Exploring Xie Jin and Chinese cinema under Mao
It’s sad that such an important director who started making films in the 50s, survived the Cultural Revolution, and made films into the new millennium is so neglected in cinephile circles. I’ve seen two other films by him, Woman Basketball Player No. 5 and Hibiscus Town. The latter is definitely one of the best Chinese films that came out of the 80s. I guess the poor man’s life just didn’t have the right timing. Many mediocre Fifth and Sixth Generation Chinese filmmakers have gotten all kinds of exposure at the expense of this old school master.
Kudos to Myra for choosing this important film for the WC.
I took a Chinese cinema course where Xie Jin was studied in depth, and while I am glad to see this topic get raised here, I don’t quite share your enthusiasm for his work. I found his films to be incredibly reactionary, staunch and quite didactic (“The Red Detachment of Women” being the biggest offender). Some would even argue that the Xie Jin model was quite disastrous for Chinese cinema, and it was his aesthetic that the fifth generation (specifically critic Zhu Dake) were rebelling against. “Hibiscus Town,” and “Legend of Tianyun Mountain” were partially an effort to correct this, but if “The Opium War” is any indication, Xie’s forte is really stuffy melodramas.
Xie essentially congealed the Hollywood melodrama, traditional Chinese opera and the Soviet Realist aesthetic. While most of his work displays this rather brilliant assimilation of styles (one that should be more known to cinephiles and scholars) I still feel that his approach is somewhat lacking.
So, while I commend you for bringing this topic up, I would also suggest to anyone reading to also check out Chen Kaige’s “Yellow Earth,” the far more aesthetically adventurous 1984 film that essentially announced the fifth generation’s presence to the world, but has been as criminally neglected as Xie Jin’s work (many people single out the far more conservative Zhang Yimou as being the more essential filmmaker to the fifth generation, an assertion I bitterly protest).
So to anyone interested I would suggest contrasting the formalism of the reform era “Yellow Earth” to the classicism of Mao era Xie Jin, a dialectal exchange that shouldn’t be passed up.
Yellow Earth is hardly neglected when compared to Xie’s works though. It’s true that the film deserves more recognition and a superior DVD release, but anyone who has any interest in contemporary Chinese cinema has either seen this film or is at least aware of its significance as the film that hailed in the Fifth Generation.
ANY interest? because I’ve meet plenty of people who do, who scratch their heads when I mention it, or simply haven’t been able to view it because of its lack of easy availability (including knowledgeable Chinese History professors). Meanwhile Xie Jin’s films are known to EVERYONE who lived in mainland China because his aesthetic became the cornerstone of their industry. Yellow Earth is more well known to scholars, but Yimou is far more recognizable by most general knowledge critics, journalists and fans (ie not die hards)
My point is, people who are really in the know obviously recognize both Kaige and Jin, but general audiences are more likely to ignore, or be ignorant to both and are far more likely to look at Yimou’s work primarily as the foundation of their knowledge, a critical error.
Chen Kaige´s masterpiece is in fact not “Yellow Earth”, but the far lesser known “The King of Children”. Now that´s a film which is widely ignored. I would say that Chen Kaige is almost as prominent as Zhang Yimou among critics due to the success of “Farewell, my Concubine” which was even awarded the Palme d´Or in Cannes. Though one can´t ignore that he´s far more of a conformist to the Communist regime than Xie Jin was whose films “Two Stage Sisters” and “Hibiscus Town” provide a subtle and intelligent criticism most of Kaige´s works lack.
i think i was in part a major reason Myra selected a Xie film in the first place because i offered her to choose something from his early films but she had informed me she already had something else processing it.
