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 significant number of films in the period to 1945. This was liberated by the Soviet Army and later taken over by the KMT as Changchun Film Studio which made this film in 1947.
The film opens in 1931 before the Japanese takeover. A family run an inn beside the Songhua river which acts as a stopping point for travelers. (The Songhua river is a long river flowing north from the Changbai mountains (on the China-Korea border) through Harbin and into the Amur river in northern Heilongjiang.)
The opening scenes show happy and hard-working Chinese going about their daily lives. But soon the Japanese invade and life becomes much tougher. The father is killed and the inn falls into disuse, now sheltering the grandfather [Pu Ke] and daughter [Zhang Ruifeng, actually 2 years younger than her grandfather] (the characters are generally indicated by their status rather than names).
The grandfather, daughter and her cousin [Wang Renlu] (who she later ‘marries’) eventually flee the area after the cousin kills a Japanese soldier who tries to rape her but the grandfather dies during the trip. The husband takes up employment at a Japanese-controlled mine. But a flood in the mine which causes the death of 60 miners leads to a fight between the miners and their families over the limited compensation provided. The husband and wife again flee and eventually join the partisans.
The film (unsurprisingly given its time) is a tale of Japanese oppression and the resistance of the local people. But it is not simplistic propaganda. The husband, for example, is effectively a collaborator with the Japanese during his time in the mine.
The film has a very lively soundtrack (including a song from Zhang Ruifeng) which is used to illustrate events and there is also extensive use of diegetic sound (customers in the inn, the sound of the mine machinery) so that there is a cacophony of noise in certain scenes.
There are also a number of striking shots (though the quality of the available film is quite poor). This is particularly the case when the half-naked bodies of the dead miners are rolled out, piled on a carriage and casually laid out beside the rail lines to be collected by their loved ones. There is also a shot when the daughter is signing a traditional song to her husband and his work colleagues who have been eating and drinking after work. The camera pans around the bare room and then moves to an outside shot, panning across the rows of poor housing in a bleak landscape, before returning to the warm interior.
Although the film shows a number of instances of partisans attacking the Japanese, this is not the main focus of the film which is on the hardship faced by ordinary people. The film makes no comment about the political leanings of the partisans which is probably an accurate reflection of the very confused period (the Communists were not very active in the early 30s when the film begins).
Director and writer Jin Shan was an actor (probable best known for Song at Midnight, 1937). He continued to work in the PRC but only directed three films in the late 1950s.
This film and movies from the same period in Shanghai show what the future of Chinese cinema might have looked like, rather than the three decades of tedium which ensued.
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