acting good and acting like “themselves”’.19 ‘Acting good’ referred to the cliché of the ‘good girl’ in media discourse: chaste and doll-divine. The emergence of youthful actresses, and their performances of girlhood (and motherhood), were part of cosmopolitan Shanghai’s construction of the feminine ideal in the 1920s and 1930s, a cultural phenomenon preceded by classical Hollywood cinema. The ‘juvenated femininity’ of performances of girlhood by stars such as Mary Pickford, Shirley Temple and Elizabeth Taylor, as described by Gaylyn Studlar, was closely tied to the ‘feminization and eroticization’ of actresses.20 As the gendered discourse on screen

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Chinese Revolutionary Cinema acting emerged in the 1920s and 1930s, the Shanghai film industry, like Hollywood, literally capitalised on actresses’ youthful exuberance, utilising a growing promotional apparatus to turn actresses into stars, icons of capitalist modernity and sexual morality. Chinese female stars were not individually celebrated for their talent until the 1930s, when a sophisticated discourse on realist screen acting (as distinct from stage acting and Peking opera) emerged.21 Jason McGrath has defined the realist tradition in fiction film as ‘the set of conventions of mimetic fictional realism’ in ‘classical Hollywood narration in the 1910s’, conventions that ‘quickly became the global standard for mainstream fictional filmmaking’.22 According to McGrath, by the ‘golden age’ of Shanghai silent cinema in the early 1930s, screen acting had been firmly distinguished from stage acting. Screen acting emphasised ‘a verisimilar performance style in keeping with the norms of classical Hollywood’.23 The quest for verisimilitude and realism did coincide with the infiltration and popularity of Hollywood movies, which displaced traditional performance art like Peking opera and the more modernised ‘civilised play’ (xinju/ wenmingxi). Traditional theatre had developed numerous techniques of exaggeration or amplification, techniques that, by the early twentieth century, were perceived as insufficient to the new aesthetic of realism that was embraced by reformers.24 Beginning in the 1920s, a new terminology for screen acting was invented to accommodate the demands of the new filmic medium, seen as having the highest degree of realism among all the arts. Feng Xizui explained two such terms – ‘interior performance’ (neixin biaoyan) and ‘facial performance’ (mianbu biaoyan) – that he saw as essentially equivalent: What we call interior performance is the sincere transmission of pleasure, anger, sorrow and happiness from the heart to the face so that the audience, by looking at the actor’s facial expressions, can feel the actor’s emotions at heart. Hence, interior performance is also called facial performance.25

Premised on a logic of interiority and authenticity, ‘interior performance’ and ‘facial performance’ gave rise to the enormous popularity and success of female stars like Hu Die and Ruan Lingyu. These actresses’ ability to communicate different levels of emotion with their eyebrows in, 126

Socialist Glamour respectively, Twin Sisters (Zheng Zhengqiu, 1933) and The Goddess (Wu Yonggang, 1934) established them as ‘stars’. Feng’s equation of interior performance with facial performance was predicated on a new relationship between actors and spectators, brought about by the cinematic convention of the close-up. As a film term, ‘closeup’, translated as da miankong (big face) and texie (special inscription), was introduced to the Shanghai film industry by film-makers like Cheng Bugao, whose short biography of the American director D. W. Griffith was published as a series in the film magazine Dianying zazhi in 1924.26 To this day, the close-up remains one of the most important filming techniques of the Hollywood star system. Close-ups and pinups of female stars allowed the corporeal body to be conceived as a picture – reproducible and disseminated for global consumption in the form of motion pictures, film stills and advertisements in the global marketplace. Together with the circulation of star images, an extrafilmic discourse was developed to construct female stars’ off-screen and private identities. This discourse supposedly revealed their love lives and sexual scandals in a voyeuristic and fetishistic manner. By the mid-1930s, the ‘“private lives” of movie actresses became “public” and were packaged and paraded for a mass audience to both see and judge.’27 Female stars’ private and public personae were the creations of an expanding promotional apparatus and a gendered and moralised discourse. When scandalous gossip contradicted their on-screen personae as ‘good’ and ‘authentic’ women, female stars were targeted and subjected to moral critique. Ruan Lingyu’s performance as Weiming in The New Woman (Cai Chusheng, 1934), and her suicide in 1935, are examples of the ways in which Republican star discourse was driven by the revelation of the private and the sexual.28 The logic of secrecy that permeated this fetishistic system of Republican star discourse was to be replaced by a new logic of transparency and authenticity in the ethical system of socialist star discourse.

Translating Stanislavski’s System: An Actor’s Self-Cultivation Republican commercial star culture and socialist star culture were not identical, however. A key difference between them was the socialist emphasis on actors’ socialist self-cultivation. A socialist actor had to act

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Chinese Revolutionary Cinema well, act good and be good. ‘Acting well’ refers to skill and training; ‘acting good’ refers to establishing a morally good and politically correct on-screen persona. To ‘be good’, an actor had to adhere to a socialist ethics of acting – cultivating an off-screen identity as a socialist actor and citizen. The Chinese socialist ethics of acting emerged out of Zheng Junli’s introduction of Constantin Stanislavski’s works to China in the 1940s.29 As the discourses on stage and screen acting developed along realist lines in Republican China, Stanislavski’s acting system, seen as a representative work of Soviet socialist realism, was introduced into China. Zheng Junli translated Stanislavski’s seminal work, An Actor Prepares (1936), in the 1940s, but it was not until the 1950s that Stanislavski’s system was officially endorsed and widely embraced by Chinese actors. Zheng Junli also translated Richard Boleslavsky’s Acting: The First Six Lessons (Yanji liujiang) (1933), publishing his translation in 1937. Boleslavsky was a student of Stanislavski; his six lessons, written in the form of a dialogue, not only shed light on the art of acting, but also touched upon the transition from stage acting to screen acting.30 Zheng Junli’s translation of An Actor Prepares (Yanyuan ziwo xiuyang) was interrupted by World War II and not published in China until 1943.31 In 1947, Zheng published his own treatise on acting, The Birth of a Role (Juese de dansheng), based on what he learned from Stanislavski’s An Actor Prepares.32 After the establishment of the PRC, Stanislavski’s system was officially endorsed. Zheng Junli’s translations were followed in the 1960s by newer translations of Stanislavski’s works based on the Russian originals.33 Hailed as a representative work of Soviet socialist realism, Stanislavski’s An Actor Prepares was a must-have manual for every stage and screen actor during the Seventeen Years. Zheng Junli had translated the title as ‘An Actor’s Self-Cultivation’ (Yanyuan ziwo xiuyang), a translation much closer to the Russian original: ‘an actor’s work on him/herself’ (работа актëра над собой). As the Russian title suggests, in acting, the actor’s body is seen as both the object of mimesis and the means of mimesis – hence, an actor works on him/herself. Zheng Junli’s translated title, which was adopted by later Chinese translators, took on particular significance in the context of Chinese socialist cinema: acting was a kind of ‘labour’ (laodong), and an actor’s work on him/herself meant ‘self-cultivation’ – more specifically, ‘political cultivation’ (zhengzhi xiuyang), which was perceived as a prerequisite for any successful screen performance.

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Socialist Glamour A few words of clarification about the label ‘actor’ (yanyuan) are needed here, for the label itself underwent radical transformation during the twentieth century. New socialist terms were coined that redefined the relationship between different cultural constituencies: ‘film worker’ (dianying gongzuozhe) and ‘film lovers/cinephiles’ (dianying aihaozhe) were preferred, while the terms ‘stars’ (mingxing) and ‘film fans’ (yingmi) – which had been in common usage prior to 1949 – were avoided.34 The new socialist term ‘film worker’ emphasised the glory and usefulness of manual, creative and affective labour as well as equalising the contributions of various cultural agents on and off screen. For example, directors, cameramen, set designers, screenwriters and actors were all ‘film workers’. The term ‘film worker’ obliterated existing hierarchies in the film industry and put actors on the same social plane as other workers, as socialist subjects are all workers of various kinds. Importantly, the adoption of the label ‘film worker’, rather than ‘star’, abandoned the privileging of physical beauty, sex appeal, individual fame and materialism usually associated with the Hollywood star system. If the more down-to-earth label ‘film worker’ represented a distancing from the ills of capitalist and commercial star culture, how are we to understand not only the continued success of stars like Bai Yang, Zhang Ruifang and Zhao Dan from the commercial legacy of Republican Shanghai cinema but also the emergence of a new generation of socialist ‘stars’ like Xie Fang and Zhu Xijuan, who rose to prominence in the late 1950s? In particular, how to explain the popularity of 22 Big Stars, crowned ‘outstanding screen actors of new China’, of whom film posters and pocket albums were sought after nationwide? To better understand the radical transformation of star discourse in socialist China, we turn to the gendered discourse on casting during the Hundred Flowers Campaign of the mid-1950s, during which actors negotiated with both a commercial film-making legacy and a new socialist ethics of acting. This gendered discourse on casting revealed an uneasy generational tension between ageing and youthful actors, and a greater tension between acting skill (substance) and physical appearance (looks).

Age Matters: Casting for an Iconic Role Model As Richard Dyer puts it, casting is ‘a question of fit in terms of directorial choice of stars for parts’.35 It is one of the most important stages in film

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Chinese Revolutionary Cinema production because a mistake in casting can destroy the unity of a film or compromise fictional realism. Many factors are taken into account, including appearance, physique, age, personality, demeanour and life experience. Casting is also an important factor in the construction of picture personalities: stars as actors establish a history of appearances in films and consistent personalities based on those appearances (a process known as typecasting). However, the aesthetic weight of a star’s accumulated image can become baggage and limit the roles an actor is allowed to play. In the early years of the PRC, state studios employed a mixed cast of established actors and new talents recruited from stage drama. The cinematic representation of women was a persistent concern.36 Experienced actors from former Shanghai private studios, such as Bai Yang, Shi Hui, Wei Heling and Zhao Dan, continued to star in major films, while new talents like Tian Hua and Shi Lianxing were recruited from stage drama. The White-Haired Girl (Wang Bin and Shui Hua, 1950) and Zhao Yiman (Sha Meng, 1950), both of which featured new female talents recruited from stage drama, were two of the earliest efforts to represent revolutionary heroines on screen. Female casting became a particularly thorny issue in the mid-1950s, as the youthful beauty of established actors from the Shanghai film-making tradition slowly faded with age, a problem compounded by widespread dissatisfaction with declining opportunities for younger actors. The relaxed political environment of the Hundred Flowers Period unleashed the discontent and criticism among older actors, who were dissatisfied with the way youthful actors were favoured by directors. Actors with years of stage experience were not given the chance to try their hands at screen acting. In a 1957 discussion session in Beijing, organised by the editorial board of the journal Chinese Film (Zhongguo dianying), some stage actresses argued that even though they could memorise Stanislavski’s An Actor Prepares, their talent, studies and years of training would go to waste if they were not given an opportunity to put into practice what they had learned.37 Some contended that the way actresses were chosen was just another manifestation of the Hollywood star system, in which an attractive face was the only thing that mattered.38 These debates around casting point out an ambiguity in reframing actors as ‘film workers’. Hierarchy, favouritism and the fear of ageing continued to haunt socialist actors in the mid-1950s.

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Socialist Glamour Director Cheng Yin argued that there are two major ways to cast an actor: select an actor with the necessary credentials and acting skills, or base selection on his or her physical resemblance to the fictional character.39 A perfect fit would include both. However, finding a perfect fit presented a particular challenge in the mid-1950s, as many experienced actors from the Shanghai film-making tradition approached middle age, diminishing their potential for portraying much younger characters. Age and authenticity in casting became a contested issue, especially for actresses. For example, Bai Yang was cast as Xianglin Sao in The New Year’s Sacrifice (Sang Hu, 1956) and Song of Youth (Cui Wei and Chen Huaikai, 1959), when she was in her mid-thirties. With the aid of make-up and superior acting skills, Bai Yang’s performance did not jeopardise revolutionary realism despite the challenge of casting her as a dying woman. Yet though she improved with age, Bai Yang had a difficult time securing the leading role of Lin Daojing in Song of Youth, a cinematic adaptation written by Yang Mo, Bai Yang’s sister. Bai Yang especially valued the opportunity to be cast in a role written for the screen by her sister, and enthusiastically prepared for the audition. An experienced actress with a proven record, Bai Yang had come of age in the tumultuous 1930s, giving her the life experience to support her performance in the role of youthful graduate Lin Daojing, but her age led to her withdrawing from the audition.40 In contrast, the actor Zhao Dan managed to be cast as twenty-something revolutionary composer Nie Er in Nie Er (Zheng Junli, 1959), although he was in his early forties, because of his acting skills and real-life friendship with Nie Er. The gendered contrast of these examples demonstrates the unforgiving nature of the socialist obsession with youth and juvenated femininity when it came to mature actresses. Director Chen Huaikai captured the difficulty of such casting decisions in the following manner: Established actors (laoyanyuan) have more life experience and can easily manage the thoughts and emotions of the 1930s. Their acting is more solid. Some believe that casting them is a more cautious approach. New actors (xinyanyuan) closer to the age of the characters have more youthful passion. Although their acting would be more challenging, it would be easier to achieve down-to-earth realism.41

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Chinese Revolutionary Cinema The major attraction of Song of Youth was to be youthfulness itself. A fresh face, rather than the aesthetic talent of experience, was demanded. Chen Huaikai and Cui Wei, the film’s directors, solicited popular opinion after a discussion session organised by Beijing Wanbao, and popular opinion preferred new actors, a preference supported by the higher-ups.42 To create a new female icon of revolution, Song of Youth’s creators invested in the youthful libidinal energies and ideological malleability of youth. Xie Fang, in her early twenties, provided a fresh ‘camera face’ (yinmu xingxiang) that was felt to be needed.43 With only a few years of stage experience, having played the role of the white-haired girl on stage, Xie Fang’s youth and intellectual appeal led to her being cast as the youthful graduate Lin Daojing in Song of Youth despite her lack of screen experience. Similar decisions to take on the risk of employing new talent were common in the late 1950s, setting in motion a socialist star craze that would culminate in 1962. Zhu Xijuan’s casting as Wu Qionghua in The Red Detachment of Women provides another example. Like Xie Fang, Zhu Xijuan was in her early twenties and was chosen based on her physical resemblance to the fictional character. Director Xie Jin’s first priority was to find a perfect pair of eyes, which he considered ‘the most important characteristic of Qionghua’s physical appearance’.44 In the literary script, Qionghua’s eyes were ‘fiery’ (huolala) and ‘fearless’, ‘gazing into the horizon like radiating lights’.45 Similarly, in the shooting script, her eyes were ‘shining radiant lights’.46 Zhu Xijuan, then a student at the Shanghai Theatre Academy, captured Xie Jin’s attention because of her wide eyes, boyish temperament and stage training. Along with physical resemblance and personality, Xie Jin considered ‘creative youthfulness’ a factor in casting.47 Xie Jin defined creative youthfulness not by age, but by the accumulated image and aesthetic weight an actor carried. According to Xie Jin, being typecast by previous roles would jeopardise creative youthfulness and freshness. Because they lacked already established picture personalities, Xie Fang’s and Zhu Xijuan’s on-screen personae as their characters underwent socialist transformation were more down-to-earth, refreshing and believable. Their freshness made them ‘simultaneously ordinary and extraordinary, accessible to the viewer as objects of desire, but just outside the viewer’s reach’.48 In casting both Song of Youth and The Red Detachment of Women, favouring physical appearance over credentials was not some-

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Socialist Glamour thing to be frowned upon. It was justified by the necessity of authenticity in casting and constituted a daring socialist experiment in screen acting. Xie Fang and Zhu Xijuan were considered ‘personality actors’ (bense yanyuan) because they were cast in roles similar to their real-life personalities. Xie Fang’s intellectual appeal was a perfect fit for the youthful graduate Lin Daojing, and Zhu Xijuan’s boyish temperament was what the director was looking for in the role of Qionghua. The contrasting term, ‘character actors’ (xingge yanyuan), refers to actors whose on-screen personalities are remarkably different from their reallife personalities (casting against type). As personality actors chosen for their looks and personalities, Xie Fang and Zhu Xijuan lacked the socialist criteria of life experience (shenghuo tiyan) and self-cultivation (ziwo xiuyang). Both women were born in the mid-1930s and cast in fictional roles representing a previous generation. Unlike Zhao Dan, who personally knew Nie Er in real life and could draw from his memory and life experience, Xie Fang and Zhu Xijuan did not have personal experience of the revolutionary era to draw on, but the Chinese socialist appropriation of Stanislavski’s system allowed experience to be cultivated. Stanislavskian training turned these two prominent Chinese socialist actresses into a suicidal graduate and a hot-blooded slave of the 1930s and allowed them to achieve immediate success as socialist icons, despite little experience in screen acting.

Tiyan and Tixian: Experience, Embodiment and Exemplification In socialist actors’ reminiscences of their acting careers, many described acting as a soulful process, in which actors gave birth to a new spirit with a new identity. The new spirit represented a new socialist subjectivity: filmmaking and film-viewing were constructed as ideological and aesthetic experiences that moulded actors and spectators alike into new socialist subjects. Yu Yang described the experience of creating a heroic character as ‘an experience of purifying the soul’,49 and Wang Danfeng regarded the work of a film artist as ‘the work of a soulful person’.50 In socialist China, acting was constructed as an ideologically and socially transformative process in which actors cultivated both acting skills and socialist values. Accordingly, Stanislavski’s system was appropriated as an ethical system of 133

Chinese Revolutionary Cinema acting, as reflected in the Chinese title ‘An Actor’s Self-Cultivation’ (Yanyuan ziwo xiuyang). Stanislavski’s system is premised on a logic of authenticity in training and performance. Its appeal for Chinese socialist cinema lay in its premise of realism and claim to truth. Soviet socialist realism was rooted in literary and theatrical realism. To create an illusion of transparency and real life laid bare on stage, Stanislavski urged actors to ‘act truthfully’ and strive for ‘spiritual communion’ ( jingshen jiaoliu) with spectators (Table 4.1).51 In the socialist context, ‘acting truthfully’ included acting according to political truth, and ‘spiritual communion’ included communion with the Party. Stanislavski’s directions therefore took on particular political and ethical implications in China. Chinese dramatist Huang Zuolin described the appropriation of Stanislavski’s system in explicitly political terms: We should not copy Stanislavski’s system in a wholesale manner [. . .] We must develop it [. . .] [Stanislavski’s system] should be revolutionised (geminghua), nationalised (minzuhua) and popularised (dazhonghua). Revolutionisation refers to the proletariat. Nationalisation refers to the Chinese opera tradition. Popularisation means serving workers, peasants and soldiers.52

In understanding how Stanislavski’s system was appropriated in the Chinese socialist context, one must keep in mind Mao’s radical redefinition of art. To create a cinema that would serve workers, peasants and soldiers, inspiration and raw materials had to be drawn from the masses. The saying, ‘actors should learn from life’ (yanyuan yao xiang shenghuo taojiao), encapsulated the primary importance of ‘life’ (shenghuo) as the foundation of an actor’s creative work.53 ‘Experience life’ was the first step by which actors could learn from the masses and cultivate themselves politically and ethically. The Chinese term tiyan literally means ‘body’ (ti) and ‘experience’ (yan). For Chinese socialist actors, bodily experience meant engaging the senses – seeing, hearing, feeling and touching. Going to the countryside for a few months allowed actors to experience life with peasants, workers and soldiers, to engage in physical labour and acquire labour skills (laodong zhishi). Xiaoning Lu explains that going to the countryside allowed actors to ‘learn new gestures, grimaces and other physical movements for

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Socialist Glamour Table 4.1

Major principles of Stanislavski's system.

Belief in the ‘fourth wall’ Belief in the ‘fourth wall’ creates an illusion of transparency and real life laid bare on stage. Communion ( jiaoliu) The creative objective should be ‘truthful so that you yourself, the actor playing with you, and your audience can believe in them’.54 Actors should strive for inter-communication of the dramatis personae and ‘spiritual communion’ ( jingshen jiaoliu) with spectators.55 Inner emotion Stanislavski opposes age-old theatrical and formalised stage conventions. Stage actors should ‘act truthfully’ with a ‘sense of truth’ (zhenshigan).56 Emotions should be felt by stage actors as they enter into and immerse themselves in their roles, so that emotions flow from the inner heart to the outer form. Observation To achieve truthful inner emotions, actors should be ‘observant in real life’ and ‘look with penetration’.57 The purpose of observation is to ‘get as close to people emotionally as we can, until sympathy for them is transformed into feelings of our own’.58 Imagination Actors should sharpen their imaginations in order to (xiangxiang) enter their roles. Stanislavski defines imagination as ‘an inner chain of circumstances which we ourselves have imagined in order to illustrate our parts’.59 Affective memory Actors should make use of repeated feelings drawn from (qingxu jiyi) their affective memories. Images from past happenings are easily fixed in visual memory, which facilitates actors' imaginations as they enter into their roles. Fusion and duality of Actors should aspire to create a fusion between ‘I’ and performance their roles. An actor on stage possesses two minds – that of an artist and that of a character. While the character gives free rein to emotions on stage, the artist has conscious control of techniques. Stanislavski explains: ‘An actor lives, weeps, and laughs on the stage, and all the while he is watching his own tears and smiles.’60 The duality of performance (free rein to emotions and conscious control) characterises Stanislavski's acting method.

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Chinese Revolutionary Cinema performance’.61 Significantly, going to the countryside was often presented in actors’ reminiscences as a sensory and bodily experience. Observing life, reading and listening to stories from the masses enabled actors to ‘absorb’ life sensually and intellectually in preparation for their roles. Zhang Ruifang described actors as ‘like a sponge that is well disposed to absorb anything beneficial in life’.62 Observation, a tenet of Stanislavski’s system, became part and parcel of ‘life experience’ in the new ethical system of acting in socialist China. Observation is not disembodied in Stanislavski’s system. Seeing engages with other forms of sensation to constitute a sensory and embodied experience as part of an actor’s training. Reflecting this idea in ‘Life is the Source of Artistic Creation’, Zhu Xijuan highlighted two major challenges she faced in her training due to her lack of life experience. At first, Zhu Xijuan did not fully understand her character Qionghua’s hatred of the landlords. On the island of Hainan, she heard personal stories of slavery, suicide and escape, and saw the overwhelming tears of storytellers and witnesses in Hainan. These experiences, Zhu Xijuan explained, enriched her ‘revolutionary education’, imagination and affective memory.63 For socialist actors, training their sensory faculties, imagination and affective memory took on political and class overtones – the collective memory of revolution often aroused actors’ creative moods as they immersed themselves in and merged with their roles (rongru juese). Seeing witnesses and hearing their stories allowed Zhu Xijuan to enter a community of feeling and enrich her affective memory – another tenet of Stanislavski’s system. Socialist actors were not only observers; they were also expected to exercise the flesh and bone of their bodies to embody and achieve fusion with their fictional roles. Zhu Xijuan’s second challenge was to toughen her personality and temperament to overcome the gap between herself and her fictional role. A young actress who grew up in Shanghai and spent most of her life within the comfortable confines of the theatre academy, Zhu Xijuan was challenged by being cast as a soldier. Zhu Xijuan recalled that her director, Xie Jin, advised her to carry a rifle at all times during her training in Hainan: Every day we trained in military uniforms and sandals from dawn to dusk. At the beginning we couldn’t get used to it because we were used to wearing sneakers and leather shoes in Shanghai. Climbing in sandals blistered our feet; the rifles strained our shoulders. But we

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Socialist Glamour persevered in living our roles at all times [. . .] At the beginning carrying a rifle was like fumbling with a burning torch, but after much training and practice, we started to resemble our characters. The training not only transformed our temperaments ( jingshen qizhi), but also allowed us to act with ease.64

Zhu Xijuan’s cosmopolitan youth, beauty and femininity were tamed so that her boyish temperament could be toughened during her training in Hainan. She spoke of achieving resemblance to the physical form (xing) of her role, and to its spiritual manifestation (shen). While the former might have been achieved with costume and make-up, the latter was more elusive, visible only to the beholder with a trained eye. Director Cheng Yin, who studied in Soviet Russia in 1954, described an actor’s preparation as like a ‘pregnancy’, nurturing and birthing a role.65 This gendered metaphor of pregnancy, nurture and birth emphasised the embodiment of socialist acting. The Chinese term tixian (to exemplify bodily) literally means ‘body’ (ti) and ‘manifestation’ or ‘revelation’ (xian). Tixian means to render the invisible visible, by giving it expression through embodiment. In Chinese revolutionary film, tixian involved not only embodiment but also exemplification, requiring actors to engage in selftransformation both on and off screen, setting an example for the audience to emulate. Laikwan Pang suggests two terms – mofan and yangban (both translatable as ‘model’) – to characterise the Cultural Revolution model of culture, premised on mimesis and emulation.66 Mofan refers both to abstract principles and actual persons as teachers (as in the 1963 campaign to ‘Follow the Examples of Comrade Lei Feng’). It can also be understood as the act of mimesis.67 Creating heroes and heroines in revolutionary film was a way to erect models that served as exemplars. Chinese revolutionary film strove not only to represent, but also to exemplify: iconic role models were ideals, types and individuals. To experience life and to ‘embody and exemplify an ideal’ (tixian lixiang) for an audience’s emulation were the cornerstones of Chinese revolutionary screen acting.68 Hence, Zhu Xijuan’s Stanislavskian training produced an off-screen personality in sync with the on-screen personality of her character, Qionghua, a moral and revolutionary exemplar. Zhu Xijuan’s perseverance in living her role at all times while in Hainan reflected an understanding of Stanislavski’s notion of ‘fusion’. As Xiaoning Lu has argued, ‘fusion’ in Stanislavski’s system

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Chinese Revolutionary Cinema became a ‘regulatory force’ for actors to ‘engage in self-transformation in accordance with socialist ideology’.69 Zhu Xijuan’s preparation for and performance in The Red Detachment of Women were presented as historically real in accordance with a politically motivated claim to truth. Although Qionghua was not a real historical figure, the logic of authenticity underpinned her journalistic and biographical representation. The logic of authenticity likewise supported Zhu Xijuan’s on- and off-screen performance as an embodiment of Qionghua. Liang Xin, the film’s scriptwriter, described Qionghua as a ‘composite’ character that was created through the selection, merger and creative transformation of various figures he encountered in his real life and research: colleagues he worked with, the deceased revolutionary Liu Qiuju, who was from Hainan, and a female martyr from the red detachment in Hainan.70 Echoing Liang Xin’s statement that ‘there are millions like Wu Qionghua in life’, Zhu Xijuan described Qionghua as a representative ‘type’ (dianxing) of Hainan working women (laodong funu€ ).71 Although Qionghua was fictional, the ‘composite’ nature of the ‘typical’ strengthened the film’s claim to fictional realism because the role of Qionghua was said to be derived from many real-life personalities. As Zhu Xijuan put it: ‘Rather than imitating life mechanically, experiencing life means combining the different personality traits of veteran soldiers, the commander Feng Zengmin, and the red detachment, and exemplifying them through the fictional role of Qionghua.’72 The rhetoric of experience, embodiment and exemplification shown here in Zhu Xijuan’s self-cultivation was, like her performance as Qionghua, exemplary: her example exemplified the transformative power of acting as an ethical system that developed actors into socialist icons.

Cinematic Iconography of the Gaze: The Illuminating Eye Originally a devotional portrait of a saint in Western Europe during the late Middle Ages, the term ‘icon’ acquires new meaning in the modern, secular world of advertising and commerce. Marita Sturken and Lisa Cartwright offer a useful definition that bridges the term’s modern and medieval meanings: an icon is ‘an image that refers to something outside of its individual components, something (or someone) that has great 138

Socialist Glamour symbolic meaning for many people. Icons are often perceived to represent universal concepts, emotions, and meanings.’73 From the early Christian cult of saints to Hollywood pin-up girls of the 1940s and 1950s, the power of religious or cultural icons lies in their ability to captivate their beholders – devotees, fans or consumers. Hollywood pin-ups were sex symbols and symbols of the capitalist star system; socialist glamour shots, however, hearkened back to the icon’s original religious overtones with their gaze of veneration. Climactic moments in Chinese revolutionary film were iconic moments, in which socialist actors’ eyes were cinematically illuminated as actors became socialist icons. Socialist icons represented the socialist realist gaze as a gaze of veneration. Consider David Morgan’s discussion of the religious veneration of icons, in which he defines the ‘devotional gaze’: Religious seeing commonly involves a visual relation that does not engage the viewer in a reciprocal exchange, but absorbs one nevertheless in a kind of ocular adoration. This devotional gaze is evident in rapt absorption of devotees before the cult image, which they regard with a way of seeing that can recall the longing of the lover for the beloved.74

In the religious context, the intense absorption of the devotional gaze enhances prayer, contemplation or imagination and may lead to states of consciousness in which seeing ceases, as in meditation.75 In film studies, the gaze exists as a mode of inquiry and analysis, a way of seeing, conditioned by the camera and cinematic apparatus that structures social relationships by mediating desire, fear and authority. In Chinese revolutionary film, the ‘socialist realist gaze’ looks to the horizon, signalling the political consciousness of Party members and leaders, as discussed in Chapter Three. The socialist realist gaze can be understood as the cinematic version of a devotional gaze, addressed not to a saint or deity, but to the Party. Because of the affinity between devotional images and socialist cinematic images in terms of visual structure, the socialist realist gaze is a kind of cinematic iconography in which lighting illuminates the eyes of socialist actors to transform them into socialist icons. In early 1960s discourse on portrait photography, the eyes of actors and other subjects of portraiture were perceived as illuminating windows upon

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Chinese Revolutionary Cinema the socialist spirit. Discussions emerged on the ‘temperament’ (qizhi) and ‘spiritual features’ ( jingshen mianmao) of positive characters (zhengmian renwu).76 Zhu Jing argued that the representation of heroes and heroines would not be complete without both ‘form’ (xing) and ‘spirit’ (shen).77 Physical form was visible on screen, but temperament and spirit were much more intangible and elusive; actors’ eyes came to play a central role in manifesting spirit and temperament, a function expressed by the saying, ‘the eyes manifest the spirit’ (meimu chuanshen). Accordingly, the actress’s eyes were often the focus of camera movement and montage in key sequences showing a heroine’s progression along the path to political consciousness. In Song of Youth, a montage sequence depicts Lin Daojing in a series of close-up shots as she is enthralled by the Soviet novel, The Iron Flood (Aleksandr Serafimovich, 1924). The sequence culminates in an extreme close-up shot of Lin Doajing’s face as her eyes look to the horizon, followed by an ‘empty shot’ (kong jingtou) of blooming flowers against the blue sky (Plate 1).78 Lin Daojing’s sparkling eyes suggest her psychological transformation: as the book opens up a new world of knowledge and faith, she first looks out towards an unseen horizon, then upwards, as if in veneration. In Song of Youth, special effort was made to ensure that a singular sparkle, a reflection from a carefully-supplied light source, appeared in the pupils of the actress’s eyes. Normally, there is only one bright spot in a pupil. However, there are many sources of light in the studio. When the lights are reflected in the characters’ eyes, several white spots appear in the pupils, damaging the gaze (yanshen) of the character. As a result, the gaze (muguang) is dispersed [. . .] We should change the position of lighting and aim for the proper reflection of a bright spot in a character’s eye [. . .] We can also spot the light on the pupil with a suitable angle, so that the character comes to life.79

Significantly, the Chinese terms for ‘eyes’ (yan, or mu) are associated with the terms ‘spirit’ (shen) and ‘light’ (guang). The singular sparkle in the pupil was perceived as that which enlivened the spirit of the inspired heroine. A lighting set-up that achieved this effect was described by an artistic metaphor: ‘dotting the dragon’s eyes’ (hualong dianjing). Originally a painting tradition dating back to the Northern and Southern dynasties,80 140

Socialist Glamour ‘dotting the dragon’s eyes’ became a cinematic lighting technique to illuminate the eyes of heroes and heroines, who were compared to painted dragons.81 The illuminating eye was thus part of the charm and magnetism that heroes and heroines were expected to exude on screen.

Capturing Glamour: Painting with Light The cinematic act of dotting the eyes involved careful and specific lighting and the use of close-ups. Just as Chinese film-makers adopted the phrase ‘dotting the dragon’s eyes’ from Chinese painting, Hollywood cinematography has also been associated with painting: the American Society of Cinematographers defines cinematography as ‘painting with light’.82 The particular use of cinematography to create cinematic glamour means that lighting often operates along gender divisions in visual representations ranging from portraiture to film. In portraits and Hollywood silent film close-ups, various lighting conventions are mobilised to enhance characterisation and accentuate features that are constructed in genderspecific ways: delicacy of complexion is usually associated with females, strong contrast of light and dark with males. As Patrick Keating puts it: ‘A woman’s face would feature “gentle” gradations, while a man’s face would express virility with stronger contrasts.’83 Low-contrast lighting smooths out the facial features of a female subject, and a frontal light eliminates wrinkles that may have been more apparent with side lighting. Keating points to the hyper-aestheticised and heavily diffused close-ups of Lillian Gish in Way Down East (D. W. Griffith, 1920) to illustrate how lowcontrast, soft frontal lighting enhanced pictorial beauty, glamour and feminine characterisation. Backlighting was often used with lens diffusion to intensify the ‘halo’ effect by making the edges of blond hair glow.84 These gender-specific lighting conventions succeeded in enhancing glamour in the Hollywood silent era, so much so that ‘some female stars began to request heavy diffusion on all their shots’.85 In Republican Shanghai cinema, similar lighting conventions had been employed to accentuate the glamour of female stars like Ruan Lingyu. In a series of close-up shots in The Goddess, low-contrast, soft frontal lighting emphasised the actress’s femininity and delicacy of complexion at the height of her career (Plate 2). As early as the 1900s, lighting in photography had been conceived as having the ability to capture character and even

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Chinese Revolutionary Cinema ‘peer into the soul’ of a subject.86 However, ‘character’ is not to be confused with ‘appearance’: ‘Appearances may change from moment to moment, but each subject has a more-or-less consistent character.’87 Ruan Lingyu’s acting career and on- and off-screen persona constructed her as a consistent character, the new woman and an iconic figure of modernity, established as a result of the complex interplay between acting, cinematography, characterisation and larger social issues in modernising Shanghai. In Chinese revolutionary film, a similar use of gender-specific Hollywood lighting conventions aestheticised the image of heroines, but towards a different end. In Song of Youth, Lin Daojing is often depicted in close-up shots with low-contrast, soft frontal lighting that accentuates her femininity and glamour. When Lin Daojing conveys her new joy and commitment to the revolution to her friend, with a slightly upturned chin as her eyes gaze at the horizon, she is depicted in close-up (also a low-angle shot) as she speaks. The sky at dusk provides a natural backlight and creates a glamorous ‘halo’ effect (Plate 3). Rather than conveying Lin Daojing as a sex symbol, however, lighting here evokes the romance of revolution. When Lin Daojing is admitted to the Party, she is depicted in a medium shot as she vows her loyalty. Wearing a red sweater passed on to her by the martyr Lin Hong, Lin Daojing’s make-up and red cheeks add colour to her image and enhance her glamour in a specific allusion to her new socialist ‘red’ identity. The use of backlight creates shadows and patterns in the interior and makes Lin Daojing’s hair glow, as if light is emanating from the heroine: she is a socialist icon (Plate 4). The gendered nature of this glamourous socialist iconography is demonstrated by the fact that none of the male characters in Song of Youth is given a similarly aestheticised treatment. Male characters recede into the background (Lin Daojing’s former mentor and the martyr Lu Jiachuan), or at least shine less (Lin Daojing’s later mentor Jiang Hua), as Lin Daojing takes on a prominent role as the vanguard of revolution. Katerina Clark has suggested the terms ‘the structure of apprenticeship’ and ‘the structure of confrontation’ as ways to understand Soviet socialist realist fiction: ‘The novel of socialist realism is a novel of work, with a hero who gives himself a task; he will join with allies; he will meet with opponents.’88 In Song of Youth, the heroine replaces the hero. Soviet fiction often situates protagonists in ‘the tension between spontaneity and consciousness’ as

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Socialist Glamour they learn to discipline themselves under the guidance of mentors on the path to transformation.89 Lin Daojing evolves from ignorant youth to glamorous woman and new Party member under the guidance of her mentor – and implied lover – Jiang Hua, who functions in Lin Daojing’s apprenticeship as a supporting character rather than a hero. In Song of Youth, Lin Daojing is the only character with a prolonged socialist realist gaze. In a montage sequence juxtaposing the Party flag with Lin’s socialist realist gaze, a close-up of Lin Daojing is combined with frontal and back lighting that smoothes out her facial features and makes her hair glow. The cinematic technique of ‘dotting the dragon’s eyes’ makes Lin Daojing’s glistening eyes shine – even more so because of the dim lighting in the interior (Plate 5). Make-up and lighting enhance Lin Daojing’s firmness of will with feminine softness. This is an aestheticised moment when the glamour of the socialist icon shines through. ‘Socialist’ and ‘glamour’, far from being mutually exclusive, cannot exist without one another. As a constitutive part of a devotional image, the socialist realist gaze was a rhetorical form of persuasion and inducement. Lin Daojing’s gaze opened an imaginary to captivate beholders who believed – an imaginary that was the ethos of the Party, including its values and ideals. The actress, Xie Fang, described merging with her fictional role as a newly admitted member of the Communist Party. Xie Fang’s imagination and chain of inner vision centred on what she saw as the transcendence of death: It is a long sequence without speech. It is as if I see a bright and colourful rainbow and a group of people marching with red flags and flowers towards a golden shining gate. Then I see the familiar faces of Lu Jiachuan, Jiang Hua, Lin Hong, Wang Xiaoyan, and Yu Shuxiu, as if they are smiling and nodding at me in congratulations. Without that chain of imagination and visual images, my interior world would have been blank.90

A socialist actor on screen served as an intermediary between socialist truth and spectators, who perceived a socialist vision through the eyes of the actor. For an image to be iconic, the viewer must be inclined to believe something: as Morgan puts it: ‘Without that faith, they are not icons at all.’91 In Song of Youth, Xie Fang/Lin Daojing became a socialist icon, transforming her own vision of death-defying transcendence into observable veneration of the Party before the viewer’s eyes. 143

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Female Icons, Femininity and Matriarchy The feminisation of icons was not new to Chinese revolutionary film. The most cherished icon in the Byzantine tradition – Madonna and Child – is built on the primacy of the face-to-face encounter between mother and child.92 Actresses served as figures of modernity and sexual morality in Republican Shanghai cinema, and they continued to serve as iconic figures in socialist China. Although they were not represented as sexual objects with revealing clothes and seductive poses, socialist actresses were neither desexualised, nor was their femininity erased. The Red Detachment of Women, for instance, invests in juvenated femininity and libidinal energy in a way that creates matriarchy through the death of a male martyr. At the end of the film, Qionghua becomes an exemplar and a revolutionary prototype with lesser figures encircling her. As mentioned earlier, Zhu Xijuan was chosen for the role of Qionghua because of her wide eyes. Qionghua’s fiery and fearless eyes are given cinematic expression in a scene where she witnesses the execution of Changqing (her implied lover). In an extreme close-up, Qionghua’s sweaty, unsmooth and distorted face is accentuated by a light reflected on her forehead. Although there is more than one bright spot in Qionghua’s pupils, her gaze and knitted eyebrows focus the viewer on her eyes and what she sees: Changqing, bound for execution. In the next shot, special lighting, which fills almost the entire shot, is used to re-create the reflection of flames at the execution site as Qionghua observes Changqing’s death from afar, behind a tree (Plate 6). The lighting here visually re-creates Qionghua’s fiery agitation, and the cinematic representation of Qionghua subverts the conventional dichotomy between masculine toughness and feminine softness. Without high fashion or glamourous make-up, Qionghua, with her sweaty and oily face, nonetheless draws the audience in with her fiery eyes. In her study of film and gender in Sino –Soviet exchange, Tina Mai Chen has pointed out that ‘love, desire, and sexuality were not erased or censored to the point of erasure’, and that ‘the masses learned about love and sexuality in part through the cultural products on display’.93 Chen points to the kiss witnessed by Stalin at the end of the Soviet film The Fall of Berlin (Mikheil Chiaureli, 1949) to demonstrate what she calls the

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Socialist Glamour ‘triangulation of legitimate love’ and the ‘triangulation of male – female – party’.94 In The Red Detachment of Women, the triangulation of legitimate love is given new expression at both the narrative and visual levels. The death of the male martyr transforms the triangulation of male – female – party, as the Party embodies the beliefs of the hero and becomes the sole locus of love and memory. The death of Changqing coincides with Qionghua’s admission to Party membership, allowing her to carry on Changqing’s legacy as a revolutionary prototype in a new matriarchy. Qionghua’s emotional and political devotion to Changqing is channelled and sublimated to the Party, as shown by the montage sequence in which an extreme facial close-up of Qionghua’s socialist realist gaze is superimposed on her Party application. There is more than one bright spot in Qionghua’s pupils – the film-makers didn’t achieve the cinematic technique of ‘dotting the eyes’ – yet the superimposition, like a halo, brightens Qionghua’s face in a moment of epiphany as the Internationale is sung (Figure 3.14). The ‘cinematic formalism’ of this climactic moment, orchestrated by montage, is a key instance of the ways Chinese revolutionary film increasingly standardised actors’ socialist realist gazes and performative gestures, creating uniform iconography for overt rhetorical effects (Plate 7).95 The socialist iconography in The Red Detachment of Women is female. As Qionghua returns to her detachment with her newly acquired political consciousness, she takes on the role of a leader, with her comrades – sisters encircling her for support and mentorship. One, Honglian, has just given birth to a child. The final shots of the film and its theme song evoke sisterhood, matriarchy and the importance of progeny in the continuation of revolution: March on! March on! A soldier’s responsibility is great. Women’s vengeance is deep. In the past Hua Mulan joined the army in her father’s stead. Now, the red detachment fights for the people March on! March on! A soldier’s responsibility is great Women’s vengeance is deep. Communism is the truth; the Party is our guide. Slaves can finally be liberated!