Xie was a small reference on a discussion i once had in our underground projections in regards to the Mao system and the subsequent policies and there was a common tracepoint of Yimou’s and Kaige’s far-fetched but for their first periods,well deserved criticism by many well-known critics,native or not.
having seen Two Stage Sisters,i can honestly say Xie’s films will probably see the light of day in my country not before the next century because most critics here (like in this site) don’t even know who Xie Jin is,let alone Kaige’s pre-Concubine period!!! and i blame the critics for the most part because they love seeing releases for the latest Eastwood films,but most of them haven’t cared to watch Ozu’s full filmography!
it’s quite significant to have a thread like this even in a semi-Criterion site like this is,because we have somehow separated loads of countries in just one period,China post-80’s,Iran post-90’s etc and i think it’s time to start fully criticizing a country by its whole,not the “commercially available”,that commercially available has given Reygadas for instance the prominence and that’s why most academics won’t even look at older Mexican cinema.
p.s.: correct me if i’m wrong Paul,but i think after 1969,there were some musical-based films,comedies and even animations!! perhaps they were politically libeled films?
@apursansar: The King of Children is available on DVD with English subs (amazon) although the quality isn’t too hot unfortunately :(
I still (!) haven’t seen Yellow Earth but The King of Children is wonderful, I agree. Makes a good double bill with Not One Less by Zhang Yimou by the way.
Thanks for the information, Grey Daisies. I wasn´t aware of a subtitled DVD, it´s definitely worth tracking down that rare film even though the image might not be good. His film “Yellow Earth” has been uploaded on youtube, by the way.
I’m glad that you bring up “The King of Children,” I haven’t seen it, but I’ve been told that it is indeed great by a few Chinese speaking people I’ve known, including my old film professor. The more neglected films we can bring up here the better
“The Red Detachment of Women” is one of the ULTIMATE Chinese propaganda films, so to describe his entire body of work as rebellious I think is a distortion. He set the template that the fifth generation were rebelling against, as I can attest to by the hours of footage of horrendous early 60’s Chinese films I was subjected to in college, all made by adhering to the tenets of his famous cinematic “model.”
Farewell My Concubine, in all its Miramax edited glory, I think is far more recognizable as a title, not for the director behind it. I do not intend to come off as if I think he is a cinematic master, or that all of his films are great, but I do think that more general viewers should at least know that there are more paramount Chinese films than “Raise the Red Lantern” “Red Sorghum” and indeed “Farewell My Concubine.” And Kaige’s Pre Concubine period is certainly ripe for (re)discovery ( If “King of Children” is a masterpiece and it’s only on spanish subtitled vhs? Shameful.)
My problem with ONLY mentioning Xie Jin is that there is a reason that he is ignorned; mainly because a lot of Chinese filmmakers found his films to be boring and complacent (as I do). Though he certainly has his defenders and disciples ( Jia Zhangke being a champion).
I also think that we should mention Actress/Center Stage by Stanley Kwan ( I have the pristine director’s cut in a region 0 dvd and its amazing) as well as the films of Center Stage’s topic ,Ruan Lingyu (some of which are available in poor, but watchable region 0 versions on Amazon).
In short, I just think we should be looking at ignored Chinese films in general, not just the work of Xie Jin, although knowledge of his work should definitely be more common, as it is essential.
And yes, the topic of the thread is Chinese Cinema under Mao, but I was just trying to expand the conversation, so feel free to call me an asshole if need be. I’m really just excited that this is being discussed at all!
Also Dimitris, there were many musical’s made after 1969, I had to watch a few of them and they are pretty mind numbing.
I was born in mainland China, I have friends and family from mainland China, and I can say that I’ve never heard Xie Jin mentioned among anyone I’ve talked to. Truth be told, I shamefully didn’t even know he existed until somewhat recently. Chen Kaige’s name is far more common among Chinese people, and I would argue from experience that Yellow Earth is more well-known, despite people often ignoring his early works. There are Chinese DVD collections of all his works floating around in China commercially (bootleg usually), yet you’d be hard-pressed to find a version of any of Xie Jin’s films unless you searched actively. God knows I’ve tried here in Vancouver and have come up close to empty. In terms of commercial value, the demand for Xie films despite their historical and critical significance is severely lacking.
That said, I myself haven’t seen that many of Xie’s films. His debut, Woman Basketball Player No. 5 I find to be rather notable though, especially when considering the era in which it was made. In the late 50s who would be so bold as to make a film about basketball, and one centering on women, at that? I believe this film was one of the first of its kind, and showed far more skin than the more conservative films that preceded it (even if it is just women in sports attire).
