Early career
Born in Shanghai to Cantonese parents, but raised in Chaoyang, Shantou, Guangdong, Cai Chusheng worked in low-level positions in several small studios during the 1920s, before eventually joining Mingxing Film Company as a director’s assistant to Zheng Zhengqiu, another Chaoyang-native. Cai later joined the Lianhua Film Company where he directed a handful of mainstream popular films including Spring in the South and Pink Dream (both 1932). He would not cement his reputation as a leading leftist filmmaker until after the Japanese attack in 1932, when Cai, like many of his colleagues, shifted towards increasingly progressive or leftist filmmaking. This shift can be seen in output after 1932, including the class-struggle dramas Dawn Over the Metropolis (1933), Song of the Fishermen (1934), and the proto-feminist New Women (1934), which starred Ruan Lingyu. Song of the Fishermen, for example, was a major box office success in Shanghai where it played for 87 days, and… read more
Early career
Born in Shanghai to Cantonese parents, but raised in Chaoyang, Shantou, Guangdong, Cai Chusheng worked in low-level positions in several small studios during the 1920s, before eventually joining Mingxing Film Company as a director’s assistant to Zheng Zhengqiu, another Chaoyang-native. Cai later joined the Lianhua Film Company where he directed a handful of mainstream popular films including Spring in the South and Pink Dream (both 1932). He would not cement his reputation as a leading leftist filmmaker until after the Japanese attack in 1932, when Cai, like many of his colleagues, shifted towards increasingly progressive or leftist filmmaking. This shift can be seen in output after 1932, including the class-struggle dramas Dawn Over the Metropolis (1933), Song of the Fishermen (1934), and the proto-feminist New Women (1934), which starred Ruan Lingyu. Song of the Fishermen, for example, was a major box office success in Shanghai where it played for 87 days, and it would also became the first Chinese film to win an international prize, doing so at the Moscow International Film Festival.
Hong Kong and wartime
During the war, Cai fled first to Hong Kong, where he helped launch Mandarin language cinema with Situ Huimin. In Hong Kong, Cai would also direct two films, including the anti-Japanese thriller, Orphan Island Paradise (1939). When Hong Kong too fell to the Japanese, Cai fled to Chongqing, China’s wartime capital, where he joined the government-run Nationalist Central Film Studio.
Post-war career
Cai’s post-war career saw him returning to Shanghai and becoming a leading member of the Lianhua Film Society (later incorporated as the Kunlun Film Company). His collaboration with Zheng Junli The Spring River Flows East (1947) also proved to be a major film and popular success in the brief “Second Golden Age” of Cinema that followed the end of the Second World War. Following the Communist revolution, Cai worked mainly in administrative tasks, though he did make one major post-1949 film, Waves on the Southern Shore (1963). As the Cultural Revolution began to gain momentum in the late 1960s, Cai Chusheng, like many artists and intellectuals, became the target of persecution, which led to his early death in 1968.
In Stanley Kwan’s 1992 biopic of Ruan Lingyu, Centre Stage, Cai Chusheng is portrayed by Hong Kong actor Tony Leung Ka Fai. —Wikipedia