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Chinese Revolutionary Cinema The Red Detachment of Women invests in femininity rather than erasing it. This political, moral and aesthetic investment in female icons, with sisters and progeny, anticipated the emergence of the non-biological revolutionary family in later films such as Red Lantern (Cheng Yin, 1970) during the Cultural Revolution. Rather than representing its female ‘stars’ as objects of capitalised sex appeal, Chinese revolutionary cinema invested in juvenated femininity and reframed glamour in socialist terms through specific choices in actors’ training, casting and cinematography. A new socialist ethics of acting, emphasising experience, embodiment and exemplification, transformed actors into socialist icons with devotional gazes for mass emulation. The 1962 socialist star craze, coincided with an emerging consumer culture and star culture on a global scale, revealed underlying tensions and similarities between two competing ‘star’ cultures, each of which produced glamour with its own ideological, economic and social agendas. Despite multiple political campaigns – and because of them – a decade of aesthetic experiments in screenwriting, cinematography and acting after the nationalisation of the Chinese film industry negotiated with pre-existing and competing cinematic traditions to create a unique and revolutionary film aesthetic.

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5 Visions of Internationalism in Chinese Film Journals

Cinematic experiments in the realm of aesthetics were not isolated from Cold War politics. The propaganda state developed ambitious visions of internationalism and redefined this malleable concept in the shifting terrain of the Cold War. In the wake of decolonisation, the postwar period witnessed competing visions of socialist and liberal internationalisms. As an organised social movement and an institution, internationalism originated in nineteenth-century workers’ movements. The establishment of the Socialist International prior to World War I and the Comintern after the 1917 Russian Revolution were followed by the postwar emergence of intergovernmental and transnational institutions – the League of Nations, the United Nations, the International Labour Organization and the World Health Organization. These institutions represented the rise of Western liberal internationalism that aimed to counter socialist bloc internationalisms through developmental aid to the Third World. The ideological and political permutations of internationalism defined the tumultuous twentieth century through two World Wars, the Cold War and the disintegration of the socialist bloc. In the twenty-first century, the shifting language of internationalism remains central to political and aesthetic discourse: from ‘international’ relations to ‘transnational’ corporations,

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Chinese Revolutionary Cinema ‘cosmopolitan’ style to economic ‘globalisation’. The specific term ‘international’ has ‘retained currency across the century as the connective space that gave meaning to those other terms’.1 For the purposes of my argument, the term ‘internationalism’ must be clearly distinguished from ‘transnationalism’ and ‘cosmopolitanism’, although they often overlap in colloquial use. The latter terms denote the penetration of borders and the movement of capital, goods, technology, cultural artefacts and people between or beyond a given nation. ‘Transnationalism’ is a relatively recent term, coined in response to the term ‘globalisation’, while ‘cosmopolitanism’ can be traced back to the European eighteenth-century Enlightenment. ‘Internationalism’ acquired specific political connotations in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries with the emergence of European socialist parties, the world’s first communist regime, and the new world order of liberal democracy. In using the term ‘internationalism’, therefore, this chapter emphasises the contested and contingent nature of the term during the Cold War, the background against which the young PRC articulated its vision and identity within the socialist bloc and beyond. Internationalism was closely imbricated with nationalism, and both concepts helped construct and reinforce the identity of the PRC as a socialist nation-state. This chapter is premised on two underlying notions: that internationalism, far from being a utopian ideal, had real implications in policy making in the realm of cultural diplomacy; and that the rhetoric of internationalist friendship and solidarity carried a high degree of emotional valence. Chinese film journals constructed an ideal domestic and international audience, one composed of socialist and non-socialist subjects with an explicitly international, anti-colonial and anti-imperialist subjectivity and worldview. Extensive coverage of film festivals, film theories, film technologies, and films from abroad performed an act of geopolitical and cultural mapping by creating an alternative space for internationalism to flourish among competing socialist bloc articulations, as the socialist bloc’s unity slowly disintegrated during the Cold War. Chinese film journals articulated visions of internationalism in two major international watershed moments. Initially, they positioned Chinese film production as learning from the Soviet ‘elder brother’, in accordance with the policy of ‘leaning to one side’ after 1949. In the post-Bandung era following the 1960s Sino –Soviet split, Chinese film journals envisioned

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Visions of Internationalism in Chinese Film Journals Afro – Asian –Latin American solidarity. The investment in internationalism as part of state propaganda was the means by which the PRC strove for world recognition and, in the process, defined Chinese cinema as socialist and revolutionary.

Internationalism Recent studies of socialist culture have shown that socialist propaganda states, far from being xenophobic, pursued cultural appropriation of various kinds in order to make their cultures great and recognised by the world. Katerina Clark calls the Soviet openness to Western European culture a kind of cosmopolitanism, observing that when the Soviet Union was perceived as at its most self-enclosed, it was actually at its most outward-looking: ‘Paradoxically, even as the Soviet Union became an increasingly closed society, it simultaneously became more involved with foreign trends.’2 On a similar trajectory, Nicolai Volland considers Chinese socialist literature of the 1950s an example of ‘socialist cosmopolitanism’, mapping the literary exchange and translation of foreign literature in what he calls the four concentric circles of the Chinese literary universe: the Soviet Union at the core, followed by socialist Eastern Europe and Asia and the Third World, with progressive literature from Western Europe and the United States on the periphery.3 Noting that Western European classics and works of the ‘beat generation’ continued to circulate through unofficial channels during the Cultural Revolution, Volland sees cosmopolitanism as being ‘clandestine’ in socialist China.4 Paula Iovene’s exploration of ‘literary internationalism’ shows that the Chinese literary journal Yiwen, founded in 1953 (Shijie wenxue from 1959 onwards), functioned as an ‘atlas of world literature’ by introducing literature from Asia, Africa, Latin America, Europe and North America.5 These studies explore the outward-looking nature of the socialist project in building a culture of its own, primarily in the literary realm. We are coming to understand that interactions within and beyond the socialist bloc during the Cold War must be understood as international, rather than domestic, history: The socialist countries’ foreign policies, toward each other and toward the broader world, cannot be studied in isolation from one

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Chinese Revolutionary Cinema another. The makers of the socialist bloc talked about this constantly – if only to clarify their mutual commitment to each other and to the virtues of what they called ‘internationalism’, ‘unity’, the ‘socialist community’, or even what the East Germans liked to call the ‘socialist world economic system’.6

Socialist countries were outward-looking in appropriating other cultures. Moreover, their interconnectedness, often evoked in the rhetoric of friendship and solidarity, also meant that major events or crises within the bloc set off ramifications with domestic and international implications. The 1956 uprisings in Poland and Hungary, for instance, had critical implications for the Hundred Flowers Campaign and the Anti-Rightist Campaign. Khrushchev’s policy of peaceful coexistence and the ensuing Sino – Soviet rift reshaped Mao’s foreign policy towards the Third World. An international perspective in the study of socialist film culture – in this case, the discourse on internationalism itself – is indispensable. The origins of competing socialist and liberal internationalisms can be traced back to the first half of the nineteenth century, when free trade and liberal capitalism were lauded as vehicles of peace and internationalism. Marx and Engels, in the last line of the 1848 Manifesto, called on the workers of the world to unite in world revolution and overthrow the capitalist world order. In 1864, the International Association of Workers (the First International) was formed, a major outcome of transnational demands for a nine-hour day put forward by workers led by the London Trades Council. Despite its dissolution in the 1870s due to internal tensions, the ‘International’ assumed ‘the value of a symbolic identity for the working classes’.7 The ‘Internationale’ song was written in 1871, and the ‘Second International’ was formed in 1889 as an organisation of various national socialist parties. It too dissolved, because of the differing stances of the socialist parties regarding the outbreak of World War I. The Communist International (1919 – 43) (Comintern, also known as the Third International), which split off from socialist internationalism and grouped together various nascent communist parties, sought to overcome the weaknesses and contradictions of the previous Internationals. As Patrizia Dogliani puts it: ‘World War I and the Russian Revolution were at the root of the split between the two major internationals of the nineteenth century: socialist and communist.’8 Yet the 150

Visions of Internationalism in Chinese Film Journals 50 years from 1889 to 1939 were ‘the golden age of the socialist international’, a period in which parties and movements of socialist or Marxist inspiration grew and prospered.9 The first Comintern school, the Communist University of the Toilers of the East, was set up in Moscow in 1921, targeting mainly Asian students. The League of Nations, dominated by Western liberal democracies, was established in response to ‘the threat posed by the Bolshevik Revolution and the alternative international model that it promoted’.10 The competing strands of internationalism continued to manifest themselves in the postwar period, as competing political visions and internationalisms were projected onto the Third World. The rhetoric of internationalism carried a high degree of emotional valence, whether reinforcing socialist or liberal values and beliefs. Postwar internationalism can be understood as a ‘competition of development models’ as the First and Second Worlds universalised their beliefs and values to other parts of the world: On the Western side, words like ‘betterment’, ‘development’, ‘help’, and ‘rescue’ were regularly used, referring to the missionary, humanitarian and philanthropic dimensions at the heart of international intervention. On the Eastern side, ‘solidarity’ and ‘friendship’ were key words and pointed to the supposed equality between donors and receivers, as well as their common fight against the imperialist oppressor.11

In re-examining the history of internationalism, Glenda Sluga and Patricia Clavin have pointed out that the realism of the nation-state is often set against the idealism of the international community. One consequence of this realist– idealist divide is that internationalism is often presented as politically marginal to the project of the nation-state.12 Yet far from being a utopian ideal, internationalism had real implications in policy making in the realm of cultural diplomacy. Akira Iriye has defined ‘cultural internationalism’ as ‘the fostering of international cooperation through cultural activities across national boundaries’.13 I contend that Chinese film journals composed a cultural internationalism premised on cinematic exchange through film festivals, film theories, film technologies, and films from abroad. In these journals, the rhetoric of solidarity and friendship gradually shifted, in the 1950s and 1960s, from the Soviet Union to Asia, Africa and Latin America. This chapter discusses internationalism as a 151

Chinese Revolutionary Cinema political project, a community and an identity. As a political project, it encompassed a vision of international order. As a community, it generated a network of cinematic exchanges. As an identity, it bound socialist and non-socialist subjects across national borders.14 In her study of film export patterns from the PRC to socialist and nonsocialist countries, Tina Mai Chen offers the term ‘socialist geographies’ to refer to the ways that film export and import, international film exhibitions and travelling film technologies articulated visions of modernisation and internationalism as national and global projects.15 By analysing export and import patterns, audience figures and filmic texts, and the relations between them, Chen delineates shifting temporal and spatial hierarchies within the socialist bloc. Her work highlights the malleability of the term ‘internationalism’ throughout the 1950s and 1960s, as the PRC increasingly appropriated the Soviet Union’s role as a visionary leader of socialism in relation to Asian, African and Latin American countries. During this period, film journals acted as a lens through which Chinese cinema looked out on and projected itself to the world.

Lean to One Side: From Dubbing to Sino –Soviet Co-Production In the early years of the PRC, Chinese film journals focused on learning from the Soviet ‘elder brother’ in accordance with the policy of ‘leaning to one side’. Temporal and familial metaphors represented the ‘complex web of temporalizations through which Chinese, Soviet and international socialism acquired meaning’.16 Slogans glorifying brotherhood with the Soviet Union, such as ‘the Soviet Union’s today is our tomorrow’, abounded in Chinese film journals of the early 1950s.17 The Soviet Union, the birthplace of the October Revolution, was conceived as the leader and pioneer of socialism. The early PRC relied heavily on Soviet film expertise. From 1949 to 1957, China imported 1,309 films (including 662 feature films), of which almost two-thirds came from the Soviet Union.18 Tina Mai Chen identifies two forms of technology that figured prominently in Sino – Soviet film exchange: ‘technologies of translation’, which include dubbing and subtitling, and ‘technologies of distribution’, which include film projectors and other forms of film machinery.19 In 1949, the first Soviet film dubbed into Chinese was

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Visions of Internationalism in Chinese Film Journals Leonid Lukov’s Alexander Matrosov (Yige putong de zhanshi/Putong yibing). In the next year, 1950, the national film plan envisaged the dubbing of 40 Soviet features to fill the ideological gap after the elimination of Hollywood movies from the Chinese market.20 By the end of 1953, more than 100 Soviet films had been dubbed and subtitled.21 In December 1953, a conference on dubbing and subtitling was held in Beijing for a week, marking the accomplishment of the work of dubbing since the establishment of the PRC. The conference received extensive coverage in the film journal The People’s Cinema (Dazhong dianying). The 30 or so participants included directors, translators and voice artists from the Northeast Film Studio and the Shanghai Film Studio. A slogan at the conference venue made clear the importance of film translation: ‘Dubbing and subtitling are important tools for promoting socialism.’22 Cai Chusheng spoke of the significant impact of dubbing and subtitling on the ‘political and cultural lives’ of the people and the nation, explaining that film art enabled people to learn from the ‘advanced cultures’ (the Soviet Union) of the world.23 In 1954, the national film plan announced the dubbing and subtitling of more than 40 films (mostly Soviet films), such as the Soviet biopic Belinsky (Grigori Kozintsev, 1953).24 By 1957, 206 Soviet feature films, 59 full-length documentaries and science and education films, and 202 various short films – including 24 animation films, 39 short documentaries, and 139 short science and education films and other newsreels – had been dubbed and subtitled in Chinese.25 Dubbing was perceived as superior to subtitling due to both the technologies of dubbing and the creative labour involved. As Tina Mai Chen contends, dubbing was conceived as ‘the most advanced and efficient of available translation technologies’ and the use of state studios to dub imported Soviet films ‘marked a shift in China’s status as modern’.26 This shift, and its revolutionary significance, were marked by Chinese film journals. The People’s Cinema published an article titled ‘Hard and Creative Labour’ in 1954, introducing to readers the behindthe-scenes work required for dubbing. Dubbing, the article explained, required two major steps: the translation of a screen script and ensuring lip synchronisation (dui kouxing). Translators were required to maintain the length of the original dialogues, and the translated script in Chinese had to match the foreign tongue and its lip movements. Otherwise, one would encounter ‘the weird situation where the mouth is shut on screen but the

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Chinese Revolutionary Cinema voice is still going, or the lips are moving but no voice is coming out’.27 For a close-up, the article went on, ‘one has to lip-sync word by word’.28 Lip synchronisation required voice actors to synchronise with the voice and emotions of the characters, while maintaining uniformity in pace of speech and lip movements, to create the impression that ‘foreigners on screen can speak Chinese naturally [my emphasis]’.29 Voice actors were expected to prepare themselves for their roles by reading books about their characters or interviewing people in real life. Dubbing was said to require more artistic cultivation on the part of voice artists. Moreover, the need to render the work of translation invisible on screen through seamless synchronisation meant that dubbing required a higher degree of technological sophistication than subtitling. Dubbing was conceived as having the potential to overcome language barriers and to render the foreign immediately translatable and intelligible – like magic. Dubbing therefore naturalised the fashioned affinity with the Soviet ‘elder brother’ on screen. The first Sino – Soviet co-production, Wind from the East (Feng cong dongfang lai) (В едином строю) (Efim Dzigan and Gan Xuewei, 1959), constructs an ideal domestic and international audience with an international subjectivity.30 The feature film, dubbed entirely in Chinese, was co-produced by the Changchun Film Studio and Mosfilm. It was shot in 1957 and released in 1959 to celebrate the tenth anniversary of the establishment of the PRC.31 Wind from the East tells the story of how Chinese and Soviet engineers and workers heroically combat a flood that endangers a hydropower station in China (Figure 5.1). The narrative interweaves Sino –Soviet collaboration with the lead characters’ reminiscences of their friendship. Rescued by Matveyev during the Russian Civil War, Wang Demin aspires to learn from his Soviet brother in arms. In a sequence portraying Saturday voluntary labour in Moscow, Wang voices his internationalist aspirations to his fellow multinational volunteers from the Comintern: ‘How I long to see Lenin, so that I could tell my fellow countrymen what Lenin is like!’ The sequence ends in a moment of solidarity, with Comintern representatives from various countries joining hands as they say where they come from: ‘China, Czechoslovakia, France, Bulgaria, Germany, Britain, the United States, Romania, Finland, Greece, Poland, Soviet Russia’ (Figure 5.2). Imprinted in the characters’ subjectivity, and by extension that of the ideal audience, international

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Figure 5.1 The Chinese film journal Film Art (Dianying yishu) (issue 1, 1961) highlighted this shot as a ‘touching’ (dongrende) moment of solidarity in the Sino – Soviet co-production Wind from the East (1959).

Figure 5.2 Moscow.

Multinational representatives from the Comintern joining hands in

Chinese Revolutionary Cinema aspirations and the language of friendship with the Soviet Union drive the narrative forward. In a later sequence shot in a picturesque snow-filled Red Square, Wang and Matveyev, serving as guards, are greeted by Lenin, who is drawn to Wang and greets him with ‘nihao’. Lenin’s warm greeting in Chinese is also a pedagogical moment for Matveyev: ‘You [Matveyev] are still young and should learn Chinese. It will be useful in the future. It will be extremely useful.’ The sequence continues in Lenin’s office, where Wang and Matveyev are invited for a chat. Speaking as both pedagogue and father of the Russian Revolution, Lenin asks them to translate a few words from Russian into Chinese and vice versa. Lenin’s translation tasks are a test and a lesson, which Wang completes admirably by reciting Pushkin’s poetry, translating revolutionary slogans and communicating effectively in Russian. Wang demonstrates his communist discipleship and internationalist aspirations by eagerly telling Lenin that his friend Matveyev is teaching him Russian. Wang eloquently recites a few lines of Pushkin’s poetry, the first moment in the film when we hear him speak Russian. Wang humbly remarks on the beauty of Pushkin’s poetry, expressing regrets that he ‘cannot even speak [Russian] properly’. Impressed by Wang’s poetic sensibility, Lenin turns to Matveyev and asks him to translate the slogan ‘proletariat of all countries, unite!’ (quan shijie wuchan jieji tuanjie qilai) from Chinese into Russian. Holding a magnifying glass, Matveyev utters each Chinese character slowly and struggles to translate the slogan into his mother tongue. Wang, standing behind Lenin, helps Matveyev by quietly pointing to the official newspaper of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, Pravda (Truth), where the slogan is printed as a small headline in Russian (пролетарии всех стран соединяйтесь) – demonstrating that he can read and translate Soviet revolutionary slogans as well as reciting poetry in Russian (Figure 5.3). Once Matveyev gets it right by cheating, Lenin laughs: ‘I caught you! Dear, I caught you! Remember, if you want to teach others, you must be a good student first.’ Wang outperforms his teacher and friend Matveyev, demonstrating how well he has learned from his symbolic ‘elder brother’ and implicitly suggesting that the younger brother has equalled, if not bested, the elder’s internationalist credentials. At the end of the sequence, Matveyev conveys to Lenin his desire to help build power stations in Vladimir. Wang joins in, adding a call in Chinese for ‘electrification of the entire Soviet Union’ (quan’e dianqihua),

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Figure 5.3 Wang Demin demonstrates that he can read and translate Soviet revolutionary slogans, outsmarting his teacher and brother in arms Matveyev, who struggles with Chinese.

followed by the Soviet slogan ‘Коммунизм – это Советская власть плюс электрификация’ (Communism is Soviet power plus electrification), spoken in Russian.32 This is the second time in the sequence when we hear Wang speaks Russian, demonstrating that he can switch from Chinese to Russian quite comfortably and paying homage to both Russian literary classics and Marxism-Leninism. Commenting on Chinese acting in 1959, the lead Soviet actress of Wind from the East, Viktoriya Radunskaya, posited an ideological, aesthetic and even physical affinity that transcended language: ‘Chinese and Soviet actors share the same language. Our friends – young Chinese actors – are very familiar with Stanislavski’s system. We were both educated under realism. Therefore, the language barrier does not affect our mutual understanding.’33 Screen acting and dubbing allowed an actor’s corporeal body to be seen and heard speaking in the audience’s language. In creating a shared cinematic language, Chinese and Soviet actors sought to overcome linguistic differences and articulate a shared international subjectivity.

Celebrating Soviet Film Weeks and the October Revolution in Chinese Film Journals To celebrate the anniversary of the October Revolution, annual Soviet film weeks were held in the PRC in the month of November from 1952 to 1956. These Soviet film weeks featured visits from Soviet film delegations and 157

Chinese Revolutionary Cinema exhibitions of Soviet films that functioned as educational models. These film weeks ‘constituted a series of experiments wherein the Chinese state, film industry and audiences engaged multiple film circuits at a local scale’.34 In some years, Soviet film weeks in China were paired with visits by Chinese film-makers to the Soviet Union. For instance, in 1954, a Soviet film week was held in 30 Chinese cities; in the same year, the PRC sent a film delegation to the Soviet Union that included Zhang Junxiang, Yuan Wenshu and the actresses Qin Yi and Zhang Ruifang. In a special article on that year’s Soviet film week, titled ‘A Glorious Model’, a writer extols: ‘The Soviet Union’s today is our tomorrow. We are marching forward on the same path that the Soviet people have travelled.’35 Three years later in 1957, The New Year’s Sacrifice (Sang Hu, 1956) was screened in the Soviet Union, accompanied by a film delegation that included Bai Yang, Huang Zuolin and Sang Hu. A 1957 issue of Shangying Pictorial (Shangying huabao) included extensive coverage of Soviet cinema to celebrate the 40th anniversary of the October Revolution. In one article, a historical overview of Soviet film in China, the writer presented Soviet cinema as a benefactor that provided ‘spiritual nutrients’ ( jingshen yingyang) for Chinese art.36 Elsewhere in the same issue, terms such as ‘intimate friendship’ (qinmi youyi) and ‘evergreen friendship’ (youyi changchun) were used to describe China’s partnership with the Soviet Union.37 These metaphors of friendship and intimacy in Chinese film journals represented internationalism and socialist solidarity as a personal relationship, while recalling the Soviet turn in Chinese film discourse in the Republican era. As in the Republican era, Soviet cinema was seen as a model for Chinese cinema. The 1957 November – December combined issues of Chinese Cinema (Zhongguo dianying), celebrating the 40th anniversary of the October Revolution, published a letter to the Soviet film journal Film Art (Искусство кино). The letter was written by the editorial boards of Chinese Cinema and Film Art Translations (Dianying yishu yicong). In the letter, the editors of the two Chinese film journals described Soviet cinema as ‘a pioneer of film art’ that ‘defined a new direction for film art in the world’.38 In a metaphor that anticipated Wang Demin’s portrayal as a student of the Russian language in Wind from the East, another critic wrote that every Soviet film was a ‘lively visual textbook’.39 In the same issue, Chen Bo wrote: ‘The sun of the October Revolution rises from the East and

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Visions of Internationalism in Chinese Film Journals shines brightly. We, under the shining and glorious sun, follow the path of the October Revolution.’40 This rhetoric of the ‘East’ (as opposed to the ‘West’), like the Chinese title of the Sino –Soviet co-production Wind from the East, articulated a Soviet-pioneered and Soviet-led vision of internationalism.41 The production and consumption of Chinese film journals fostered and satisfied a thirst for learning and engagement with foreign cinema. Far from being xenophobic, Chinese film journals published during the Seventeen Years from 1949 to 1966 consistently tried to internationalise their coverage while advertising Chinese cinema to the world. Filled with colourful illustrations, advertisements, film commentaries and pictures of socialist stars foreign and domestic, Chinese film journals informed readers of behind-the-scene happenings, film terms, technological practices and film production goals. Chinese film journals oriented readers to look outward, keeping them up-to-date about film happenings all over the world – not only within the socialist bloc but also beyond. After the Sino – Soviet split in the 1960s, the PRC took on the role of a leader in the socialist bloc and beyond, presenting a new vision of internationalism. When the ‘wind from the east’ shifted, China stepped into the role of its elder brother.

Film Art Translations What follows is a brief overview of a few noteworthy Chinese film journals. The monthly Film Art Translations (Dianying yishu yicong, founded in 1952, discontinued in 1958, and restarted in 1981 as Shijie dianying) played a pivotal role in translating Soviet film theories and criticism into Chinese. Its coverage focused mostly on the Soviet Union, with occasional discussion of French and Japanese film criticism. From 1952 to 1956, the journal translated over 50 Soviet film scripts and over 50 Soviet theoretical works about film, including the major works of Eisenstein, Pudovkin and Stanislavski. Issues from 1955 to 1958 featured a column called ‘Learning Stanislavski’s Acting System’. The 1958 inaugural issue of International Cinema (Guoji dianying), which succeeded the discontinued Film Art Translations, featured a collection of special essays on Eisenstein and Pudovkin to commemorate the tenth anniversary of Eisenstein’s death and the fifth anniversary of Pudovkin’s. 159

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International Cinema While Film Art Translations focused on translation, International Cinema represented a major shift in content and organisation as Sino –Soviet tensions emerged in the late 1950s. The inaugural issue described its predecessor as a journal that specialised in Soviet film theory and practice but ‘lacked research on Chinese film art’.42 The editor wrote that Film Art Translations ‘uncritically introduced theories that were obviously flawed, resulting in negative effects on readers’.43 To overcome the weaknesses of its predecessor, International Cinema, as its title suggests, was to strive for wider international coverage rather than focusing exclusively on Soviet film theory and criticism. Although coverage of Soviet cinema was reduced in International Cinema, Soviet revolutionary classics such as Lenin in October (Mikhail Romm and Dmitriy Vasilev, 1937) and Lenin in 1918 (Mikhail Romm, E. Aron and Isidor Simkov, 1939) still occupied a canonical position.44

Chinese Cinema Iovene has suggested that the Chinese literary journal Yiwen, founded in 1953, (Shijie wenxue from 1959 onwards), functioned as an ‘atlas of world literature’ in its ‘literary internationalism’.45 She notes that beginning in 1957, the Soviet Union was replaced in the journal’s purview by a more inclusive formulation that emphasised the journal’s reorientation toward ‘all the countries of the world’.46 A similar reorientation occurred in other Chinese film journals at about the same time, as Sino – Soviet tensions surfaced. While Film Art Translations had treated mostly Soviet film theories and criticism in specialised language targeted to a sophisticated group of readers, the journal Chinese Cinema (Zhongguo dianying), founded in 1956, discussed a diverse range of foreign film magazines and film happenings in a user-friendly manner. Yomi Braester suggests that the founders of Chinese Cinema ‘sought to introduce a major change in the popular perception of film in China’ by drawing from Georges Sadoul’s notion of cinephilia during the brief thaw of the Hundred Flowers Campaign.47 Placing Chinese film in the context of world cinema, contributors to Chinese Cinema constructed ‘a community bridging industry insiders, professional critics and informed audiences’.48 Along

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Visions of Internationalism in Chinese Film Journals with introducing domestic films, almost every issue of Chinese Cinema featured a one-page column introducing a foreign film journal to Chinese readers. The December 1956 issue introduced the Polish film journal Kwartalnik Filmowy, started in 1951. 1957 issues introduced Sight and Sound (UK, 1932), Cinema (France, 1955), Deutsche Filmkunst (Germany, 1953), Filmfare (India, 1952), the Italian journals Cinema Nuovo (1952) and Unitalia Film (published in English, French, German, Italian and Spanish), Czechoslovak Film (published in English, French, German, Russian and Spanish) and the Soviet film journal Sovetskii Ekran (1957). In 1958, Chinese Cinema profiled Korean Film (Korea, 1957) and the Vietnamese journal Film (1957). As the list indicates, Chinese Cinema introduced a diverse range of the most current foreign film journals from all over the world.49 One column writer, commenting on the Vietnamese journal Film, highlighted the similar missions of Film and Chinese Cinema. The column writer complimented the way the Vietnamese film journal introduced The New Year’s Sacrifice, translated its film script, and by extension introduced films from ‘brotherly nations’ such as China.50 A column on Sight and Sound disapproved of the way the journal ‘separated art from economics’.51 Nonetheless, the column writer allowed that ‘[a]lthough it tends towards an aestheticism that transcends class, it has its own practical usefulness.’52 The most useful features of Sight and Sound were said to be essays that introduced film artists and theories from the West, categorised into four groups: ‘The problem of film art, research on film history, essays on film artists, and film criticism.’53 As Volland suggests, foreign literature and literary developments ‘remained a crucial benchmark, indicating the larger framework within which Chinese [socialist] literature imagined itself.’54 Foreign film and cinematic developments in the capitalist bloc remained relevant and even crucial in shaping the worldview and self-understanding of Chinese socialist cinema.

Redefining Red Friendship: Post-Bandung Afro –Asian –Latin American Solidarity We hear the groans of the people. Their eyes shine with the spark of anti-imperialist struggle.

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Chinese Revolutionary Cinema March on, our brothers in South America and Africa! We are gazing at your struggle for justice.55 – ‘March On, our Brothers in Latin America and Africa!’ Sun Daolin, Zhang Ruifang, and Qin Yi

In the late 1950s following de-Stalinisation, the post-Bandung era envisioned Afro –Asian – Latin American solidarity. Red friendship was redefined, turning the spotlight away from the Soviet Union to Asian, African and Latin American countries. This shift in cinematic alignment was a result of Cold War politics. After Khrushchev’s secret speech in the Twentieth Party Congress in 1956, which initiated de-Stalinisation and the ‘thaw’, the Soviet Union was no longer seen as free from ideological flaws and revisionism. As Anne E. Gorsuch and Diane P. Koenker suggest in their critical examination of the ‘socialist sixties’, Khrushchev’s doctrine of peaceful coexistence enabled ‘unprecedented international contact’, in which ‘encounters with the West’ became the thaw’s defining experience.56 The 1960s saw the rise of Soviet consumerism, as ‘previously condemned aspects of “Western” culture – fashionable clothing, urban cafes, light jazz – were domesticated and made acceptably socialist.’57 The ‘Kitchen Debate’ between Richard Nixon and Khrushchev at the 1959 American Exhibition in Moscow about the relative merits of their economic systems introduced consumption as ‘a site of Cold War competition over the “good life”’.58 Khrushchev’s policy reshaped the socialist bloc’s collective character, threatening its unity and revealing intrabloc competitions and tensions as the PRC became increasingly critical of Soviet ‘great power chauvinism’ and past Russian imperialism. Those tensions spilled over into the Third World as the First and Second Worlds universalised their beliefs, values and competing strands of internationalism in the form of developmental aid and anti-colonial rhetoric. In fashioning a new internationalism as a counterforce against the Soviet – US peaceful coexistence, the PRC invested in anti-colonial and anti-imperialist rhetoric. Key to understanding the PRC’s new vision of internationalism is the notion of ‘solidarity’ in creating an anti-colonial imaginary that boosted socialist China’s image at home and abroad. In his study of East German discourse on Africa and SWAPO (South West Africa People’s Organisation), Toni Weis suggests that ‘solidarity’, often used in

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Visions of Internationalism in Chinese Film Journals deliberate opposition to the Western concept of development, ‘was meant to describe a relationship among equals, based on the idea of reciprocity and the membership in a shared moral community’.59 In creating an anti-colonial imaginary in solidarity with the Third World, the PRC emphasised their ‘common encounter with European colonialism and difficult exposure to Soviet aid, advisers, and forms of socialist bloc collaboration’.60 Film advertisements and the representation of film festivals and cinematic exchange in Chinese film journals played an important role in constructing this alternative vision of internationalism, one that was much broader in scope than the previous brotherhood with the Soviet Union. Chinese film journals fashioned an alternative mode of temporality and remapped world cinematic space, shifting its centre of gravity from the ‘West’ to the ‘East’ and eventually to Asia, Africa and Latin America.

Asian Film Weeks and Afro –Asian Film Festivals Film weeks and film festivals were no less important than film production. Often receiving extensive coverage in film journals, film weeks and festivals were important venues for advertising and circulating foreign films in China, and Chinese films abroad. Chinese film delegations often attended foreign film weeks and festivals, where prizes and honours were presented, and which served as opportunities to ‘exhibit the nation to the international community’.61 In the spirit of the 1955 Bandung Conference that served as a foundation for the Nonaligned Movement, the 1957 Asian Film Week (Yazhou dianyingzhou) ‘exemplified the PRC’s early experiments in choreographing an international event participated by multiple nations’.62 With a line-up of 17 films from more than ten Asian countries, the event was held in August in ten Chinese cities: Beijing, Changchun, Guangzhou, Hangzhou, Kunming, Nanjing, Shanghai, Shenyang, Tianjin and Wuhan.63 Participating countries included Burma, Cambodia, India, Indonesia, Japan, Korea, Lebanon, Mongolia, Pakistan, the PRC, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam. The closing ceremony announced that the event would be continued as the Afro – Asian Film Festival (Yafei dianyingjie), with each participating country rotating the organisational duties of the mobile event. 163

Chinese Revolutionary Cinema The first Afro–Asian Film Festival accordingly took place in Tashkent, Uzbekistan in 1958, followed in 1960 by a second festival held in Cairo.64 One of the main activities of both festivals was to preview films from various participating countries. The ‘social imaginary’ represented in Chinese film journals, as Tina Mai Chen calls it, was explicitly anti-colonial and antiimperialist.65 For example, an article in International Cinema featuring the Afro–Asian Film Festival described film festivals as an opportunity for participating countries to learn from the editing, performance, music and photography of exhibited films, and praised the way ‘[p]eople in Asia and Africa are marching ahead in the struggle against colonialism and imperialism’.66 The Third (and last) Afro – Asian Film Festival, held in Jakarta in April 1964, was an unusual festival that spurred anti-American sentiments. Participating countries included Afghanistan, Cuba, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, India, Indonesia, Iraq, Japan, Korea, Lebanon, Mali, Mongolia, Pakistan, the Philippines, the PRC, Somalia, the Soviet Union, Tunisia, Uganda, Vietnam, Zambia and Zanzibar. A few countries including Mali, the Philippines, Tunisia and Zanzibar presented films at an international festival for the first time. The Red Detachment of Women (Xie Jin, 1961) received the Bandung award at the festival. After the festival, on 9 May, 16 organisations in Jakarta initiated a campaign for a boycott of US films throughout Indonesia. The Chinese film journal Film Art responded to the boycott eagerly with an article titled ‘Resolutely in Support of the Indonesian Struggle against American Film’. The article described Hollywood movies as tools of ‘cultural invasion’ and ‘ideological infiltration’ because Hollywood movies dominated as much as 60 per cent of the market share in Indonesia. In contrast, only 15 domestic films were produced annually in Indonesia.67 An article in China’s Screen, titled ‘Revolution in the Afro–Asian Film World’, described the nationwide screening of Afro–Asian films and the boycott of American films in Indonesia as an ‘unprecedented revolutionary act’, and the Afro–Asian film festival in Jakarta as a ‘revolutionary’, ‘progressive’, and ‘healthy’ ‘festival of unity’.68 The Afro–Asian Film Festival was therefore not only a venue for cinematic showcase and exchange; it was also a highly political event that stirred revolutionary sentiments and called for collective action. In addition to the Asian Film Week and the Afro – Asian Film Festival, the PRC held film weeks featuring films from specific countries in Asia and

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Visions of Internationalism in Chinese Film Journals Latin America. A Mexican film week was held in 1959 in Beijing, Shanghai and Wuhan, where Espaldas Mojadas (Wetback/Toudu de kugong) (Alejandro Galindo, 1955) was shown. The Burmese Film Week was held in 1960, the ‘Year of Sino –Burmese Friendship’, during which Film Art described the friendship and cultural exchange between China and Burma as ‘family-like’ and ‘the most ancient’.69 Though ‘severed by imperialism’ in the late nineteenth century, the Sino –Burmese relationship was ‘restored after liberation and independence’.70 In September 1964, a Vietnamese Film Week was held in Beijing, Guangdong, Shanghai and three other Chinese cities to celebrate the nineteenth anniversary of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam (North Vietnam).71 China’s Screen described China and Vietnam as ‘neighbours’ and ‘brothers’, whose relationship was as close as ‘lips and teeth’.72 The familial and temporal metaphors that had been used to fashion brotherhood with the Soviet Union were redirected to neighbouring nations with a similar colonial past, such as Burma, as the PRC reimagined itself as the leader of the Afro – Asian Third World. Socialist brotherhood was no longer exclusively tied to the Soviet ‘elder brother’; it was now extended to Burma and Vietnam in the name of anti-colonial solidarity.

