“Silent films like Little Toys (1933), The Goddess (1934) and Street Angel (1937) – starring glamorous actresses like Ruan Lingyu and Zhou Xuan – extolled the exotic beauty of Shanghai (and its women),” Fowler writes in his book.
Ruan and Zhou, still the staple of kitsch art on Shanghai souvenirs, caved in under the often crude and asphyxiating public gaze. “The speculation and investigation that these women had to endure were massive. Ruan was tormented by press intrusion in her personal life and maybe because she was so used to playing the tragic figure on screen (she killed herself four times in the movies she made) she decided to take that way out,” Fowler informs.
He gives the credit for successfully marrying the political message to evolved cinematic language for the first time to Xie Jin. The career of the man who made the racy sports drama, Woman Basketball Player No 5 (1957), shot in vivid tri-color – in which a corrupt basketball coach sells out to a team of thuggish foreign marines – peaked in the late 1950s and early 60s, before it took the inevitable plunge. With the onset of the “cultural revolution” (1966-1976), only films propagating the dominant political ideology could be released.
Chen Kaige, Tian Zhuangzhuang and Zhang Yimou – the class of 1982 at Beijing Film Academy – arrived on the scene in the mid-1980s, with a cloudburst of raw energy, striking visual imagination and radical themes. They made films that captured the sensibilities of a China trying to reconcile with the damages left by the tumultuous 70s even as it tried to make sense of the new realities of a society in transition.
“Yellow Earth (by Chen Kaige, 1984), One and Eight (Zhang Juzhao, 1983), The Horse Thief (Tian Zhuangzhuang, 1986) captured the world’s attention, putting China on the cinematic map,” Fowler writes.
For all his admiration of the “fifth-generation” directors, most of the films listed in the “essential” 101 are from the present decade.
Fowler is sold on the languorous, documentary-style features on human migration and displacement made by Jia Zhangke (Still Life, 2006, 24 City, 2008). He thoroughly digs the arrogant, flashy, fast-paced comedy thrillers like Ning Hao’s Crazy Stone (2006) and Feng Xiaogang’s A World Without Thieves (2004) as they reflect “the optimism of the moment”.
A coming-of-age film set in cynical, stifling urban academic set-ups like Lu Yue’s Thirteen Princess Trees (2006) stirs him for its “honest depiction of the realities facing China’s youth”. Wang Quan’an’s Tuya’s Marriage (2006), about a woman’s struggle for survival in the hostile terrain of Inner Mongolia, which took the Golden Bear at the Berlin International Film Festival, appeals to him as “it shows how even the lives of those furthest away from China’s industrial centers feel the effects of modernization”.
“If you look at the scope of what has been produced in the last 10 years I think you can find a number of films that equally match the ‘golden age’ (1930s), but the difference is that nowadays it’s less of a cohesive movement. Obviously money has become a huge factor and the commercialization of mainstream Chinese cinema has not seen a rise in overall quality,” Fowler comments.
The audience’s expectations from a film have changed too. In the 1930s and 40s people would go watch a film not so much to be entertained but to empathize and identify with the tough luck that stars like Shi Hui and Ruan Lingyuan struggled with. In the 1960s and 70s propaganda films were mandatory viewing. Now in the age of unlimited access to easy downloads and pirated DVDs, an audience needs stronger motivation to come to the theater.
“Most Chinese people will (still) pay a relatively large amount of money to see a spectacle,” Fowler opines. “Look at the films that have made huge amounts of money in China – Aftershock, Red Cliff … These are expensive films with amazing special effects.”
Unfortunately, to watch most of the films listed in his book going online or buying pirated DVDs are the only options.
