Abstract
On June 1, 1950, the first PRC state-sponsored movie magazine Mass Cinema (Dazhong dianying) began its publication in Shanghai. It would soon replace all the remaining popular Republican-era movie magazines. In a long essay published in the first three issues of the magazine, Huang Zongying, a progressive Shanghai private studio actor (yanyuan),1 told a story of her witnessing the “liberation” of a Chinese girl from the Hollywood star culture. Entitled “Two Cultures,” the story begins shortly before the CCP’s takeover of Shanghai in 1949. Huang receives an unexpected visit from the girl, who is a fan of hers. Having watched Bathing Beauty (1944) five times and believing that she herself looks like Paulette Goddard, the girl dreams of becoming a movie star and has come to Huang to ask how. To educate this “captive of American cinema,” Huang tells her that there are two kinds of cinema. The cinema that suits the girl’s movie star fantasy is “yellow” or obscene.2 It “fabricates outlandish stories out of thin air, has pretty women boldly sell their bodies, and is full of thrills and eroticism.” The other kind of cinema “is a cultural education, transmits truth and righteousness, reveals to people the direction of their lives, and encourages them to move forward.” Progressive films, such as Plunder of Peach and Plum (Tao li jie, 1934), Song of the Fishermen (Yu guang qu, 1934), and The Highway (Da lu, 1934), are all examples of the latter kind of cinema.
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Notes
Andrew Jones has an insightful discussion of this usage of the word “yellow” in Chinese media culture. See Andrew F. Jones, Yellow music: Media culture and colonial modernity in the Chinese Jazz age (Durham: Duke University Press, 2001).
Chaoguang Wang, “Zhongguo yingping zhong de meiguo dianying, 1895–1949 (American films in Chinese movie reviews, 1895–1949),” Meiguo yanjiu (American Studies Quarterly), no. 2 (1996): 78–92. Jishun Zhang, “Cultural consumption and popular reception of the West in Shanghai, 1950–1966,” The Chinese historical review, 12, no. 1 (2005): 97–126.
Shaoguang Wang, Failure of charisma: The Cultural revolution in Wuhan (Oxford; New York: Oxford University Press, 1995), 21.
The actual line between “the two kinds of cinema” was of course much more blurred than Huang claims in the essay. For a discussion of the deep and complex interconnections between the Chinese progressive cinema and what Huang calls the “yellow cinema,” see Laikwan Pang, Building a new China in cinema: The Chinese left-wing cinema movement, 1932–1937 (Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2002).
Paul Pickowicz is one of the few scholars who have ever mentioned Song Jingshi. Yet he quickly dismisses the film as “quite forgettable,” and believes that “Zheng Junli clearly passed the test by mastering the CCP’s official position on the actual peasant rebellion led by Song Jingshi”; Paul Pickowicz, China on film: A century of exploration, confrontation, and controversy (Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc., 2012), 195.
Paul Clark, Chinese cinema: Culture and politics since 1949, Cambridge studies in film (Cambridge (Cambridgeshire); New York: Cambridge University Press, 1987), 190.
Yaping Ding, ed. Bainian zhongguo dianying lilun wenxuan (Selected articles on film theory during the recent one hundred years), 2 vols., vol. 1 (Beijing: Wenhua yishu chubanshe, 2002), 346.
The narrative of the shooting and revision process of The Life of Wu Xun in this section is based on Sun’s account; Yu Sun, Dalu zhi ge (Song of the highway) (Taipei: Yuanliu chuban gongsi, 1990), 179–205.
See, for example, Yulu Ke, “Ping dianying Guan lianzhang (A review of the film Platoon Commander Guan),” Wenyi bao (Literary gazette), 4, no. 5 (1951): 20–21;
See, for example, Clark, Chinese cinema: Culture and politics since 1949, 48–52; Yingjin Zhang, Chinese national cinema (New York: Routledge, Edition: 1st ed., 2004), 194–99;
Kei Shu, “Cangsang renjian sishi nian: Sun Yu yu Wu Xun Zhuan (Ups and downs during the forty years: Sun Yu and The Life of Wu Xun),” in Dalu zhi ge (Song of the highway), (Taipei: Yuanliu chuban gongsi, 1990): 259–269.
Dafeng Zhong and Xiaoming Shu, Zhongguo dianying shi (A history of Chinese cinema) (Beijing: Zhongguo guangbo dianshi chubanshe, 1995), 89.
zz Qizhi, Mao Zedong shidai de renmin dianying (People’s cinema during the Maoist era) (Taipei: Xiuwei zixun keji gufen youxiangongsi, 2010), 96.
Di Wu, ed. Zhongguo dianying yanjiu ziliao (Research materials of Chinese cinema): 1949–1979, 3 vols., vol. 1 (Beijing: Wenhua yishu chubanshe, 2006), 124.
Yonglie Ye, Jiang Qing zhuan (Biography of Jiang Qing) (Beijing: Zuojia chubanshe, 1993), 221.
Ross Terrill, Madame Mao: The white boned demon, Rev. ed. (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1999), 181.
Ji Jia, Song Jingshi qiyi gushi (Stories of Song Jingshi’s rebellion) (Beijing: Zhongguo qingnian chubanshe, 1956).
Hairuo Zeng, “TV Documentary on Song Jingshi,” in Dianying chuanqi (Film legends), (2007).
See Mao’s speech in Zedong Mao and Tse-tung Mao, Selected works of Mao Tse-Tung., vol. III (Beijing: Foreign Languages Press, 1967), 271–74. Mao gave this speech on June 11, 1945. The historical investigation of Wu Xun claims that Song Jingshi joined the Taiping army around 1863.
Bo Chen, ed. Zhongguo dianying biannian jishi: zonggang juan (Annals of Chinese cinema: Records of the overall development), 2 vols., vol. 1 (Beijing: Zhongyang wenxian chubanshe, 2005), 430.
Bing Xiao, “Dianying juben de yinmu tixian: ping dianying juben he dianying Song Jingshi (The way to film a script: A review of the film script and the film Song Jingshi) (1957),” in Chen Baichen ping zhuan (A critical biography of Chen Baichen), ed. Hong Chen (Chongqing: Chongqing chubanshe, 1998), 397–402.
Zedong Mao and Tse-Tung Mao, Selected works of Mao Tse-Tung, vol. V (Beijing: Foreign Languages Press, 1977), 185.
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© 2014 Zhuoyi Wang
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Wang, Z. (2014). From The Life of Wu Xun to the Career of Song Jingshi: Adapting Private Studio Filmmaking Legacy for a Nationalized Cinema, 1951–1957. In: Revolutionary Cycles in Chinese Cinema, 1951–1979. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137378743_2
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