Sino –Albanian Co-Production Along with the Afro –Asian Third World, the PRC’s new internationalism extended to Albania, the only Eastern European socialist country that sided openly with China (particularly during the Cultural Revolution). Once a Yugoslav satellite, Albania relied on Soviet assistance after 1948, but abandoned that partnership for the PRC after the Sino –Soviet split in the 1960s. The worsening of Albanian – Soviet relations was due to Khrushchev’s rapprochement with Yugoslavia. Mao’s anti-Yugoslav and anti-revisionist rhetoric was very well received in Albania. When Moscow withdrew Soviet advisers and specialists from Tirana in 1961, Beijing agreed to step in and supply grain, factories and technology.73 Like the PRC, Albanian cultural authorities in the 1960s ‘sought to define a nonMoscow-centered way of being socialist in the world’.74 The first Sino – Albanian co-production, Forward, Side by Side (Krah p€er krah) (Endri Keko, 1964), was a full-length documentary featuring the ‘militant friendship’ between China and Albania around the ‘common cause of 165

Chinese Revolutionary Cinema building socialism’ and ‘fighting imperialism and modern revisionism’.75 The film’s ‘Song of Red Friendship’ sang of ‘great oceans and high mountains set us far apart, but our two strong hands are tightly clasped together’, evoking the brothers-in-arms imagery previously used in the Sino – Soviet co-production Wind from the East. This time, however, China took on the role of an elder brother to Albania in the name of socialist and anti-imperialist solidarity.76 Forward, Side by Side and the Albanian feature film Extraordinary Mission (Teshu renwu/Detyr€e e posac me) (Kristaq Dhramo, 1963) were screened in Beijing, Shanghai, Wuhan and other cities to celebrate the anniversary of the Albanian liberation. Albanian films and symbolic objects, such as the cifteli (a type of guitar) and Albanian cigarettes, continued to circulate in the PRC during the Cultural Revolution. The highly publicised and symbolic Sino –Albanian friendship demonstrated that even a small country such as Albania, as the ‘socialist light of Europe’, could play a role in big power politics.77

Advertising Chinese Cinema: The Multi-Language Film Journal China’s Screen With the aim of internationalising its audience, the multi-language quarterly film journal China’s Screen, like foreign film journals such as Unitalia Film (published in English, French, German, Italian and Spanish) and Czechoslovak Film (published in English, French, German, Russian and Spanish), represented a major undertaking in advertising Chinese cinema to the world. With a local and international readership in mind, China’s Screen was published in Chinese, English, French and Spanish, and began to circulate in the 1960s.78 Eschewing coverage of Soviet cinema, China’s Screen focused almost exclusively on domestic film and films from Asia, Africa and Latin America. The multi-language journal, with its eyecatching mottos and colourful illustrations, represented the new anticolonial internationalism, as the propaganda state acquired self-sufficiency and confidence in propagating and advertising the new identity of Chinese cinema as a socialist, anti-colonial and revolutionary cinema. Both socialist and non-socialist countries in Asia, Africa and Latin America were on the radar of China’s Screen’s new internationalism.

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Visions of Internationalism in Chinese Film Journals A 1964 issue featured an article titled ‘Progressive Latin American Films Popular in China’, in which films from Argentina, Bolivia, Chile, Columbia, Cuba, Mexico and Venezuela were introduced to the journal’s local and international audience.79 ‘Reflecting the life and struggle of the Latin American people’, those films were well understood by the Chinese, ‘who shared a similar fate in the past’.80 The works of film-makers and authors with leftist leanings or activists in international front organisations were deemed ‘progressive’.81 China’s Screen’s use of the term extended its anti-colonial, anti-imperial and revolutionary sentiments to socialist and non-socialist subjects alike, in an aim to broaden its appeal to an international audience beyond the socialist bloc. Several issues of China’s Screen in 1965 featured documentaries shot in Africa. An article introduced the Chinese documentary film The People of the Congo Will Certainly Win, which demonstrated the way Chinese people ‘support[ed] the Leopoldville Congolese people’s struggle’ and ‘condemn[ed] the crime of aggression committed against the Congo by US – Belgian imperialism’.82 Another article, ‘Forward, Africa! Fight On’, featured a provocative illustration that filled two pages, with a slogan from the full-length documentary Africa Marches Forward: ‘An awakened and mighty Africa is going to take her rightful place in the world.’83 The rhetoric here echoes Kasongo Kapanga’s suggestion that the national identity of Congolese literature and film is characterised by the ‘awakening to consciousness’ – the rise of consciousness of a collective plight – and the foundational urge to articulate that consciousness.84 China’s Screen, by articulating and propagating an awakened collective consciousness in its anti-colonial rhetoric, fostered a sense of belonging to an imagined yet concrete international community. Like its literary counterpart Yiwen (Shijie wenxue from 1959 onwards), China’s Screen functioned as a cinematic atlas that boosted China’s selfimage as a cinematic pioneer whose encyclopaedic quests and footprints reached the far corners of the world. Premier Zhou Enlai’s visits to Albania, Burma, Ceylon, Pakistan and ten African countries were featured in an article titled ‘A Militant, Many Splendored Friendship’. The article described Zhou Enlai’s journeys in ‘awakened, militant, and advancing Africa’: Algeria, Ethiopia, Ghana, Guinea, Mali, Morocco, Somalia, Sudan, Tunisia and the United Arab Republic (Egypt) from December 1963 to March 1964.85 Employing expansionist logic, the article graphically

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Figure 5.4 An illustrated map of Premier Zhou Enlai’s visits to Albania, Burma, Ceylon, Pakistan and ten countries in Africa, constructing a ‘glittering arc’ of friendship.

mapped out Zhou Enlai’s tour, which ‘spanned a distance of 108,000 li in three continents’ (Figure 5.4).86 The tour ‘forged a bond of unity among comrades and friends’ and ‘drew a glittering arc of militant friendship between the revolutionary peoples’.87 The ‘glittering arc’ of friendship was lit by the PRC, as the sun of revolution whose rays reached three continents, awakening the people of Asia, Africa and Eastern Europe from their colonial plight. The revolutionary sun no longer resided in the Soviet Union. It rose from the PRC, the leader of the ‘East’, and shone over the far corners of the world, symbolically recasting notions of enlightenment and progress in socialist terms. Zhou Enlai’s tri-continental tour was recorded in four documentaries produced by the Central Newsreel and Documentary Film Studio: Premier Zhou Enlai Visits Albania, Premier Zhou Visits Northern Africa, Premier Zhou Visits Western Africa and Premier Zhou Visits Northeast Africa. These were promoted in the aforementioned article, along with the tour map and Zhou Enlai’s words: ‘Our revolutionary sentiments burn together’.88 The article, tour map and documentary films made up a network of representation, revealing the anti-colonial imaginary and bonding the PRC with the revolutionary and potentially socialist community. Emphasising the ‘age-old friendship’ between China and other Asian and African countries, the article echoed earlier efforts to glorify China’s ‘most ancient’ friendship with Burma.89 The ‘age-old friendship’ between China and many African countries, though severed by imperialism, was 168

Visions of Internationalism in Chinese Film Journals ‘restored’ after liberation: ‘Since China and many African countries regained their independence, all kinds of obstacles have been brushed aside and our age-old friendship has begun to shine with new luster.’90 The same was true of Burma, Ceylon and Pakistan, which all had ‘long-standing ties of friendship’ with China: ‘Our common lot as victims of imperialist aggression and oppression and our common task of fighting imperialism unite us and have added kinship to our age-old friendship.’91 A shared colonial past was constructed, situating the PRC and its brotherly nations along the same line of revolutionary struggle and liberation. This new vision of internationalism, premised on an anti-colonial and anti-imperialist solidarity, carried the PRC’s aspiration of expanding international influence as well as confidence in the superiority of Chinese socialism. To further fashion the PRC as a leader whose light of revolution and socialist modernity reached the far corners of the world, China’s Screen publicised documentaries shot in African countries. The documentary film Visit to Uganda was promoted in China’s Screen in 1965 to show that since independence, the people of Uganda ‘have overcome all manner of difficulties in their efforts to build their country’.92 An article on ‘Chinese Cameramen in Africa’ introduced other documentaries shot in Africa: The Horn of Africa, Independent Mali, An Ode to the Nile, The People of the Congo Will Certainly Win and Resolute Algeria.93 Tina Mai Chen suggests that this production of ‘knowledge-based’ films ‘points to an increased independence and self-confidence within the PRC by 1956’.94 Documentaries filmed in African countries with an ethnographic gaze provided knowledge about brotherly nations while demonstrating the international reach of China’s film technology, establishing China as ‘an alternative center of knowledge’.95 Echoing earlier film journals like Shangying Pictorial (Shangying huabao), which had proclaimed that ‘Chinese film reaches the world’, China’s Screen, with an international readership in mind, proudly presented the Chinese film industry as self-sufficient and technologically advanced.96 ‘Some Facts about New China’s Film Industry’, written by Chen Huangmei in 1964, emphasised that China was ‘self-sufficient with regard to film apparatus and equipment, while exporting some products’.97 Cinematic exchange, Chen Huangmei went on, improved ‘mutual understanding between peoples of the world’ and forged ‘solidarity and friendship among the peoples’.98 Self-sufficiency, which laid the ground for

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Chinese Revolutionary Cinema film export, was conceived as a major accomplishment: the PRC no longer relied on Soviet assistance and imports as it took on a leadership role, exporting film and forging a new solidarity with countries that had revolutionary and socialist potential. In addition to introducing Asian, African and Latin American films, China’s Screen advertised Chinese film to the world – which explains why the journal was published in Chinese, English, French and Spanish. The song and dance pageant The East is Red (Dongfanghong) was given extensive coverage. The East is Red proclaims the glory of revolution (and of Mao) in song and dance, telling the history of the Chinese revolution and its ensuing socialist construction. In ‘The East is Red: A Song and Dance Pageant’, China’s Screen described the performance as ‘revolutionary’, ‘national’ and ‘popular’.99 The journal’s extensive coverage of The East is Red, which was recorded on film in 1965, indicates the celebratory culmination of China’s self-image. In the period between the Sino –Soviet co-production Wind from the East and The East is Red, the PRC had displaced the Soviet Union as the leader of the ‘East’, whose revolutionary and socialist light emanated to the non-West: Asia, Africa, Eastern Europe and Latin America. China’s Screen also featured international reactions to highly acclaimed Chinese films. Highlighting the success of domestic films in the eyes of others was a way to propagate and project China’s self-image to the world. An article on ‘The White-Haired Girl Abroad’ celebrated the success of The White-Haired Girl (Wang Bin and Shui Hua, 1950), which was subtitled in English, French and Spanish and screened in more than 30 countries. The article cited the praise of the Algerian newspaper, Le Peuple, for ‘the skillful way in which the director and actors synthesized the beautiful singing and the story’.100 Quoting Le Peuple, China’s Screen wrote: ‘This wonderful film was made under the enlightening guidance of the theories on art and literature propounded by Mao Tse-tung in May 1942.’101 It was also reported that a representative of the Malian motion picture department, after seeing the film, said: ‘Without dubbing, without subtitles, the acting alone is enough to move an audience to tears.’102 Music and the corporeality of acting were said to have overcome language barriers to reinforce mutual understanding between the Chinese and the Algerian audience. The inclusion of illustrations from Algerian and Vietnamese newspapers and magazines gave the article a sense of ‘truth’,

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Visions of Internationalism in Chinese Film Journals albeit filtered by the state, in reporting the foreign success of The WhiteHaired Girl. Another article, ‘A Most Outstanding Film: Reactions of Viewers Abroad to Five Golden Flowers’, described Five Golden Flowers (Wang Jiayi, 1959), a romantic comedy in an exotic ethnic setting, as a ‘refreshing change’.103 The article reported that the foreign audience ‘remarked on the pure [and] serious love shown in the film, so different from the love interest and perverse[ly] decadent emphasis on sex found in many Western films’.104 The contrast with ‘Western’ romance was emphasised to underscore the radical difference and ‘refreshing change’ that Five Golden Flowers provided; little was said about the ways the film appropriated classical Hollywood narration or its dual plot of romance and work. Five Golden Flowers was fashioned by China’s Screen as an alternative entertainment (pure love without a decadent emphasis on sex) and an ideological form (ethnic harmony under the guidance of the Han elder brother). Its foreign popularity demonstrated that Chinese socialist films were more attractive than ‘Western films’. ‘Some foreign friends’, the article continued, compared the film music to paradise: ‘The music is surely from heaven. How rarely is it heard in the world of men!’105 Like the reported success of The White-Haired Girl, the popularity of Five Golden Flowers was partly attributed to music that appealed to an international audience despite linguistic differences.106 A shared cinematic language emphasising the intelligibility of music and the corporeality of screen acting was constructed and propagated to foster mutual understanding between ideal domestic and international audiences that shared a proper international subjectivity. The propaganda state’s cinematic experiment encompassed an ambitious vision of internationalism. Its reach spanned continents from the socialist bloc to Asia, Africa and Latin America. The cinematic experiment was an aesthetic experiment as much as it was a political project in nation building and creating an international order on the world stage. Chinese cultural authorities were heavily invested in testing what cinema could be: its emancipatory potential in calling for collective action, rousing revolutionary sentiments and liberating newly decolonised countries from their colonial past. Investing in a potentially socialist vision of internationalism and developing an anti-colonial rhetoric of solidarity were the means by which Chinese cultural authorities remapped

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Chinese Revolutionary Cinema world cinematic space, shifting from the discursive position of cultural marginality to that of a competing cinematic centre. Chinese film journals open up a neglected international dimension on the study of Chinese socialist cinema, in which national and international characters are closely intertwined. As a form of advertisement, mass persuasion and a site of knowledge production, where information was disseminated domestically and internationally, Chinese film journals offered a self-representation of Chinese socialist cinema as a revolutionary cinema. The sheer breadth and diversity of the films introduced in Chinese film journals demonstrated belief in collective strength in numbers. Extensive coverage of film festivals, film theories and films from abroad constructed an international worldview, a community and an identity that were revolutionary and anti-colonial, articulating the potential for a worldwide socialist revolution.

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Conclusion

Throughout the Seventeen Years from 1949 to 1966, film was a tool of propaganda and provocation. Its melding of ideology and aesthetics created dissatisfactions as well as radical aspirations for revolution. In periods of political relaxation, discontent and the desire for greater autonomy of the arts were unleashed. In periods of tightened political control, artists and critics were prosecuted, films were banned, and radical campaigns were initiated to rectify and remould artists and the masses. The dialectic of propaganda and its discontents (as well as the overcoming of those discontents) characterised the Seventeen Years before the Cultural Revolution. In Revolution and its Narratives, Cai Xiang describes the early 1960s as a crisis of socialism. Cai argues that symptoms of the Cultural Revolution already existed in the first half of the 1960s, when the establishment of an urban-centred socialist culture, an emerging middle class and consumer culture, and value identification with the West generated political anxiety that set off radical experiments to rectify ideology.1 For instance, the shortlived 1962 socialist star craze can be seen as a manifestation of this crisis of socialism, as the phenomenon depended on an emerging consumer culture and value identification with capitalism. In reaction to the political anxiety around revisionism and the Party’s lack of hegemony over what Xiaobing Tang calls the ‘anxiety over everyday life’, Mao initiated the mass campaign ‘Follow the Examples of Comrade Lei Feng’ in 1963, creating Lei Feng as a perfectly self-disciplined socialist icon for everyday mass emulation.2 At the same time, a nationwide campaign of studying Mao’s works emerged. To curb political anxiety over everyday life, revolutionary heroism spilled over to quotidian and everyday protagonists, and daily life became the site

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Chinese Revolutionary Cinema of class struggle. ‘Good people, good events’ (haoren haoshi) became the subject matter of film, exemplifying everyday heroism, everyday class struggle and socialist ethics. The moralisation of everyday life was to take on new intensity during the Cultural Revolution, which set off even more radical aesthetic experiments. Driven by political anxiety around revisionism, radical slogans were proposed, rejecting the old and privileging the new by establishing contemporary people and events (xinren xinshi) as the subject matter of film. In 1963, Ke Qingshi, mayor of Shanghai, proposed the radical slogan ‘feature the thirteen years’ (daxie shisannian), which called on artists to depict contemporary people and events of the 13 years since 1949 as the only proper reflection of socialist construction, negating pre-1949 people and events as subject matter. In the same year, Mao critiqued the dominance of ‘dead people’ from a bygone historical period as subject matter in various artistic forms such as dance, drama, film, fine art, music and poetry.3 The thematic and aesthetic preference for contemporary subject matter with a contemporary style was also articulated by Jiang Qing in ‘On the Revolution in Peking Opera’ (1964), which proposed radically revolutionising Peking opera in order to represent contemporary workers, peasants and soldiers. In a speech from the plenary discussion with performers after the modern Peking opera trial performance convention in Beijing in July 1964, Jiang Qing suggested that traditional operas should be ‘adapted and reworked’: ‘We advocate modern revolutionary dramas. We seek to reflect the real life of these fifteen years of nation building, and to model the image of the contemporary revolutionary hero on our opera stage.’4 Jiang Qing’s ideas later formed the basis of model opera films (yangbanxi) produced during the Cultural Revolution, when the production of fiction film came to almost a complete halt. The radical call to reject or revolutionise the old served to rectify ideology and negate the past by establishing yet another new, pioneering and revolutionary ideology. The political anxiety over revisionism and the idea of getting rid of the old manifested in a new rectification campaign in 1964, which targeted Xia Yan and Chen Huangmei, key players in the 1961 –2 Blooming and Contending. This rectification campaign involved a 16-month nationwide mass critique of films that were deemed ‘poisonous weeds’, such as Nie Er (Zheng Junli, 1959), The Lin Family Shop (Shui Hua, 1959), Big Li, Small

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Conclusion Li, and Old Li (Xie Jin, 1962), Early Spring in February (Xie Tieli, 1963) and Stage Sisters (Xie Jin, 1965). Produced as a result of political relaxation after the Great Leap Forward, these films were criticised for their entertainment value, promotion of ‘universal’ values such as human nature, romance and sisterhood, and their representation of the interior world and psychological struggles of intellectuals, artists and shop owners. After 1949, film criticism took the form of political campaign and political judgement, sometimes initiated by Mao himself (for instance, the Campaign against The Life of Wu Xun). In 1964, Mao mobilised cities throughout the country to organise public screenings of ‘poisonous’ films as negative examples. Most of the films produced during the Seventeen Years became targets of mass criticism. From 1964 to 1965, 724 critiques of Early Spring in February and 325 critiques of The Lin Family Shop were published in various national newspapers and periodicals.5 In 16 months, 1,772 critiques were published: an average of 110 a month and 3.7 a day.6 Written critiques were mostly produced by intellectuals, including prominent writers and film critics such as Ba Jin and Zhang Junxiang. Mass critiques and discussion sessions were variously held at the local level. Zhuoyi Wang has suggested that some ‘poisonous’ films paradoxically gained popularity because of the mass critique that Mao had initiated. Wang’s research uncovers unpublished materials, such as minutes of local level meetings, to reveal how ‘the masses attended the viewing sessions for diverse purposes and watched the films in various ways, often to the dismay of the authorities.’7 Early Spring in February, for instance, was especially welcomed by young viewers, who were impressed with its cinematography, love story and star power. The nationwide mass mobilisation against ‘poisonous’ films was another occasion for popular film viewing, but its goal was ideological remoulding, a prelude to the even more radical Cultural Revolution. This study has traced the evolution of a revolutionary aesthetic of heroism in Chinese socialist fiction film, from film adaptations of literature and family melodramas to war films featuring heroes and heroines.8 The cinematic evolution of a heightened sense of heroism was intertwined with evolving discourses on screenwriting, montage, screen acting and realism. The heroism emphasised before and during the Cultural Revolution was followed by a profound search for humanism in post-socialist China, as reflected in the ‘humanist spirit’ debate and discourse on post-socialist

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Chinese Revolutionary Cinema realism, which looked to Andr
e Bazin’s notion of cinema as a visual truth for theoretical guidance.9 Fifth-generation film-makers and various auteurs (such as Chen Kaige and Jia Zhangke) used long takes and onlocation shooting and avoided montage, subverting previous revolutionary conventions and creating an aestheticised post-socialist realism that focused on the human rather than the hero. The screen kiss (a cheek kiss) resurfaced in post-socialist films such as Romance on Lushan Mountain (Huang Zumo, 1980), essentially a love story that shows young people how to date and how to love. Critical study of the Seventeen Years allows us to unwind the trajectories of socialist and post-socialist realism and map the search for a cultural hero in Chinese revolutionary film discourse. In his study of Chinese socialist cinema after 1949, Paul Clark has also critically analysed an art form often seen as tainted by ideology: ‘The presumption seems to be that, in such a politicized culture, film has been simply a political tool in the hands of the national leadership [. . .] this book hopes to suggest otherwise.’10 The present study has tackled the challenge of reading filmic texts that are often referred to pejoratively as propaganda: cultural productions that strictly conformed to the dominant state ideology and were heavily censored by the state. Chinese revolutionary film as state propaganda was more than this: an aesthetic experiment that sought to develop the appeal and allure of revolution through massive mobilisation and trial and error. Some of its aesthetic impulses were rooted in the interwar avant-garde, commercial cinema and international discourse on realism – the untapped potential of which was rechannelled into a socialist ideological agenda after 1949. Further serious study of Chinese socialist cinema must cross the 1949 divide and locate its roots in the interwar period, including the Soviet turn in Chinese film discourse in the Republican era. The socialist aesthetic experiment produced a unique culture of film theory and criticism, which included ideological remoulding through selfcriticisms, political campaigns, judgements and persecutions. Yet, amidst the direst ideological discipline and punishment, dissent and creative energy were unleashed, and sometimes absorbed, re-evaluated and redirected by the Party. In the Hundred Flowers Campaign and the AntiRightist Campaign, Zhong Dianfei’s notion of the political, aesthetic and box office values of film was articulated and suppressed; but it resurfaced in the short-lived 1962 socialist star craze, when taboo terms such as ‘stars’

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Conclusion (mingxing) and ‘masters’ (dashi), associated with entertainment and art cinema, were redirected to revolutionary film discourse. Paul Pickowicz notes that many of the most memorable films of the Mao era were made in the immediate years following the Great Leap Forward because of relaxation and recovery after the Great Leap and the maturation of revolutionary aesthetics.11 Paul Clark has described the latter half of the Seventeen Years as moving towards ‘sinification’ of film, characterised by the acknowledgement of the May Fourth literary tradition and more ancient popular cultural traditions.12 Recognising state propaganda as aesthetic experiment allows us to reconceive the delicate and mutually dependent relationship between artistic autonomy, individual talent and the state as an ideological binding machine. The visual age of interwar propaganda continued onto the postwar period: fascism as the ‘third way’ died out, but the ideological and aesthetic competition between capitalism and socialism heightened during the Cold War, when each bloc extended its vision of internationalism to the newly decolonised Third World. In 1957, ‘Red China’s Big Push’ highlighted the attraction and artistic refinement of Chinese film: The films, good by any standard, attract [my emphasis] especially large audiences when dubbed in local languages. An American motion-picture expert, after examining Peking’s productions, observed that they showed ‘great production values and technical refinements.’ Unlike Hollywood, the Chinese tailor their product to the Asian market.13

Propaganda had to be appealing in the eye of the beholder in order for it to be an attractive and effective ideological form. In creating potential revolutionary subjects as an ideal audience, Chinese film-makers and cultural authorities invested in the visual, aural, kinaesthetic, sexual, ideological and ethical appeal of revolutionary film. The kinaesthetic rhythm generated by montage stimulated the eye and the ear. Where Sergei Eisenstein believed in the montage of attractions’ ability to generate a leap from sensory experience to rational thinking and revolutionary practice, Chinese film-makers distanced themselves from Eisenstein’s idea of intellectual cinema and invested in the cinematic stimulation of the senses. Their focus on sight and sound, punctuated by montage and the relay of gazes, sutured the ideal audience with rhetorical flourishes that conveyed a 177

Chinese Revolutionary Cinema glorified and heroic revolutionary cause. Chinese film-makers’ appropriation of classical Hollywood narration and the dual plot of romance (or family) and work tapped into libidinal energy to promote socialist work ethic, morality and family values. Their investment in star power, glamour and juvenated femininity created socialist female icons for mass emulation. Their appropriation of Stanislavski’s system served to regulate actors’ ideological remoulding, self-cultivation and self-transformation. A nuanced understanding of propaganda as aesthetic experiment accounts for the potential appeal of Chinese revolutionary film and provides us with critical tools to understand the limits and emancipatory possibilities of socialist cinema, as well as the ways in which such cinema, through the work of translation, engaged in dialogue with world cinema. The complexity of Chinese socialist cinema is just a small piece of our understanding of socialist culture. Joining efforts undertaken by scholars with a shared interest in socialist culture in the broadest sense of the word – socialist literature and socialist film in all genres – this study has emphasised the international connexions that Chinese revolutionary cinema made with other cinemas in terms of its aesthetic appropriations and international aspirations. Much more could be said about Chinese socialist cinema’s engagement with cinematic trends such as Italian neorealism and Japanese animation, or its exchange with cinemas from Asia, Africa, Eastern Europe and Latin America. In contextualising and historicising Chinese socialist cinema, looking beyond Hollywood and the Soviet connexion would yield insights from the peripheries of the socialist bloc and the decolonised Third World. A methodology that looks more closely at distribution and audience reception (albeit filtered by the state in official channels) might lead us to further rethinking of the parameters of Chinese socialist cinema. Along these lines, I find Weijia Du’s work especially interesting: Du sheds light on the important role of dubbed foreign film, which occupied a third to a half of total exhibition time in Chinese theatres in the Seventeen Years.14 As ‘indispensable fillers’ supplementing domestic production, dubbed foreign films were sheltered from much of the censorship imposed on domestic production;15 they could even betray the propagation of socialist ideology and ‘constituted a legitimate space of mild dissent’.16 Du’s examination of government documents, film company records and audience reception recollected in memoirs complements my focus on domestic production. Chinese socialist

178

Conclusion film culture was constituted by both domestic production and imported foreign film, whose distribution and reception remain under-studied. In both regards, Chinese film history is intimately intertwined with other film histories. Chinese revolutionary cinema opened up the emancipatory potential of cinema. It encompassed an ambitious socialist vision that went awry but nonetheless provided a source of solidarity for postwar experimental or revival cinemas from other parts of the world. The ambitious scope, depth of knowledge and creative manoeuvring demonstrated by Chinese filmmakers’ negotiation with the propaganda state reveal the richness and complexity of socialist cultural production and its international aspirations. Following Khrushchev’s policy of peaceful coexistence and the Soviet thaw, socialist countries had pursued different directions and formed different alliances, leading to the socialist bloc’s gradual disintegration and culminating in perestroika and the collapse of the Soviet Union. Deng Xiaoping’s 1978 ‘reform and opening’ initiated a socialist market economy under the banner of ‘socialism with Chinese characteristics’. In the domain of film, the revolutionary aesthetic of heroism before and during the Cultural Revolution came to be subverted, making way for a post-socialist aesthetic for a burgeoning commercial and global art cinema market. A critical look through the forgotten pages of film history, at the experimentations and legacies of Chinese revolutionary cinema, allows us to reimagine not only what cinema is, but what it could be.

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Notes

Introduction 1. See Kevin M. F. Platt and David Brandenberger, eds., Epic Revisionism: Russian History and Literature as Stalinist Propaganda (Madison: The University of Wisconsin Press, 2006). 2. Ibid., 9. 3. See Laikwan Pang, The Art of Cloning: Creative Production During China’s Cultural Revolution (New York: Verso, 2017). 4. Mao Zedong, ‘Talks at the Yan’an Forum on Literature and Art’, in Modern Chinese Literary Thought: Writings on Literature, 1893 –1945, ed. Kirk Denton (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1996), 474. 5. For more information about these genres, see Ying Bao, ‘The Problematics of Comedy: New China Cinema and the Case of L€u Ban’, Modern Chinese Literature and Culture 20.2 (2008): 185– 228; Ying Bao, ‘National Cinema, Local Language, Trans-regional Adaptation: Dialect Comedy in the Early People’s Republic of China’, Asian Cinema 21.1 (2010): 124–38; Daisy Yan Du, Animated Encounters: Transnational Movements of Chinese Animation, 1940s – 1970s (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 2018); Paola Iovene and Judith T. Zeitlin, eds., The Opera Quarterly 26.2 –3 (2010): 179 –492. 6. The 1960s witnessed a gradual thematic shift away from the grand narrative of revolution to the representation of everyday life in socialist society. Many fiction films produced in the 1960s turn to the mundane and the everyday in order to provide civic education, contrasting sharply with earlier fiction films in which larger-than-life Party members are the heroes and heroines. The conclusion briefly discusses fiction films that evoke a different sense of revolutionary heroism during the crisis of socialism in the 1960s. 7. Although Soviet short films and newsreels were shown in Harbin in the 1920s, it was not until 1931 that Soviet feature films were screened for public viewing in China. Battleship Potemkin (Броненосец ‘Потe€ мкин’) (Sergei Eisenstein, 1925) was the first Soviet feature film screened, in Shanghai in

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Notes to Pages 4 –8

8. 9. 10. 11.

12. 13.

14. 15. 16.

17. 18. 19. 20. 21.

22. 23. 24. 25. 26. 27.

1925. The semi-private screening was organised by the Soviet embassy as an invitation for the cultural circle in Nanguoshe in Shanghai. Paul Clark, Chinese Cinema: Culture and Politics Since 1949 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987), 6. Yomi Braester and Tina Mai Chen, ‘Film in the People’s Republic of China, 1949 –1979: The Missing Years’, Journal of Chinese Cinemas 5.1 (2011): 10. Ibid., 9. Miriam Bratu Hansen, ‘The Mass Production of the Senses: Classical Cinema as Vernacular Modernism’, in Reinventing Film Studies, eds. Christine Gledhill and Linda Williams (London: Arnold, 2000), 341. See Zhang Zhen, An Amorous History of the Silver Screen: Shanghai Cinema 1896 – 1937 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005). Huang Zibu (Xia Yan), ‘Shenglu ping yi’ (On The Road to Life I), in Sanshi niandai Zhongguo dianying pinglun wenxuan, ed. Chen Bo (Beijing: Zhongguo dianying chubanshe, 1993), 656. Ibid. Ibid. The ‘soft film’ and ‘hard film’ debate between 1933 and 1934 revolved around the tension between film as education, reinforcing leftist ideology, and film as entertainment (which itself is an ideology). Huang Jiamo, in an essay titled ‘Hard Film and Soft Film’ published in Xiandai Dianying (1933), advocated the slogan ‘film is ice cream for the eyes and sofa for the soul’ against leftist ideology and revolutionary slogans. In retaliation, Xia Yan wrote a scathing criticism titled ‘The Cataracted “Business Eyes” – Who Has Destroyed the Newborn Cinema in China?’ in Chenbao (1934) against the entertainment orientation of soft-film theorists. For a more detailed discussion of the debate, see Zhang, An Amorous History of the Silver Screen, 267– 74. Huang Zibu (Xia Yan), ‘Shenglu ping yi’, 655. Ibid., 654. Ibid., 655. Chen Liting, ‘Kan Shenglu’ (Watching The Road to Life), in Sanshi niandai Zhongguo dianying pinglun wenxuan, 667. ‘Zhongguo dianying congyeyuan de Shenglu guanhougan’ (Chinese film workers’ thoughts on The Road to Life), in Sanshi niandai Zhongguo dianying pinglun wenxuan, 670. Ibid. Ibid. Hong Shen and Xi Naifang (Zheng Boqi), ‘Shenglu xiangping’ (On The Road to Life), in Sanshi niandai Zhongguo dianying pinglun wenxuan, 661. ‘Zhongguo dianying congyeyuan de Shenglu guanhougan’, 670. Ibid. Wang Qixun, ‘Shenglu ping er’ (On The Road to Life II), in Sanshi niandai Zhongguo dianying pinglun wenxuan, 658.

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Notes to Pages 8 –11 28. The line between entertainment and education is not necessarily as clear-cut as the rhetoric in film discourse suggests. By the 1930s, left-wing Chinese film-makers had mastered classical Hollywood narration, playfully adapting the dual plots of heterosexual romance and work for pedagogical messaging and entertainment purposes in films such as Queen of Sports (Sun Yu, 1934). 29. Xia Yan, ‘Tan Sulian dianying de jiaoyu jiazhi’ (On the pedagogical value of Soviet film), in Xia Yan quanji, vol. 6 (Zhejiang: Zhejiang wenyi chubanshe, 2005), 203. 30. See Zhuoyi Wang, Revolutionary Cycles in Chinese Cinema 1951 – 1979 (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014). Also notable is Paul Clark’s Chinese Cinema: Culture and Politics Since 1949, a pioneering study of Chinese socialist cinema since 1949. 31. The study of Soviet mass culture in the 1920s and 1930s has been revolutionised since 1991 by the declassification of important archives. See Katerina Clark and Evgeny Dobrenko, eds., Soviet Culture and Power: A History in Documents, 1917 – 1953 (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2007). 32. See Rey Chow, Primitive Passions: Visuality, Sexuality, Ethnography, and Contemporary Chinese Cinema (New York: Columbia University Press, 1995). 33. See Zhang, An Amorous History of the Silver Screen. Zhang’s study is a major breakthrough in Chinese film studies in the sense that the work considers the development of early Chinese cinema not in isolation, but as a historical event interconnected with world politics and aesthetic trends. Zhang looks at the ways in which Hollywood cinema, as what Miriam Hansen calls ‘vernacular modernism’, was translated, domesticated and put into local use during the Republican era in semi-colonial Shanghai. Building upon the works of scholars such as Kristine Harris, Leo Ou-fan Lee and Yingjin Zhang (1999), who read early Chinese cinema as constitutive of the urban culture in Shanghai, Zhang reconceptualises early Chinese cinema as a form of vernacular modernism in the semi-colonial context of Shanghai, going a step further than previous efforts undertaken by Laikwan Pang (2002) and Vivian Shen (2005) in locating the ‘left-wing cinema movement’ in the historically confined period from 1932 to 1937. 34. Braester and Chen, ‘Film in the People’s Republic of China, 1949 – 1979: The Missing Years’, 5. 35. Ibid., 7. 36. Ibid., 6. 37. See Cai Xiang, Revolution and its Narratives: China’s Socialist Literary and Cultural Imaginaries, 1949 – 1966, trans. Rebecca E. Karl and Xueping Zhong (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2016). 38. Ban Wang, The Sublime Figure of History: Aesthetics and Politics in TwentiethCentury China (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1997), 124.

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Notes to Pages 11 –13 39. Chris Berry, Postsocialist Cinema in Post-Mao China: The Cultural Revolution After the Cultural Revolution (New York: Routledge, 2004), 27 –75. 40. Stephanie Hemelryk Donald, Public Secrets, Public Spaces: Cinema and Civility in China (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2000), 59– 62. 41. Tina Mai Chen, ‘Internationalism and Cultural Experience: Soviet Films and Popular Chinese Understandings of the Future in the 1950s’, Cultural Critique 58 (2004): 82– 114. 42. See Weihong Bao, ‘The Politics of Remediation: Mise-en-Scene and the Subjunctive Body in Chinese Opera Film’, The Opera Quarterly 26.2 –3 (2010): 256– 90; Xinyu Dong, ‘Meeting of the Eyes: Invented Gesture, Cinematic Choreography, and Mei Lanfang’s Kun Opera Film’, The Opera Quarterly 26.2 –3 (2010): 200 – 19. 43. See Jason McGrath, ‘Cultural Revolution Model Opera Films and the Realist Tradition in Chinese Cinema’, The Opera Quarterly 26.2 – 3 (2010): 343– 76. 44. See Qi Wang, ‘Those Who Lived in a Wallpapered Home: The Historical Space of the Socialist Chinese Counter-Espionage Film’, Journal of Chinese Cinemas 5.1 (2011): 55– 71; Matthew D. Johnson, ‘The Science Education Film: Cinematizing Technocracy and Internationalizing Development’, Journal of Chinese Cinemas 5.1 (2011): 31 –53. 45. See Chen Huangmei, ed. Dangdai Zhongguo dianying (Contemporary Chinese cinema). 2 vols (Beijing: Zhongguo shehui kexue chubanshe, 1989); Meng Liye, Xin zhongguo dianying yishu shigao, 1949 – 1959 (A history of new China’s film Art) (Beijing: Zhongguo dianying chubanshe, 2002); Qi Xiaoping, Xianghua ducao: hongse niandai de dianying mingyun (Fragrant flowers and poisonous weeds: the fate of films during the red years) (Beijing: Dangdai Zhongguo chubanshe, 2006); Qi Zhi (Wu Di), Mao Zedong shidai de renmin dianying, 1949 – 1966 (People’s cinema in Mao Zedong’s era) (Taipei: Xiuwei zixun keji gufen youxian gongsi, 2010); Wu Di, ed. Zhongguo dianying yanjiu ziliao, 1949 – 1979 (Research materials on Chinese cinema). 3 vols (Beijing: Wenhua yishu chubanshe, 2006). 46. See Hong Hong, Sulian yingxiang yu Zhongguo shiqinian dianying (Chinese cinema during the ‘Seventeen Years’ and its Soviet influence) (Beijing: Zhongguo dianying chubanshe, 2008). 47. Braester and Chen, ‘Film in the People’s Republic of China, 1949 – 1979: The Missing Years’, 7. 48. See Jie Li and Enhua Zhang, eds, Red Legacies in China: Cultural Afterlives of the Communist Revolution (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2016). 49. ‘(Re)Inventing China: A New Cinema for a New Society, 1949 – 1966’, Moving Image Source, accessed December 15, 2017, http://www.moving imagesource.us/events/reinventing-china-a-new-cinema-for-20090926.

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Notes to Pages 13 –16 50. ‘Walker Art Center and University of Minnesota Present the People’s Republic of Cinema’, Walker Art Center, accessed December 15, 2017, https://walkerart. org/press-releases/2009/walker-art-center-and-university-of-minnesota. 51. See Wang, Revolutionary Cycles in Chinese Cinema, 11. Wang uses the term ‘revolutionary cinema/films’ to replace ‘communist cinema/films’ because the latter term ‘has been too frequently associated with a static understanding that this cinema, in its entirety, served one single agenda: communist propaganda’. He meticulously delineates the dramatic shifts in revolutionary campaigns, which he calls ‘revolutionary cycles’, in order to reveal the diverse individual calculations and conflicting agendas of film artists, audiences, critics, bureaucrats and Party authorities as they negotiated and competed for power and meaning. Wang argues that revolutionary films were ‘discursive sites open to multifarious struggles and conflicts during the revolutionary cycles, which did not follow a single, coherent propagandistic line in the first place.’ 52. David Brandenberger, Propaganda State in Crisis: Soviet Ideology, Indoctrination, and Terror under Stalin, 1927 – 1941 (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2011), 5. For an earlier study of the development of Bolshevik propaganda, see Peter Kenez, The Birth of the Propaganda State: Soviet Methods of Mass Mobilization 1917 – 1929 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1985). 53. Clark and Dobrenko, Soviet Culture and Power, xii. 54. Katerina Clark, Petersburg, Crucible of Cultural Revolution (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1995), 1. 55. Katerina Clark, Moscow, the Fourth Rome: Stalinism, Cosmopolitanism, and the Evolution of Soviet Culture, 1931 – 1941 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2011), 11. 56. Ibid., 12. 57. For a detailed study of the Campaign against The Life of Wu Xun, see Wang, Revolutionary Cycles in Chinese Cinema, 25–43. 58. Clark and Dobrenko, Soviet Culture and Power, xiv. 59. Pang, The Art of Cloning, 14. 60. Ibid., 15. 61. Mao Dun, ‘Zai fandongpai yabi xia douzheng he fazhan de wenyi’ (The struggling literature and art under the oppression of reactionaries), in Zhongguo dianying yanjiu ziliao, 1949 – 1979, vol. 1, ed. Wu Di (Beijing: Wenhua yishu chubanshe, 2006), 21. 62. Alice Lovejoy’s pioneering study on cinema and experiment in the Czechoslovak military sheds light on the ‘critical role that state institutions played in the development of the “Czechoslovak film miracle,” even at politically repressive moments’. She argues that ‘auteurs can be useful to institutions – and institutions useful to auteurs.’ See Alice Lovejoy, Army Film and the Avant Garde: Cinema and Experiment in the Czechoslovak Military (Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 2015).

