Symphony of Lianhua

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

Born in Shanghai, China, Fei Mu is considered by many to be one of the major film directors prior to the Communist takeover in 1949. Known for his artistic style and costume dramas, Fei made his first film, 1933’s Night in the City (produced by the Lianhua Film Company), at the young age of 27, and he was met with both critical and popular acclaim (the film, unfortunately, is now lost). Continuing to make films with Lianhua, Fei directed films throughout the 1930s and became a major talent in the industry, with films like 1936’s Blood on Wolf Mountain (often seen as an allegory on the war with Japan) and 1935’s Song of China, a glorification of traditional values that was part of the New Life Movement. Later, Song of China became one of the few films that had a limited release in the United States.

Fei’s legacy as one of China’s greatest directors was sealed with his 1948 influential masterpiece Spring in a Small Town about a love triangle in post-war China (it was later remade by Tian Zhuangzhuang in 2002 as Springtime in a Small Town). In 2005, Spring in a Small Town was declared the greatest Chinese films ever made by the Hong Kong Film Critics Association. Fei remained active in this so-called “Second Golden Age” and also directed China’s first color film Remorse at Death (1948), which incorporated Beijing Opera and starred Mei Lanfang. Following the Communist revolution in 1949, Fei Mu, along with many other artists and intellectuals fled to Hong Kong. There he founded Longma Film Company (“Dragon-Horse Films”) with Zhu Shilin and Fei Luyi and produced (under the Longma name) Zhu Shilin’s The Flower Girl (1951).

Following his death in Hong Kong in 1951, Fei Mu and his work fell into obscurity, as much of his filmography was forgotten or ignored on the Mainland, rejected by leftist critics as indicative of rightist ideologies. It was not until the 1980s, when the China Film Archive re-opened after being closed down during the Cultural Revolution did Fei Mu’s work find a new audience. Most significant was a new print made by the China Film Archive from the original negative of Spring in a Small Town. —Wikipedia

Sun Yu was born on March 21, 1900 in Chongqing (Chungking), Sichuan province, to an intellectual family which valued education highly. Sun’s father, who had been a successful scholar at the provincial level during the Qing (Manchu) dynasty, was a historical researcher who traveled around China, and as a boy Sun Yu often went along, which added considerably to the future filmmaker’s experience and knowledge. The family later moved to Shanghai, where Sun Yu saw his first movie in a theater.

After graduating from middle school, Sun Yu passed the entrance exams for admission to Qinghua University, where movies and poetry became his twin passions. In his third year, he entered a film reviewing competition and won the grand prize. Among the judges in the competition were future Chinese film directors Zhu Shilin and Fei Mu, while the chair of the panel was Luo Mingyou, who as the head of the Lianhua (United Photoplay Service) Film Company would one day rewrite the history of Chinese cinema. After graduating from Qinghua, Sun Yu took up advanced study at the University of Wisconsin in the United States, where his graduate thesis was On English Translations of the Poetry of Li Bai.

After Wisconsin, Sun studied screenwriting and directing at Columbia University, while also studying photography at the New York Institute of Photography. In 1926 he returned to Shanghai to formally begin his film career. Actually, Sun Yu’s first attempt at obtaining motion picture work was as a screenwriter, but his application to the Mingxing (Star) studio was rejected. It took two years before he succeeded in getting a job, when in 1928 the Great Wall studio hired him to write and direct his maiden effort, Strange Hero (渔叉怪侠), a martial arts film which dealt with the close friendship between two fishermen.

The following year, when the depressed economy forced Great Wall to began making serious cutbacks (it ceased operations in 1930), Sun Yu left Great Wall for the Minxin (New People) studio. The Chinese film industry was in difficult circumstances at that time, and studios were turning out a glut of movies made for purely economic reasons, movies which did not suit what the public wanted to see. As a result, many Shanghai film companies went under. About this time, Luo Mingyou joined forces with Li Minwei, head of the Minxin company, to establish the Lianhua Film Company (also called the United Photoplay Service), which they intended as a “revolutionary army for revival of our national cinema, a vanguard vessel of resistance.” At their invitation Sun Yu wrote and directed Spring Dream in the Old Capital (故都春梦). This film, a realistic portrayal of the sufferings of intellectuals in old China, invoked a strong public reaction and drew audiences to the theater in record numbers. Unfortunately, during the filming Sun Yu overworked himself to the point of suffering from a bleeding ulcer, and he collapsed on the set.