The Red Detachment of Women you mention is ‘reactionary’ and ‘didactic’ and yes, I myself have issues with its messages. However, from studying Xie you may know that the second half of the film in particular was severely censored, to the point where Xie himself deemed the film ‘unwatchable’ due to the distortion of what he initially planned. He was not allowed to develop the love story further on an individual level, as films from the Mao era diverged from individualism and instead focused on the masses in keeping in line with the ideals of the Revolution. Personal feelings were secondary or non-existent in films, and if addressed, were sacrificed for the ideology of the time.
Plot and censorship aside, one of the things I admire most about Xie’s films is his portrayal of women. Anyone who has seen that particular film cannot deny the sheer emotion that resonates from the female protagonist’s eyes – they absolutely burn with a fervid ferocity. She’s headstrong and determined, even if it is for revenge and propaganda purposes.
Two Stage Sisters to some may fall prey to unnecessary melodrama, especially during the courtroom scene. This doesn’t belittle its execution in my opinion. I don’t have much else to say about this film in particular, as Paul has linked an excellent article on the film, except that I am very fond of its use of colour and opera. Unfortunately, my own copy of the film is less than ideal with its washed out colours, but is the uncensored version with the additional ending. Again, even with such a monumental film in the history of Chinese cinema, I could not even find a suitable copy to buy in stores.
Myra- I was basing my earlier (and admittedly glib) comments about Xie Jin’s notoriety on testimony from older professors i had who lived in the mainland during or shortly after his rise to prominence in the early 60’s, and on testimony from the discourse in the early 80’s about the state of Chinese cinema (his name came up quite a bit). As for Kaige’s notoriety, I was referring to his perception in the west ( I apologize for the clumsy and ill advised comparison, its 4 in the morning here, bare with me). But as your experience is first hand and mine is secondary, I’ll certainly take your word for it.
Although, Xie Jin directed the “Opium War,” in 1997, which was at the time the most expensive mainland film ever made at the time (15,000,000 usd according to wikipedia) and the winner of that year’s Golden Rooster and Hundred Flower’s award for best picture, so I’d like to think at least that one was pretty visible (but I’ll assume you primarily mean his earlier work).
You’re right about the second half of Red Detachment, but what about the first half? I still maintain that Xie still very much fell in line with the party model a good amount of the time, and I still think his portrayal of women (which are striking, as you eloquently describe) hardly counts as subversive as the Chinese Revolution was (at least superficially) a very woman friendly movement, and strong women were often the subject of Chinese films both before and after the revolution. I basically take issue with the notion that Xie (artistic talent aside) was some great rebellious figure completely poised against the rigidity of the CCP %100 of the time, and Chen Kaige is some great conformist, when in fact Chen (again, artistic flaws aside) was pivotal in reversing the standards and regulation which kept Chinese cinema from the world stage for so many years.
But regardless of my faults with his work. Xie’s films should be seen, known, and discussed and I am elated to find his name popping up on this forum.
Oh, I’m glad he’s being discussed as well and I apologize if my earlier post seemed rather defensive in its remarks, which wasn’t my intention at all. My own experience is limited to Chinese people who I have spoken to, who unfortunately are not very aware of older Chinese cinema in general, and therefore Xie by extension. My own parents think I’m insane for wanting to watch films from before my time. They refused to have a serious discussion with me about pre-80s Chinese cinema, despite me wanting to learn more from them. :( So I just wanted to campaign for Xie and Chinese cinema during the 50s and 60s in China (or earlier), although this is slightly hypocritical as I myself was entirely ignorant of pre-Fifth Gen Chinese cinema for the longest time, and thought everything revolved around Zhang Yimou in my youth. :(
In regard to the earlier mention of Chen’s King of the Children, I agree that it’s wonderful and underseen. There’s also a copy available at YesAsia, which from the cover of the Amazon version, seems to be the same sole copy that is available, but for US $6.99.
Kwan’s Centre Stage was great, and Cheung gives an elegant yet fragile performance as Ruan, but I can’t say I love the film myself for some reason. It was beautifully done and I’d recommend it to others though. I sadly have only seen the edited version of this film, so perhaps my opinion will change as I’ve heard great things about the extended director’s version. Some critics list it as one of the best Chinese films of the 90s. There’s also Kwan’s Rouge, an interesting ghost tale starring Leslie Cheung whom I adore, and singer-actress Anita Mui. I didn’t quite take to the later portion of the film, but I’m fond of the beginning (musical) scenes between Cheung and Mui.