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Notes to Pages 18 –22 63. Clark, Moscow: The Fourth Rome, 16. 64. Likewise, in his study of the Soviet reception of Western visitors in the interwar period, Michael David-Fox highlights the paradox that ‘imported ideas were used to construct notions of Russian uniqueness’. See Michael David-Fox, Showcasing the Great Experiment: Cultural Diplomacy and Western Visitors to the Soviet Union, 1921–1941 (New York: Oxford University Press, 2012), 12. 65. Nicolai Volland, Socialist Cosmopolitanism: The Chinese Literary Universe, 1945–1965 (New York: Columbia University Press, 2017), 169–86. In his study, Volland traces the continuity between open cosmopolitanism in the Republican era and rarely acknowledged cosmopolitan aspirations in the socialist era. 66. Walter Benjamin, ‘The Work of Art in the Age of its Technological Reproducibility’, in Selected Writings, ed. Michael W. Jennings. Vol. 3 (Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press, 2002), 101 – 33. 67. Mao, ‘Talks at the Yan’an Forum on Literature and Art’, 468. 68. Fernando Solanas and Octavio Getino, ‘Towards a Third Cinema’, accessed December 15, 2017, http://documentaryisneverneutral.com/words/camas gun.html. 69. Ibid. 70. Ibid. 71. Ibid. 72. Ibid. 73. Ibid. 74. In terms of cinematic conventions, the use of montage and low/high-angle shots to accentuate power relations between oppressing classes and the oppressed is a common feature shared by third cinema and Chinese revolutionary film. However, the use of close-up shots and camera movements motivated by individual psychology differentiates Chinese revolutionary film from third cinema and aligns it more closely with Hollywood entertainment cinema. Chinese revolutionary film retains the entertainment value of fiction film (a foremost concern of Hollywood cinema) to strengthen the educational impact of film as a dual form of entertainment and education. For a set of cinematic conventions of third cinema, see Teshome H. Gabriel, ‘Towards a Critical Theory of Third World Films’, in Questions of Third Cinema, eds. Jim Pines and Paul Willeman (London: British Film Institute, 1989), 46–7. 75. Markus Nornes, Cinema Babel: Translating Global Cinema (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2007), 66. 76. See Lawrence Venuti, The Translator’s Invisibility: A History of Translation (New York: Routledge, 1995), 1 –42. 77. See Victor Fan, Cinema Approaching Reality: Locating Chinese Film Theory (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2015). 78. Nornes, Cinema Babel, 66. 79. Ibid., 69. 80. Andrew F. Jones, Yellow Music: Media Culture and Colonial Modernity in the Chinese Jazz Age (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2001), 11.

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Notes to Pages 23 –9

1

Propaganda and Film Aesthetics

1. Robert S. Elegant, ‘Red China’s Big Push’, Newsweek, September 30, 1957, 124. 2. Ibid. 3. Ibid. 4. Ibid. 5. Weihong Bao, ‘“A Vibrating Art in the Air”: Cinema, Ether, and Propaganda Film Theory in Wartime Chongqing’, New German Critique 41.2 (2014): 187. 6. Matthew D. Johnson, ‘Propaganda Film’, Journal of Chinese Cinemas 10.1 (2016): 17. 7. For more details about film censorship, see Qizhi (Wu Di), Mao Zedong shidai de renmin dianying 1949 – 1966 (People’s cinema in Mao Zedong’s era) (Taipei: Xiuwei zixun keji gufen youxian gongsi, 2010), 53– 65. 8. Johnson, ‘Propaganda Film’, 18. 9. See Iwasaki Akira, ‘Senden, sendoushudan toshiteno eiga’ (Film as a tool of propaganda and provocation), in Eiga to shihon shugi (Tokyo: Oraisha, 1931), 97– 124. 10. Lu Xun, ‘Xiandai dianying yu youchan jieji’ (Modern film and the bourgeoisie), in Lu Xun quanji, vol. 4 (Beijing: Renmin wenxue chubanshe, 2005), 418–9. 11. Ibid., 419. 12. Ibid., 418. 13. Eric Cazdyn, The Flash of Capital: Film and Geopolitics in Japan (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2002), 56 –7. 14. Zhang Zhen, An Amorous History of the Silver Screen: Shanghai Cinema 1896 – 1937 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005), 65. 15. Ibid. 16. Liu Siping and Xing Zuwen, eds., Lu Xun yu dianying: zilao huibian (Lu Xun and film: collected essays) (Beijing: Zhongguo dianying chubanshe, 1981), 176. 17. Ibid., 183. 18. Ibid., 188. 19. Iwasaki, ‘Senden, sendoushudan toshiteno eiga’, 97 –8. 20. Lu, ‘Xiandai dianying yu youchan jieji’, 399. 21. Iwasaki, ‘Senden, sendoushudan toshiteno eiga’, 103– 4, 110, 117. 22. Ibid., 102. 23. Walter Benjamin, ‘The Work of Art in the Age of its Technological Reproducibility’, in Selected Writings, ed. Michael W. Jennings. Vol. 3 (Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press, 2002), 121. 24. Quoted in Jeffrey T. Schnapp, ‘Fascinating Fascism’, Journal of Contemporary History 31.2 (1996): 237.

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Notes to Pages 29 –34 25. Emily Braun, ‘Expressionism as Fascist Aesthetic’, Journal of Contemporary History 31.2 (1996): 275. Expressionist styles were also used by apolitical and even openly anti-fascist artists like Scipione or Renato Guttuso. 26. George L. Mosse, ‘Fascist Aesthetics and Society: Some Considerations’, Journal of Contemporary History 31.2 (1996): 252. 27. Lutz P. Koepnick, ‘Fascist Aesthetics Revisited’, Modernism/modernity 6.1 (1999): 55. 28. Ibid. 29. Timothy A. Brennan, ‘Postcolonial Studies Between the European Wars: An Intellectual History’, in Marxism, Modernity, and Postcolonial Studies, eds. Crystal Bartolovich and Neil Lazarus (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), 191–3. 30. Bao, ‘“A Vibrating Art in the Air”’, 183. 31. Johnson, ‘Propaganda Film’, 18. 32. Laikwan Pang, ‘Between Will and Negotiation: Film Policy in the First Three Years of the People’s Republic of China’, in The Oxford Handbook of Chinese Cinemas, ed. Carlos Rojas and Eileen Chow (New York: Oxford University Press, 2013), 483. 33. For a detailed study of the Campaign against The Life of Wu Xun, see Zhuoyi Wang, Revolutionary Cycles in Chinese Cinema 1951 – 1979 (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014), 25 –43. 34. Pang, ‘Between Will and Negotiation’, 481. 35. Yomi Braester, ‘A Genealogy of Cinephilia in the Maoist Period’, in The Oxford Handbook of Chinese Cinemas, eds. Carlos Rojas and Eileen Chengyin Chow (New York: Oxford University Press, 2013), 110. 36. Victor Fan, Cinema Approaching Reality: Locating Chinese Film Theory (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2015), 6. 37. Hu Qiaomu, ‘Wenyi gongzuozhe weishenme yao gaizao sixiang’ (Why should artists undergo ideological remoulding), in Zhongguo dianying yanjiu ziliao, 1949 – 1979, vol. 1, ed. Wu Di (Beijing: Wenhua yishu chubanshe, 2006), 213. 38. Ibid. 39. Ibid., 212. 40. Mao Zedong, ‘Zai wenxue yishujie kaizhan zhengfeng xuexi’ (Initiate a rectification campaign in literature and art), in Zhongguo dianying yanjiu ziliao, 1:216. 41. See Wang, Revolutionary Cycles in Chinese Cinema, 25 –43. 42. Xian Qun, ‘Guanyu “ke bu keyi xie xiao zichan jieji” wenti’ (On the question ‘can we write about petty bourgeoisie’), in Zhongguo dianying yanjiu ziliao, 1:43 – 4. 43. L€u Ban, ‘Wo renshi le wo de cuowu sixiang’ (I recognised my flawed ideology), in Zhongguo dianying yanjiu ziliao, 1:222. 44. Cai Chusheng, ‘Gaizao sixiang, wei guanche mao zhuxi wenyi luxian er fendou’ (Remould our thoughts to realise chairman Mao’s vision of literature and art), in Zhongguo dianying yanjiu ziliao, 1:249.

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Notes to Pages 34 –7 45. Ibid., 250. 46. Ibid., 249. 47. Shi Dongshan, ‘Renzhen xuexi, nuli gaizao ziji’ (Diligently remould myself through serious learning), in Zhongguo dianying yanjiu ziliao, 1:259. 48. Ibid., 261. 49. Ibid., 262. 50. Ibid., 263. 51. Zheng Junli, ‘Wo bixu tongqie de gaizao ziji’ (I must resolutely remould myself), in Zhongguo dianying yanjiu ziliao, 1:280. 52. Ibid., 283. 53. Mao Dun, ‘Zai fandongpai yabi xia douzheng he fazhan de wenyi’ (The struggling literature and art under the oppression of reactionaries), in Zhongguo dianying yanjiu ziliao, 1:21. 54. Ibid. 55. Shi Dongshan, ‘Muqian dianying yishu de zuofa’ (Our current film method), in Zhongguo dianying yanjiu ziliao, 1:37. 56. Chen Bo’er, ‘Gushipian congwu daoyou de biandao gongzuo’ (The screenwriting and directing of fiction film from scratch), in Zhongguo dianying yanjiu ziliao, 1:63. 57. Ibid. 58. Zhou Yang, ‘Zai quanguo diyijie dianying juzuo huiyi shang guanyu xuexi shehui zhuyi xianshi zhuyi wenti de baogao’ (A report on the learning of socialist realism at the First National Conference on Screenwriting), in Zhongguo dianying yanjiu ziliao, 1:331. 59. Ibid., 331– 2. 60. Ibid., 332– 3. Zhou Yang’s suggestions were inspired by Soviet socialist realism, officially adopted in the PRC in 1953. Katerina Clark suggests that the novel of socialist realism is ‘a novel of work, with a hero who gives himself a task; he will join with allies; he will meet with opponents.’ According to Clark, Soviet fiction often situates protagonists in ‘the tension between spontaneity and consciousness’ as the protagonists learn to discipline themselves under the guidance of mentors on the path to transformation. See Katerina Clark, The Soviet Novel: History as Ritual (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1981), 257–9. 61. Ibid., 334. 62. Ibid., 338. 63. Chen Huangmei, ‘Guanyu dianying juben chuangzuo wenti’ (On the question of screenwriting), in Zhongguo dianying yanjiu ziliao, 1:381. 64. Ibid. 65. Ibid., 383. 66. Ibid., 384. 67. Ibid. 68. Ibid., 386.

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Notes to Pages 38 –41 69. Chen Huangmei, ‘Lun zhengmian renwu de suzao’ (On the creation of positive characters), in Zhongguo dianying yanjiu ziliao, 1:438. 70. Ibid., 431. 71. Ibid., 440– 1. 72. Ibid., 439. 73. Zhou Yang’s and Chen Huangmei’s perspectives on romance and love were inspired by Soviet socialist realism. Regine Robin suggests that Soviet socialist realist fictions typically have a ‘basic narrative paradigm’ and a ‘secondary narrative paradigm’: the former introduces ‘a goal in the public sphere and in collective life’, whereas the latter introduces ‘the characters’ private lives’, which ‘often leave something to be desired’. See Regine Robin, Socialist Realism: An Impossible Aesthetic, trans. Catherine Porter (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1992), 259. 74. Cai Chusheng, ‘Dui 1954 nian dianying chuangzuo gongzuo de buchong fayan’ (A supplementary speech on film-making in 1954), in Zhongguo dianying yanjiu ziliao, 1:405. 75. Ibid., 411. 76. Ibid., 410. 77. Ibid. 78. Ibid., 401. 79. Chen Huangmei, ‘Yu “Zai jing bianju zuotanhui” shang de fayan’ (A speech from the discussion session on screenwriting in Beijing), in Zhongguo dianying yanjiu ziliao, 1:365. 80. Shi Dongshan, ‘Guanyu women de chuangzuo de jidian yijian’ (A few opinions on our creative work), in Zhongguo dianying yanjiu ziliao, 1:393. 81. Ibid., 395– 6. 82. Ibid., 397. 83. Ibid. 84. Hu Feng, ‘Zuowei cankao de jianyi’ (Suggestions for reference), in Zhongguo dianying yanjiu ziliao, 1:453. 85. Wenhui Daily Editorial, ‘Weishenme hao de guochanpian zheyang shao’ (Why are there few excellent domestic films), in Zhongguo dianying yanjiu ziliao, 2:33. Wenhui Daily lists two exceptions: Liang Shan-bo and Zhu Yingtai (Sang Hu and Huang Sha, 1954) and Reconnaissance across the Yangtze (Tang Xiaodan, 1954). The two films had attendance rates in Shanghai of 94 and 85 per cent, respectively. See Wenhui Daily Editorial, ‘Guochan yingpian shangzuol€u qingkuang buhao, bu shou guanzhong huanying de shi ying yinqi dianying zhipianchang de zhongshi’ (Weak attendance rate and unpopularity of domestic film requires attention from film studios), in Zhongguo dianying yanjiu ziliao, 2:33 – 4. 86. Wenhui Daily Editorial, ‘Weishenme hao de guochanpian zheyang shao’, 32. 87. Ibid. From 1949 to 1956, 155 fiction films were made. The seven-year output is equivalent to a year’s output in the PRC before 1949 and six months’ output

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Notes to Pages 41 –5

88. 89.

90. 91. 92.

93. 94. 95. 96. 97. 98. 99. 100. 101. 102. 103. 104. 105. 106. 107. 108.

in Hong Kong and Japan. See Qi Zhi (Wu Di), Mao Zedong shidai de renmin dianying, 1949 –1966, 266. Wenhui Daily Editorial, ‘Guochan yingpian shangzuolu€ qingkuang buhao’, 34. Chen Liting, ‘Daoyan yinggai shi yingpian shengchan de zhongxin huanjie’ (Directors should be at the centre of film production), in Zhongguo dianying yanjiu ziliao, 2:48. Li Xing, ‘Guanzhong xuyao kan shenmeyang de yingpian’ (What kind of film does the audience watch), in Zhongguo dianying yanjiu ziliao, 2:75. Zhong Dianfei, ‘Dianying de luogu’ (Gongs and drums of cinema), in Zhongguo dianying yanjiu ziliao, 2:78. Ibid., 78– 9. Zhong’s view was denounced as city-centric by Yuan Wenshu as it took into account box office and revenue data from Shanghai only. See Yuan Wenshu, ‘Cong yingpian de piaofang jiazhi shuoqi’ (On box-office value), in Zhongguo dianying yanjiu ziliao, 2:101. Tang Zhenchang, ‘Gaijin shengao zhidu’ (Improve the system for reviewing film scripts), in Zhongguo dianying yanjiu ziliao, 2:36– 7. Mu Bai, ‘Paishe guocheng zhong de “qinggui jiel€u”’ (Commandments during shooting), in Zhongguo dianying yanjiu ziliao, 2:50. Lao She, ‘Jiujiu dianying’ (Save our cinema), in Zhongguo dianying yanjiu ziliao, 2:58. Ibid. Shi Hui, ‘Zhongshi zhongguo dianying de chuantong’ (Value the tradition of Chinese cinema), in Zhongguo dianying yanjiu ziliao, 2:60. Chen Liting, ‘Daoyan yinggai shi yingpian shengchan de zhongxin huanjie’, 48. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid., 49. Sun Yu, ‘Zunzhong dianying de yishu chuantong’ (Respect the aesthetic tradition of cinema), in Zhongguo dianying yanjiu ziliao, 2:54. Wu Zuguang, ‘Dang “chenzao bie lingdao yishu gongzuo”’ (Party, please don’t lead artistic work), in Zhongguo dianying yanjiu ziliao, 2:117. Shanggong Yunzhu, ‘Rang wushu maicang de zhubao fangguang’ (Let numerous hidden jewels shine), in Zhongguo dianying yanjiu ziliao, 2:43. Ibid., 44. Le Yan, ‘Yanyuan de kunao’ (Actors’ frustrations), in Zhongguo dianying yanjiu ziliao, 2:66. Shanggong, ‘Rang wushu maicang de zhubao fangguang’, 44. Han Fei, ‘Meiyou xiju ke yan’ (No comedies to perform), in Zhongguo dianying yanjiu ziliao, 2:56. In his three-year stint in Hong Kong, Han Fei appeared in more than 20 films. However, Han appeared in only one film and did mostly dubbing in the four years after he moved to Shanghai.

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Notes to Pages 45 –8 109. Sun Jinglu, ‘Zui zhongyao de shi guanxin ren’ (Caring for others is the most important), in Zhongguo dianying yanjiu ziliao, 2:42. 110. Shanggong, ‘Rang wushu maicang de zhubao fangguang’, 43. 111. Sun Jinglu, ‘Zui zhongyao de shi guanxin ren’, 41. 112. Le Yan, ‘Yanyuan de kunao’, 67. 113. Ibid. 114. ‘Guanyu tigao yishu zhiliang de baogao (jie lu)’ (A report on raising aesthetic quality), in Zhongguo dianying yanjiu ziliao, 2:271. 115. Xia Yan, ‘Wei dianying shiye de jixu dayuejin er fendou’ (Let’s continue to strive for the Great Leap in film production), in Zhongguo dianying yanjiu ziliao, 2:275 –6. 116. ‘Wenhua bu guanyu cujin dianying faxing fangying gongzuo dayuejin de tongzhi’ (A notice by the Ministry of Culture on the promotion of the Great Leap in film distribution and projection), in Zhongguo dianying yanjiu ziliao, 2:183. 117. Ibid., 184. 118. ‘Wenhua bu guanyu gedi dianying zhipianchang de jianshe fangzhen xiang zhongyang de qingshi baogao’ (A report by the Ministry of Culture on the construction plan for film studios in various regions), in Zhongguo dianying yanjiu ziliao, 2:258. 119. Chen Huangmei, ‘Xiang geming de xianshi zhuyi he geming de langman zhuyi qianjin de kaishi’ (Marching towards revolutionary realism and revolutionary romanticism), in Zhongguo dianying yanjiu ziliao, 2:241. 120. Yuan Wenshu, ‘Xin de shenghuo yaoqiu xin de biaoxian xingshi’ (New life requires a new expressive form), in Zhongguo dianying yanjiu ziliao, 2:244. 121. Ibid. 122. For a detailed analysis of the documentary-style art film Rhapsody of the Shisanling Reservoir (Yu Yanfu, 1958), see Wang, Revolutionary Cycles in Chinese Cinema, 101– 9. 123. Cai Chusheng, ‘Shi lun jiluxing yishupian’ (On documentary-style art film), in Zhongguo dianying yanjiu ziliao, 2:291. 124. Chen, ‘Xiang geming de xianshi zhuyi he geming de langman zhuyi qianjin de kaishi’, 242. 125. As Zhuoyi Wang suggests, some documentary-style art films have science fiction elements inspired by Soviet science fiction. 126. Qi Zhi (Wu Di), Mao Zedong shidai de renmin dianying, 346. 127. Cai, ‘Shi lun jiluxing yishupian’, 293. 128. The GLF itself can be considered as another rectification campaign, during which almost half of the fiction films produced in 1957 were criticised due to their association with the Hundred Flowers Campaign. 129. Xia Yan, ‘Zai taolun yishupian fang weixing zuotanhui shang de baogao’ (A report on launching satellites in fiction film), in Zhongguo dianying yanjiu ziliao, 2:216. 130. Ibid., 214– 16.

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Notes to Pages 48 –51 131. Ibid., 215. 132. Ibid., 216. 133. ‘Wenhua bu guanyu gedi dianying zhipianchang de jianshe fangzhen xiang zhongyang de qingshi baogao’, 259. 134. Zhou Enlai, ‘Zhou Enlai guanyu wenyi gongzuo liangtiaotui zoulu wenti de jianghua’ (Zhou Enlai’s speech on ‘walking on two legs’ in literature and art), in Zhongguo dianying yanjiu ziliao, 2:268 –9. 135. Ibid., 269. 136. ‘Guanyu tigao yishu zhiliang de baogao (jie lu)’, 272. 137. Ibid. 138. Ibid. 139. Ibid. 140. Ibid., 273. 141. Ibid. 142. Ibid. Chapter Four discusses how age mattered in actors’ casting for heroic roles. 143. Xia Yan, ‘Yiding yao tigao dianying yishu de zhiliang’ (We must raise the quality of film art), in Zhongguo dianying yanjiu ziliao, 1949 – 1979, 2:306. 144. Ibid., 309. 145. Xia Yan, ‘Wei dianying shiye de jixu dayuejin er fendou’, 276. 146. Merle Goldman uses the term ‘the Blooming and Contending of 1961 – 2’ to describe the relative relaxation after the Great Leap Forward. The driving force behind relaxation was Liu Shaoqi, rather than Mao, who had been instrumental in initiating previous relaxations, especially the Hundred Flowers Campaign. See Goldman, ‘Party Policies Toward the Intellectuals: The Unique Blooming and Contending of 1961 – 2’, in Party Leadership and Revolutionary Power in China, ed. John Wilson Lewis (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1970), 268 – 303. Zhuoyi Wang calls the political relaxation after the GLF the ‘Second Hundred Flowers Period’. See Wang, Revolutionary Cycles, 128. 147. Chen Huangmei, ‘Zai Beiying chuangzuo huiyi shang de fayan’ (A speech at the creative conference at the Beijing Film Studio), in Zhongguo dianying yanjiu ziliao, 2:318. 148. Chen Huangmei, ‘Zai Beiying, Bayi liangchang bufen lingdao tongzhi he chuangzuo ganbu zuotanhui shang de jianghua’ (Remarks from a discussion session with leaders and cadres at the Beijing Film Studio and the August First Studio), in Zhongguo dianying yanjiu ziliao, 2:322– 4. 149. Ibid., 322. 150. Ibid., 329. 151. Ibid., 330. 152. Ibid., 334. 153. Ibid. 154. Ibid. 155. Ibid., 335.

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Notes to Pages 52 –6 156. The proposals in the drafted documents were never executed due to another rectification campaign in 1963. 157. Zhou Enlai, ‘Zai wenyi gongzuo zuotanhui he gushipian chuangzuo huiyi shang de jianghua’ (A speech at the National Discussion Plenum on Artistic Work and the National Conference on Fiction Film), in Zhongguo dianying yanjiu ziliao, 2:352. 158. Ibid. 159. Zhou Yang, ‘Zai quanguo gushipian chuangzuo huiyi shang de fayan’ (A speech at the National Conference on Fiction Film), in Zhongguo dianying yanjiu ziliao, 2:362. 160. Cai Chusheng, ‘Mantan sihao – zai yici zuotanhui shangde fayan’ (The four excellences – a speech in a discussion session), in Zhongguo dianying yanjiu ziliao, 2:377. 161. Ibid. 162. Zhou Yang, ‘Zai quanguo gushipian chuangzuo huiyi shang de fayan’, 362. 163. Wang, Revolutionary Cycles in Chinese Cinema, 132. 164. See Cai Xiang, Revolution and its Narratives: China’s Socialist Literary and Cultural Imaginaries, 1949 – 1966, trans. Rebecca E. Karl and Xueping Zhong (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2016), 357 –402.

2

Literature on Screen: Recasting Classical Hollywood Narration in Family Melodrama 1. Although This Life of Mine and The New Year’s Sacrifice do not feature revolution and hardly evoke heroism, these two films are chosen for analysis because they played an important role in the evolution of screenwriting. As a revolutionary family melodrama, Revolutionary Family employed narrative and cinematic devices that overcame traces of negativity in May Fourth and pre-1949 literature like This Life of Mine and ‘The New Year’s Sacrifice’. 2. Emily Yueh-yu Yeh, ‘Wenyi and the Branding of Early Chinese Film’, Journal of Chinese Cinemas 6.1 (2012): 70, 72. The term ‘Mandarin Duck and Butterfly School’ was used pejoratively in the late 1910s to refer to the ‘classical-style love stories of a small, but very widely read, group of authors who made liberal use of the traditional symbols of mandarin ducks and butterflies for pairs of lovers.’ See Perry Link, Mandarin Ducks and Butterflies: Popular Fiction in Twentieth Century Chinese Cities (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1981), 7. 3. Ibid., 65. 4. Xia Yan (Shen Naixi) (1900 –95), whose career spanned almost the entire twentieth century, was one of the pioneering screenwriters of Chinese film. Xia Yan joined the Chinese Communist Party in 1927 and was one of the leaders of the League of Left-Wing Writers when it formed in 1930. He translated Maksim Gorky’s novel Mother, as well as Vsevolod Pudovkin’s

193

Notes to Pages 56 –65

5. 6. 7. 8. 9.

10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19.

20. 21. 22. 23. 24.

The Film Director and Film Material in collaboration with Zheng Boqi (see Chapter Three). After 1932 Xia Yan became involved in film circles and adapted several screenplays such as Mao Dun’s Spring Silkworms (Chuncan). In 1955 Xia Yan was appointed Vice-Minister of Culture, but was removed from the post ten years later in 1965. He was subjected to harsh criticism and spent more than eight years in prison during the Cultural Revolution (1966– 76). Xia Yan was rehabilitated in 1978 and his complete works were anthologised and published in 2005. Xia Yan, Xie dianying juben de jige wenti (A few questions about screenwriting) (Beijing: Renmin wenxue chubanshe, 1978), 1– 2. Ibid., 7. Ibid., 8. Ibid., 4. David Bordwell, ‘Classical Hollywood Cinema: Narrational Principles and Procedures’, in Narrative, Apparatus, Ideology: A Film Theory Reader, ed. Philip Rosen (New York: Columbia University Press, 1986), 22. Ibid., 19. Ibid., 26 –7. Ibid., 29. Xia Yan, Xie dianying juben de jige wenti, 2– 3. Ibid., 35. Ibid., 9. Ibid., 12. Ibid. Ibid., 36. See Victor Fan, Cinema Approaching Reality: Locating Chinese Film Theory (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2015) for his discussion of the term ‘bizen’ (approaching reality) in Chinese film discourse in the Republican era. Xia Yan, Xie dianying juben de jige wenti, 37. Ibid., 54. Ibid., 58. Ibid., 44. Sang Hu (Li Peilin) (1916 –2004), one of the most prolific directors in Chinese film history, adapted and directed over 30 films in various genres throughout his career. Sang Hu pioneered the three ‘firsts’ in Chinese cinema: the first colour opera film Liang Shanbo and Zhu Yingtai (1954), the first colour narrative film The New Year’s Sacrifice (1956), and the first threedimensional narrative film (liti gushipian) Adventures of the Magician (1962). A fan of Peking opera as well as Hollywood film, Sang Hu established himself in the film circle in 1941 with his first screenplay Spirit and Flesh (Ling yu rou) under the guidance of Zhu Shilin. Sang Hu also collaborated with Zhang Ailing and directed Long Live the Wife (1947), and continued to make films such as Midnight (1981) after the Cultural Revolution.

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Notes to Pages 65 –8 25. Xia Yan, ‘Zatan gaibian’ (On adaptation), in Zhufu: cong xiaoshuo dao dianying (Beijing: Zhongguo dianying chubanshe, 1959), 119; Sang Hu, Sang Hu daoyan wencun (Writings of director Sang Hu) (Beijing: Beijing daxue chubanshe, 2007), 238. 26. Jin Cao, ‘Dianying juben hao, dianying ye hao: luetan yingpian zhufu jiqi juben’ (The film script is good, the film is good too: a few words on The New Year’s Sacrifice and its script), Renmin Ribao, 22 October, 1956. 27. Yuan Xuefen (1922 –2011), a renowned yueju actress, played an important role in yueju reform in the 1940s. When the yueju Xianglin Sao was first made into a film in 1948, film production was delayed significantly since neither the director nor the actors had any experience in film studio. It was said that even though over 20,000 feet of negatives – enough for more than two films – were consumed in four months, the film was still not finished. Additional filming was needed since there was no way to edit what had already been filmed. See ‘Xianglin Sao manmanliu’ (The slow-moving Xianglin Sao), Qingchun dianying 14 (1948): no pagination. For more details about Nan Wei’s film script, see Harry Kuoshu, Lightness of Being in China: Adaptation and Discursive Figuration in Cinema and Theater (New York: Peter Lang, 1999), 51– 70. 28. Harry Kuoshu argues that the influence of the 1956 film adaptation was so strong that ‘the later Shaoxing opera versions of Xianglin Sao (1956, 1962) were really its reiterations rather than the revisions of Nan Wei’s original adaptation in the same opera form.’ See Kuoshu, Lightness of Being in China, 56. 29. Xia Yan, ‘Zatan gaibian’, 119. 30. Theodore Huters, ‘Ideologies of Realism in Modern China: The Hard Imperatives of Imported Theory’, in Politics, Ideology, and Literary Discourse in Modern China, eds. Kang Liu and Xiaobing Tang (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1993), 154. 31. Pascale Casanova, The World Republic of Letters, trans. M. B. Debevoise (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2004). 32. Marston Anderson, The Limits of Realism: Chinese Fiction in the Revolutionary Period (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990), 91. 33. David Der-wei Wang, Fictional Realism in Twentieth-Century China: Mao Dun, Lao She, Shen Congwen (New York: Columbia University Press, 1992), 10. 34. Lu Hsun, ‘The New Year’s Sacrifice’, in Selected Stories of Lu Hsun, trans. Yang Hsien-yi and Gladys Yang (New York: W. W. Norton, 2003), 143. 35. Ibid., 128 (with my modified translation). 36. Realism, according to Erich Auerbach, creates multiple consciousnesses and gives voices to the low. Edward Said conceives realism as the third seminal point of Western literary history, succeeding the first and second seminal points when Christianity shatters the classical balance between high and low, after which reality is represented as human in Dante’s The Divine Comedy.

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Notes to Pages 68 –71

37.

38. 39. 40. 41. 42.

43.

44. 45.

46. 47. 48. 49.

See Auerbach, Mimesis: The Representation of Reality in Western Literature, trans. Willard R. Trask (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1953). Marston Anderson, ‘The Morality of Form: Lu Xun and the Modern Chinese Short Story’, in Lu Xun and His Legacy, ed. Leo Ou-fan Lee (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1985), 41. Lu Hsun, ‘The New Year’s Sacrifice’, 140. Barbara Herrnstein Smith, Contingencies of Value: Alternative Perspectives for Critical Theory (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1988), 45. Ibid., 44. Huters, ‘Ideologies of Realism in Modern China’, 152. Charles Laughlin notes that the 1920s witnessed a passage from ‘literary revolution’ to ‘revolutionary literature’, which involved ‘reconceptualizing literature as no longer the end of a process of revolutionary change but a means to, an instrument of, social revolution.’ See Laughlin, ‘The Debate on Revolutionary Literature’, in The Columbia Companion to Modern Chinese Literature, ed. Kirk Denton (New York: Columbia University Press, 2016), 159. Mao Zedong, ‘Talks at the Yan’an Forum on Literature and Art’, in Modern Chinese Literary Thought: Writings on Literature, 1893 – 1945, ed. Kirk Denton (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1996), 479 – 80. Ibid., 470, 474. Socialist realism was adopted as an official doctrine at the First Soviet Writers’ Congress in 1934. According to Lorenz Bichler, the use of the term ‘socialist realism’ in China can be divided into three phases (1) From the 1930s to 1953, socialist realism was considered a strictly Soviet phenomenon. In his talks in Yan’an, Mao Zedong used the term ‘proletarian realism’ instead (2) Beginning in 1953, the term ‘socialist realism’ was used in Chinese discourse as a Chinese phenomenon. Zhou Enlai, at the Second Congress of Representatives of Literary and Art Workers, said that ‘“the realism of socialism” was from now on to be the highest principle for all works in literature and the arts.’ (3) After Mao’s proclamation of the ‘combination of revolutionary realism and revolutionary romanticism’ in 1958, the use of the term ‘socialist realism’ was avoided in Chinese discourse. See Lorenz Bichler, ‘Coming to Terms with a Term’, in In the Party Spirit: Socialist Realism and Literary Practice in the Soviet Union, East Germany and China, eds. Hilary Chung, et al. (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1996), 31 –6. For more information on the historical relationship between ‘socialist realism’ and the ‘combination of revolutionary realism and revolutionary romanticism’, see Lan Yang, ‘“Socialist Realism” versus “Revolutionary Realism Plus Revolutionary Romanticism”’, in In the Party Spirit, 88 –105. Xia Yan, ‘Zatan gaibian’, 119. Ibid., 115. Ibid., 117. Paul Clark, Chinese Cinema: Culture and Politics Since 1949 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987), 110.

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Notes to Pages 72 –80 50. Smith, Contingencies of Value, 50. 51. Sang Hu, ‘Zhufu daoyan chanshu’ (A few words from the director of The New Year’s Sacrifice), in Zhufu: cong xiaoshuo dao dianying, 129; Jin Cao, ‘Dianying juben hao, dianying ye hao’. 52. Li Chenglie, ‘Tan yingpian zhufu de yishu chengjiu’ (On the artistic accomplishments of The New Year’s Sacrifice), in Zhufu: cong xiaoshuo dao dianying, 151. 53. Sang Hu, ‘Zhufu daoyan chanshu’, 129. 54. See Sang Hu, Sang Hu daoyan wencun, 239. Sang Hu recalled that at the time, he was quite proud of the tight editing of this specific sequence. However, when he watched the film once again in 1978, Sang Hu felt uncomfortable watching the sequence, which he described as ‘artificial’. The ‘artificiality’, conceived retrospectively by the director (and possibly by us), emerges not so much from the director’s immature editing skills, but from the different expectations of how much romantic enticement is permissible on screen in different ideological contexts. In an era when Hollywood movies were denounced, the Hollywood convention of portraying romantic love was on the contrary creatively appropriated. 55. Xiao Liu, ‘Red Detachment of Women: Revolutionary Melodrama and Alternative Socialist Imaginations’, differences 26.3 (2015): 122. 56. Linda Williams, Playing the Race Card: Melodramas of Black and White from Uncle Tom to O. J. Simpson (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2002), 12. 57. Ibid., 38. 58. Peter Brooks, The Melodramatic Imagination (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1995), 5. 59. Thomas Elsaesser, ‘Tales of Sound and Fury: Observations on the Family Melodrama’, in Home is Where the Heart Is: Studies in Melodrama and the Woman’s Film, ed. Christine Gledhill (London: British Film Institute, 1987), 50. 60. Mao, ‘Talks at the Yan’an Forum on Literature and Art’, 470. 61. Bai Yang, Wo de yingju shengya (My life in screen acting) (Beijing: Zhongguo dianying chubanshe, 1996), 18. 62. Sang Hu, Sang Hu daoyan wencun, 160. 63. Bai Yang, Wo de yingju shengya, 19 –20. 64. Yuan Xuefen, Qiusuo rensheng yishu de zhendi (In search for the truth of art in life) (Shanghai: Shanghai yishu chubanshe, 2002), 107. 65. Xia Yan, ‘Zatan gaibian’, 120. 66. Lin Zhihao. ‘Guanyu Xianglin Sao kan menlan de xijie’ (Details about the threshold scene), in Zhufu: cong xiaoshuo dao dianying, 160. 67. Xia Yan, ‘Zatan gaibian’, 121; Lu Hsun, ‘The New Year’s Sacrifice’, 135 (with my modified translation). 68. Li Chenglie, ‘Tan yingpian zhufu de yishu chengjiu’, 150. 69. Xia Yan, ‘Zatan gaibian’, 120– 1.

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Notes to Pages 81 –9 70. Bai Yang, Wo de yingju shengya, 12. 71. Krista Van Fleit Hang, Literature the People Love: Reading Chinese Texts from the Early Maoist Period (1949 – 1966) (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013), 18. 72. Xiao Liu, ‘Red Detachment of Women’, 126. 73. Ibid., 125. 74. Stephen Teo suggests that ‘the style and content of The Lin Family Shop is redolent of the social melodramas of the 1930s – the so-called “progressive” films produced between 1932 and 1937 in Shanghai.’ The film tells the story of the protagonist Mr. Lin (the small fish), who struggles to maintain his business as he delays payment to his creditors (the big fish) again and again. A melodramatic turning point of the narrative comes when the corrupted official lays his eyes on Mr. Lin’s daughter as a potential concubine. Because Mr. Lin refuses to marry his daughter off as a concubine, his safety and business are threatened. The film ends with the culmination of class conflict: Mr. Lin and his daughter leave town, leaving a widow (the shrimp) in desperation. See Teo, ‘The Lin Family Shop: A Chinese Melodrama of Capitalist Existentialism’, senses of cinema 28 (2003), accessed December 15, 2017, http://sensesofcinema.com/2003/cteq/lin_family_shop. 75. See Yang, ‘“Socialist Realism” versus “Revolutionary Realism Plus Revolutionary Romanticism”’, 91. Mao’s notion of ‘revolutionary realism’ is distinctive from Soviet socialist realism. Although ‘socialist realism’ was adopted as a Chinese phenomenon from 1953 to 1956, it was re-evaluated worldwide due to de-Stalinisation in the Soviet Union in 1956. 76. As will be discussed in Chapter Four, the gendered representation of women and the Party that constitutes revolutionary family finds echoes in Song of Youth and The Red Detachment of Women. 77. Mark Shiel, Italian Neorealism: Rebuilding the Cinematic City (London: Wallflower Press, 2006), 6.

3

Translating Soviet Montage 1. Weihong Bao, ‘The Politics of Remediation: Mise-en-scene and the Subjunctive Body in Chinese Opera Film’, The Opera Quarterly 26.2 –3 (2010): 256. 2. See Stephanie Hemelryk Donald, Public Secrets, Public Spaces: Cinema and Civility in China (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2000), 59– 62; Ban Wang, The Sublime Figure of History: Aesthetics and Politics in TwentiethCentury China (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1997), 124. 3. Jason McGrath, ‘Communists Have More Fun! The Dialectics of Fulfillment in Cinema of the People’s Republic of China’, World Picture 3 (2009), accessed December 17, 2017, http://www.worldpicturejournal.com/WP_3/ McGrath.html.

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Notes to Pages 89 –92 4. Although there has been effort to highlight the innovative use of montage in Chinese films such as The New Woman (Cai Chusheng, 1934), Street Angel (Yuan Muzhi, 1937) and Stage Sisters (Xie Jin, 1965), discussion of montage in Chinese cinema tends to be brief and deserves more in-depth study, especially with regard to how and why Soviet montage was translated and adapted by Chinese film-makers. See Chris Berry, Postsocialist Cinema in Post-Mao China: The Cultural Revolution After the Cultural Revolution (New York: Routledge, 2004), 43 –50; Robert Chi, ‘The Red Detachment of Women: Resenting, Regendering, Remembering’, in Chinese Films in Focus II, ed. Chris Berry (New York: BFI/Palgrave Macmillan, 2008), 192; Ning Ma, ‘The Textual and Critical Difference of Being Radical: Reconstructing Chinese Leftist Films of the 1930s’, Wide Angle 11.2 (1989): 24 –5; Laikwan Pang, Building a New Cinema in China: The Chinese Left-wing Cinema Movement, 1932 – 1937 (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2002), 144–50; Zhang Zhen, An Amorous History of the Silver Screen: Shanghai Cinema 1896 – 1937 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005), 249 – 84. 5. The French verb monter means ‘to mount’ or ‘to assemble’. As a film term, montage means ‘editing’ in the general sense; i.e., how shots are put together to make up a film. 6. Cheng Bugao, Yingtan yijiu (Memories of the film world) (Beijing: Zhongguo dianying chubanshe, 1983), 161. 7. Hong Shen, Dianying shuyu cidian (A dictionary of film terms) (Shanghai: Tianma shudian, 1935), 264. 8. See Xia Yan, ‘Dianying daoyan lun’ (On film director), Xia Yan quanji: yizhu, vol. 12 (Zhejiang: Zhejiang wenyi chubanshe, 2005), 753 –97. Pudovkin’s The Film Director and Film Material (1926) was translated into German in 1928 and into English by Ivor Montagu in 1929. Pudovkin was the first of the Soviet directors to have his writings translated into English, over a decade before Jay Leyda translated Sergei Eisenstein’s The Film Sense. For more details about Pudovkin as a film-maker and a theorist, see Vsevolod Pudovkin, ‘The Film Script (The Theory of the Script) [1926]’, Selected Essays, trans. Richard Taylor and Evgeni Filippov, ed. Richard Taylor (London: Seagull Books, 2006), 32– 64. 9. Lydia Liu, The Clash of Empires: The Invention of China in Modern World Making (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2004), 110. 10. Various Soviet films and newsreels were introduced into China (especially Harbin) before the public screening of Storm Over Asia in 1931. For example, Battleship Potemkin (Броненосец Потемкин) (Sergei Eisenstein, 1925) was the first Soviet feature film screened in Shanghai in 1925. The semi-private screening was organised by the Soviet embassy as an invitation for the cultural circle in Nanguoshe in Shanghai. 11. Xia Yan, Xia Yan quanji: dianying pinglun (Selected works of Xia Yan: film criticism), vol. 6 (Zhejiang: Zhejiang wenyi chubanshe, 2005), 192.