Following the success of Spring Dream, Sun Yu’s next work was Wild Flowers (野草闲花) which received the same public acceptance. In 1932, Sun Yu directed Wild Rose (野玫瑰), which depicted the lives of Shanghai’s lower classes living in the “pigeon cages” in the lanes and alleys of the teeming metropolis. Sun had the idea that the scenes of these mean lodgings would have greater impact if viewed from above, so before making the film, he asked a technical graduate of Tungji University to build a 13-meter high camera crane for him to use. This was the first camera crane in Chinese movie history, and China’s only one at that time.

Between 1932 and 1934, Sun Yu’s creative vigor produced a succession of six films which are all considered classics of China’s silent era: following Wild Rose was Loving Blood of the Volcano (火山情血), Daybreak (天明), Little Toys (小玩意), Queen of Sports (体育皇后), and The Big Road (大路). Of these, The Big Road is the most highly regarded, with even Sun Yu himself calling it his most representative work. The Big Road tells the story of a group of young people working on road construction for national defense. The movie had four songs, all composed by Nie Er. In one of these, Song of the Big Road, two lines struck an inspirational note with audiences, “Marching ahead with a heavy burden on our shoulders, till we finish building the big road to freedom.” Also, the group’s leader in the film, a vigorous and strong young man named Jin Ge (played by Jin Yan) inspired people throughout China with his spirited image of optimistic and open-minded individualism. From the time of its Shanghai premiere on January 1, 1935 it was a huge success. Upon viewing it, Shen Xiling, director of another 1930s classic Crossroads (十字街头), dubbed Sun Yu “the poet director.”

When full-scale war erupted between China and Japan, Sun Yu took his family back to Chongqing, the place of his birth and China’s wartime capital. In spite of ill health, Sun shot two patriotic war films there, Thousands of Miles of Open Sky (长空万里), and Baptism by Fire (火的洗礼), after which he went back to America for medical attention and recuperation.

Returning to China in 1947, Sun turned his attention to planning The Life of Wu Xun (武训传), a film he had envisioned for some time. Wu Xun (1838-1896) is a famous figure in Chinese history: a bright child born into a desperately poor family, with no chance of receiving an education, Wu became a professional beggar. Throughout his life, Wu painstakingly set aside a portion of his earnings from begging to save for his dream, a free school for the education of poor children who could not afford tuition. Cast in the title role of this heartrending story of dedication and sacrifice was Zhao Dan, China’s top male actor at the time. Making the film turned out to be a difficult process; among other problems, the studio funding the project packed up and fled the mainland for Taiwan in the spring of 1949. Filming was finally completed in 1950 under the relatively new Kunlun studio. The Life of Wu Xun premiered in February, 1951 in Shanghai and Nanjing, with strong audience approval. Sun Yu took a copy of the movie to Beijing, the capital of the new Communist government, and exhibited it to Chinese government and political officials, an audience which included Premier Zhou Enlai and the army’s commander-in-chief Zhu De. All who saw the film rated it highly. So after all this praise, it came as a shock when barely three months later, on May 20, 1951, the official government organ, the People’s Daily, published an editorial, Pay Close Attention to Discussions of ’The Life of Wu Xun’. Accusing the film of “fanatically propagating feudal culture,” and “bowing down to reactionary feudal rulers,” this editorial laid the foundation for what became a nationwide campaign of critical attacks on the movie.

Criticism of The Life of Wu Xun was a major event in the first stage of the cultural environment being established in New China, and it had deep impact. For Sun Yu, it signified an end to his creative career. After this, he made only a few more films, of minor significance. During the Cultural Revolution, he suffered numerous invasions of his home and seizure of his family’s possessions. He was also arrested and made to endure public denunciations which weakened his health to the point that he was at last permitted to return home to recuperate. However, he was still subjected to repeated public criticism.

After the Cultural Revolution ended, Sun Yu’s reputation was restored, but he no longer had the strength or will to resume filmmaking. He turned to writing, and in 1981 published two books, Selected Screenplays by Sun Yu, and New Translations of the Poetry of Li Bai, the latter work in English. In September of that same year, he was honored at the New Light Theater in Shanghai with a Celebration of 50 Years of Sun Yu’s Motion Picture Career, a commemoration ceremony. In May, 1987, Sun Yu’s autobiography, Afloat on the Silver Sea: Recalling My Life was published in China. Retitled Song of the Big Road, it was published in Taiwan and overseas in 1990.

On July 11 of that year, Sun Yu died at the age of 90. In the first half of the last century he had been like a brilliant meteor flashing across China’s movie sky, a brilliance extinguished prematurely by politics, as were so many others during that era. —The Chinese Mirror