General History of Chinese Film II

1949–1976

Ding Yaping, Jin Haina

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2021
• Print ISBN: 9781032069562
• eBook ISBN: 9781000434873
• Topic: Art
• Subtopic: Art General

Since 1949, Chinese film has been greatly influenced by a variety of historical, cultural, and political events in the history of the People's Republic of China. This volume explores the development of Chinese film from 1949 to 1976.

This volume restores Chinese film to its original historical form and assesses its complex relationship with society, politics, culture, and art in the Maoist period. The 17-year films, Cultural Revolution-era films, the influence of model operas, and the documentary newsreels of Xinwen Jianbao are discussed. Combining a macro-perspective with a micro-perspective, the author analyzes the special characteristics of Chinese film in this period and showcases the inheritance and differences between earlier Chinese film and Chinese film in the newly founded the People's Republic of China.

The book will be essential reading for scholars and students in film studies, Chinese studies, cultural studies, and media studies, helping readers develop a comprehensive understanding of Chinese film.

1 Films shouldering a newborn state power (1949–1951)

DOI: 10.4324/9781003204701-1

1.1 Film and cultivation of a nation's will

1.1.1 Gathering of talents and division of identity

In April 1949, the Central Cinema Administrative Bureau was founded in Beijing, with Yuan Muzhi as the bureau director. The seasons changed fast, and things were different. People in the cinematic art system were from different places in China: some of them came from the old revolutionary base areas, some from the liberated areas, and some from Shanghai and Hong Kong. However, those people all shared a common trait: their passion for films.

Naturally, the veteran cadres coming directly from Yan’an did bring with them the presumably glorious experience of the revolution, while the intellectuals and professional cadres from Shanghai or Hong Kong, even in the face of remolding, inevitably tended to be too liberal as criticized by Chairman Mao. Other than regional differences, there was also the distinction between those who were supportive of the revolution and the ones who were not, and the distinction among the social classes, including the workers, the peasants, and the intellectuals, all of which would manifest themselves in the artistic creation and movements of the Chinese film industry after 1949, in the form of some obvious divergences.

The Communist Party of China established its political rule after October 1949, and a socialist system was being implemented in the republic, which was characterized by a political system of multi-party cooperation and political consultation under the leadership of the Communist Party of China, and a planned, public-owned economy. The film industry of the People’s Republic of China was supposed to go as planned by the state, and the film talents were managed in an organized and structural way. Northeast Film Studio, Beijing Film Studio, and Shanghai Film Studio, also known as the three major film studios, became the places where filmmakers were gathered.

Notably, after the establishment of the People’s Republic of China in 1949, other than the three major state-owned film studios, there were also several private film companies, namely Wenhua Film Company, Kunlun Film Company, Guotai Film Company, Datong Film Company, Daguangming Film Company, Huaguang Film Company, and Great China Film Company, as well as Changjiang Film Studio which was of joint state-private ownership. Although the privately-owned studios had to rely on loans to produce films most of the time, they still managed to weather through and made films like The Palm of the People, Corrosion, Ideological Problems, This Life of Mine, Spring Comes to Both Families, and The Life of Wu Xun after 1950. This kind of practice lasted for over two years, after which the privately-owned film studios were nationalized and integrated into the state-owned film production system.

Based on the third studio of the original Central Film Studio, Beijing Film Studio was founded on April 20, 1949, with key members transferred from Yan’an and Northeast Film Studio.¹ Tian Fang was appointed as the first production manager and Wang Yang as the assistant production manager. Beijing Film Studio sent eight cinematographic teams to the south with the army and completed a long documentary named Birth of a New China, short documentaries such as Army Flag, Toward a New Life, The Going South of the Fourth Field Army and The Great Shanghai Celebrates the Victory, and newsreels like Chairman Mao and Commander Chu Come to Peking to Review the Troops, A Mighty Army of Millions Goes South across Yangtze, Liberate Taiyuan, Battlefield Report from Huaihai and The Preliminary Committee of the New Political Consultative Conference is Formed.