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Notes to Pages 92 –5 12. See Shen Fengwei, ‘Tan “mengtaiqi”’ (On ‘montage’), Xinyingtan 4 (1943): 18 –19; Shen Fengwei, ‘Zaitan “mengtaiqi”’ (On ‘montage’ again), Xinyingtan 6 (1943): 19. 13. Shen, ‘Tan “mengtaiqi”’, 18. 14. Montage was also associated with photography, but the term ‘photomontage’ was not introduced until after World War I by the German dadaists (though the method existed as early as the 1860s). The Soviet director Lev Kuleshov was the first person to use the term ‘montage’ in relation to film. In 1916, Kuleshov announced that ‘the fundamental source of cinematic impact upon the viewer [...] is montage, that is, the alternation of shots.’ See Lev Kuleshov, ‘Art of the Cinema’, Kuleshov on Film, ed. Ronald Levaco (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1974), 47 –8. In the late 1910s, Kuleshov carried out a series of experiments (known as the ‘Kuleshov experiments’) and concluded: ‘The basic strength of cinema lies in montage, because with montage it becomes possible both to break down and to reconstruct and ultimately to remake the material.’ Kuleshov was a teacher and mentor to both Pudovkin and Eisenstein. See Yuri Tsivian, ‘The Rediscovery of a Kuleshov Experiment: A Dossier’, Film History 8.3 (1996): 358. 15. Amy Sargeant, Vsevolod Pudovkin: Classic Films of the Soviet Avant-Garde (New York: I.B.Tauris Publishers, 2001), xiv –xxi. 16. The biggest disagreement between Pudovkin and Eisenstein lies in ‘montage as series’ (сцепление) versus ‘montage as collision’ (столкновение). The former refers to the unrolling of an event through a series of fragments, whereas the latter refers to the collision of shots that gives rise to an abstract idea. Eisenstein writes: ‘A graduate of the Kuleshov school, he [Pudovkin] zealously defends the concept of montage as a series of fragments (сцепления кусков). In a chain. ‘Bricks’. Bricks that expound an idea serially. I opposed him with my view of montage as a collision (столкновение), my view that the collision of two factors gives rise to an idea.’ See Eisenstein, ‘Beyond the Shot’, Selected Works, vol. 1, ed. Richard Taylor (London: BFI, 1988), 144. Pudovkin speaks of the forceful direction of the spectators, whereas Eisenstein speaks of ‘a series of blows to the [audience’s] consciousness and emotions’. See Sargeant, Vsevolod Pudovkin, 174. 17. Vsevolod Pudovkin, ‘The Film Script (The Theory of the Script) [1926]’, Selected Essays, trans. Richard Taylor and Evgeni Filippov, ed. Richard Taylor (London: Seagull Books, 2006), 32– 64. 18. Pudovkin, ‘The Film Script (The Theory of the Script)’, 63. 19. Ibid. 20. Shen, ‘Zaitan “mengtaiqi”’, 19. 21. Given Pudovkin’s appraisal and refinement of Griffith’s film method, one could say that, stylistically, Pudovkin was no revolutionary at all. Amy Sargeant suggests that Pudovkin’s chief purpose may have been ‘no more than to codify and lend testimony to techniques which he judged had proved themselves already efficacious elsewhere’. In this sense, Chinese film-makers’ preference

200

Notes to Pages 95 –8

22.

23.

24.

25. 26. 27. 28. 29. 30. 31.

32.

for the more pragmatic Pudovkin over the esoteric Eisenstein is not surprising. See Sargeant, Vsevolod Pudovkin, xxv. While Chinese translators in the 1930s were interested in Soviet montage as a formal experiment in the strict sense, various films from the 1930s onwards had brief examples of Soviet-style montage as well as more numerous examples of Hollywood-style montage sequences (which should not be confused with Soviet montage). A Hollywood-style montage sequence is a segment of film that condenses a passage of time into a succession of images connected by dissolves, fades, wipes or superimpositions. In suggesting that montage is often mobilised for political critique by leftwing film-makers, I do not mean that montage as a cinematic technique is inherently ideological. In fact, the same cinematic technique is used in films such as Little Angel (Wu Yonggang, 1935) and Song of China (Fei Mu, 1935) to promote the Nationalist official ideology and to serve a different political objective. Nonetheless, as argued earlier in this chapter, the revolutionary allure of Soviet montage held an attraction for left-wing film-makers such as Cai Chusheng, who experimented with the novel technique. The revolutionary song ‘Huangpu River’ was censored for its anti-imperialist lyrics on its original release in 1935. While it is impossible to retrieve original audience reactions to the sound effects of the film, I suggest that the director’s intention to include the song in the montage sequence (on both the narrative and formal level) was a creative attempt to strengthen the emotional and political effects of montage as Shanghai cinema transitioned to the sound era. Beginning in 1933, songs from films such as Twin Sisters (Zheng Zhengqiu, 1933) and Song of the Fisherman (Cai Chusheng, 1934) became hugely popular among Chinese audiences. Shen, ‘Zaitan “mengtaiqi”’, 19. Shen, ‘Tan “mengtaiqi”’, 19. Shen, ‘Zaitan “mengtaiqi”’, 19. Bao, ‘The Politics of Remediation’, 268. Zhou Yang, China’s New Literature and Art (Peking: Foreign Languages Press, 1954), 87. See Sergei Eisenstein, Dianying yishu sijiang (The film sense), trans. Qi Zhou (Beijing: Shidai chubanshe, 1953). Bao suggests that the notion of a ‘cinematic means of expression’ emerges as the idea gained currency in the 1950s and early 1960s: ‘Editing, particularly montage (mengtaiqi) and decoupage ( jingtou fenqie and jingtou zujie), were considered key modes of cinematic expression.’ For a more detailed discussion of the opera film debates that revolved around the tensions between cinematic and operatic means of expression, see Bao, ‘The Politics of Remediation’, 265. See Sergei Eisenstein, Aisensitan lunwen xuanji (Selected writings of Sergei Eisenstein) (Beijing: Zhongguo dianying chubanshe, 1962); Vsevolod Pudovkin, Puduofujin lunwen xuanji (Selected writings of Vsevolod Pudovkin) (Beijing: Zhongguo dianying chubanshe, 1962).

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Notes to Pages 98 –117 33. Xia Yan, Xie dianying juben de jige wenti (A few questions about screenwriting) (Beijing: Renmin wenxue chubanshe, 1978), 66. 34. Shi Dongshan, Dianying yishu zai biaoxian xingshi shang de jige tedian (Several characteristics of the cinematic means of expression) (Beijing: Zhongguo dianying chubanshe, 1958), 69. 35. Zhang Junxiang, Guanyu dianying de teshu biaoxian shouduan (On the specific means of cinematic expression) (Beijing: Zhongguo dianying chubanshe, 1959), 12. 36. Ibid. 37. Sergei Eisenstein, Dianying yishu sijiang, 261– 2. 38. Shi Dongshan, ‘Bi “mengtaiqi” de hunluan jieshi’ (Against confusing explanations of ‘montage’), in Ershi shiji zhongguo dianying lilun wenxuan, vol. 1, ed. Luo Yijun (Beijing: Zhongguo dianying chubanshe, 2003), 348. 39. Ibid., 348– 9. 40. Shi Dongshan, Dianying yishu zai biaoxian xingshi shang de jige tedian, 68– 9. 41. Shi Dongshan, ‘Bi “mengtaiqi” de hunluan jieshi’, 349. 42. Xia Yan, Xie dianying juben de jige wenti, 62. 43. Ibid., 67. Xia Yan emphasised narrative logic and diegetic contiguity, that is, Pudovkin’s ‘montage as series’, as opposed to Eisenstein’s ‘montage as collision’. 44. Ibid., 61. 45. Ji Zhifeng, Mengtaiqi jiqiao qiantan (A brief introduction to montage techniques) (Beijing: Zhongguo dianying chubanshe, 1962), 2. 46. Shi Dongshan, ‘Bi “mengtaiqi” de hunluan jieshi’, 348. 47. Cheng Bugao, Yingtan yijiu, 141. 48. Shen, ‘Zaitan “mengtaiqi”’, 18. 49. Zhang Junxiang, Guanyu dianying de teshu biaoxian shouduan, 4. 50. Tom Gunning, ‘The Cinema of Attractions: Early Film, its Spectator and the Avant-Garde’, in Early Cinema: Space, Frame, Narrative, ed. Thomas Elsaesser and Adam Barker (London: BFI Publishing, 1990), 58. 51. David Bordwell, Narration in the Fiction Film (Madison: The University of Wisconsin Press, 1985), 249. 52. McGrath, ‘Communists Have More Fun’, no pagination. 53. David Bordwell, Narration in the Fiction Film, 249. 54. Zhang Junxiang, Guanyu dianying de teshu biaoxian shouduan, 21. 55. Ibid., 19. 56. Stephanie Donald, Public Secrets, Public Spaces, 62. 57. Ibid., 60, 62. 58. Ibid., 59. 59. Ji Zhifeng, Mengtaiqi jiqiao qiantan, 39. 60. See Ban Wang, The Sublime Figure of History, 124; McGrath, ‘Communists Have More Fun’, no pagination. 61. Jason McGrath suggests: ‘the spectatorial desire to see the potential romance consummated is redirected to the didactic function of a cinema explicitly

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Notes to Pages 117 –23 aimed at serving the Communist revolution.’ For more details on the sublimation process in terms of film narrative technique, see McGrath, ‘Communists Have More Fun’. 62. Sergei Eisenstein, ‘Sergei Eisenstein: The Montage of Attractions’, in The Film Factory: Russian and Soviet Cinema in Documents 1896 – 1939, trans. Richard Taylor, eds. Richard Taylor and Ian Christie (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1988), 88. 63. Tina Mai Chen, ‘International Film Circuits and Global Imaginaries in the People’s Republic of China, 1949 –57’, Journal of Chinese Cinemas 3.2 (2009): 159.

4

Socialist Glamour: The Socialist Star Craze, Stanislavski’s System and Cinematic Iconography of the Gaze 1. See Screen, May 1962. 2. See Kinema Junpo 315 (July 1962); Kinema Junpo 325 (November 1962). 3. See Richard deCordova, Picture Personalities: The Emergence of the Star System in America (Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2001), 140. 4. Dong Yang, ‘Shei zhizao le “22 da mingxing”’ (Who made the 22 big stars), Wenshi cankao 65 (2012): 29. 5. Zhou Yang, ‘Zai quanguo gushipian chuangzuo huiyi shang de fayan’ (A speech at the National Conference on Fiction Film), in Zhongguo dianying yanjiu ziliao, 2:362. 6. Liu Shu, Yongheng de xingchen: Xinzhongguo 22 da dianying mingxing huazhuan (shang) (Eternal stars: New China’s 22 big movie stars album, vol. 1) (Beijing: Shijie zhishi chubanshe, 2009), 29. The 22 Soviet stars included: Boris Fyodorovich Andreyev, Aleksey Vladimirovich Batalov, Sergei Fedorovich Bondarchuk, Aleksandr Borisov, Nikolay Konstantinovich Cherkasov, Boris Petrovich Chirkov, Vladlen Semyonovich Davydov, Vladimir Vasilievich Druzhnikov, Lyudmila Markovna Gurchenko, Sergei Safonovich Gurzo, Izolda Vasilyevna Izvitskaya, Pavel Petrovich Kadochnikov, Nikolai Afanasyevich Kryuchkov, Marina Alekseyevna Ladynina, Vasily Semyonovich Lanovoy, Tamara Fyodorovna Makarova, Vera Petrovna Maretskaya, Lyubov Petrovna Orlova, Lidiya Nikolayevna Smirnova, Oleg Aleksandrovich Strizhenov, Vyacheslav Vasilyevich Tikhonov and Georgi Aleksandrovich Yumatov. 7. Ibid., 31. 8. Ibid. 9. Ibid., 34. Side-by-side advertising of Chinese and Soviet films was a common practice in the 1950s. For example, the Chinese revolutionary film Zhao Yiman (Sha Meng, 1950) was circulated in China alongside the Stalinist classic Zoya (Lev Arnshtam, 1944) in the early 1950s and on its re-release in the 1960s. For a

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Notes to Pages 123 –7

10. 11.

12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18.

19. 20. 21.

22. 23. 24.

25.

26. 27. 28.

discussion of socialist and international star culture and how Soviet film stars were received, discussed and debated in China in the 1950s and 1960s, see Tina Mai Chen, ‘Socialism, Aestheticized Bodies, and International Circuits of Gender: Soviet Female Film Stars in the People’s Republic of China, 1949– 1969’, Journal of the Canadian Historical Association 18.2 (2007): 53–80. Ibid. The 22 Big Stars included: Cui Wei, Xie Tian, Chen Qiang, Zhang Ping, Yu Lan and Xie Fang from the Beijing Film Studio; Zhao Dan, Bai Yang, Zhang Ruifang, Shanggong Yunzhu, Qin Yi, Wang Danfeng and Sun Daolin from the Shanghai Film Studio; Li Yalin, Zhang Yuan, Pang Xueqin and Jin Di from the Changchun Film Studio; Tian Hua, Wang Xingang and Wang Xiaotang from the August First Film Studio; and Zhu Xijuan from the Shanghai Theatre Academy. Liu Shu, Yongheng de xingchen: Xinzhongguo 22 da dianying mingxing huazhuan (shang), 43 –4. Ibid., 44. DeCordova, Picture Personalities, 92. Ibid., 112– 3. Ibid., 140. Ibid., 143. Michael G. Chang, ‘The Good, the Bad, and the Beautiful: Movie Actresses and Public Discourse in Shanghai, 1920s –1930s’, in Cinema and Urban Culture in Shanghai, 1922 – 1943, ed. Yingjin Zhang (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1999), 129. Ibid., 136. Gaylyn Studlar, Precocious Charm: Stars Performing Girlhood in Classical Hollywood Cinema (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2013), 2, 6. Hu Die was internationally well known for her dual performance in Twin Sisters (Zheng Zhengqiu, 1933). She attended the Moscow International Film Festival and the Berlin Film Festival in 1935. Jason McGrath, ‘Cultural Revolution Model Opera Films and the Realist Tradition in Chinese Cinema’, The Opera Quarterly 26.2 –3 (2010): 356– 7. Ibid., 359. See Joshua Goldstein, ‘From Teahouse to Playhouse: Theaters as Social Texts in Early-Twentieth-Century China’, The Journal of Asian Studies 62.3 (2003): 753– 79. Feng Xizui, ‘Tan neixin biaoyan’ (On interior performance), in Zhongguo wusheng dianying, ed. Dai Xiaolan (Beijing: Zhongguo dianying chubanshe, 1996), 914. See Cheng Bugao, ‘Gelifeisi chenggongshi 1 – 5’ (Short biography of D. W. Griffith), Dianying zazhi 1.1 –1.5 (1924). Michael G. Chang, ‘The Good, the Bad, and the Beautiful’, 154. See Kristine Harris, ‘The New Woman Incident: Cinema, Scandal, and Spectacle in 1935 Shanghai’, in Transnational Chinese Cinemas: Identity,

204

Notes to Pages 127 –31

29.

30.

31.

32. 33.

34.

35. 36.

37. 38. 39. 40.

Nationhood, Gender, ed. Sheldon Lu (Hawaii: University of Hawaii Press, 1997), 277–302. For details about Zheng Junli’s career, see Paul G. Pickowicz, ‘Zheng Junli, Complicity and the Cultural History of Socialist China, 1949 –1976’, The China Quarterly 188 (2006): 1048 – 69; Zheng Junli, Zheng Junli quanji (The collected works of Zheng Junli), 8 vols, ed. Li Zhen (Shanghai: Shanghai wenhua chubanshe, 2016). See Richard Boleslavsky, Acting: The First Six Lessons (New York: Theatre Arts Inc., 1933); Richard Boleslavsky, Yanji liujiang (Six lessons on acting), trans. Zheng Junli (Hong Kong: Yingyi chubanshe, 1963). See Constantin Stanislavski, An Actor Prepares, trans. Elizabeth Reynolds Hapgood (New York: Theatre Arts Books, 1965); Constantin Stanislavski, Yanyuan ziwo xiuyang (An actor’s self-cultivation), trans. Zheng Junli and Zhang Min (Beijing: Sanlian shudian, 1950). Zheng Junli’s translation of Stanislavski’s An Actor Prepares is based on Elizabeth Reynolds Hapgood’s English translation, which was published in 1936, before publication of the Russian original. For more information on copyrights and the discrepancies between Hapgood’s translation and Stanislavski’s original, see Jean Benedetti, Stanislavski: An Introduction (New York: Routledge, 2004). See Zheng Junli, Juese de dansheng (The birth of a role) (Beijing: Zhongguo dianying chubanshe, 1981). In 1963 the China Film Press published the first four volumes of The Collected Works of Stanislavski (translated from the Russian original), which include An Actor Prepares (Parts I and II) and Creating a Role. See Constantin Stanislavski, Sitannisilafusiji quan ji (The collected works of Stanislavski), 4 vols, ed. Shi Mindu and Zheng Xuelai (Beijing: Zhongguo dianying chubanshe, 1958–63). Yomi Braester, ‘A Genealogy of Cinephilia in the Maoist Period’, in The Oxford Handbook of Chinese Cinemas, eds. Carlos Rojas and Eileen Chengyin Chow (New York: Oxford University Press, 2013), 101. Richard Dyer, Stars (London: BFI Publishing, 1998), 129. Tina Mai Chen suggests that, ‘given the proclivity of Chinese reformers and revolutionaries throughout the twentieth century to symbolize oppressed social groups through the female body, the oppression of women under “feudalism”, Confucianism and imperialism marked women as ideal beneficiaries of the new order.’ See Tina Mai Chen, ‘Female Icons, Feminist Iconography? Socialist Rhetoric and Women’s Agency in 1950s China’, Gender & History 15.2 (2003): 289. ‘Tingting yanyuan de xindihua’ (Listen to actors), Zhongguo dianying 6 (1957): 13. Ibid. Cheng Yin, ‘Tantan xuanze yanyuan de wenti’ (On casting an actor), Zhongguo dianying 5 (1957): 40. See Liu Shu, Yongheng de xingchen: Xinzhongguo 22 da dianying mingxing huazhuan (shang), 175 –8.

205

Notes to Pages 131 –7 41. ‘Qingchun zhi ge de biaoyan yishu zuotanhui’ (A discussion session on the performing arts of Song of Youth), in Qingchun zhi ge: cong xiaoshuo dao dianying (Beijing: Zhongguo dianying chubanshe, 1962), 382. 42. Ibid. 43. Xie Fang, Yinmu neiwai (On and off screen) (Beijing: Shijie zhishi chubanshe, 1986), 31. 44. Xie Jin, ‘Hongse niangzijun daoyan chuangzuo zaji’ (Notes on the director’s creation of The Red Detachment of Women), in Hongse niangzijun: cong juben dao yingpian (Beijing: Zhongguo dianying chubanshe, 1962), 283. 45. Liang Xin, ‘Hongse niangzijun (dianying wenxue juben)’ (The Red Detachment of Women [cinematic literary script]), in Hongse niangzijun: cong juben dao yingpian, 71. 46. Xie Jin, ‘Hongse niangzijun (fen jingtou juben)’ (The Red Detachment of Women [shooting script]), in Hongse niangzijun: cong juben dao yingpian, 193. 47. Xie Jin, ‘Hongse niangzijun daoyan chuangzuo zaji’, 282. 48. Krista Van Fleit Hang, ‘Zhong Xinghuo: communist film worker’, in Chinese Film Stars, eds. Mary Farquhar and Yingjin Zhang (New York: Routledge, 2010), 113. 49. Liu Shu, Yongheng de xingchen: Xinzhongguo 22 da dianying mingxing huazhuan (xia), 665. 50. Liu Shu, Yongheng de xingchen: Xinzhongguo 22 da dianying mingxing huazhuan (shang), 361. 51. Constantin Stanislavski, An Actor Prepares, trans. Elizabeth Reynolds Hapgood (New York: Theatre Arts Books, 1965), 37, 193. 52. Huang Zuolin, Wo yu xieyi xijuguan (The theatre aesthetic of xieyi and I) (Beijing: Zhongguo xiju chubanshe, 1990), 419. 53. Shen Shan, ‘Yanyuan yao xiang shenghuo taojiao’ (Actors should learn from life), Dazhong dianying 7 (1961): 21. 54. Constantin Stanislavski, An Actor Prepares, trans. Elizabeth Reynolds Hapgood (New York: Theatre Arts Books, 1965), 112. 55. Ibid., 193. 56. Ibid., 37. 57. Ibid., 86. 58. Ibid., 179. 59. Ibid., 60. 60. Ibid., 252. 61. Xiaoning Lu, ‘Zhang Ruifang: Modelling the Socialist Red Star’, in Chinese Film Stars, 105. 62. Zhang Ruifang, ‘Banyan Li Shuangshuang de jidian tihui’ (Thoughts on playing Li Shuangshuang), Dianying yishu 2 (1963): 28. 63. Zhu Xijuan, ‘Shenghuo shi chuangzuo de yuanquan’ (Life is the fountain of creation), in Hongse niangzijun: cong juben dao yingpian, 302. 64. Ibid., 303. 65. Cheng Yin, ‘Daoyan zaji’ (Notes of a director), Zhongguo dianying 11 (1957): 100.

206

Notes to Pages 137 –43 66. Laikwan Pang, The Art of Cloning: Creative Production During China’s Cultural Revolution (New York: Verso, 2017), 84. 67. Ibid. 68. Zhao Ziyue, ‘Zenyang zuoge haoyanyuan’ (How to be a good actor), Dianying chuangzuo 5 (1961): 38. 69. Xiaoning Lu, ‘Zhang Ruifang: Modelling the Socialist Red Star’, 104. 70. Liang Xin, ‘Cong shenghuo dao chuangzuo: Wu Qionghua xingxiang de suzao jingguo’ (From life to creation: the creative process of Wu Qionghua’s image), in Hongse niangzijun: cong juben dao yingpian, 215. 71. Ibid., 212; Zhu Xijuan, ‘Shenghuo shi chuangzuo de yuanquan’, 301. 72. Ibid., 301. 73. Marita Sturken and Lisa Cartwright, Practices of Looking: An Introduction to Visual Culture (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), 36. 74. David Morgan, The Embodied Eye: Religious Visual Culture and the Social Life of Feeling (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2012), 73. 75. Ibid., 74. 76. Zhu Jing, ‘Xiaoxiang sheying chutan’ (Exploring portrait photography), Dianying yishu 4 (1963): 47. 77. Ibid., 41. 78. An ‘empty shot’ is a shot that depicts only scenery, functioning as a pause succeeding a cinematic climax. See Chapter Three for a more detailed analysis of ‘empty shots’ as a component of montage. 79. Zhu Jing, ‘Xiaoxiang sheying chutan’, 47. 80. During the Liang Dynasty, a renowned painter named Zhang Sengyao was commissioned by the emperor to paint four dragons on the walls of a temple. However, Zhang neglected to paint the eyes. He said: ‘If I were to paint the eyes, the dragons will have flown away’. The bystanders thought: ‘How ridiculous!’ Zhang then painted a pair of eyes on one of the dragons. Within seconds, thunder struck through the walls. A dragon soared into the sky. Those without painted eyes remained on the wall. 81. Zhu Jing, ‘Xiaoxiang sheying chutan’, 46. 82. Patrick Keating, Hollywood Lighting from the Silent Era to Film Noir (New York: Columbia University Press, 2009), 5. 83. Ibid., 128. 84. Ibid., 46. 85. Ibid., 44. 86. Ibid., 35. 87. Ibid., 34 –5. 88. Katerina Clark, The Soviet Novel: History as Ritual (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1981), 257. 89. Ibid., 259. 90. Xie Fang, “Banyan Lin Daojing de tihui” (Thoughts on playing Lin Daojing), in Qingchun zhi ge: cong xiaoshuo dao dianying, 267. 91. Morgan, The Embodied Eye, 104.

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Notes to Pages 144 –52 92. Ibid., 95. 93. Tina Mai Chen, ‘Socialism, Aestheticized Bodies, and International Circuits of Gender’, 58, 78. 94. Tina Mai Chen, ‘Film and Gender in Sino– Soviet Cultural Exchange, 1949– 1969’, in China Learns from the Soviet Union, 1949 to the Present, eds. Hua-yu Li and Thomas Bernstein (Lanham, MD: Lexington Press, 2010), 438. See also Chapter Three for my analysis of this sequence. 95. McGrath, ‘Cultural Revolution Model Opera Films and the Realist Tradition in Chinese Cinema’, 344.

5

Visions of Internationalism in Chinese Film Journals

1. Glenda Sluga and Patricia Clavin, ‘Rethinking the History of Internationalism’, in Internationalisms: A Twentieth-Century History, eds. Glenda Sluga and Patricia Clavin (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2017), 11. 2. Katerina Clark, Moscow, the Fouth Rome: Stalinism, Cosmopolitanism, and the Evolution of Soviet Culture, 1931 – 1941 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2011), 16. 3. Nicolai Volland, Socialist Cosmopolitanism: The Chinese Literary Universe, 1945 – 1965 (New York: Columbia University Press, 2017), 169 –86. 4. See Volland, ‘Clandestine Cosmopolitanism: Foreign Literature in the People’s Republic of China, 1957 –1977’, The Journal of Asian Studies 76.1 (2017): 185 –210. 5. Paola Iovene, Tales of Futures Past: Literature and Anticipation in Contemporary China (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2014), 51, 57. 6. Austin Jersild, The Sino – Soviet Alliance: An International History (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 2014), 19. 7. Patrizia Dogliani, ‘The Fate of Socialist Internationalism’, in Internationalisms: A Twentieth-Century History, 41. 8. Ibid., 59. 9. Ibid., 49. 10. Sandrine Kott, ‘Cold War Internationalism’, in Internationalisms: A Twentieth-Century History, 343. 11. Ibid., 355– 6. 12. Sluga and Clavin, ‘Rethinking the History of Internationalism’, 8. 13. Akira Iriye, ‘Foreword’, in Internationalisms: A Twentieth-Century History, xiv. 14. See Talbot Imlay, ‘Socialist Internationalism after 1914’, in Internationalisms: A Twentieth-Century History, 214–5. 15. Tina Mai Chen, ‘Socialist Geographies, Internationalist Temporalities, and Traveling Film Technologies: Sino –Soviet Film Exchange in the 1950s and 1960s’, in Futures of Chinese Cinemas: Technologies and Temporalities in

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Notes to Pages 152 –8

16.

17. 18. 19. 20. 21.

22. 23. 24.

25.

26. 27. 28. 29. 30. 31. 32.

33. 34.

35. 36.

Chinese Screen Cultures, eds. Olivia Khoo and Sean Metzger (Bristol, UK: Intellect Books, 2009), 73. Tina Mai Chen, ‘Internationalism and Cultural Experience: Soviet Films and Popular Chinese Understandings of the Future in the 1950s’, Cultural Critique 58 (2004): 108. Mei Duo, ‘Guanghui de bangyang’ (A glorious model), Dazhong dianying 20 (1954): 3. Chen, ‘Internationalism and Cultural Experience’, 85. Chen, ‘Socialist Geographies’, 80. Paul Clark, Chinese Cinema: Culture and Politics since 1949 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987), 40. Bu Ping, ‘Zhongyang dianyingju juxing yizhipian gongzuo huiyi’ (Chinese Film Bureau holds a conference on dubbing and subtitling), Dazhong dianying 3 (1954): 24. Ibid. Ibid. A few films from Hungary, Germany, Czechoslovakia, Korea, Romania, Japan and Italy (such as The Bicycle Thief) were also dubbed and subtitled in that year. See Zhang Ji, ‘Jinnian woguo jiang yizhi sishiyu bu waiguo yingpian’ (Our country will dub and subtitle about 40 foreign films this year), Dazhong dianying 6 (1954): 21. Cai Chusheng, ‘Xiang shiyue geming huanhu! Xiang Sulian dianying xuexi!’ (Cheers for the October Revolution! Let’s learn from Soviet cinema!), Zhongguo dianying 11 –2 (1957): 6. Chen, ‘Socialist Geographies’, 81 –2. Xinru, ‘Jianku de, chuangzaoxing de laodong’ (Hard and creative labour), Dazhong dianying 3 (1954): 26. Ibid. Ibid. The film version used in my visual analysis is the version (Feng cong dongfang lai) targeted to a domestic Chinese audience. It is ironic that a year later, in 1960, the Soviet Union withdrew all its advisers from the PRC, which officially marked the Sino– Soviet split. The slogan ‘Communism is Soviet power plus electrification of the whole country’ was created by Lenin himself in his report on the work of the Council of People’s Commissars in December 1920. Viktoriya Radunskaya, ‘Dangwo jiuyao likai Shanghai de shihou’ (When I am about to leave Shanghai), Shangying huabao 8 (1959): 4. Ran Ma, ‘A Genealogy of Film Festivals in the People’s Republic of China: “Film Weeks” during the “Seventeen Years” (1949– 1966)’, New Review of Film and Television Studies 14.1 (2016): 54. Mei, ‘Guanghui de bangyang’, 3. Yu Ling, ‘Gei jintian kan Sulian dianying de qingnian’ (For young people who watch Soviet film nowadays), Shangying huabao 4 (1957): 7.

209

Notes to Pages 158 –62 37. Zi Si, ‘Zhongsu dianying gongzuozhe youyi changchun’ (The evergreen friendship between Chinese and Soviet film workers), Shangying huabao 4 (1957): 18 –9. 38. ‘Sulian dianying shi quanshijie dianying yishu de xianfeng’ (Soviet cinema is the pioneer of film art in the world), Zhongguo dianying 11 –2 (1957): 3. 39. Sha Lang, ‘Sulian dianying yu Zhongguo guanzhong’ (Soviet cinema and the Chinese audience), Zhongguo dianying 11– 2 (1957): 83. 40. Chen Bo, ‘Ganxie Sulian dianying’ (Thanks, Soviet cinema), Zhongguo dianying 11– 2 (1957): 111. 41. In his speech at the Moscow Meeting of Communist and Workers’ Parties in November 1957, Mao said: ‘There is a Chinese saying, “Either the East Wind prevails over the West Wind or the West Wind prevails over the East Wind.” I believe it is characteristic of the situation today that the East Wind is prevailing over the West Wind. That is to say, the forces of socialism have become overwhelmingly superior to the forces of imperialism.’ See Mao Tsetung, Quotations from Chairman Mao Tse-Tung (Peking: Foreign Language Press, 1966), 80– 1. 42. ‘Fakanci’ (Editorial note), Guoji dianying 1 (1958): 1. 43. Ibid. 44. Tina Mai Chen notes that the number of new Soviet films imported into China dropped dramatically after 1957, and those screened in the 1960s tended to be Stalinist classics rather than newly produced films. See Chen, ‘Internationalism and Cultural Experience’. 45. Iovene, Tales of Futures Past, 51, 57. 46. Ibid., 58. 47. Yomi Braester, ‘A Genealogy of Cinephilia in the Maoist Period’, in The Oxford Handbook of Chinese Cinemas, eds. Carlos Rojas and Eileen Chengyin Chow (New York: Oxford University Press, 2013), 100, 108. 48. Ibid., 105. 49. In 1959, the journals Chinese Cinema and International Cinema merged to become Film Art (Dianying yishu). 50. Xiao Qiao, ‘Jieshao Yuenan dianying zazhi “dianying”’ (Introducing the Vietnamese film journal Film), Zhongguo dianying 2 (1958): 81. 51. ‘Yingguo “Huamian yu yinxiang” zazhi’ (The English journal Sight and Sound), Zhongguo dianying 2 (1957): 64. 52. Ibid. 53. Ibid. 54. Volland, ‘Clandestine Cosmopolitanism’, 194. 55. Sun Daolin, Zhang Ruifang, and Qin Yi, ‘Qianjin ba! Nanmei he Feizhou de dixiong’ (March on! Our brothers in Latin America and Africa), Shangying huabao 2 (1959): 2. 56. Anne E. Gorsuch and Diane P. Koenker, ‘Introduction: The Socialist 1960s in Global Perspective’, in The Socialist Sixties: Crossing Borders in the Second

210

Notes to Pages 162 –5

57. 58. 59.

60.

61.

62. 63. 64.

65. 66. 67.

68. 69. 70. 71.

World, eds. Anne E. Gorsuch and Diane P. Koenker (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2013), 8. Ibid., 7. Ibid., 10. Toni Weis, ‘The Politics Machine: On the Concept of “Solidarity” in East German Support for SWAPO’, Journal of Southern African Studies 37.2 (2011): 352. Austin Jersild, ‘Sino –Soviet Rivalry in Guinea –Conakry, 1956– 1965: The Second World in the Third World’, in Socialist Internationalism in the Cold War: Exploring the Second World, eds. Patryk Babiracki and Austin Jersild (Switzerland: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016), 309. Tina Mai Chen, ‘International Film Circuits and Global Imaginaries in the People’s Republic of China, 1949 – 1957’, Journal of Chinese Cinemas 3.2 (2009): 150. Ran Ma, ‘A Genealogy of Film Festivals in the People’s Republic of China’, 53. Concurrently, the entire August 1957 issue of the literary journal Yiwen was devoted to the literature of Asia. See Iovene, Tales of Futures Past. The first Afro– Asian Film Festival, which took place in Tashkent, Uzbekistan in 1958, should be distinguished from the First Tashkent Festival of African and Asian Cinema in 1968, to which the PRC was not invited by the Soviet organisers. (The 1958 festival was expanded, for the fourth Festival in 1976, to include Latin America.) Rossen Djagalov and Masha Salazkina describe the Tashkent festival as an ambitious effort by Third World film-makers and Soviet cultural bureaucracies to construct a ‘Third-World cinematic field that could compete against Hollywood or west European cinema’s global domination in the realm of both aesthetics and distribution’. See Rossen Djagalov and Masha Salazkina, ‘Tashkent ’68: A Cinematic Contact Zone’, Slavic Review 75.2 (2016): 280. Chen, ‘International Film Circuits and Global Imaginaries’, 152. Wang Yang, ‘Yafei dianying yishu de jieri’ (The festival of Afro –Asian film art), Guoji dianying 4 (1958): 30. ‘Jianjue zhichi Yindunixiya renmin fandui Meiguo dianying de douzheng’ (Resolutely in support of the Indonesian Struggle against American Film), Dianying yishu 3 (1964): 7. Ssutu Hui-min, ‘Revolution in the Afro– Asian Film World’, China’s Screen 4 (1964): 7. Shen Yanbing, ‘Zhongmian youyi wangu changqing’ (The ancient and evergreen Sino – Burmese friendship), Dianying yishu 11 (1960): 20. Ibid. Three feature films (Kim Dong, What Smoke, and The Souvenir) and three documentaries (The Triumphant Decade, The Indomitable Buddhists of South Vietnam, and The Indomitable People of South Vietnam) were shown during the Vietnamese Film Week. Production year not identified.

211

Notes to Pages 165 –7 72. Han Shangyi, ‘Support Vietnam, Oppose U.S. Imperialism’, China’s Screen 3 (1965): 2. 73. Albania formally withdrew from the Warsaw Pact in 1968 in response to the Prague Spring. The PRC and Albania remained closely allied until Deng Xiaoping’s reform era in 1978. 74. Elidor M€ehilli, ‘Socialism in Motion: How Georgians and Russians Acted Albania’s Ottoman Past and Albanian Films Brought War to Mao’s China’, paper given at the New York University Jordan Center for the Advanced Study of Russia, 2017. See also Elidor M€ehilli, From Stalin to Mao: Albania and the Socialist World (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2017). 75. Chinese title not identified. Chien Hsiao-chang, ‘Song of Red Friendship’, China’s Screen 1 (1965): 2. 76. Ibid. 77. Simon Shen and Cho-kiu Li, ‘The Cultural Side Effects of the Sino –Soviet Split: The Influence of Albanian Movies in China in the 1960s’, Modern China Studies 22.1 (2015): 219, 230. 78. My reading of China’s Screen throughout this chapter is based on the English edition. 79. The following films from Latin America were introduced in the article: Behind the Big Wall (Detras de un largo muro/Daqiang houmian) (Lucas Demare, Argentina, 1958), The Forward Center Dies at Dawn (El centroforward murio al amanecer) (Rene Mugica, Argentina, 1961), The Source (La vertiente/Pubu) (Jorge Ruiz, Bolivia, 1958), The Miracle of Salt (El milagro de sal/Yan de qiji) (Luis Moya Sarmiento, Columbia, 1958), Stories of the Revolution (Historias de la revolucion) (Tomas Gutierrez Alea, Cuba, 1960), Realengo 18 (Eduardo Manet, Cuba, 1961), The Young Rebel (El joven rebelde) (Julio García Espinosa, Cuba, 1961), The Right to be Born (El derecho de nacer/Sheng de quanli) (Zacarías Gomez Urquiza, Mexico, 1952) and Araya (Margot Benacerraf, Venezuela, 1959). 80. ‘Progressive Latin American Films Popular in China’, China’s Screen 1 (1964): 18. 81. The term ‘progressive’ was also used to describe works of authors from Western Europe and the United States in what Nicolai Volland calls ‘zone four’ on the periphery of the Chinese literary universe. See Volland, Socialist Cosmopolitanism, 181. 82. Production year not identified. See Chih Chao, ‘The People of the Congo Will Certainly Win’, China’s Screen 2 (1965): 6. 83. Production year not identified. See Tu Hsuan, ‘Forward, Africa! Fight On’, China’s Screen 4 (1965): 7. 84. Kasongo Kapanga, The Writing of the Nation: Expressing Identity through Congolese Literary Texts and Films (London: Africa World Press, 2017), xiv. 85. Li Teh-chuan, ‘A Militant, Many Splendored Friendship’, China’s Screen 4 (1964): 2. The United Nations named 1960 the ‘Year of Africa’. Seventeen new nations gained independence soon after. From 1963 to 1965, Zhou Enlai

212

Notes to Pages 167 –73

86. 87. 88. 89. 90. 91. 92. 93. 94. 95. 96. 97. 98. 99. 100. 101. 102. 103. 104. 105. 106.

and Liu Shaoqi visited over 30 Third World nations. The PRC gained recognition from 15 African nations and offered approximately $296 million in aid to Africa from 1960 to 1965. See Jersild, ‘Sino –Soviet Rivalry in Guinea – Conakry’, 306. Li, ‘A Militant, Many Splendored Friendship’, 2. Ibid. Ibid., 3. Ibid., 4. Ibid., 3. Ibid., 4. Production year not identified. See ‘Visit to Uganda’, China’s Screen 4 (1965): 9. Production year not identified. Chen, ‘International Film Circuits and Global Imaginaries’, 156. Ibid. ‘Zhongguo dianying bianji quan shijie’ (Chinese film reaches the world), Shangying huabao 9 (1959): 21. Chen Huangmei, ‘Some Facts About New China’s Film Industry’, China’s Screen 3 (1964): 3. Ibid. ‘The East is Red’, China’s Screen 3 (1965): 12. ‘The White-Haired Girl Abroad’, China’s Screen 1 (1964): 19. Ibid. Ibid. ‘A Most Outstanding Film: Reactions of Viewers Abroad to Five Golden Flowers’, China’s Screen 3 (1964): 19. Ibid. Ibid. Five Golden Flowers received a warm welcome at the Chinese Film Festival in Tunisia, at the That Luang Fair in Laos, and in Sudan. The film was awarded the prize for the best actress (Yang Likun) and best director (Wang Jiayi) at the second Afro– Asian Film Festival in Cairo in 1960.

