This article mainly discussed China’s early film history that has long been neglected until recent decades. It managed to analyse the intricate relationships between theatre and Film in the 1930s China, and in Labor’s Love how “filming” serves as a mean to exhibit theatre (“YingXi”), on the other hand emerging as an end (“DianYing”) of storytelling. A very interesting point was that the director named the leading character — a bricoleur by his own name, and according to the author this carried his sense of craftmanship in filmmaking.
At the end of the article, the author wrote: “The brevity of this silent story and its jocular overtone have a long echo that we are only beginning to hear.” Looking at mainstream films in mainland China today, we may find some traces. Shanghai before revolution, the modern, luxurious metropolis appeared more and more as history backgrounds in recent Chinese commercial movies, especially suspense movies. For example, this years’ hit movie Wu Ming (Hidden Blade, 2023), and Luo Man Di Ke Xiao Wang Shi (The Wasted Times, 2016) by the same director Chen Er, Yang Ming Li Wan (Be Somebody, 2021) and many others. This is not only paying tributes. Shanghai’s hustling, sensational landscape/lifestyles actually match with China’s big cities today better than most other China’s cities in other historical period. As a result, the prominence of entertaining and commercial functions of such movies became rather consistent with those early films in the 1920-30s. Due to censorships and the advancing entertainment business in China, movies’ functions have undoubtedly transformed greatly in past decades. Emphasizing novelty in techniques and higher-quality recreations, China’s new commercial movies may learn from the early developments of Chinese films — or go on the exploratory path that has been stopped and forgotten started by Labor’s Love.
Kaizhe Shen UID3035974640
It s enjoyable to read your well-structured writing in which case studies and personal reflection are firmly integrated into your reading analysis. Also, your focus raises several questions: 1) How is the Chinese metropolis (especially Shanghai) shaped in the films in different eras? 2) Why Shanghai is packed as the cinematic context of suspense movies? 3) How do Chinese metropolises, represented by Shanghai, witness and serve the transition of the Chinese cinematic industry?