Meanwhile, Beijing Film Studio and filmmakers from the Soviet Union also co-produced color newsreels The Triumph of the Chinese People and The Liberated China, with the former’s focus on the Liberation War, and the latter’son the construction after the liberation. The crew were sent by Joseph Stalin to film the birth of the People’s Republic of China and the founding ceremony of the state and obtained important achievements in cooperation with the Chinese film circle. The Triumph of the Chinese People was co-produced by Beijing Film Studio and the Central Studio for Documentary Film of the Soviet Union. The documentary was written by Varlamov, directed by Ivan Lukinsky, with Wu Benli and Zhou Feng as assistant directors, Huang Zhen as the military advisor, Liu Baiyu as the literary consultant, and the cinematography was done by Gúsev, Krylov, Wu Benli, Hao Yushen, Li Hua, Xu Lai, Li Bingzhong and Ye Hui. The filmmakers made great efforts to achieve a sense of immediacy, and, with the employment of posing in some scenes, made a systematic account for the course of struggle toward the founding of the People’s Republic of China in the Liberation War. The original copy of the film was destroyed by accident afterward. The Liberated China was co-produced by Beijing Film Studio and Gorky Film Studio in Moscow in 1950. which was directed by Sergej Gerasimov and Volkov, with Zhou Libo as the literary consultant, and the cinematography was done by Rapoport, Blaskov, Petrov, Xu Xiaobing, and Su Heqing. The sight of Chinese people devoting themselves to construction work with enthusiasm and confidence was recorded in the documentary, which did its best to capture various changes happening in China. The two documentaries were of great exemplary value and were both awarded the 1950 Stalin Prize in literature and art.

On November 16, 1949, Shanghai Film Studio was founded. And in February 1952, eight film companies of privately-ownership and state-private joint ownership, including Changjiang and Kunlun Joint Film Studio,² Wenhua Film Studio, and Guotai Film Studio, merged into the state-owned Shanghai Joint Film Studio.³ These privately owned film companies also produced quite a few films after 1949. Taking Wenhua Film Company, for example, it produced ten films between 1949 and 1952, such as This Life of Mine; Captain Guan; Stand Up, Sisters and Ideological Problems.

This Life of Mine was produced in 1950 by Wenhua Film Company, adapted by Yang Liuqing, which was the pseudonym of Shi Hui’s older brother Shi Yuxun, from the novel of the same name by Lao She, directed by Shi Hui, with a music score by Huang Yijun, starring Shi Hui, Wei Heling, Shen Yang, and Jiang Xiu. The film has a simple style and centers on the life and feelings of a senior policeman in Peking. Along with the unfolding of his life story, a half-century of social changes spread before the audiences’ eyes. Historical episodes, social panorama as well as the characters’ feelings and thoughts are all impressively presented. In his comment on This Life of Mine, Cui Weiping praises Shi Hui’s outstanding performance and points out that, “Shi Hui’s performance made a bottom class figure’s sensitivity and bafflement intensely moving. Such feelings and cognition, as well as an implied yearning for a new society, was shared by the entire people at that time.”⁴ The film won the second prize in the Ministry of Culture’s Award of Excellent Films between 1949 and 1955.

Before the production companies turning into the state-ownership, the films produced by the privately-owned film studios were frequently criticized and censored. In his 1952 essay On the Ideological Remolding of Filmmakers, Jia Ji argues that what the privately-owned film studios produced “are mostly flawed and of poor quality in general”. He adds that “since the Liberation, 47 of the 58 productions of the privately-owned film studios lack educational value or have committed real blunders as reported by correspondents of Wenhui Bao. Those films are seen as harmful or even toxic for the revolutionary cause of our people.”⁵ Filmmakers at that time were generally disoriented, baffled, and confused, and the private film industry was not any better. Except for Wenhua Film Company, which was still able to produce films, the rest of the private companies already suspended operation and constantly failed to pay their employees on time. They had to leave their film copies as pledges to secure huge bank loans, chiefly from the privately-owned Xinhua Bank, “to the point that the banks refused to issue more loans for them unless the old scores were paid off.” Apart from Wenhua Company, the mortgage of three companies, namely Kunlun, Datong, and Guotai, had each reached several hundreds of thousand yuan. The interest alone would be too much of a burden, and the loan could not be paid off even with all their assets. “The original copies left as pledges were already, actually, not worth so much at that time.”⁶

In April 1957, Shanghai Film Studio was reorganized as Shanghai Film Production Studio. It had three film studio branches, respectively being Shanghai Haiyan Film Studio, Shanghai Tianma Film Studio, and Shanghai Jiangnan Film Studio. Before long Jiangnan Studio was abolished, and Shanghai Film Studio was renamed as Shanghai Film Bureau. In May 1973, Haiyan Studio, which had been renamed as Hongqi Film Studio merged with Tianma Studio, which had been renamed as Dongfanghong Film Studio, thus Shanghai Film Studio as it was known today was established.