Conclusion 1. See Cai Xiang, Revolution and its Narratives: China’s Socialist Literary and Cultural Imaginaries, 1949 – 1966, trans. Rebecca E. Karl and Xueping Zhong (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2016), 357 – 402. 2. Xiaobing Tang, ‘Qianwan buyao wangji de lishi yiyi: guanyu richang shenghuo de jiaol€u jiqi xiandaixing’ (The historical significance of Never Forget: anxiety over everyday life and its modernity), in Ershi shiji Zhongguo wenxueshi lun, vol. 2, ed. Wang Xiaoming (Shanghai: Dongfang chuban zhongxin, 2003), 176– 84.

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Notes to Pages 174 –8 3. Mao Zedong, ‘Mao Zedong dui wenxue yishu de pishi’ (Mao Zedong’s critique of literature and art), in Zhongguo dianying yanjiu ziliao, 1949 – 1979, vol. 2, ed. Wu Di (Beijing: Wenhua yishu chubanshe, 2006), 418. 4. Jiang Qing, ‘On the Revolution in Peking Opera’, trans. Jessica Ka Yee Chan, The Opera Quarterly 26.2 –3 (2010): 456. 5. Qi Zhi (Wu Di), Mao Zedong shidai de renmin dianying, 1949 – 1966 (People’s cinema in Mao Zedong’s era) (Taipei: Xiuwei zixun keji gufen youxian gongsi, 2010), 487. 6. Ibid. 7. Zhuoyi Wang, Revolutionary Cycles in Chinese Cinema 1951–1979 (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014), 151. 8. As early as 1953, in his endorsement of socialist realism at the First National Conference on Screenwriting, Zhou Yang established the priority of filmmaking in creating ‘pioneering characters as a type’. The priority was consistently re-articulated in successive campaigns. See Zhou Yang, ‘Zai quanguo diyijie dianying juzuo huiyi shang guanyu xuexi shehui zhuyi xianshi zhuyi wenti de baogao’ (A report on the learning of socialist realism at the First National Conference on Screenwriting), in Zhongguo dianying yanjiu ziliao, 1:331. 9. See Jason McGrath, Postsocialist Modernity: Chinese Cinema, Literature, and Criticism in the Market Age (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2008). 10. Paul Clark, Chinese Cinema: Culture and Politics Since 1949 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987), 1. 11. Paul Pickowicz, China on Film: A Century of Exploration, Confrontation, and Controversy (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 2013), 214. 12. Paul Clark, Chinese Cinema: Culture and Politics Since 1949, 56. The gesturing toward China’s operatic tradition in the latter half of the Seventeen Years anticipated the aesthetics of model opera films produced during the Cultural Revolution. 13. Robert S. Elegant, ‘Red China’s Big Push’, Newsweek, September 30, 1957, 126. 14. Weijia Du, ‘Beyond the Ideology Principle: The Two Faces of Dubbed Foreign Films in PRC, 1949 – 1966’, Journal of Chinese Cinemas 9.2 (2015): 141. 15. Ibid., 142. 16. Ibid. Du highlights a woman’s comment in a literary magazine: ‘When I was little, I saw in a Soviet film a female agent who wore a plat’e [dress] [. . .] and I thought, I would put up with any hard labor if I could wear that kind of dress!’ See Du, ‘Beyond the Ideology Principle’, 153.

214

Glossary

aiqing baihuajiang bense bense yanyuan bizhen caise gushipian cheng chuanbo chuge cuowu sixiang damiankong Dangdai zhongguo dianying daodeguan dashi daxie shisannian Dazhong dianying dazhonghua dedi dianxing Diansheng ribao dianying aihaozhe Dianying daoyanlun dianying gongzuozhe dianying juben dianying wenxue juben Dianying yishu

爱情 百花奖 本色 本色演员 逼真 彩色故事片 承 传播 出格 错误思想 大面孔 当代中国电影 道德观 大师 大写十三年 大众电影 大众化 的地 典型 电声日报 电影爱好者 电影导演论 电影工作者 电影剧本 电影文学剧本 电影艺术

215

Chinese Revolutionary Cinema Dianying yishu sijiang Dianying yishu yicong Dianying yishu zai biaoxian xingshi shang de jige tedian

电影艺术四讲 电影艺术译丛 电影艺术在表现形式上的几个 特点 电影杂志 低级趣味 东方红 动人的 动作性 对口型 对立的构成法 多快好省 俄国式剪接 分镜头 分镜头剧本 副末 改造 感情 感性 革命 革命化 个性 工农兵 光

Dianying zazhi diji quwei Dongfanghong dongrende dongzuoxing duikouxing duili de gouchengfa duo kuai hao sheng e’guoshi jianjie fenjingtou fenjingtou juben fumo gaizao ganqing ganxing geming geminghua gexing gongnongbing guang Guanyu dianying de teshu biaoxian shouduan guofang wenxue guoji de huozi Guoji dianying haoren haoshi he hualong dianjing huodong yingpian huolala jiandan er youli jianjie

关于电影的特殊表现手段 国防文学 国际的活字 国际电影 好人好事 合 画龙点睛 活动影片 火辣辣 简单而有力 剪接

216

Glossary jianxie jiechu jiegou jieji ganqing jiluxing yishupian jinglian jingshen jingshen jiaoliu jingshen mianmao jingshen qizhi jingshen yingyang Juese de dansheng kokusai-teki katsuji kong jingtou kongqi kuangre laodong laodong funü laodong zhishi laoyanyuan li li de mei lian’ai lianxu de gouchengfa liliang lixing luan Mao Zedong shidai de renmin dianying meimu chuanshen meng mengdaqi mengtaiqi Mengtaiqi jiqiao qiantan mianbu biaoyan mingxing Mingxing ribao

间歇 接触 结构 阶级感情 记录性艺术片 精炼 精神 精神交流 精神面貌 精神气质 精神营养 角色的诞生 国際的活字 空镜头 空气 狂热 劳动 劳动妇女 劳动知识 老演员 力 力的美 恋爱 连续的构成法 力量 理性 乱 毛泽东时代的人民电影 眉目传神 蒙 蒙达奇 蒙太奇 蒙太奇技巧浅谈 面部表演 明星 明星日报

217

Chinese Revolutionary Cinema minzuhua mofan mu mu mubiao muguang neixin biaoyan neixin huodong pingyi pipan piping qi qi qinmi youyi qizhi quan’e dianqihua quan shijie wuchan jieji tuanjie qilai qunzhong guandian Renmin ribao Renmin wenxue renqing wei rongru juese ruxi Shangying huabao shen shenqi shenghuo shenghuo tiyan Shijie dianying Shijie wenxue shiyan pai shunxu shuobuqing shuo zhuti sixiang gaizao

民族化 模范 目 幕 幕表 目光 内心表演 内心活动 平易 批判 批评 起 奇 亲密友谊 气质 全俄电气化 全世界无产阶级团结起来 群众观点 人民日报 人民文学 人情味 融入角色 入戏 上影画报 神 神奇 生活 生活体验 世界电影 世界文学 实验派 顺序 说不清 说主题 思想改造

218

Glossary Sulian yingxiang yu zhongguo shiqinian dianying tai texie tiao tixian tixian lixiang tiyan tongsuhua tuila jingtou wenmingxi wenxue juben wenyi Wenyi bao Wenyi yuebao wenyi zhengfeng Wode yijia wutaiju Xiandai dianying yu youchan jieji xiandaiju Xianghua ducao: hongse niandai de dianying mingyun xianjie xianjin renwu de dianxing xianli pian xianming xiaoshimin xiaoshuo Xie dianying juben de jige wenti xieyi Xin zhongguo dianying yishu shigao xing xingge yanyuan xingxiang xingxianggan xinju

苏联影响与中国十七年电影 太 特写 跳 体现 体现理想 体验 通俗化 推拉镜头 文明戏 文学剧本 文艺 文艺报 文艺月报 文艺整风 我的一家 舞台剧 现代电影与有产阶级 现代剧 香花毒草: 红色年代的电影 的命运 衔接 先进人物的典型 献礼片 鲜明 小市民 小说 写电影剧本的几个问题 写意 新中国电影艺术史稿 形 性格演员 形象 形象感 新剧

219

Chinese Revolutionary Cinema Xinqiao xinren xinshi xinyanyuan xiqu xuanchuan Yafei dianyingjie yan yangban yangbanxi Yanji liujiang yanshen yanyuan yanyuan yao xiang shenghuo taojiao Yanyuan ziwo xiuyang Yazhou dianyingzhou yihu xunchang yingmi yingxiong renwu yinmu xingxiang yishi yishu xing Yiwen youchan jieji youqing youyi changchun yueju zai chuangzuo zhanghui zhengmian renwu zhengzhi xing zhengzhi xiuyang zhenshigan zhenxian Zhongguo dianying Zhongguo dianying yanjiu ziliao zhuan zhuanzhe

220

新侨 新人新事 新演员 戏曲 宣传 亚非电影节 眼 样板 样板戏 演技六讲 眼神 演员 演员要向生活讨教 演员自我修养 亚洲电影周 异乎寻常 影迷 英雄人物 银幕形象 意识 艺术性 译文 有产阶级 友情 友谊长春 越剧 再创作 章回 正面人物 政治性 政治修养 真实感 针线 中国电影 中国电影研究资料 转 转折

Glossary zhuguanhua yin zhuguan jingtou ziwo jiancha ziwo piping ziwo xiuyang

主观化音 主观镜头 自我检查 自我批评 自我修养

221

Filmography

Adventures of the Magician 魔术师的奇遇. Dir. Sang Hu. Shanghai Tianma Film Studio. 1962. Alexander Matrosov (Рядовой Александр Матросов). Dir. Leonid Lukov. Soyuzdetfilm. 1948. Araya. Dir. Margot Benacerraf. Caroni Films C.A. and Films de l'Archer. 1959. Battleship Potemkin (Броненосец Потëмкин). Dir. Sergei Eisenstein. Goskino. 1925. Behind the Big Wall (Detrás de un largo muro/大墙后面). Dir. Lucas Demare. Argentina Sono Film S.A.C.I. 1958. Belinsky (Белинский). Dir. Grigori Kozintsev. Lenfilm Studio. 1953. Big Li, Small Li, and Old Li 大李小李和老李. Dir. Xie Jin. Shanghai Film Studio. 1962. The Birth of a Nation. Dir. D.W. Griffith. David W. Griffith Corporation. 1915. Breakfast at Tiffany's. Dir. Blake Edwards. Jurow-Shepherd Productions. 1961. Chapaev (Чапаев). Dir. Georgi Vasilyev and Sergei Vasilyev. Lenfilm Studio. 1934. Corrosion 腐蚀. Dir. Huang Zuolin. Wenhua Film Studio. 1950. Crows and Sparrows 乌鸦与麻雀. Dir. Zheng Junli. Kunlun Film Studio. 1949. Daughter of the Party 党的女儿. Dir. Lin Nong. Changchun Film Studio. 1958. Daybreak 天明. Dir. Sun Yu. Lianhua Film Studio. 1933. Early Spring in February 早春二月. Dir. Xie Tieli. Beijing Film Studio. 1963. Extraordinary Mission (Detyrë e posac me/特殊任务). Dir. Kristaq Dhramo. Shqipëria e Re. 1963. The Fall of Berlin (Падение Берлина). Dir. Mikheil Chiaureli. Mosfilm. 1949. Family 家. Dir. Chen Xihe and Ye Ming. Shanghai Film Studio. 1956. Five Golden Flowers 五朵金花. Dir. Wang Jiayi. Changchun Film Studio. 1959. For Peace 为了和平. Dir. Huang Zuolin. Shanghai Film Studio. 1956. The Forward Center Dies at Dawn (El centroforward murió al amanecer). Dir. René Múgica. Argentina Sono Film S.A.C.I. 1961. Forward, Side by Side (Krah për krah). Dir. Endri Keko. 1964. Gate Number Six 六号门. Dir. Lü Ban. Northeast Film Studio. 1952. The Goddess 神女. Dir. Wu Yonggang. Lianhua Film Studio. 1934. The Gorky Trilogy: My Childhood (Mое детство), My Apprenticeship (В людях), My Universities (Мои университеты). Dir. Mark Donskoi. Soyuzdetfilm. 1938. A Heroic Beginning 伟大的起点. Dir. Zhang Ke. Shanghai Film Studio. 1954.

222

Filmography Huang Baomei 黄宝妹. Dir. Xie Jin. Shanghai Tianma Film Studio. 1958. Intolerance. Dir. D.W. Griffith. Triangle Film Corporation. 1916. Lei Feng 雷锋. Dir. Dong Zhaoqi. August First Film Studio. 1964. Lenin in 1918 (Ленин в 1918 году). Dir. Mikhail Romm, E. Aron and Isidor Simkov. Mosfilm. 1939. Lenin in October (Ленин в Октябре). Dir. Mikhail Romm and Dmitriy Vasilev. Mosfilm. 1937. Liang Shanbo and Zhu Yingtai 梁山伯与祝英台. Dir. Sang Hu and Huang Sha. Shanghai Film Studio. 1954. Li Shuangshuang 李双双. Dir. Lu Ren. Shanghai Haiyan Film Studio. 1962. This Life of Mine 我这一辈子. Dir. Shi Hui. Wenhua Film Studio. 1950. The Life of Wu Xun 武训传. Dir. Sun Yu. Kunlun Film Studio. 1951. The Lin Family Shop 林家铺子. Dir. Shui Hua. Beijing Film Studio. 1959. Lin Zexu 林则徐. Dir. Zheng Junli. Shanghai Haiyan Film Studio. 1959. Long Live the Wife 太太万岁. Dir. Sang Hu. Wenhua Film Studio. 1947. The Lüliang Heroes 吕梁英雄. Dir. Lü Ban and Yilin. Beijing Film Studio. 1950. The March Forward 在前进的路上. Dir. Cheng Yin. Northeast Film Studio. 1950. The Married Couple 我们夫妻之间. Dir. Zheng Junli. Kunlun Film Studio. 1951. Midnight 子夜. Dir. Sang Hu and Fu Jinggong. Shanghai Film Studio. 1981. The Miracle of Salt (El milagro de sal/盐的奇迹). Dir. Luis Moya Sarmiento. Cinematográfica Colombiana. 1958. Myriad of Lights 万家灯火. Dir. Shen Fu. Kunlun Film Studio. 1948. The New Woman 新女性. Dir. Cai Chusheng. Lianhua Film Studio. 1934. The New Year's Sacrifice 祝福. Dir. Sang Hu. Beijing Film Studio. 1956. Nie Er 聂耳. Dir. Zheng Junli. Shanghai Haiyan Film Studio. 1959. Queen of Sports 体育皇后. Dir. Sun Yu. Lianhua Film Studio. 1934. Realengo 18. Dir. Eduardo Manet. Instituto Cubano del Arte e Industrias Cinematográficos. 1961. Reconnaissance across the Yangtze 渡江侦察记. Dir. Tang Xiaodan. Shanghai Film Studio. 1954. Red Crag 烈火中永生. Dir. Shui Hua. Beijing Film Studio. 1965. The Red Detachment of Women 红色娘子军. Dir. Xie Jin. Shanghai Tianma Film Studio. 1961. Red Lantern 红灯记. Dir. Cheng Yin. August First Film Studio. 1970. Red Sorghum 红高粱. Dir. Zhang Yimou. Xi'an Film Studio. 1988. Revolutionary Family 革命家庭. Dir. Shui Hua. Beijing Film Studio. 1961. The Right to be Born (El derecho de nacer/生的权利). Dir. Zacarías Gómez Urquiza. Producciones Galindo Hermanos. 1952. The Road to Life (Путëвка в жизнь). Dir. Nikolai Ekk. Mezhrabpomfilm. 1931. Romance on Lushan Mountain 庐山恋. Dir. Huang Zumo. Shanghai Film Studio. 1980. Sea Hawk 海鹰. Dir. Yan Jizhou. August First Film Studio. 1959. Song of the Fisherman 渔光曲. Dir. Cai Chusheng. Lianhua Film Studio. 1934. Song of Youth 青春之歌. Dir. Cui Wei and Chen Huaikai. Beijing Film Studio. 1959. The Source (La vertiente/瀑布). Dir. Jorge Ruiz. 1958. Spirit and Flesh 灵与肉. Dir. Zhu Shilin. Dacheng Film Studio. 1941.

223

Chinese Revolutionary Cinema The Spring River Flows East 一江春水向东流. Dir. Cai Chusheng and Zheng Junli. Kunlun Film Studio. 1947. Spring Silkworms 春蚕. Dir. Cheng Bugao. Mingxing Film Studio. 1933. Stage Sisters 舞台姐妹. Dir. Xie Jin. Shanghai Tianma Film Studio. 1965. Storm Over Asia (Потомок Чингис-Хана). Dir. Vsevolod Pudovkin. Mezhrabpomfilm. 1928. Stories of the Revolution (Historias de la revolución). Dir. Tomás Gutiérrez Alea. Instituto. Cubano del Arte e Industrias Cinematográficos. 1960. Street Angel 马路天使. Dir. Yuan Muzhi. Mingxing Film Studio. 1937. Strike (Cтачка). Dir. Sergei Eisenstein. Goskino. 1925. Twin Sisters 姊妹花. Dir. Zheng Zhengqiu. Mingxing Film Studio. 1933. The Urgent Letter 鸡毛信. Dir. Shi Hui. Shanghai Film Studio. 1954. War and Peace. Dir. King Vidor. Ponti-De Laurentiis Cinematografica. 1956. Way Down East. Dir. D.W. Griffith. D.W. Griffith Productions. 1920. Wetback (Espaldas Mojadas/偷渡的苦工). Dir. Alejandro Galindo. ATA Films and Atlas Films. 1955. The White-Haired Girl 白毛女. Dir. Wang Bin and Shui Hua. Northeast Film Studio. 1950. Wind from the East (风从东方来/ В едином строю). Dir. Efim Dzigan and Gan Xuewei. Changchun Film Studio and Mosfilm. 1959. Xianglin Sao 祥林嫂. Dir. Nan Wei. Qiming Film Studio. 1948. Yellow Earth 黄土地. Dir. Chen Kaige. Guangxi Film Studio. 1984. The Young Rebel (El joven rebelde). Dir. Julio García Espinosa. Instituto Cubano del Arte e Industrias Cinematográficos. 1961. Zhao Yiman 赵一曼. Dir. Sha Meng. Northeast Film Studio. 1950. Zoya (Зоя). Dir. Lev Arnshtam. Soyuzdetfilm. 1944.

224

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Index

Page references followed by fig indicate an illustration. Acting: The First Six Lessons (Boleslavsky), 128 acting. see screen acting ‘acting good’ clich
e, 125 An Actor Prepares (Stanislavski) influence on Chinese cinema by, 8, 130 translation of, 8, 128, 134, 205n.31 ‘actor’ (yanyuan) label, 129 see also screen actors/actresses ‘An Actor’s Self-Cultivation’ (An Actor Prepares translated title), 134, 205n.31 adaptations. see literature film adaptations aesthetic experiments in cinematography, 17 Cultural Revolution (1966 –76) setting up radical, 174 dialectical tension between propaganda and film aesthetics, 16 of fascists, 28– 9 ‘montage of attractions’ technique, 87, 89, 94, 104– 5, 117 producing unique culture of film theory and criticism, 176– 7 propaganda understood as an, 24 in screenwriting and screen acting, 14, 16– 17, 24, 33, 36 –53

Seventeen Years’ alternating moments of control, 31– 2 Soviet anti-colonial energies informing Chinese, 30 see also art; Chinese film-makers; Chinese revolutionary cinema; propaganda aesthetic nature (yishu xing) the film industry’s continual struggle between the political and, 23 –53 First Five-Year Plan (1953– 7) setting goals for, 14, 24, 33, 36–40 ideology conveyed through, 48 post-World War II development of socialist realism as communist, 86 problem of unifying political (zhengzhi xing) and, 15, 35– 6 Rectification Campaign (1951– 2) to remould, 14, 24, 32– 6 Soviet avant-garde influence on Chinese intellectuals, 3 – 8 Xinqiao Conference’s focus on, 52 –3 see also socialist realism affective memory (qingxu jiyi) principle, 135t Africa Marches Forward (documentary), 167 Afro– Asian film Festivals (Yafei dianyingjie), 163–5, 211n.64

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Chinese Revolutionary Cinema Afro–Asian–Latin American solidarity ‘age-old friendship’ between China and countries of, 168–9 China’s Screen (film journal) promotion of, 164, 165, 166–71 Chinese vision of, 19, 148– 9 post-Bandung friendship and, 161–3 Premier Zhou Enlai’s visits to increase, 167– 8fig Yiwen (later Shijie wenxue) [Chinese literary journal] promotion of, 149 Ah Mao (The New Year’s Sacrifice character), 76– 7fig Albania Extraordinary Mission (Kristaq Dhramo, 1963), 166 Forward, Side by Side (Krah p€er krah) [Endri Keko, 1964] co-produced with, 165–6 Premier Zhou Enali’s visit to, 167– 8fig Alexander Matrosov (Leonid Lukov, 1949), 153 American cinema. see Hollywood cinema American Society of Cinematographers, 141 An Amorous History of the Silver Screen: Shanghai Cinema, 1896 – 1937 (Zhang Zhen), 10 Anderson, Marston, 66– 7, 68 Anti-Hu Feng Campaign (1955), 40, 45, 50 Anti-Rightist Campaign (1957) [PRC], 41, 42, 45, 99, 150 April Fifth movement, 63 Aron, E., 160 arranged marriage resistance, 72 art ‘feature the thirteen years’ slogan for subject matter of film, 174 Italian Fascist regime’s use of Expressionist, 29

Mao Zedong’s redefinition of, 32, 33, 69, 71, 98, 134 Soviet cinema as providing ‘spiritual nutrients’ for Chinese, 158 unifying political (zhengzhi xing) and aesthetic nature (yishu xing) of, 15, 35– 6 Zhou Enlai’s ‘walking on two legs’ speech film and, 48– 9, 50, 53 see also aesthetic experiments Asian film festivals (Afro –Asian film Festivals), 163–5, 211n.64 Asian Film Week (Yazhou dianyingzhou) [1957], 163 attractions ‘cinema of attractions’ concept, 104 ‘montage of attractions’ technique, 87, 89, 94, 104– 5, 117 August First Film Studios, 123 Ba Jin, 72, 84, 175 Bai Yang attending The New Year’s Sacrifice Soviet Union screening, 158 playing the role of the Xianglin Sao character, 76 –7fig, 80 –1, 131 work by and casting of, 129, 130, 131 Bandung Conference (1955), 19, 163 Bazin, Andr
e, 86 Bazinian film theories, 9 Beijing Art Company, 124 Beijing Film Academy ‘fifth-generation’ film-makers graduated from, 9 Xia Yan’s A Few Questions about Screenwriting speech at, 56– 7, 59 –61, 98 Beijing Film Studio conference (1961), 50 Beijing Screen Acting Troupe, 44 Beijing Wanbao, 132 Belinsky (Grigori Kozintsev, 1953), 153 Benjamin, Walter, 16, 19, 29 Berry, Chris, 11

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Index Big Li, Small Li, and Old Li (Xie Jin, 1962), 174– 5 Bing Xin, 55 The Birth of a Role (Zheng Junli), 128 Blooming and Contending (1961–2) [PRC], 51– 3, 174, 192n.146 Boleslavsky, Richard, 128 Bolshevik Revolution. see October Revolution (Russian Revolution) [1917] bourgeoisie thinking self-criticisms, 33–6 Boxer Rebellion, 63 Braester, Yomi, 5, 10 –11, 13, 31 Brandenberger, David, 2 Braun, Emily, 29 Breakfast at Tiffany’s (Blake Edwards, 1961), 119 A Brief Introduction to Montage Techniques (Mengtaiqi Jiqiao qiantan) [Ji Zhifeng], 98, 103, 114fig Brooks, Peter, 75 Buddhist temple scene (The New Year’s Sacrifice), 78– 80 bureaucratic leadership criticism over film production and censorship under, 41–5 tension between film aesthetics and bureaucratic, 16, 39– 45 Burmese Film Week (1960), 165 Byzantine Madonna and Child icon, 144 Cai Chusheng commenting on significance of dubbing and subtitling, 153 documentary-style art films as described by, 47 as Film Guidance Executive Committee member, 31 his description of film watching as sensual and rational experience, 52

on lack of quantity and quality of, 1954 fiction films, 39 The New Woman (1934) by, 95– 7, 104– 5, 127 on personality actors, 38 –9, 45 self-examination (ziwo jiancha) by, 33, 34, 35 The Spring River Flows East (1947) by, 34 Sun Yu on his friendship with, 43 use of montage for political criticism by, 95– 7, 104 –5, 201n.23 Cai Xiang, 53, 173 Cai Xiang, Revolution and its Narratives China’s Socialist Literary and Cultural Imaginaries, 1949 – 1966 by, 11 Call to Arms (1923), 66 ‘camera face’ (yinmu xingxiang), 1323 camera shots Cheng Bugao on camera shots ‘rec-creation’ of literary script into film, 102– 3 ‘close-up’ (da miankong or big face) and texie (special inscription), 127 correlation between emotional intensity and shot division, 103fig ‘empty shots’ (kongjingtou) creating pauses ( jianxie), 112fig – 13, 116fig high-angle shots to depict villains and class enemies, 103–4 principles of shot division in montage experiments, 102–4 shot/reverse-shot technique, 73–4fig, 113–15 see also film editing; lighting conventions Campaign against The Life of Wu Xun (Sun Yu, 1951), 33, 49– 50, 175 Cao Yu, 45 capitalism fascism representing a ‘third way’ besides communism and, 28 –9

239

Chinese Revolutionary Cinema Hollywood cinema as form of, 20 –1, 28 ideological and aesthetic competition between socialism and, 177 Lu Xun’s translation and film criticism on film and, 25 –8 Cartwright, Lisa, 138–9 Casanova, Pascale, 66 casting actors/actresses, 129–33 censorship Chen Huangmei’s argument for reducing levels of, 50 Chinese institutions involved in, 25 criticism of Hundred Flowers Campaign, 41 –5 First Five-Year Plan (1953– 7) setting cinema goals and, 14, 24, 33, 36– 40 tension between film aesthetics and bureaucratic, 16, 39– 45 Central Film Bureau (PRC), 31 Central Newsreel and Documentary Film Studio (PRC), 168 Changchun Film Studio, 154 Changchun Screen Acting Troupe, 44 Changqing (The Red Detachment of Women character), 116–17 Chapaev (Georgi Vasilyev and Sergei Vasilyev, 1934), 36– 7, 61 ‘character actors’ (xingge yanyuan), 133 Chen Bo, 158– 9 Chen Bo’er, 36 Chen Huaikai (Song of Youth, 1959), 51, 54, 116, 131– 2, 142 –3 Chen Huangmei arguing for reduced levels of censorship, 50 Dangdai Zhongguo dianying by, 12 encouraging literature film adaptations, 39, 50 Film Bureau (PRC) headed by the, 124 new rectification campaign (1964) targeting, 174

‘On the Creation of Positive Characters’ speech (1955) by, 37 –8 ‘On the Question of Screening’ speech (1954) by, 37 on the purpose of documentary films, 46 on socialist values cultivated by The Red Detachment of Women (Xie Jin, 1961), 50 ‘Some Facts about New China’s Film Industry’ by, 169 –70 on talent of Chinese directors and film-makers, 51 Chen Kaige, 9, 176 Chen Liting, 7, 41, 43 Chen Qiang, 123 Chen, Tina Mai on Chinese audience nostalgia for Chinese socialist films, 13 on female body as symbol of oppressed social groups, 205n.36 her study of PRC film (1949–57) as internationalism project, 118 on implications of the PRC ‘knowledge-based’ films, 169 on rethinking pre- and post-1949 Chinese film, 5 on risk of ‘missing years’ (1949 to, 1979) label, 10 –11 on ‘social imaginary’ represented in Chinese film journals, 164 on ‘socialist geographies’, 152 study on Soviet film circulation in China, 11– 12 on ‘technologies of translation’ used for Soviet films in China, 152 on triangulation of legitimate love’ and ‘triangulation of male – female – party’, 144–5 Chen Xihe (Family, 1956), 72, 74 Chen Yin (Red Lantern, 1970), 146 Cheng Bugao

240

Index ‘close-up’ (da miankong or big face) and texie (special inscription) introduced by, 127 commenting on The Road to Life (Nikolai Ekk, 1931), 7 on shot division as ‘rec-creation’ of literary script into film, 102– 3 Spring Silkworms (1933) by, 59 –60, 84 writing on ‘magical’ montage technique, 90 Cheng Yin, 42, 131, 137 Chiaureli, Mikheil (The Fall of Berlin, 1949), 113– 14fig, 116, 144 China Boxer Rebellion in, 63 Chongqing wartime resistance (1937– 45), 23– 4, 30 fall of the Qing Dynasty of, 63 Japan’s Manchurian invasion (1931) of, 4, 30 Nationalist Party of, 63 see also People’s Republic of China (PRC); Republican era (1911–49) China Film Distribution and Exhibition Corporation, 123– 4 China Picture Company, 124 China’s Screen (film journal) ‘Chinese Camermen in Africa’ article in, 169 ‘The East is Red: A Song and Dance Pageant’ article in, 170 featuring international reactions to Chinese films, 170– 1 ‘Forward, Africa! Fight On’ article in, 167 international film advertisements in the, 166, 170 internationalism of, 164, 165, 166–71 ‘A Militant, Many Splendored Friendship’ article in, 167–9 ‘A Most Outstanding Film: Reactions of Viewers Abroad to Five Golden Flowers’ article in, 171

as multi-language quarterly, 166 ‘Progressive Latin American Films Popular in China’ (1964 issue), 167 ‘progressive’ terminology and anticolonial rhetoric, 167, 212n.81 publicising documentaries shot in African countries, 169 ‘Some Facts about New China’s Film Industry’ (Chen Huangmei) article in, 169–70 ‘The White-Haired Girl Abroad’ article in, 170–1 ‘Chinese Camermen in Africa’ (China’s Screen journal), 169 Chinese cinema genres documentary-style art film ( jiluxing yishupian), 46– 7, 48, 53 gift presentation films (xianli pian), 47 –8 see also family melodrama; heroic narratives; Red Classics Chinese Cinema (Zhongguo dianying) (film journal), 158, 160– 1 Chinese Communist Party as benefactor to families in Chinese cinema, 83 –4 declarations (1935) on resisting Japanese invasion, 30 40th anniversary of the establishment of, 122 historical connections of film, Maoist cultural policy, and, 31–2 Lei Leng film on family of the, 1 –2 Lin Daojing (Song of Youth character) admitted into the, 142 Propaganda Department (CCP Central Committee) of the, 25, 32, 52 –3 Qionghua (The Red Detachment of Women character) gaze toward the, 116fig– 17 ‘triangulation of legitimate love’ and ‘triangulation of male – female – party’, 144– 5

241

Chinese Revolutionary Cinema see also communism; People’s Republic of China (PRC) Chinese film aesthetics. see aesthetics experiments Chinese film journals celebration of October Revolution and Soviet film weeks in, 157 –9 China’s Screen, 164, 165, 166– 71 Chinese Cinema (Zhongguo dianying), 158, 160–1 Chinese Film (Zhongguo dianying), 130 composing a cultural internationalism, 151–2 constructing an ideal domestic and international audience, 148 envisioning Afro– Asian –Latin American solidarity, 19, 148– 9, 161– 3 film advertisements and Asian film festival coverage in the, 163– 5 Film Art (Dianying yishu), 155fig, 158, 164, 165 Film Art Translations (Dianying yishu yicong), 39– 40, 159– 60 fostering internationalism during Seventeen Years era, 159 images articulated in discourse of, 3 International Cinema (Guoji dianying), 159– 60, 164 on intimate and evergreen Sino – Soviet friendship, 158 leaning to one side policy influencing, 19, 100, 148, 152–7 The People’s Cinema (Dazhong dianying), 123, 153 rhetoric of internationalism in, 17 –18, 147–72 Shangying Pictorial (Shangying huabao), 158, 169 Shijie dianying, 159 slogans glorifying brotherhood with Soviet Union in, 152 ‘social imaginary’ represented in, 164

Yiwen (Shijie wenxue from, 1959 onwards), 149, 160, 167 Chinese film-makers actively reinventing theoretical issues and film methods, 22 appropriation of Hollywood cinema by, 28, 55 –61, 64– 5 casting actors for iconic role model, 129– 33 Chen Huangmei on talent of directors and, 51 Chinese transliteration mengtaiqi [‘veil (is) too strange’], 88, 89– 92 the ‘fifth-generation’, 9– 10 First Five-Year Plan (1953– 7) setting aesthetic goals for, 14, 24, 33, 36– 40 Hundred Flowers Campaign (1956– 7) encouraging open critical expression by, 14, 24, 40 –5 impact of the Sino – Soviet split (mid-1950s and, 1960s) on, 19, 89, 99, 100 influence and appropriation of Soviet film by, 3, 4, 87– 118 investment in creating appealing propaganda films, 177–9 post-nationalised film industry and changes roles of, 41 Rectification Campaign (1951– 2) for ‘remoulding’ of, 14, 24, 32– 6, 53 The Road to Life response by, 6– 8 Sino – Soviet co-production by, 154– 7fig Sino – Soviet split and distancing from Soviet cinema by, 19, 89, 99, 100, 122, 148–9, 150 tension between bureaucratic leadership and autonomy of, 39 –45 see also aesthetic experiments; film production; Shanghai-based film-makers

242

Index Chinese Film (Zhongguo dianying) [film journal], 130 Chinese intellectuals affinity for Soviet Russia shaped by, 5 –8 attitude toward xiao shimin (‘petty urbanites’) by, 27 Soviet avant-garde influence on, 3 –8 Chinese National Film Museum’s, 22 Big Movie Stars exhibition (2012), 120–1, 129, 204n.11 Chinese revolutionary cinema continual struggle between aesthetics and politics by, 23 –53 film industry nationalised, 41 –2 Hollywood cinema’s influence on, 8, 20 –1, 28, 55 –61 internationalism rhetoric of, 18– 21 investment in creating appealing propaganda films of, 177– 9 leaning to one side policy positioning Soviet cinema as elder brother of, 19, 100, 148, 152 –7 the ‘missing years’ (1949–66) in, 8–13 as part of PRC political, social, economic, and cultural projects, 118 as part of the modernisation project (1911– 49), 5 relationship between state propaganda and aesthetic experiment in, 13–18 as representing an alternative aesthetic to Hollywood, 20–1 Sino – Soviet exchange as historical context of, 13 Soviet cinema presence and model for, 5 –8, 92 see also aesthetic experiments; cinematography; propaganda film; Red Classics Chinese star discourse ‘acting good’ clich
e of the, 125 casting for iconic role model, 129– 33

Chinese National Film Museum’s, 22 Big Movie Stars exhibition (2012) celebrating, 120– 1 comparing capitalist and socialist star culture and, 119– 20 deCordova’s Hollywood star system used to understand, 125–7 ‘film worker’ label replacing ‘stars’ in, 129 life experience, tiyan, and tixian, 133– 8 People’s Cinema (Dazhong dianying) Hundred Flowers poll, 123 private and public personae of female stars, 127 Republican Shanghai cinema roots of, 119, 124–7 self-cultivation difference between Republican and socialist star culture, 127–8, 138 socialist realist gaze understood as devotional gaze of actors, 139 –41 Stanislavski’s realist acting system, 8, 21, 28, 127– 30, 133–4, 159 ‘22 outstanding screen actors’ promotion (1962), 120–4, 129, 204n.11 see also screen actors/actresses Chongquing wartime resistance (1937–45), 23 –4, 30 Chow, Rey, 9– 10 Chunhua (Stage Sisters character), 109fig Cinema Approaching Reality: Locating Chinese Film Theory (Fan), 21 Cinema Babel: Translating Global Cinema (Nornes), 21 Cinema (French film journal issue, 1955), 161 Cinema Nuovo (Italian film journal), 161 ‘cinema of attractions’ concept, 104 cinematography defined as ‘painting with light’, 141 exploring aesthetic experiments in, 17

243

Chinese Revolutionary Cinema see also Chinese revolutionary cinema; Hollywood cinema; Soviet cinema cinephilia notion, 160 Clark, Katerina, 14, 15, 18, 149 Clark, Paul, 5, 176 class standing high-angle shots to depict villains and class enemies, 103–4 melodramatic moments in film to accentuate class conflicts, 75 Rectification Campaign focus on ‘ideological remoulding’ and, 14, 24, 32– 6, 53 Rectification Campaign self-criticisms reflecting, 33– 6 screenwriting a type (dianxing) establishing, 36 –7 This Life of Mine (Shi Hui, 1950) commentary on, 64– 5 see also proletariats Clavin, Patricia, 151 ‘cloning’ metaphor, 2 ‘close-up’ (da miankong or big face) and texie (special inscription), 127 Cold War Chinese revolutionary cinema as part of PRC’s self-positioning during, 19 cinematic experiences within the context of the, 147 defined by internationalism ideology and politics of, 147 films of the interwar period before and during, 28 –32 ‘othering’ of propaganda during, 23 –4 see also internationalism; internationalism rhetoric; politics; Soviet Union collective subject ‘montage’ to cinematically construct a, 88 –9

‘socialist realist gaze’ creating a, 11, 89, 110fig – 13 Stage Sisters (1965) montage on suffering of women as, 109fig Comintern (Third International) [1919–43], 147, 150–1, 155fig communion ( jiaoliu) principle, 135t communism fascism representing a ‘third way’ besides capitalism and, 28 –9 propaganda roots in interwar of modernism and Marxism of, 30 –1 Wind from the East scene on Soviet power as being, 156– 7fig, 158– 9, 166 see also Chinese Communist Party Communist International (Comintern) [1919–43], 147, 150–1 The Communist Manifesto (Marx and Engels), 150 Communist University of the Toilers of the East (Moscow, 1921), 151 comparative montage categories contrast, 94 leitmotif, 95 parallel action, 94 simile, 94 simultaneity, 95 Congolese literature, 167 ‘Contingencies of Value’ (Smith), 69 contrast (comparative montage), 94 contrastive editing, 100fig Corrosion novel (Mao Dun, 1941), 56 cosmopolitanism Chinese socialist literature as form of socialist, 149 internationalism distinguished from, 148 Soviet openness to Western culture as kind of, 18, 149, 162 ‘The Creation of Film Art for Now’ (Shi Dongshan), 34– 5 criticism ( piping), 33

