Song at Midnight [夜半歌声] (1937)

Song at Midnight is often described as the first Chinese horror movie. It is inspired by the 1925 film The Phantom of the Opera. The film was a huge success at the time. Presumably the fact that there is no supernatural element helped it to get through the KMT censorship which discouraged .superstition The film…

Along the Sungari River [松花江上] (1947)

Along the Sungari (or Songhua) River is an interesting example of the complexity of Chinese film making in the period from 1931 to 1949 (or even the early 1950s when privately owned studios were finally abolished). After the Japanese colonised the north-east (Manchuria) in 1931, they set up a film studio (Man'ei) which made a…

An Amorous History of the Silver Screen [银幕艳史] & Two Stars of the Milky Way [银汉双星) (1931)

Two striking self-reflective films about Chinese cinema made by two of the main film companies at the time Mingxing and Lianhua. These films mark the end of the initial period of Chinese cinema before the democratisation and politicisation of cinema which was to come in the period from 1932-37. In the coming years, films were…

Modern Women [摩登女性] (1945)

Despite the title, this is a conservative and anti-feminist diatribe in the form of a comedy. Cousins Yunzhen [director's wife Ouyang Shafei] and Meiying [Liu Yang] are students in occupied Shanghai (though the political context is never mentioned). Meiying is studious but Yunzhen is more interested in fellow student Lin Zhihua [Yan Jun]. Yunzhen comes…

Lianhua Symphony [联华交响曲] (1937)

A compilation of eight short films by directors of Lianhua film studio including Fei Mu, Sun Yu and Cai Chusheng. The film opens with Two Jiao (by director Situ Huimin, a CPC member who later directed a number of anti-Japanese films in Hong Kong and served in a number of roles in the PRC government…

Remorse in Shanghai [春江遗恨] 1944

An interesting wartime Sino-Japanese 'co-production' extolling the virtues of a Greater Asian approach to fight against the evil British and Americans. It is apparently based loosely on real events and characters. As we currently have it, the film opens as a Japanese delegation sail into a crowded Shanghai port in 1862 during the Taiping revolt.…