As for Changchun Film Studio, it was found on October 1, 1945, originally as Northeast Film Company, whose name was changed into Northeast Film Studio after one year. The three major film studios became the three bases of film production in the 17 years following the founding of the People’s Republic of China.

On May 9, 1949, People’s Daily published an essay named “Lenin and the Film.” Lenin argues that, of all the arts, cinema is the most important, and that “it is one of the most powerful tools to educate the masses.” In the founding assembly of Shanghai Film Studio, Yu Ling, the head of the studio, communicated that they had received the instructions of the central authorities: the film industry was to occupy an extremely important position among all the industries of the various departments of the central authorities.

No matter in Beijing, Changchun, or Shanghai, filmmakers from the old revolutionary base areas, Yan’an, or the big cities pooled their intelligence and became a constructive force of the involvement of the film in the new culture. Of course, the running-in and the adjustment would take some time. After the founding of the People’s Republic of China, the ideological chasm between the film tradition of Yan’an and that of Shanghai widened, which led to sluggish production: only ten films were produced in the first year. The Yan’an tradition was once predominant in the cultural circles, on which Chen Xihe gave his account. He reckoned that, if the cultural tradition of Yan’an was compared with that of Shanghai, several differences would emerge: in terms of geopolitical conditions, the former was rooted in inland rural areas and revolutionary bases, while the latter’s root can be found in modern cities and capital markets; as to cultural characteristics, the former laid stress on the modernity of the revolution, while the latter emphasized the modernity of the democracy; and with regards to economic systems, the former was of a planned economy, while the latter a market economy. “The films of the Shanghai School have gone through a process of marginalization during the second half of the 20th century. With the establishment of the three film studios in Changchun, Beijing, and Shanghai, as well as the northward shift of the political and cultural center, the central position of Shanghai Film Studios as an organizational entity was abolished. Meanwhile, the Shanghai School in a culturological sense was put through a thorough remolding, starting with the critique of The Life of Wuxun. However, at that time, few people were able to properly estimate the difficulty of the challenge which would be imposed on the Shanghai cultural tradition by the Yan’an tradition, and the far-reaching influence of the latter on Chinese film and drama.”⁷ This kind of analysis is reasonable, especially in the long run, yet the reality of the 1950s was that the filmmakers from Yan’an and the liberated areas was nurtured by the conviction that everyone engaged in the film industry should be trained into valiant fighters in national revolutionary wars, and in the new context, their concern was to dedicate themselves to the New China, and devote their works to the glorious socialist cause, while the filmmakers from big cities were more concerned with self-improvement through learning and the representation of the new reality of China. If we looked objectively, the Yan’an tradition was being constantly strengthened in terms of politics and ideology, and gradually showed a tendency of dominance, while the Shanghai tradition and cinematic discourse was more prevalent in practice, especially during the actual filming.

Figure 1.1 Chen Bo'er, Tian Fang, and Qian Xiaozhang dispatch the camera crew to the front.

On May 27, 1949, Shanghai was liberated. On July 12, the Art Office of the Committee of Management of Culture and Education, which was affiliated with Shanghai Military Control Commission, invited writers and directors of the movie and drama circles to hold a colloquium, on which Xia Yan said, “our minimum requirements are that… the films produced by the privately-owned companies are not harmful to the people or do not deviate from the policies of the people’s government. Of course, what we hope is to educate our people, remold the old mentality, and encourage the production and the construction.”⁸ During the period between November 1949 and March 1952, the cultural and military-political institutions in the old liberated areas, such as the military art troupe of the East China Military Area Command, the field armies, East China Revolution University, and Shandong Revolution University, all transferred more than 100 staff to the newly-founded Shanghai Film Studio. Working with great zeal and enthusiasm, those people were passionate and unsophisticated, but their work was more of nominal importance, and they were not considered as backbones on their respective spots. Nonetheless, they played significant roles as people from the institutions and organizations directly governed by the Communist Party of China during the entire Liberation War and took hold of the power of discourse in the circles of literature and art. Sun Yu and Wu Yonggang expressed their feelings or even discon...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• List of Figures
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• 1 Films shouldering a newborn state power (1949–1951)
• 2 Imagination and a turning point (1952–1956)
• 3 In collective sentiments: The true mirror (1957–1965)
• 4 Death of film: A portrait of delirium in the cultural revolution period (1966–1971)
• 5 The scene of revolution in a special period (1972–1974)
• 6 Under the redness (1975–1976)
• Index