244

Index see also self-criticism (ziwo piping) [Rectification Campaign] Crows and Sparrows (Zheng Junli, 1949), 35 Cuban documentary film movement, 20 Cui Wei best actor award (1962) to, 123 Song of Youth (1959) by Chen Huaikai and, 51, 54, 116, 131– 2, 142– 3 Cultural Revolution (1966– 76) Albanian films and symbolic objects circulating during, 166 Cai Xiang on early, 1960s symptoms of, 173 Chinese film from Seventeen Years banned during, 9, 10 ‘cloning’ metaphor on creative process of, 2 films banned during the, 9, 10 historical connections of party-state, film, and, 31 –2 model opera film (yangbanxi) popular during, 12, 174, 201n.31, 214n.12 mofan and yangban characterising the, 137 radical aesthetic experiments set off by the, 174 Red Lantern (Cheng Yin, 1970) during the, 146 state propaganda in context of, 15–16 Western European works circulating throughout the, 149 see also People’s Republic of China (PRC) culture defining characteristic of propaganda is stewardship of, 14 investment of PRC’s propaganda state in, 14– 15, 17 –18 Soviet Union’s openness to Western, 18 see also Soviet intellectuals

Czechoslovak Film (Italian film journal), 161, 166 Dadaism movement, 87 Dangdai Zhongguo dianying (Chen Huangmei), 12 Daughter of the Party (Lin Nong, 1958), 51 Daybreak (Sun Yu, 1933), 4 deCordova, Richard, 125 Democratic Republic of Vietnam (North Vietnam), 165 Deng Xiaoping, 48, 179 Deutsche Filmkunst (German film journal issue, 1953), 161 Dhramo, Kristaq (Extraordinary Mission, 1963), 166 Dianying zazhi (magazine), 127 A Dictionary of Film Terms (Hong Shen, 1935), 90 ‘Diligently Remould Myself through Serious Learning’ (Shi Dongshan), 34 directors. see Chinese film-makers ‘Directors Should be at the Center of Film Production’ (Chen Liting, 1956), 43 Dobrenko, Evgeny, 15 documentary-style art film ( jiluxing yishupian) Chen Huangmei on the purpose of, 46 China’s Screen (journal) publicising African, 169 mass education during GLF using, 46 –7, 48, 53 Dogliani, Patrizia, 150–1 Donald, Stephanie, 11, 89, 110 Dong Zhaoqi (Lei Feng, 1964), 1 –2 Donskoi, Mark (The Gorky Trilogy: My Childhood, My Apprenticeship, and My Universities (1938), 56 dragon without eyes fable, 207n.80 dual plot, 38, 72, 115–16

245

Chinese Revolutionary Cinema dubbing/subtitling films, 152– 4, 178, 190n.108 Dyer, Richard, 129 Dzigan, Efim (Wind from the East, 1959), 154– 7fig, 158–9, 166 Early Spring in February (Xie Tieli, 1963), 175 East German Africa discourse study (Weis), 162– 3 ‘The East is Red: A Song and Dance Pageant’ (China’s Screen journal), 170 The East is Red (song and dance pageant), 170 Edwards, Blake (Breakfast at Tiffany’s, 1961), 119 Eisenstein, Sergei Chinese rhetoric of simplicity reinventing montage of, 88, 97 –102t efforts to introduce Chinese audience to work by, 92 ‘esoteric’ criticism of montage methods by, 95 Film Art Translations (Dianying yishu yicong) [film journal] translating works by, 159 his The Film Sense translated into Chinese, 98, 99 intellectual cinema idea of, 177 ‘montage of attractions’ technique by, 87, 89, 94, 104 –5, 117 Shen Fengwei’s delineation of montage categories formulated by, 92–4 Strike (1925) by, 94, 100fig Ekk, Nikolai (The Road to Life, 1931), 4, 6– 8 Elsaesser, Thomas, 75 ‘empty shots’ (kongjingtou), 112fig – 13, 116fig Engels, Friedrich, 150 Enlightenment, 148

Espaldas Mojadas (Wetback/Toudu de kugong) [Alejandro Galindo, 1955], 165 Expressionist art, 29 Extraordinary Mission (Kristaq Dhramo, 1963), 166 ‘eyes’ (yan, or mu), 140 ‘facial performance’ (mianbu biaoyan), 126–7 fascism, 29, 177 The Fall of Berlin (Mikheil Chiaureli, 1949), 113– 14fig, 116, 144 families Chinese cinema on the Party’s role in guiding displaced, 83– 4 heterosexual romance and, 16, 37– 9, 72 –4fig, 84– 5, 86 Lei Feng (Dong Zhaoqi, 1964) on Party as, 1 – 2 May Fourth Movement literature on the nation as a, 16, 54, 55, 74 –5 The Red Detachment of Women friendships creating a new, 49, 50, 72, 74, 83, 116fig– 17, 132, 144, 145– 6 Revolutionary Family (Shui Hua, 1961) creation of a, 16, 54, 60, 74, 81 –5 This Life of Mine’s plot alternating between protagonist and, 63 –5 Family (Chen Xihe and Ye Ming, 1956), 72, 74, 84 family melodrama creation of revolutionary film, 74 –8fig Family (Chen Xihe and Ye Ming, 1956) as, 72, 74, 84 The New Year’s Sacrifice (Sang Hu, 1956) as, 16, 49, 55, 65– 81, 68 –70, 75–81, 84 Revolutionary Family (Shui Hua, 1961) as, 16, 54, 60, 74, 81 –5, 192n.2

246

Index Shanghai film-making tradition of, 16 supporting nation as family propaganda, 16 see also Chinese cinema genres; melodrama mode Family novel (Ba Jin, 1933), 72, 84 Fan, Victor, 21, 31 ‘Fascinating Fascism: The Aesthetics of Fascism’ (Journal of Contemporary History), 29 Fascist aesthetic experiments, 28 –9 ‘Fascist Aesthetics Revisited’ (Koepnick), 29 ‘feature the thirteen years’ slogan, 174 female stars Chinese revolutionary film’s feminisation of icons, 144–6 gender-specific lighting conventions for, 141– 2 pinups of, 127, 139 private and public personae of, 127 Republican Shanghai cinema’s modernity and sexual morality of, 144 see also screen actors/actresses Feng Xizui, 126, 127 A Few Questions about Screenwriting speech (Xia Yan, 1958), 56– 7, 59–61, 98 ‘fifth-generation’ film-makers, 9 –10 film adaptations. see literature film adaptations film advertisements China’s Screen, 166, 170 contributing to vision of internationalism, 163, 166– 71 side-by-side Chinese and Soviet films, 203n.9 – 4n.9 film aesthetics. see Chinese film aesthetics Film and Capitalism (Iwasaki Akira), 25, 26 Film Art (Dianying yishu) [film journal], 155fig, 158, 164, 165

Film Art Translations (Dianying yishu yicong) [film journal], 39– 40, 159–60 ‘Film as a Tool of Propaganda and Provocation’ (Iwasaki Akira), 25, 26, 27– 8 Film Bureau (PRC) on average age of actors in Shanghai, 49 Chen Huangmei as head of the, 124 film censorship role by the, 25 ‘Report on Raising Artistic Quality’ report (1959) by the, 48– 9 The Film Director and Film Material (Pudovkin), 8, 91 film editing Eisenstine’s Strike (1925) use of contrastive editing, 100fig Hollywood’s continuity approach to, 101 Sang Hu on ‘artificiality’ of his, 197n.54 Shi Dongshan on comprehensibility priority in, 98 socialist realist gaze, 11, 89, 110fig –13 see also camera shots; montage experiments ‘film fans’ (yingmi), 129 Film Guidance Executive Committee (PRC), 31 film-makers. see Chinese film-makers; Shanghai-based film-makers film production criticism over bureaucratic leadership and censorship of, 41– 5 A Dictionary of Film Terms (1935) on terms used in, 90 GLF’s increased quantity at the cost of quality, 46, 47–8 shot division used in, 102–4 Sino – Soviet co-production of films, 154– 7fig

247

Chinese Revolutionary Cinema ‘walking on two legs’ policy on, 48 –9, 50, 53 see also Chinese film-makers ‘The Film Script is Good; the Film is Good Too’ commentary (People’s Daily), 65 ‘The Film Script (The Theory of the Script)’ [Pudovkin], 94 The Film Sense translation (Eisenstein), 98, 99 Film Society of Lincoln Center, 13 Film Studio (PRC) report on raising artistic quality (1959) by, 48 Shanghai Film Studio, 44 see also Shanghai Film Studio (PRC) ‘film truth’, 87 Film (Vietnamese film journal), 161 film weeks Asian Film Week (Yazhou dianyingzhou) [1957], 163 Chinese film journals celebrating Soviet, 157–9 regularly held by the PRC, 164–5 ‘film worker’ label, 129 Filmfare (Indian issue, 1952), 161 first cinema (consumer good and entertainment), 20 –1 First Five-Year Plan (1953–7) [PRC] centered on aesthetic form, 53 description of, 14, 24 film theory as target of ‘film construction’ under, 97 Rectification Campaign setting the stage for, 33 setting goals for screenwriting, directing, and acting, 33, 36–40 First International (1864), 36 –7, 150 First National Conference on Screenwriting (1953), 36– 7, 214n.8 Five Golden Flowers (Wang Jiayi, 1959), 49, 50, 72, 124, 171, 213n.106

‘Follow the Examples of Comrade Lei Feng’ campaign (1963), 1– 2, 137, 173 For Peace (Huang Zuolin, 1956), 45 foreign films dubbing and subtitling, 152– 4, 178, 190n.108 PRC film weeks for imported, 157–9, 163, 164–5 socialist cinema’s engagement with, 178– 9 see also Soviet films ‘Forward, Africa! Fight On’ (China’s Screen journal), 167 Forward, Side by Side (Krah p€er krah) [Endri Keko, 1964], 165– 6 ‘fourth wall’ belief, 135t friendship Afro –Asian – Latin American solidarity and, 19, 148 –9, 161– 3 Comintern representatives joining hands in, 155fig emotional violence included in internationalism rhetoric on, 148, 150– 2 Premier Zhou Enali’s visits constructing ‘glittering arc’ of, 167– 8fig The Red Detachment of Women film on new family created through, 49, 50, 72, 74, 83, 116fig – 17, 132, 144, 145– 6 Sun Yu commenting on his and Cai Chusheng’s, 43 terminology used to describe Sino – Soviet, 158 Wind from the East (1959) on Sino-Soviet, 154–7fig, 158 –9, 166 ‘Year of Sino – Burmese Friendship’ (1960), 165 fusion and duality of performance, 135t futurism, 87

248

Index Galindo, Alejandro (Espaldas Mojadas, 1955), 165 Gan Xiuewei (Wind from the East, 1959), 154– 7fig, 158–9, 166 Gao Jinxian, 27 Gate Number Six (L€u Ban, 1952), 105fig – 6 genres. see Chinese cinema genres Gerasimov, Sergei, 39– 40 Getino, Octavio, 20 gift presentation films (xianli pian), 47–8 Gish, Lillian, 141 ‘glittering arc’ of friendship, 168fig ‘globalisation’, 148 ‘A Glorious Model’ (Soviet film week article), 158 The Goddess (Wu Yonggang, 1934), 127, 141 Gorky, Maxim, 56 The Gorky Trilogy: My Childhood, My Apprenticeship, and My Universities (Mark Donskoi, 1938), 56 Gorsuch, Anne E., 162 ‘Great Experiment’ (1920s), 14 Great Leap Forward Campaign (GLF, 1958 – 61) [PRC], 14, 24, 45, 46–9, 50, 53, 85, 177, 191n.128 Griffith, D. W., 94, 95, 103, 127, 141, 200n.21– 1n.21 Gu Yuanqing, 27 Gunning, Tom, 89, 104 Guomindang (GMD) government (China), 4 ‘halo’ backlighting effect, 141 Han Fei, 45, 190n.108 Hang, Krista Van Fleit, 81 Hansen, Miriam, 5 ‘Hard and Creative Labour’ (The People’s Cinema) [1954], 153 He Laoliu (The New Year’s Sacrifice film character), 73 –4fig, 76 –8fig

Hepburn, Audrey, 119 Heroic Beginning (Zhang Ke, 1954), 42 heroic narratives adoption of social realism approach to, 36– 8 of documentary-style art film ( jiluxing yishupian), 46 –7 Lei Feng (‘Follow the Examples of Comrade Lei Feng’ campaign, 1963), 1– 2, 137, 173 male death and survivor images of women, 85, 116, 145 propaganda films’, 31 revolutionary aesthetics of heroism in the, 3 role in shaping socialist propaganda states, 2 spiritual features, love, and romance included in, 37– 9 tracing the revolutionary aesthetic of, 175 –6 see also Chinese cinema genres; narration; screenwriting scripts; specific film Hesitation (1925), 66 heterosexual romance. See romance (lian’ai) high-angle shots, 103– 4 History of Chinese Film Concepts (Jian Heyan), 10 –11 Hollywood cinema Breakfast at Tiffany’s (Blake Edwards, 1961), 119 capitalism of, 20 –1 Chinese revolutionary cinema representing alternative aesthetic to, 20– 1 continuity film editing used in, 101 as ‘first cinema’ for capital accumulation, 20– 1 Hollywood star system of, 125–7, 130 implications for Chinese cinema adaptation of heterosexual romance from, 86

249

Chinese Revolutionary Cinema Lu Xun’s critique of, 28 montage used to convey passage of time in, 106 pin-ups as cultural icons, 139 popularity in semi-colonial Shanghai of, 25 –6, 58, 95 recasting narration in Chinese films and literary terms, 55– 61 ‘sedative’ nature of, 8 series of shot/reverse shots and close-ups used by, 73 –4fig This Life of Mine (Shi Hui, 1950) use of stylistic devices of, 64 –5 Xia Yan on influence on Chinese cinema by, 58 –9 see also cinematography; the West Hollywood films circulating in semi-colonial Shanghai as propaganda, 25– 6 comparing dual plot of romance and work in Chinese cinema to, 38, 72, 115– 16 gender-specific lighting conventions used in, 141–2 montage sequence used in, 201n.22 principles of classical Hollywood narration (1917 to, 1960) characterising, 58t, 61 ‘Resolutely in Support of the Indonesian Struggle against American Film’ (Film Art journal) on, 164 selective appropriation by Chinese film-makers of, 3, 4, 21 vernacular modernism framework examining influence on PRC films, 5 xiao shimin (‘petty urbanites’) [PRC] consumers of, 26– 7 Hollywood star system, 125 –7, 130 Hong Kong, 13 Hong Shen A Dictionary of Film Terms (1935) on film terms by, 90 influence of Soviet cinema on, 4

on Soviet cinema as model for Chinese cinema, 7 –8 The Horn of Africa (documentary), 169 Hu Die, 124, 126–7, 204n.21 Hu Feng, 40 Hu Qiaomu, 32 Huang Zibu. see Xia Yan (Huang Zibu) Huang Zumo (Romance on Lushan Mountain, 1980), 176 Huang Zuolin, 45, 134, 158 ‘Huangpu River’ song (1935), 201n.24 Hundred Flowers Award ceremony (1962), 123 Hundred Flowers Campaign (1956 –7) [PRC] Anti-Rightist Campaign (1957) ending the, 41, 42 criticism over executive leadership and censorship under, 41– 5 debates on nationalisation of cinema during, 99 description of, 14, 24 discontent and criticism among older actors during the, 130 encouraging open critical expression from film artists, 14, 24, 40 –5, 50 Geroges Sadoul’s notion of cinephilia during, 160 implications of Polish and Hungarian uprisings (1956) for the, 41, 150 as part of the film industry’s aesthetics –politics struggle, 50 as period of political relaxation, 51 Hungarian Uprising (1956), 41, 150 Huters, Theodore, 66, 69 ‘I Must Resolutely Remould Myself’ (Zheng Junli), 35 ‘I Recognised my Flawed Ideology’ (L€u Ban), 34 iconography bridging the modern and medieval meanings of, 138– 9

250

Index Byzantine Madonna and Child, 144 Chinese revolutionary film’s feminisation of, 144–6 comparing socialist and religious, 139 gendered nature of lighting conventions for socialist, 142– 3 Hollywood pin-ups as cultural, 139 The Red Detachment of Women (Xie Jin, 1961) female socialist, 145– 6 Song of Youth’s Xie Fang/Lin Daojing becoming a socialist, 143 ‘ideological remoulding’, 14, 32, 32– 6, 53 ideology continued competition between capitalism and socialism, 177 conveyed through aesthetic forms, 48 of internationalism defining the twentieth century, 147– 72 interwar period cinema impacted by politics and, 147 L€u Ban on his tendency to emphasis technique instead of ideology, 34 Rectification Campaign focus on class standing and, 33– 6, 53 self-criticisms on individual failures to emphasis, 33– 6 tension between Chinese filmmakers and bureaucratic focus on, 39 –45 underlying tension between aesthetics and, 35– 6 imagination (xiangxiang) principle, 135t imperialism Chinese film-makers’ response to, 4 May Fourth movement response to, 5 of Russia on China prior to October Revolution (1917), 5 Sino – Albanian co-production focused on fight against, 165– 6

‘Improve the System for Reviewing Film Scripts’ (Tang Zhenchang, 1956), 42 Independent Mali (documentary), 169 inner emotion principle, 135 intellectuals. see Chinese intellectuals; Soviet intellectuals ‘interior performance’ (neixin biaoyan), 126–7 ‘internal montage’ technique, 108 –9fig International Association of Workers (the First International) [1864], 36–7, 150 International Cinema (Guoji dianying) [film journal], 159–60, 164 International Labour Organization, 147 ‘Internationale’ song (1871), 150 internationalism Afro –Asian – Latin American solidarity, 19, 148–9, 161– 3 Asian film weeks and Afro –Asian film festivals, 163– 5 ‘cultural’, 151–2 defining the tumultuous twentieth century, 147 distinguished from ‘transnationalism’ and ‘cosmopolitanism’, 148 examining implications for cultural diplomacy and policy making, 148 film advertisements contributing to vision of, 163, 166– 71 institutions representing rise of Western liberal, 147 interwar period cinema impacted by ideology and politics of, 147 PRC state propaganda investment in, 149– 52 propaganda state’s cinematic experiment encompassing vision of, 171–2 redefining Red friendship post-Bandung, 161– 3 shifting language of twenty-first century political and aesthetic discourse, 147– 8

251

Chinese Revolutionary Cinema Sino–Albanian co-production, 165–6 socialist bloc interactions understood as part of historic, 149– 50 Soviet– US peaceful coexistence countered by new PRC’s vision of, 19, 150, 162– 3, 179 twentieth century defined by ideology of, 147–72 see also Cold War; politics internationalism rhetoric China’s Screen (journal) anti-colonial, 167 in Chinese film journals, 17– 18, 147– 72 of Chinese socialist cinema culture, 18 –21 emotional violence included in friendship and solidarity, 148, 150– 2 see also Cold War interwar period cinema competing propagandas of the, 29–32 conceiving propaganda as instrument of affect, 30–1 internationalism ideological and political permutations impacting, 147 Lu Xun’s critique of Hollywood cinema during, 25–8 see also Republican Shanghai cinema Iovene, Paula, 149, 160 Iriye, Akira, 151 Italian Fascist regime, 29 Ivan the Terrible, 2 Iwasaki Akira Film and Capitalism by, 25, 26 ‘Film as a Tool of Propaganda and Provocation’ by, 25, 26, 27– 8 on film as an international text, 27 –8 Lu Xun’s translation of, 25, 26 –8 Japan Kinema Junpo featuring mini photo spreads of, 237 Japanese actresses, 119

Manchuria invasion (1931) by, 4, 30, 64 re-establishment of Sino – Soviet relations (1932), 4 Second Sino-Japanese War (1937– 45), 4 Ji Zhifeng A Brief Introduction to Montage Techniques (Mengtaiqi jiqiao qiantan) by, 98, 101– 2t, 103, 114fig redefining scope of montage to include film editing, 101 –2 on superimposition as being ‘internal montage’, 108 Jia Zhangke, 176 Jian Heyan, 10– 11 Jiang Meiqing, 82, 83 Jiang Qing, 174 Jin Yan, 7, 124 Johnson, Matthew, 24– 5 Journal of Chinese Cinemas (2011 special issue), 12 Journal of Contemporary History’s ‘Fascinating Fascism: The Aesthetics of Fascism’, 29 journals. see Chinese film journals Jue Hui (Family character), 84 Kaplan, Alice Yaeger, 29 Kasongo Kapanga, 167 Ke Qingshi, 174 Keating, Patrick, 141 Keko, Endri (Forward, Side by Side, 1964), 165– 6 Khrushchev, Nikita ‘Kitchen Debate’ (1959) between Nixon and, 162 peaceful coexistence policy promoted by, 19, 150, 162–3, 179 the Twentieth Party Congress (1959) secret speech given by, 40– 1, 162 Khrushchev – Nixon ‘Kitchen Debate’ (1959), 162

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Index Kinema Junpo (Japanese film journal), 119 Koenker, Diane P., 162 Koepnick, Lutz P., 29 Korean film (film journal), 161 Kozintsev, Grigori (Belinsky, 1953), 153 Kuleshov experiment, 87 Kuleshov, Lev, 87 Kwartalnik Filmonwy (Polish film journal), 161 Laikwan Pang, 31, 137 language dubbing and subtitling used to create a shared cinematic, 152– 4, 178, 190n.108 Wind from the East (1959) coproduction approach to creating a shared, 154– 7fig see also translation Lao She ‘Save our Cinema’ essay (1956) by, 42 This Life of Mine (1937) novella by, 56, 62 This Life of Mine (Shi Hui, 1950) adaptation of work by, 16, 55, 62fig – 5, 70, 84, 193n.1 Latin America. see Afro–Asian –Latin American solidarity Le Peuple (Algerian newspaper), 170 Le Yan, 44, 45 League of Nations, 147, 151 leaning to one side policy (PRC) revisited after the Sino –Soviet split, 100 Soviet cinema positioned as ‘elder brother’ as in the, 148, 152– 7 Soviet Union seen as ‘elder brother’ in the, 19 ‘Learning Stanislavski’s Acting System’ column (Film Art Translations film journal), 159 Lei Feng (Dong Zhaoqi, 1964), 1 –2

Lei Feng (‘Follow the Examples of Comrade Lei Feng’ campaign, 1963), 1 –2, 137, 173 leitmotif (comparative montage), 95 Lenin in, 1918 (Romm, Aron, and Simkov), 160 Lenin in October (Romm and Vasilev), 160 Lenin, Vladimir (Wind from the East portrayal), 154, 156– 7fig, 158–9 Lermontov, Mikhail, 2 ‘Let Numerous Hidden Jewels Shine’ (Shanggong Yunzhu, 1956), 44 Li Chenglie, 80– 1 Li (‘force’), 7 Li Shuangshuang (Lu Ren, 1962), 54, 85–6 Li Zhun, 85 Liang Shanbo and Zhu Yingtai opera film (Sang Hu, 1954), 72 Liang Xin, 138 ‘life experience’ (ethical system of acting), 134, 136, 137 ‘Life is the Source of Artistic Creation’ (Zhu Xijuan), 136 This Life of Mine (Shi Hui, 1950), 16, 55, 62fig – 5, 70, 84, 193n.1 The Life of Wu Xun (Sun Yu, 1951) opposition campaign, 33, 49 –50, 175 lighting conventions capturing glamour through, 141–2 ‘dotting the dragon’s eyes’ (hualong dianjing), 140–1 gender-specific, 141– 2 gendered nature of socialist iconography and, 142–3 see also camera shots Lin Daojing (Song of Youth character), 51, 131, 132, 142–3 The Lin Family Shop (Shui Hua, 1959), 60, 74, 82, 84, 174, 198n.74 Lin Nong, Daughter of the Party (1958), 51

253

Chinese Revolutionary Cinema Lin Zexu (Zheng Junli, 1959), 49 literature Kasongo Kapanga’s suggestion on Congolese, 167 Katerina Clark’s description of a socialist realist novel, 188n.60 ‘literary revolution’ (1920s) evolving into ‘revolutionary’, 196n.42 Lu Xun as the father of modern Chinese, 56 Lu Xun’s May Fourth critical realism, 65– 8 ‘Mandarin Ducks and Butterfly’, 55 –6, 75, 193n.2 Mao on revolutionary art and literature serving the masses, 19–20 May Fourth, 11, 16, 54, 55, 56, 74– 5, 177 PRC’s promotion of internationalism and solidarity in, 149–50 pre-1949 revolutionary, 56 Soviet socialist realist fictions, 189n.73 Tao Cheng’s autobiography My Family, 81 –2 used to brand Chinese cinema, 55 –6 Volland on ‘socialist cosmopolitanism’ of Chinese socialist, 149 literature film adaptations Chen Huangmei’s encouragement of, 50 of the Family novel (Ba Jin, 1933), 72 family theme of socialist, 74– 5 of the May Fourth Movement on nation as a family, 16, 54, 55, 56 melodramatic pathos approach in, 74 –8fig of the ‘The New Year’s Sacrifice’ short story (Lu Xun, 1924), 56, 60, 65 –72 Spring Silkworms (Cheng Bugao, 1933) adapted from Mao Dun’s novella, 59–60 used to brand Chinese cinema, 55 –6

Xia Yan on film’s unique expressive method for, 57, 59–61 Zhou Enlai’s ‘two legs’ speech on art and, 48 –9, 50, 53 see also screenwriting scripts Liu, Lydia, 91 Liu Qiuju, 138 London Trades Council, 150 Long Live the Wife (Sang Hu and Zhang Ailing, 1947), 72 love Chinese revolutionary film reunions, romance, and, 113– 17, 202n.61 – 1n.61 family and heterosexual romance and, 72 –4fig heroic narratives to include romance and, 37 –8 ‘Mandarin Ducks and Butterfly’ literature on, 55 –6, 75, 193n.2 need to correctly define, 38 The New Year’s Sacrifice (Sang Hu, 1956) romance and, 72 –4fig, 193n.2 Soviet socialist realism perspective of romance and, 189n.73 ‘triangulation of legitimate love’ and ‘triangulation of male – female – party’, 144– 5 L€u Ban Gate Number Six (1952), 105fig – 6 ‘I Recognised my Flawed Ideology’ (1951) self-criticism by, 34 self-criticism on his class standing by, 33– 4 Lu Ren, 85 Lu Xun criticism on film and capitalism, 25–8 as the father of modern Chinese literature, 56 ‘Film as a Tool of Propaganda and Provocation’ (Iwasaki Akira) translation by, 25, 26, 27–8 Mao’s mixed praise of, 69

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Index May Fourth critical realism of, 65– 8, 69 national commemoration of death of, 65 ‘The New Year’s Sacrifice’ (1924) short story by, 56, 60, 65–6, 70 The New Year’s Sacrifice film remaking him into revolutionary writer, 81 scholarship on narrative approach by, 66– 8 Lukov, Leonid (Alexander Matrosov, 1949), 153 The L€uliang Heroes (L€u Ban and Yilin, 1950), 34 male martyr death, 145 The Man with a Movie Camera (Dziga Vertov), 87 Manchurian invasion (1931), 4, 30, 64 ‘Mandarin Ducks and Butterfly’ literature, 55 –6, 75, 193n.2 Mao Dun, 15, 35, 56, 59– 60 Mao era (1949– 76) [PRC] fictional films on heroes and heroines of the, 2 Hu Qiaomu’s speech (1951) quoting from, 32–3 Mao Zedong books, film scripts, and play scripts reviewed by, 14 Campaign against The Life of Wu Xun (Sun Yu, 1951) initiated by, 33, 49– 50, 175 on combining revolutionary realism and romanticism, 84– 5, 86 film studies emerging after, 1976 death of, 9 ‘Follow the Examples of Comrade Lei Feng’ campaign (1963) initiated by, 1 –2, 137, 173 on how revolutionary art serves the masses, 19– 20 mixed praise of Lu Xun by, 69

Moscow Meeting of Communist and Workers’ Parties (1957) speech by, 210n.41 nationwide campaign of studying works of, 173 Rectification Campaign endorsed by, 33 ‘revolutionary’ realism notion of, 198n.75 Yan’an talks redefinition of art, 32, 33, 69, 71, 98, 134 Mao Zedong shidai de renmin dianying (Wu Di), 12 The March Forward (Cheng Yin, 1950), 42 The Married Couple (Zheng Junli, 1951), 35 Marx, Karl, 150 Marxism propaganda roots, 30– 1 master (dashi), 51 Matveyev (Wind from the East character), 154, 156– 7fig May Fourth movement (PRC) attitude toward xiao shimin (‘petty urbanites’) by intellectuals of, 27 Chinese film discourse from literature of, 11, 54, 177 focus on the nature as family by literature of, 16, 54, 55, 74 –5 Lu Xun’s May Fourth critical realism, 65– 8, 69 modernisation project initiated by the, 5 McGrath, Jason, 12, 89, 106, 115, 126 melodrama mode of The New Year’s Sacrifice (Sang Hu, 1956), 55, 68 –70, 75– 8fig, 193n.1 as a system of punctuation, 75 used in socialist film adaptations to create moral anchor, 75– 6 see also family melodrama Meng Liye, 12 mengtaiqi [‘veil (is) too strange’], 88, 89–92

255

Chinese Revolutionary Cinema Mexican film week (1959), 165 ‘A Militant, Many Splendored Friendship’ (China’s Screen journal), 167–9 Ministry of Culture (PRC) announcing annual film output on par with Soviet Union, 48 film censorship role by, 25 22 Big Stars list sent to, 123 the Xinqiao Conference organised by the Propaganda Department of the CCP and, 52 –3 the ‘missing years’ (1949 –66) reasons for oversight in scholarship of, 10 –11 recent innovative efforts to research, 12 –13 under-research of Chinese cinema during the, 8 –12 model opera films (yangbanxi), 12, 174, 201n.31, 214n.12 modernisation Koepnick on fascism’s political, 29 May Fourth movement (PRC) project of, 5, 11, 16, 27 propaganda roots in interwar of Marxism and, 30– 1 mofan (model), 137 montage experiments adopted by Chinese film-makers from Soviet, 87 –118 Cai Chusheng’s The New Woman (1934) political criticism using, 95 –7, 104–5, 201n.23 Chinese mengtaiqi [‘veil (is) too strange’] transliteration of, 88, 89 –92 Chinese rhetoric of simplicity reinventing, 88, 97 –102t to cinematically construct a collective subject, 88 to condense the passage of time, 106 Eisenstein’s ‘montage of attractions’ technique, 87, 89, 94, 104– 5, 117

Gate Number Six (1952) use of fast cutting with revolutionary songs, 105fig –6 Hollywood film, 201n.22 introduced into China in early, 1930s from Soviet Union, 88, 92 –7 Ji Zhifeng’s A Brief Introduction to Montage Techniques on, 101– 2t montage sequences accompanied by revolutionary songs, 104, 105fig –8, 117 Nie Er (Zheng Junli, 1959) use of ‘subjectified sound’ and comparative, 106– 8 ‘photomontage’, 200n.14 principles of shot division in, 102–4 Pudovkin’s ‘montage as series’ and comparative, 94 –5, 107, 117, 200n.16 Qionghua (The Red Detachment of Women character), 116fig –17 Shen Fengwei’s delination of montage categories, 92– 4, 97 Shi Dongshan on two approaches in Chinese cinema, 100fig– 1 shot/reverse-shot technique, 113–15 split-screen montage sequence, 96fig Storm Over Asia (Vsevolod Pudovkin, 1928) relay of gazes in montage, 110fig – 11 superimposition as being ‘internal montage’, 108– 9fig Xia Yan and Zheng Boqi’s use of the term, 91– 2 Xia Yan on guiding principles for practising, 98 Zhang Junxiang’s conception of montage as grammar of film, 103fig –4 see also film editing ‘montage of attractions’ technique, 87, 89, 94, 104–5, 117 Morgan, David, 139, 143 Mosfilm, 154

256

Index ‘A Most Outstanding Film: Reactions of Viewers Abroad to Five Golden Flowers’ (China’s Screen), 171 Mu Bai, 42 music in the Five Golden Flowers (Wang Jiayi, 1959), 171 Forward, Side by Side (Krah p€er krah) [Endri Keko, 1964], 166 Gate Number Six (1952) use of fast cutting with revolutionary songs, 105fig –6 ‘Huangpu River’ song (1935), 201n.24 montage sequences accompanied by revolutionary songs, 104 Nie Er (Zheng Junli, 1959) comparative montage and ‘subjectified sound’, 106– 8 Zhou Yang on audience expectation of ‘excellent’, 52, 121 see also sound effects My Family autobiography (Tao Cheng), 81– 2 Myriad of Lights (Shen Fu, 1948), 34 narration comparing Hollywood and Chinese cinema dual plot of romance and work, 38, 72, 115–16 page turning and off-screen voice of protagonist-narrator device, 62fig principles of classical Hollywood (1917 to 1960), 58t, 61 scholarship on Lu Xun’s ‘The New Year’s Sacrifice’, 66– 8, 69, 71– 2 Xia Yan on reverse and chronological, 60 see also heroic narratives; screenwriting scripts National Conference on Fiction Film (1961), 121– 2 Nationalist Party (China), 63 Nazi Germany, 29

Nevskii, Aleksandr, 2 The New Woman (Cai Chusheng, 1934), 95– 7, 104–5, 127 The New Year’s Sacrifice (Sang Hu, 1956) Bai Yang actress playing Xianglin Sao character, 76– 7fig, 80– 1, 158 Buddhist temple scene in, 78– 80 controversy of rebellion and resistance themes in, 78– 81 death of Ah Mao character in, 76 –7fig as a family melodrama, 55, 68– 70 Film (Vietnamese film journal) introduction of, 161 the fish used as moral symbol and marker in, 78 He Laoliu character in, 73– 4fig, 76 –8fig heterosexual romance and love in, 72 –4fig international reception of, 49 ‘Mandarin Duck and Butterfly School’ style of, 193n.2 as May Fourth critical realism, 16, 65 –8 melodramatic moments to accentuate class conflicts, 75 narration by ‘voice of History’, 71 re-narrativisation and temporality of adaptation by, 70– 2 screened in the Soviet Union, 158 the Xianglin Sao character in, 65, 68, 71, 73– 4fig, 76– 81, 84, 85, 109, 131, 195n.27 see also Red Classics ‘The New Year’s Sacrifice’ short story (Lu Xun, 1924) film adaptation of, 56, 60, 65– 6, 70 mediating narrator ‘I’ in the, 67 –8, 69, 71– 2 New York Film Festival (2009), 13 Newsweek’s ‘Red China’s Big Push’ article (1957), 23, 177

257

Chinese Revolutionary Cinema Nie Er (Zheng Junli, 1959), 106 –8, 131, 174 Nixon, Richard, 162 Nonaligned Movement, 163 Nornes, Markus, 21 Northeast Film Studio, 36, 153 observation (tenet of Stanislavski’s system), 136 October Revolution (Russian Revolution) [1917], 4, 5, 7, 147, 150–1, 152, 157–9 An Ode to the Nile (documentary), 169 ‘On the Creation of Positive Characters’ (Chen Huangmei speech, 1955), 37–8 ‘On the Pedagogical Value of Soviet Film’ (Xia Yan, 1948), 8 ‘On the Question of Screenwriting’ (Chen Huangmei speech, 1954), 37 ‘On the Revolution in Peking Opera’ (Jiang Qing), 174 On the Specific Means of Cinematic Expression (Zhang Junxiang), 98 opera films (yangbanxi), 12, 174, 201n.31, 214n.12 The Opera Quarterly (2010 special issue), 12 ‘Opinions on Strengthening the Leadership of the Creation and Production of Art Film’ (Xinqiao Conference), 52 Ouyang Meisheng, 82 Pang Laikwan, 2, 15 parallel action (comparative montage), 94 ‘Party, Please Don’t Lead Artistic work’ (Wu Zuguang, 1957), 43 pauses ( jianxie), 113 peaceful coexistence policy (Soviet Union), 19, 150, 162–3, 179

pedagogy Berry on Chinese cinema during Seventeen Years as, 11 as focus of Soviet cinema, 8 of Revolutionary Family, 82– 4 Xia Yan on film-watching experience as pleasure and, 8 The People of the Congo Will Certainly Win (documentary), 167, 169 The People’s Cinema (Dazhong dianying) [film journal] ‘Hard and Creative Labour’ (1954) published in the, 153 Hundred Flowers poll of the, 123 reporting on dubbing and subtitling of Soviet films, 153 People’s Liberation Army documentary-style art films on, 47 Lei Feng film on fictional soldier of, 1 –2 People’s Literature, 85 People’s Republic of China (PRC) Asian Film Week (Yazhou dianyingzhou) [1957] hosted by, 163 assertion as leader in the Third World, 19, 162–3, 170 Bandung Conference (1955) attended by, 19, 163 Chinese cinema’s role in political, social, economic, and cultural projects of, 118 Deng Xiaoping’s ‘reform and opening’ (1978) policy, 179 film industry nationalised by the, 41 –2 leaning to one side policy of the, 19, 100, 148, 152–7 Mao era (1949– 76) of the, 2, 32 –3 Ministry of Culture of the, 25, 48, 52 –3, 123 new vision of internationalism (1960s) by, 19, 162– 3 as propaganda state invested in culture, 14–15, 17– 18

258

Index ‘Reform and Opening’ era (1980s) and opening to the West, 9, 179 Sino – Burmese friendship, 165 Sino – Soviet split (mid-1950s and, 1960s), 19, 89, 99, 100, 122, 148– 9, 150, 161– 3, 179 see also China; Chinese Communist Party; Cultural Revolution (1966– 76); Seventeen Years era (1949– 66) [PRC] ‘The People’s Republic of Cinema’ film series (Walker Art Center, 2009), 13 performance fusion and duality, 135t personality actors (bense yanyuan), 38–9, 45, 133 Peter the Great, 2 ‘photomontage’, 200n.14 Pickford, Mary, 125 Pickowicz, Paul, 177 pinups of female stars, 127 Platt, Kevin M. F., 2 ‘poisonous’ films opposition (1964–1965), 174–5 Polish uprising (1956), 150 political nature (zhengzhi xing) Benjamin’s notion of aestheticisation of, 16 problem of unifying aesthetic (yishu xing) and, 15, 35– 6 of the ‘third cinema’, 20– 1 politics co-optation of aesthetics by propaganda states in, 29 internationalism defining the tumultuous twentieth century, 147 internationalism language of twenty-first century, 147– 8 interwar period cinema impacted by ideology and, 147 see also internationalism post-socialist realism, 176 pre-1949 revolutionary literature, 56

Premier Zhou Enlai Visits Albania (documentary), 168 Premier Zhou Visits Northeast Africa (documentary), 168 Premier Zhou Visits Northern Africa (documentary), 168 Premier Zhou Visits Western Africa (documentary), 168 Primitive Passions: Visuality, Sexuality, Ethnography, and Contemporary Chinese Cinema (Chow), 9– 10 ‘Progressive Latin American Films Popular in China’ (China’s Screen journal), 167 Proletarian Filmmaker’s League (Prokino), 26 proletariat The Communist Manifesto (Marx and Engels) calling on rise of the, 150 Mao Zedong’s Yan’an talks on literature for the, 32, 33, 69, 71 Xia Yan’s popularisation (tongsuhua) aimed toward, 70 Xian Qun on artists adopting perspective of, 33 see also class standing propaganda Chinese cinema as part of PRC’s anti-West positioning, 19 Chinese investment in creation of an appealing cinema, 177–9 Cold War’s construction of, 23 –4 description and meaning of, 3 dialectical tension between film aesthetics and bureaucratic leadership, 16, 39 –45 family melodrama supporting nation as family, 16 interwar years conception as instrument of affect, 30 –1 PRC investment in internationalism as part of state, 149–52 Seventeen Years era use of film as tool of, 173– 9

