Scenes of City Life

A talented filmmaker of the 1930s-40s, Yuan Muzhi became involved in theater while still at high school. During his college years, he played the lead role in a Chinese stage adaptation of Chekov’s Uncle Vanya. In 1930, Yuan was drawn into the leftist theater movement. However, his parents’ disapproval of his involvement in theater, together with their active interference of his work, served to estrange Yuan from his family.

Yuan joined Diantong Film Company, a centre of the leftist film movement, in 1934. He wrote and starred in Plunder of Peach and Plum (dir. Ying Yunwei, 1934), which deals with the widespread problem of unemployment and is highly critical of social conditions in the 1930s. Yuan also starred in another Diantong production, Children of Troubled Times (dir. Xu Xingzhi, 1935). In 1935, he wrote and directed Scenes of City Life (1935), a musical focusing on the dark side of urban life.

Yuan joined Mingxing Film Company after Diantong was shut down because of its leftist orientation. He starred in Hearts United (dir. Ying Yunwei, 1936), then scripted and directed Street Angel (1937), one of the best-known films of the 1930s. During the Sino-Japanese war, Yuan appeared in Eight Hundred Heroic Soldiers (dir. Ying Yunwei, 1938) before leaving for Yanan.

In 1940, Yuan joined the CCP and was sent to the Soviet Union. In the post-war period, Yuan played a major role in the CCP take-over of Manchurian Motion Pictures. Northeast Film Studio was established under his leadership in 1946. After 1949, Yuan left his post as Northeast Studio’s manager and was appointed chief director of the Film Bureau under the Ministry of Culture. —chinesecinema.ucsd.edu