259

Chinese Revolutionary Cinema transformation of individual filmmakers’ talents as priority of PRC, 44 understood as an aesthetic experiment, 24 see also aesthetic experiments; propaganda state Propaganda Department (CCP Central Committee) [Chinese Communist Party] film censorship undertaken by, 25 ‘ideological remoulding’ term used by the, 32 the Xinqiao Conference organised by Ministry of Culture and, 52 –3 propaganda film historical connections of party-state, Maoist cultural policy, and, 31– 2 Hollywood movies circulating in semi-colonial Shanghai as, 25– 6 Johnson’s definition of, 24 –5 ‘montage of attractions’ technique used in, 87, 89, 94, 104 –5, 117 visual age of propaganda during Interwar period, 24– 32 see also Chinese revolutionary cinema propaganda film theory Iwasaki’s Film and Capitalism origins of Chinese, 25 Weihong Bao on the ‘othering’ of propaganda, 23– 4 propaganda state co-optation of aesthetics in political life by, 29 Cultural Revolution understood in context of, 15– 16 fascist, 29 internationalism encompassed in PRC’s cinematic experiment as, 171– 2 investment in culture as defining characteristic of a, 14

the PRC’s investment in culture as a, 14 –15, 17–18 role of heroic narratives in shaping socialist, 1 –3, 31 Soviet Union as the world’s first, 13 –14 Stalin’s Purge as historical precedent for, 15 see also propaganda protagonists protagonist-narrator, 62fig situated in Soviet fiction between spontaneity and consciousness, 142– 3, 188n.60 This Life of Mine’s story alternating between family and, 63 –5 Xia Yan on filmic image of the, 60 –1 Pudovkin, Vsevolod Chinese rhetoric of simplicity reinventing montage of, 88, 97 –102t efforts to introduce Chinese audience to work by, 92 Film Art Translations (Dianying yishu yicong) [film journal] translating works by, 159 The Film Director and Film Material by, 8, 91 ‘The Film Script (The Theory of the Script)’ by, 94 ‘montage as series’ and comparative montage by, 94– 5, 107, 117, 200n.16 on need to direct audience’s attention to chronological plot, 101 positive attitude toward ‘Russian Griffith’, 95, 103, 200n.21 – 1n.21 Shen Fengwei’s delineation of montage categories formulated by, 92 –4 Storm Over Asia (1928) by, 4, 87, 110fig –11 Pushkin, Aleksandr, 2 Pushkin’s poetry scene (Wind from the East, 1959), 156

260

Index Qi Xiaoping, 12 Qi Zhi (Wu Di), 12 –13 Qi Zhou, 99 Qin Yi, 158, 162 Qing Dynasty, 63 Qionghua (The Red Detachment of Women character), 116fig – 17, 137–8, 144, 145 Radunskaya, Viktoriya, 157 realism description of, 195n.36 – 4n.36 ‘revolutionary’, 47, 48, 198n.75 see also socialist realism Rectification Campaign (1951– 2) [PRC] description of, 14, 24 flat film characters blamed on the, 37 focus on class standing and ideologically remoulding film artists, 14, 24, 32 –6, 53 origins and purpose of, 32– 3 as part of the film industry’s aesthetics –politics struggle, 50 self-criticism during the, 33 –6 ‘Red China’s Big Push’ (Newsweek, 1957), 12, 177 Red Classics Li Shuangshuang (Lu Ren, 1962), 54, 85 –6 literary origins of the, 16 Red Crag (Shui Hua, 1965), 54 Revolutionary Family (Shui Hua, 1961), 16, 54, 55, 60, 74, 81–5 Song of Youth (Cui Wei and Chen Huaikai, 1959), 51, 54, 116, 131– 2, 142–3 This Life of Mine (Shi Hui, 1950), 16, 55, 62fig– 5, 70, 193n.1 see also Chinese cinema genres; Chinese revolutionary cinema; The New Year’s Sacrifice (Sang Hu, 1956) Red Crag (Shu Hua, 1965), 54

The Red Detachment of Women (Xie Jin, 1961) Bandung award (1964) given to, 164 Chen Huangmei on socialist values cultivated by romance in, 50 dual plot of romance and work in, 72 female socialist iconography in, 145– 6 Qionghua female survivor character in, 116fig– 17, 132, 137– 8, 144, 145 Xia Yan’s praise of, 49 Xiao Liu on revolutionary family created in, 83 Xiao Liu on revolutionary melodrama of, 74 Zhu Xijuan cast as Wu Qionghua character in, 132 Red Lantern (Cheng Yin, 1970), 146 Red Legacies in China: Cultural Afterlives of the Communist Revolution (Jie Li and Enhua Zhang), 13 Red Sorghum (Zhang Yimou, 1988), 9 Red Square scene (Wind from the East, 1959), 156 ‘Reform and Opening’ era (1980s) Deng Xiaoping’s policy starting the, 179 film studies emerging during the, 9 ‘(Re)Inventing China: A New Cinema for a New Society, 1949 – 1966’ (New York Film Festival, 2009), 13 relay of gazes in Pudovkin’s Storm Over Asia’s montage, 110fig in Sea Hawk (Yan Jizhou, 1959) montage, 112fig – 13, 115fig, 116 in Zhao Yiman (Sha Meng, 1950), 111fig –12 religious icons, 139 ‘Remould Our Thoughts to Realise Chairman Mao’s Vision of Literature and Art’ (Cai Chusheng), 34

261

Chinese Revolutionary Cinema remoulding national mobilisation against ‘poisonous’ films (1964– 1965) goal of, 174– 5 Rectification Campaign (1951– 2) for, 14, 24, 32 –6, 53 Renmin riabo, 73, 81 ‘Report on Raising Artistic Quality’ report (1959) [Film Bureau], 48 –9 ‘Report on the Practice and State of Art and Literature in Recent Years’ (Hu Feng), 40 Republican era (1911– 49) Chinese film-making as part of modernisation project of, 5 self-cultivation difference between socialist star culture and star culture of, 127– 8 Soviet cinema seen as model for Chinese cinema during, 158 star discourse in Republican Shanghai Cinema, 119, 124– 7 see also China Republican Shanghai cinema Chinese star discourse of the, 119, 124– 7 female star’s representing modernity and sexual morality in, 144 Hollywood movies circulating in, 25 –6, 58, 95 see also interwar period cinema; Shanghai ‘Resolutely in Support of the Indonesian Struggle against American Film’ (Film Art journal), 164 ‘Respect the Aesthetic Tradition of Cinema’ (Sun Yu, 1956), 43 retribution theme, 75 Revolution and its Narratives China’s Socialist Literary and Cultural Imaginaries, 1949 – 1966 (Cai Xiang), 11, 173 Revolutionary Cycles in Chinese Cinema, 1951–1979 (Zhuoyi Wang), 9, 11, 13

Revolutionary Family (Shui Hua, 1961) adapted from Tao Cheng’s autobiography My Family, 81– 2 as family melodrama and Red Classic, 16, 54, 60, 74, 81 –5 Xia Yan as screenwriter of, 55, 81 Zhou Lian (character) in the, 82–3, 85 ‘revolutionary realism and revolutionary romanticism’, 47, 48, 198n.75 revolutionary songs Chinese adoption of montage with, 117 Gate Number Six (1952) use of fast cutting with, 105fig – 6 ‘Huangpu River’ (1935), 201n.24 ‘March of the Volunteers’ (Nie Er, 1959), 106–7 montage sequences accompanied by, 104 Nie Er (Zheng Junli, 1959) comparative montage and ‘subjectified sound’, 106 –8 ‘Song of Red Friendship’ (Forward, side by Side, 1964), 166 The White-Haired Girl (1950) ending accompanied by, 106 The Road to Life (Nikolai Ekk, 1931), 4, 6– 8 romance (lian’ai) Chinese revolutionary film reunions and, 113 –17, 202n.61 –1n.61 comparing Chinese and Hollywood films in dual plot of work and, 38, 72, 115–16 comparing The Fall of Berlin and Sea Hawk, 116 implications for Chinese cinema adaptation of Hollywood, 86 inclusion of heroic narratives of, 37 –9 incorporating Hollywood narrations of, 16

262

Index ‘Mandarin Ducks and Butterfly’ literature on, 55 –6, 75, 193n.2 Mao’s propagation combining revolutionary realism and, 84– 5, 86 in The New Year’s Sacrifice (Sang Hu, 1956), 72 –4fig, 193n.2 The Red Detachment of Women (Xie Jin, 1961) depiction of, 116fig– 17 Sang Hu on ‘artificiality’ of his editing of sequence on, 197n.54 shot/reverse-shot technique used for reunion scenes, 113–15 Soviet socialist realism perspective of love and, 189n.73 see also women Romance on Lushan Mountain (Huang Zumo, 1980), 176 Romm, Mikhail, 160 Ruan Lingyu, 126– 7, 127, 141, 142 Russian Revolution. see October Revolution (Russian Revolution) [1917] Sadoul, Georges, 160 Sang Hu (Li Peilin) on the ‘artificiality’ of romance sequence editing he did, 197n.54 attending The New Year’s Sacrifice screening in Soviet Union, 158 Liang Shanbo and Zhu Yingtai opera film (1954) by, 72 Long Live the Wife (1947) by Zhang Ailing and, 72 The New Year’s Sacrifice (1956) by, 16, 49, 55, 60, 65 –72, 75, 78 –81, 84, 109, 131, 158, 161 prolific directing career of, 194n.24 ‘Save our Cinema’ essay (Lao She), 42 screen acting aesthetic experiment in, 17 First Five-Year Plan (1953– 7) setting goals for, 14, 24, 33, 36–40 ‘Let Numerous Hidden Jewels Shine’ (Shanggong Yunzhu, 1956) on problem of, 44

‘life experience’ in socialist ethical system of, 134, 136, 137 major principles of Stanislavski’s appropriated by Chinese, 134–6 personality actors (bense yanyuan), 38 –9, 45, 133 Stanislavski’s realist system of, 8, 21, 38, 127–9, 130, 133–6, 159 screen actors/actresses average age in Shanghai Film Studio, 49 Bai Yang (actress playing Xianglin Sao character), 76 –7fig, 80 –1, 158 casting, 129– 33 ‘character actors’ (xingge yanyuan), 133 discontent among older actors during Hundred Flowers Period, 130 dubbing and voice actors, 154, 190n.108 ‘facial performance’ (mianbu biaoyan) of, 126– 7 gender-specific lighting conventions for, 141– 2 Hollywood star system, 125–7 ‘interior performance’ (neixin biaoyan) of, 126– 7 Kinema Junpo featuring mini photo spreads of 237 Japanese actresses, 119 lack of work opportunities for Chinese, 44 –5 personality actors (bense yanyuan), 38 –9, 45, 133 protagonist-narrator, 62fig Rectification Campaign focus on ideologically remoulding, 14, 24, 32 –6, 53 self-cultivation of, 127– 9, 138 Shanggong Yunzhu on ‘problem of actors’ work’, 44 socialist realist gaze understood as devotional gaze of, 139–41

263

Chinese Revolutionary Cinema Stanislavski’s system for, 8, 21, 38, 127– 9, 130, 133– 6, 159 ‘stars’ (mingxing) label of, 51, 52, 129, 176–7 tiyan (body and experience) engagement by, 134, 136 ‘22 outstanding screen actors’ promotion (1962), 120–4, 129, 204n.11 Viktoriya Radunskaya (Wind from the East actress), 157 Xia Yan on filmic image of the protagonist, 60– 1 the Xinqiao Conference’s spotlighting of, 52 Yu Lan (Revolutionary Family actress), 82 Zhou Enlai’s acknowledgement of privileged position of, 122– 3 Zhou Yang on audience expectation of ‘excellent’, 52, 121 see also ‘actor’ (yanyuan) label; Chinese star discourse; female stars screenwriting scripts Chen Huangmei’s argument for reducing levels of censorship on, 50 A Few Questions about Screenwriting speech (Xia Yan, 1958) on, 56– 7, 59 –61 First Five-Year Plan (1953– 7) setting goals for, 33, 36– 40 First National conference on Screenwriting (1953) on, 36– 7, 214n.8 Great Leap Forward Campaign (1958– 61) impact on, 14, 24, 45, 46 –9 Hundred Flowers Campaign (1956–7) encouraging open critical expression in, 14, 24, 40–5, 50 page turning and off-screen voice of protagonist-narrator device, 62fig

principles of classical Hollywood (1917 to 1960), 58t, 61 Shi Dongshan elevating literary quality of, 39– 40 shooting scripts ( fenjingtou juben), 40, 102 ‘stating a theme’ (shuo zhuti), 37 tension between bureaucratic leadership and autonomy of, 39–45 a type (dianxing) establishing class standing, 36– 7 Xia Yan on filmic image of the protagonist, 60– 1 Xia Yan on representing pioneering characters, 49 see also heroic narratives; literature film adaptations; narration Sea Hawk (Yan Jizhou, 1959), 112fig – 13, 116 second cinema (European art or auteur film), 21 Second International (1889), 150 Second National Assembly of Chinese Literature and Art Workers (1953), 36 Second Sino-Japanese War (1937– 45), 4, 30 Second World, 162 self-criticism (ziwo piping) [Rectification Campaign], 33–6 see also criticism ( piping) self-cultivation of actors, 127–9, 138 self-examination (ziwo jiancha), 33 Seventeen Years era (1949 –66) [PRC] alternating moments of control over aesthetic experiments during, 31–2 Anti-Hu Feng Campaign (1955), 40, 45, 50 Anti-Rightist Campaign (1957), 41, 42, 45, 50, 99, 150 articulating goals for aesthetic experiments, 14– 15 Blooming and Contending (1961– 2), 51– 3, 174, 192n.146

264

Index Chinese film journals fostering internationalism during, 159 ‘Chinese revolutionary cinema’ created during the, 2 –4 film as tool of propaganda throughout the, 173 –9 films filled with flourishes reminiscent of Soviet montage, 89 First Five-Year Plan (1953– 7), 14, 24, 36– 40, 53, 97 ‘Follow the Examples of Comrade Lei Feng’ campaign (1963), 1– 2, 137, 173 Great Leap Forward Campaign (GLF, 1958 –61), 14, 46– 9, 50, 53, 85, 177, 191n.128 Hundred Flowers Campaign (1956–7), 14, 24, 40–5, 50, 51, 99, 130, 150, 160 May Fourth movement, 5, 11, 16, 54, 55 new rectification campaign (1964), 174– 5 Rectification Campaign (1951– 2), 14, 24, 32 –6, 37, 50, 53 revolutionary aesthetics of heroism created during, 3 under-researched ‘missing years’, 8 –13 see also People’s Republic of China (PRC) Several Characteristics of the Cinematic Means of Expression (Shi Dongshan), 98 Sha Meng (Zhao Yiman, 1950), 104, 130 Shanggong Yunzhu, 44 Shanghai construction of feminine ideal (1920s and, 1930s) in, 125 Hollywood movies circulating in semi-colonial, 25 –6, 58, 95 study of Seventeen Years cinema in, 10 see also Republican Shanghai cinema

Shanghai-based film-makers ideological differences between Yan’an-trained and, 33 legacy of family melodrama from, 16 self-criticism during Rectification Campaign of, 33– 6 Xia Yan’s experience as one of the, 60 see also Chinese film-makers Shanghai Film Studio (PRC) average age of actors in, 49 dubbing and subtitling conference (1953) participation by members of, 153 Shanggong Yunzhu on lack of actor work in, 44 see also Film Studio (PRC) Shanghai Theatre Academy, 132 Shangying Pictorial (Shangying huabao) [film journal], 158, 169 Shen Fengwei, 92– 4, 97, 102– 3 Shen Fu Myriad of Lights (1948) by, 34 The Spring River Flows East (1948) by, 34, 35 Shen Xiling on The Road to Life, 7 Soviet influence on films of, 4 Shi Dongshan elevating literary quality of film scripts and shooting, 39 –40 as Film Guidance Executive Committee member, 31 self-criticism by, 33, 34– 6 Several Characteristics of the Cinematic Means of Expression by, 98 suicide during Anti-Hu Feng Campaign (1955) by, 40, 45 on two approaches to montage in Chinese cinema, 100fig– 1 Shi Hui casting of, 130 expressing his vexation as a director, 42

265

Chinese Revolutionary Cinema This Life of Mine (1950) by, 16, 55, 62fig – 5, 70, 84, 193n.1 suicide by, 45 The Urgent Letter (1954) by, 104 Shi Lianxing, 130 Shijie dianying (film journal), 159 Shijie wenxue (was Yiwen) [Chinese literary journal], 149, 160, 167 Shinko geijtsu (1930), 26 shooting scripts ( fenjingtou juben) elevating the literary quality of, 40 re-creation through short division and writing a, 102 The short biography of Li Shuangshuang (Li Zhun), 85 shot division basic principles in montage, 102 correlation between emotional intensity and, 103fig ‘re-creation’ of literary script in filmic form using, 102–3 shot/reverse-shot technique used by Hollywood cinema, 73 –4fig used in montage series, 113– 15 Shui Hua The Lin Family Shop (1959) by, 60, 74, 82, 84, 174, 198n.74 Red Crag (1965) by, 54 Revolutionary Family (1961) by, 16, 54, 55, 60, 74, 81 –5 The White-Haired Girl (1950) by Wang Bin and, 49, 51, 104, 106, 130, 170 Sight and Sound (UK film journal issue, 1932), 161 simile (comparative montage), 94 simultaneity (comparative montage), 95 Sino –Albanian co-production, 165– 6 Sino –Burmese friendship, 165 Sino –Soviet exchange Chinese cinema during Seventeen Years in context of, 13

post-Bandung Conference (1955) strengthening of, 19 terminology used to describe friendship of, 158 Wind from the East (1959) co-produced by, 154– 7fig, 158– 9, 166 Sino –Soviet split (mid-1950s and, 1960s) Chinese film journals envisioning Afro –Asian – Latin American solidarity after, 148– 9, 161–3 creating a need to distance from Soviet Cinema, 122 debates over nationalisation of cinema following, 99 Khrushchev’s policy of peaceful coexistence and, 19, 150, 162–3, 179 ‘leaning to one side’ policy revisited following the, 100 PRC asserting itself as Third World leader after, 19, 170 Soviet montage no longer encouraged after, 89 Sironi, Mario, 29 Sluga, Glenda, 151 Smith, Barbara Hernstein, 69 ‘social imaginary’, 164 socialism icons of, 139, 142–6 ideological and aesthetic competition between capitalism and, 177 Soviet Union conceived as leader and pioneer of, 152 Tina Mai Chen on ‘socialist geographies’ of, 152 socialist bloc Comintern (Third International) [1919] of the, 147, 150– 1, 155fig interactions understood as part of international history, 149–50 internationalism ideology and politics defining disintegration of, 147

266

Index Khrushchev – Nixon ‘Kitchen Debate’ (1959) reshaping the, 162 Socialist International of the, 147 see also Third World socialist iconography, 139, 142– 6 Socialist International. see International Association of Workers (the First International) socialist realism Chapacv (Georgi Vasilyev and Serei Vasilyev, 1934) example of, 36 –7 First National Conference on Screenwriting (1953) on priority of, 36 –7, 214n.8 heroic narratives written using, 36 –8 Katerina Clark’s description of a novel of, 188n.60 Lu Xun’s May Fourth critical realism form compared to, 65– 8, 69 Mao’s propagation combining revolutionary romance and, 84– 5, 86 Maxim Gorky as the father of, 56 post-World War II development as communist aesthetic, 86 PRC’s official adoption of, 196n.45 ‘revolutionary realism and revolutionary romanticism’ replacement of, 47, 48 romance and love perspective of Soviet, 189n.73 Second National Assembly of Chinese Literature and Art Workers’ (1953) adoption of, 36 Zhou Yang’s official endorsement and promotion of, 36– 7, 97 –8, 214n.8 see also aesthetic nature (yishu xing); realism socialist realist gaze prefigured by cinematic relay of gazes, 110fig – 11 Qionghua’s (The Red Detachment of Women character), 116fig –17

relay of gazes in Pudovkin’s Storm Over Asia’s montage, 110fig relay of gazes in Sea Hawk (Yan Jizhou, 1959) montage, 112fig – 13, 115fig, 116 relay of gazes in Zhao Yiman (Sha Meng, 1950) creating, 111fig – 12 Song of Youth Lin Daojing character with a, 143 Stephanie Donald on constructing collective subject using, 11, 89, 110 understood as cinematic version of devotional gaze, 139– 41 socialist work ethic, 1 –2 Solanas, Fernando, 20 solidarity Afro –Asian – Latin American, 19, 148– 9, 161–3, 164, 165, 166–71 emotional valence in internationalism rhetoric of, 148, 150– 2 often used in deliberate opposition to Western development concept, 162– 3 Wind from the East (1959) coproduction creating, 154–7fig, 158– 9, 166 ‘Some Facts about New China’s Film Industry’ (Chen Huangmei) [China’s Screen ], 169 –70 Song of Youth (Cui Wei and Chen Huaikai, 1959) death of hero and surviving heroine in, 116 Lin Daojing character in, 51, 131, 132, 142–3 literary origins of, 54 sound effects Gate Number Six (1952) fast cutting with revolutionary songs, 105fig–6 montage sequences accompanied by revolutionary songs, 104 Nie Er (Zheng Junli, 1959) comparative montage and ‘subjectified sound’, 106– 8

267

Chinese Revolutionary Cinema The Red Detachment of Women montage and subjectified sound, 116 The White-Haired Girl (1950) ending accompanied by revolutionary songs, 106 see also music Sovetskii Ekran (Soviet film journal), 161 Soviet avant-garde Chinese intellectual affinity for, 5– 8 honing aesthetic sensibilities for political purposes, 16 selective appropriation by Chinese film-makers of, 3, 4 Soviet cinema anti-colonial energies of the, 30 conceived as model for Chinese cinema, 5 – 8, 92 educating the society mission of, 8 extensive research and translation of, 9 providing ‘spiritual nutrients’ for Chinese art, 158 shot/reverse-shot convention used in reunions scenes, 113– 14fig Sino – Soviet split and distancing from, 19, 89, 99, 100, 122, 150 ‘Soviet montage’ experiments in film method (1920s), 87– 8, 89, 94, 104– 5 Xia Yan’s praise of, 6 –7, 92 see also cinematography Soviet film weeks Chinese film journals celebrating October Revolution and, 157–9 ‘A Glorious Model’ (article) on, 158 Soviet films Alexander Matrosov (Leonid Lukov, 1949), 153 Belinsky (Grigori Kozintsev, 1953), 153 Chinese film-makers’ adoption of montage experiments of, 87 –118

dubbing and subtitling into Chinese language, 152 –4, 178, 190n.108 103 fiction films produced in, 1958, 48 The Road to Life (Nikolai Ekk, 1931), 6 –8 Sino – Soviet co-production of, 154– 7fig Storm Over Asia (Vsevolod Pudovkin, 1928), 4, 87, 110fig – 11 The Fall of Berlin (Mikheil Chiaureli, 1949), 113–14fig, 116, 144 see also foreign films Soviet intellectuals avant-garde of the, 3, 4– 8 intermediary role between Party leadership and populace by, 15 Stalin’s Purge of, 15 see also culture Soviet montage technique Chinese rhetoric of simplicity reinventing, 88, 97 –102t early development (1920s) of the, 87 –8 ‘esoteric’ criticism of Eisentein’s, 95 introduced into Chinese cinema (1930s), 88– 9, 92 –7 Pudovkin’s ‘montage as series’ and comparative montage, 94 –5, 107, 200n.16 Seventeen Years era films filled with flourishes reminiscent of, 89 Soviet Union Clark’s study on creation of a national aesthetic in, 14 conceived as leader and pioneer of socialism, 152 cosmopolitanism openness to the West by, 18, 149, 162 de-Stalinisation following death (1953) of Stalin, 40 –1, 162 Khrushchev – Nixon ‘Kitchen Debate’ (1959), 162

268

Index Khrushchev’s peaceful coexistence policy, 19, 150, 162–3, 179 October Revolution (1917) eventually leading to the, 4, 5, 7, 147, 150– 1, 152, 157– 9 re-establishment of Sino – Soviet relations (1932), 4 Sino – Soviet split (mid-1950s and, 1960s), 19, 89, 99, 100, 122, 148– 9, 150, 161– 3 Stalin’s Purge in, 15 Twentieth Party Congress (1956) in the, 40– 1, 162 as world’s first propaganda state, 13 –14 worsening Albanian relations with, 165 see also Cold War ‘spiritual features’ ( jingshen mianmao), 37–8 split-screen montage sequence, 96fig The Spring River Flows East (Shen Fu, 1948), 34, 35 Spring Silkworms (Cheng Bugao, 1933), 59–60, 84 Stage Sisters (Xie Jin, 1965), 109fig, 175 Stalin, Joseph books, film scripts, and play scripts reviewed by, 14 de-Stalinisation following death (1953) of, 40–1, 162 The Fall of Berlin (1949) with shot/ reverse-shot to portray, 114fig, 116 witness to kiss at end of The Fall of Berlin, 144 Stalin’s Purge, 15 Stalinist propaganda study (Platt and Brandenberger), 2 Stanislavski, Constantin An Actor Prepares by, 8, 128, 130, 134, 205n.31 Film Art Translations (Dianying yishu yicong) [film journal] translating works by, 159

his method appropriating an ethical system of acting, 133– 4 his realist acting system introduced into China, 21, 38, 128, 133 ‘Learning Stanislavski’s Acting System’ column (Film Art Translations film journal) on, 159 observation as a tenet of his system, 136 political context of appropriation of his system, 134– 6 translating his system for actor’s self-cultivation, 127 –9, 138 star culture. see Chinese star discourse ‘stars’ (mingxing), 51, 52, 129, 176–7 ‘stating a theme’ (shuo zhuti), 37 Storm Over Asia (Vsevolod Pudovkin, 1928), 4, 87, 110fig – 11 Strike (Eisenstein, 1925), 94, 100fig Studlar, Gaylyn, 125 Sturken, Marita, 138– 9 ‘subjectified sound’ (zhuguanhua yin), 107–8, 116 subtitling/dubbing films, 152– 4, 178, 190n.108 Sulian yingxiang yu Zhongguo shiqinian dianying (Hong Hong), 11 Sun Daolin, 162 Sun Jinglu, 45 Sun Xiwang (Li Shuangshuang character), 85– 6 Sun Yu campaign against The Life of Wu Xun (1951) by, 33, 49 –50, 175 Daybreak, 1933 by, 4 ‘Respect the Aesthetic Tradition of Cinema’ (1956) by, 43 Soviet influence on films of, 4 Sunrise (Cao Yu, 1936), 45 surrealism, 87 SWAPO (South West Africa People’s Organisation), 162

269

Chinese Revolutionary Cinema Talks on Literature and Art (Yan’an Forum, 1942), 19– 20 Tang Zhenchang, 42 Tao Cheng, 81, 85 Taylor, Elizabeth, 125 Temple, Shirley, 125 The Fall of Berlin (Mikheil Chiaureli, 1949), 113– 14fig, 116 third cinema defined as collective revolutionary activism, 20– 1 rise in the post-Bandung anticolonial movements, 3 Third International (Comintern) [1919–43], 147, 150–1, 155fig Third World Afro–Asian–Latin American solidarity vision of the, 19, 148–9, 161–3 postwar internationalism as competition of development models for, 151, 162 Sino – Soviet split (1960s) and assertion of PRC as leader in, 19, 162– 3, 170 Western foreign aid to count socialist internationalism influence in, 147 see also socialist bloc ‘Thirty-two Articles on Film’ (or ‘Opinions on Strengthening the Leadership of the Creation and Production of Art Film’) [Xinqiao Conference], 52 This Life of Mine novella (Lao She, 1937), 56, 62 This Life of Mine (Shi Hui, 1950), 16, 55, 62fig – 5, 70, 84, 193n.1 ‘300,000-Word Letter’ (Hu Feng), 40 Tian Hua, 51, 120– 1, 130 tixian (body and manifestation), 137 tiyan (body and experience), 134, 136 Tolstoi, Lev, 2

translation of Acting: The First Six Lessons (Boleslavsky) by Zheng Junli, 128 Chinese language dubbing and subtitling of films, 152 –4, 178, 190n.108 Chinese mengtaiqi [‘veil (is) too strange’] transliteration of montage, 88, 89 –92 of Eisenstein’s The Film Sense into Chinese, 98, 99 Film and Capitalism (Iwasaki Akira) by Lu Xun, 25– 8 by Film Art Translations (Dianying yishu yicong) [film journal], 159 Film Art Translations (film journal), 39 –40 historicity and power inequality of, 91 Nornes on process as marked by inequality, 22 Nornes’s redefinition as form of authorship in film, 21 of Stanislavski’s An Actor Prepares by Zheng Junli, 8, 128, 134, 205n.31 Stanislavski’s realist acting system introduced to China via, 21, 133, 159 Tina Mai Chen on ‘technologies of’, 152 tracking ontology of Chinese cinema through, 21 Wind from the East (1959) scenes on, 156– 7fig see also language transnationalism, 148 triangulation of legitimate love, 145 triangulation of male –female – party, 145 Twentieth Party Congress (1956) [Soviet Union], 40– 1, 162 ‘22 outstanding screen actors’ promotion (1962) [PRC], 120–4, 129, 204n.11

270

Index Twin Sisters (Zheng Zhengqin, 1933), 84, 127 type (dianxing), 36– 7 Unitalia Film (Italian film journal), 161, 166 United Nations, 147 United States. see Hollywood cinema The Urgent Letter (Shi Hui, 1954), 104 USSR. see Soviet Union Vasilev, Dmitriy, 160 Vasilyev, Georgi, 36– 7, 61 Vasilyev, Sergei, 36– 7, 61 Venuti, Lawrence, 21 vernacular modernism framework, 5 Vertov, Dziga (The Man with a Movie Camera), 87 Vidor, King (War and Peace adaptation, 1956), 70 Vietnamese Film Week (1964), 165 Visit to Uganda (documentary), 169 voice actors, 154 Volland, Nicolai, 18, 149, 161 Walker Art Center’s ‘The People’s Republic of Cinema’ film series (2009), 13 ‘walking on two legs’ policy, 48– 9, 50, 53 Wang, Ban, 11, 89, 115 Wang Bin (The White-Haired Girl, 1950), 49, 51, 104, 106, 130, 170 Wang, David Der-wei, 67 Wang Demin, 158 Wang Hanlun, 125 Wang Jiayi (Five Golden Flowers, 1959), 49, 50, 72, 124, 171, 213n.106 Wang Shiren (The White-Haired Girl character), 104 Wang, Zhuoyi his study of ‘revolutionary cycles’, 15 Revolutionary Cycles in Chinese Cinema, 1951 – 1979 by, 9, 11, 13

War and Peace adaptation (King Vidor, 1956), 70 Way Down East (D. W. Griffith, 1920), 141 ‘We Must Raise the Quality of Film Art’ (Xia Yan), 49 Wei Heling, 130 Wei Ming (The New Woman character), 95– 6fig Weihong Bao, 12, 24, 30, 97 Weijia Du, 178– 9 Weis, Toni, 162– 3 Wenhui Daily (newspaper), 41 wenyi (letters and arts), 55 the West aid to Third World to counter socialist bloc by the, 147 China’s ‘Reform and Opening’ era (1980s) and opening up to, 9, 179 cosmopolitanism of Soviet openness to culture of the, 18, 149, 162 postwar internationalism as competition of development models, 151 ‘solidarity’ often used in opposition to development concept of, 162–3 see also Hollywood cinema ‘The White-Haired Girl Abroad’ (China’s Screen journal), 170– 1 The White-Haired Girl (Wang Bin and Shui Hua, 1950), 49, 51, 104, 106, 130, 170 ‘Why Artists Should Undergo Ideological Remoulding’ (Hu Qiaomu speech, 1951), 32– 3 Williams, Linda, 75 Wind from the East (Feng congdongfang lai) [Efim Dzigan and Gan Xiuewei, 1959], 154– 7fig, 158, 166 women Chinese revolutionary film’s feminisation of icons, 144–6 Chunhua (Stage Sisters character) montage on suffering of, 109fig

271

Chinese Revolutionary Cinema Li Shuangshuang (Lu Ren, 1962) portrayal of a good wife, mother, and, 85 –6 The New Year’s Sacrifice (Sang Hu, 1956) Xianglin Sao character, 65, 68, 71, 73–4fig, 76 –81, 84, 85, 109 PRC state studio concerns over cinematic representation of, 130 private and public personae of female stars, 127 The Red Detachment of Women (Xie Jin, 1961) on friendship among, 49, 50, 72, 74, 83, 116fig– 17, 132, 138, 144, 145, 146 Revolutionary Family (Shui Hua, 1961) survivor image of, 85 Shanghai construction of feminine ideal (1920s and, 1930s) of, 125 Song of Youth (Cui Wei and Chen Huaikai, 1959) survivor image of, 116 Tina Mai Chen on oppression symbolised by female body of, 205n.36 Wei Ming (The New Woman character) montage sequence, 95 –6fig see also romance (lian’ai) ‘The Work of Art in the Age of its Technological Reproducibility’ (Benjamin), 19 Workers’ Press, 82 World Health Organization, 147 World War I differing stances of socialist parties over, 150 interwar period cinema following the, 25– 32, 147 as root of the split between socialist and communist internationals, 150– 1 World War II films of the interwar period before and after, 28 –32

interwar period cinema before the, 25 –32, 147 Wu Di (pen name Qi Zhi), 12 –13 Wu Qionghua (The Red Detachment of Women character), 49, 83, 132, 138 Wu Yonggang (The Goddess, 1934), 127, 141 Wu Zuguang, 43, 45 Xi Naifang. see Zheng Boqi (Xi Naifang) Xia Yan (Huang Zibu) commenting on GLF film output, 46 commenting on ‘The New Year’s Sacrifice’ short story adaptation, 65 –6 A Few Questions about Screenwriting speech (1958) by, 56– 7, 59 –61, 98 on filmic image of the protagonist, 60 –1 on guiding principles for practising montage, 98 his call to ‘pay attention to quality’, 48 on Lu Xun as a pioneer in film theory, 27 montage terminology used by, 91 new rectification campaign (1964) targeting, 174 ‘On the Pedagogical Value of Soviet Film’ (1948) by, 8 pioneering career of, 193n.4 –4n.4 popularisation (tongsuhua) aim as screenwriter, 70 praise of Soviet cinema by, 6 –7, 92 as Revolutionary Family (1961) screenwriter, 55, 81 The Road to Life commentary by, 6 –7 Soviet influence on films of, 4 translation of The Film Director and Film Material by Zheng Boqi and, 8

272

Index ‘We Must Raise the Quality of Film Art’ by, 49 on what makes a montage outstanding, 101 Xian Qun, 33 Xianghua ducao: hongse niandai de dianying mingyun (Qi Xiaoping), 12 Xianglin Sao (The New Year’s Sacrifice film character), 65, 68, 71, 73 – 4fig, 76–81, 84, 85, 109, 131, 195n.28 Xianglin Sao (‘The New Year’s Sacrifice’ short story character), 71 Xiao Liu, 74–5, 83, 84 xiao shimin (‘petty urbanites’) [PRC], 26–7 Xiaobing Tang, 173 Xiaoning Lu, 137– 8 Xie Fang, 51, 129, 132, 133, 143 Xie Jin Big Li, Small Li, and Old Li (1962) by, 174–5 casting actors approach by, 132 internal montage in Stage Sisters (1965) by, 109fig The Red Detachment of Women (1961) by, 49, 50, 72, 74, 83, 116fig –17, 116fig, 132, 138, 144, 145 Stage Sisters (1965) by, 109fig, 175 Zhu Xijuan on being directed by, 136– 7 Xie Juezai, 82 Xie Tieli (Early Spring in February, 1963), 175 Xin Yan, 49 Xin Zhongguo dianying yishu shigao, 1949 – 1959 (Meng Liye), 12 Xinqiao Conference, 52– 3, 123 Xinyu Dong, 12 Xu Zhuodai, 55 xuanchuan (propaganda, publicity, and advertising), 25

Yan Jizhou (Sea Hawk, 1959), 112fig – 13, 116 Yan’an Forum on Literature and Art (1942) Mao Zedong’s talk at the, 32, 33, 69, 71, 98 rhetoric of simplicity focus of the, 98 Yang Likun, 124 Yang Mo, 131 Yang Naimei, 125 yangban (model), 137 Ye Ming (Family, 1956), 72, 74 ‘Year of Sino – Burmese Friendship’ (1960), 165 Yeh, Emily Yueh-yu, 55 Yellow Earth (Chen Kaige, 1984), 9 Yiwen (later Shijie wenxue) [Chinese literary journal], 149, 160, 167 Yu Lan (Revolutionary Family actress), 82 Yu Yang, 133 Yuan Muzhi, 4, 31 Yuan Wenshu, 46, 158 Yuan Xuefen, 65, 195n.27 Yugoslavia, 165 Zhang Ailing (Long Live the Wife, 1947), 72 Zhang Junxiang, 98, 99, 101, 103fig– 4, 158, 175 Zhang Ke (Heroic Beginning, 1954), 42 Zhang Ruifang, 129, 158, 162 Zhang Sengyao, 207n.80 Zhang Shichuan, 8 Zhang Yimou (Red Sorghum, 1988), 9 Zhang Zhen An Amorous History of the Silver Screen: Shanghai Cinema, 1896 – 1937 by, 10 description of the xiao shimin population by, 26– 7 her ‘vernacular modernism’ framework applied to Chinese cinema, 5 Zhao Dan, 129, 130, 131, 133

273

Chinese Revolutionary Cinema Zhao Yiman (Sha Meng, 1950), 104, 130 Zheng Boqi (Xi Naifang) montage terminology used by, 91– 2 on Soviet cinema as model for Chinese cinema, 7 –8 translation of The Film Director and Film Material by Xia Yan and, 8 Zheng Junli The Birth of a Role by, 128 Boleslavsky’s Acting: The First Six Lessons translated by, 128 Crows and Sparrows (1949) by, 35 influence of Soviet cinema on, 4 Lin Zexu (1959) by, 49 The Married Couple (1951) by, 35 Nie Er (1959) by, 106–8, 131, 174 self-examination and self-criticism by, 33, 35 The Spring River Flows East (1947) by Cai Chusheng and, 34 translation of An Actor Prepares, 1936 by, 8, 128, 134, 205n.31 Zheng Zhengqiu (Twin Sisters, 1933), 84, 127

Zhong Dianfei, 45, 176 Zhongguo dianying yanjiu ziliao, 1949 – 1979 (Wu Di), 12 Zhou Enlai acknowledgement of privileged position of actors, 122– 3 international visits as PRC premier, 167– 8fig ‘walking on two legs’ speech by, 48 –9, 50, 53 Zhou Lian (Revolutionary Family character), 82– 3, 85 Zhou Yang on the four ‘excellents’ expected by film audience, 52, 121 National Conference on Fiction Film speech (1961) by, 121– 2 on outstanding work requiring outstanding talent of actors, 51 perspective on romance and love, 38 promotion of socialist realism by, 36 –7, 97– 8, 214n.8 Zhu Xijuan, 123, 129, 132, 133, 136 – 7, 138 Zhuoyi Wang, 52– 3, 175

274

Plate 1 The cinematic technique of ‘dotting the dragon’s eyes’ in Song of Youth (1959).

Plate 2 Low-contrast, soft frontal lighting is used to emphasise femininity and Ruan Lingyu’s delicacy of complexion in The Goddess (1934).

Plate 3 (1959).

A glamorous ‘halo’ effect created by natural backlight in Song of Youth

Plate 4 The use of backlight enhances glamour, as if light is emanating from the socialist icon.

Plate 5 Lin Daojing’s glistening eyes shine due to the cinematic technique of ‘dotting the dragon’s eyes’.

Plate 6 Qionghua’s fiery agitation is enhanced by the use of lighting.

Plate 7 Orchestrated by montage, the socialist realist gaze and performative gestures are part of socialist iconography.