Yes, the actual Ruan! I’m up for discussing her at any time, as well as Zhou Xuan… or Li Lili… or any of the other wonderful women of the ’30s Shanghai era. :)
Hey Myra,
Quite a few of my Chinese friends knew of him, if not by name. I was introduced to his works by a Chinese friend after I commented on the performance of Bao GuoAn in the long-running TV adaptation of Romance of the Three Kingdoms. I watched ‘The Opium War’ on that recommendation.
I suddenly have an urge to watch it again :D.
Apropos CENTER STAGE: I have seen (and now I own it as a DVD) the original cut by this film and I love it a lot. I saw as well the short version or shall I say the barbaric edited version which is really awful and especially the very sad final is almost completly eliminated. I heard that Stanley Kwan was quite pissed of by the shorter version which happened against his will.
Anyway CENTER STAGE really introduced me to chinese film history especially the Shanghai period.
In its full about 150 min-version CENTER STAGE is a very complex film, documentary (you see Kwans team and himself at work making CENTER STAGE, a reconstruction of scenes from Ruan Ling Yus life and with a lot of excerpts from her films. It is for my side as well Maggie Cheungs role of her life.
I’m glad of some replies. I hope this means more people have seen Two Stage Sisters, too. Unfortunately I made a mistake on the film’s date in my original post- 1965, not 1966. Of course it’s too late to edit.
First off, KF, no one ever said anything about Chen being “some great conformist”- although I’ve heard plenty of criticism of his later films on aesthetic rather than political grounds- until you introduced his name to the thread in a post dismissive of Xie as such. I take heart from your later comments that “regardless of my faults with his work. Xie’s films should be seen, known, and discussed,” but your earlier comments seemed to say he deserved his obscurity in the West. Chen not only won the Palme, but became the first and thus far only (!) Chinese-language director ever to do so. Concubine is a film I really like, btw, however unfashionable it is to say so. In fact I prefer it to this Xie film. But as a consequence of its tokenistic status in the West (which did indeed symbolize the rearrival of strong Chinese cinema brought about by Chen and others after the Cultural Revolution) Concubine gets more than enough attention at the expense of the long history of strong Chinese cinema before and since. As Gina Marchetti’s essay explains, Concubine clearly references Xie’s Two Stage Sisters in itself- as did lesser known Fifth Generation works like Huang Shuqin’s Woman Demon Human- and for those many of us who have already seen Chen’s most famous work, but have little access to the films he was reacting to (or even reacting against, as you say about Xie) it should be an all the more interesting experience to watch Xie’s film- whether we admire or dislike it more or less than Chen’s, it’s too original for us to wish it buried, even if I understand that other propaganda films from that era evoke painful memories for those who grew up in a system where this art was used to justify great wrongs.
Yes, my personal tastes do run toward the best work of the Fifth Generation and subsequent auteurs like Jia (I had no idea he loved Xie!), not to mention my love for what I’ve been lucky to see from ‘30s Shanghai thanks to Marc, the Internet Archive, Google Video and a company called Cinema Epoch- but mostly to Myra for featuring these works in her World Cup selections and hyping them to me before that. Young filmmakers with brilliant often self-taught aesthetics and leftist (though not necessarily Maoist) sympathies joined with actors of exquisite charisma, rising above every imagineable difficult background, to challenge, entertain and to demand, in sophisticated, subversive art, the fair future that has been so far unfulfilled for many Chinese- particularly women- under “Communism” just as it was before under feudal style capitalism. I’m unfortunately too ignorant thus far to be able to talk about more than a handful of ‘30s films, but thankfully things have improved in the years since Jonathan Rosenbaum raved about Maggie Cheung’s performance in Stanley Kwan’s biopic, without having been able to see any of the complete original films of Ruan Lingyu. From the Shanghai films I have seen, I feel Shanghai produced the most cosmopolitan yet socially committed cinema ever, and was likely the original source of Xie’s feminism as well. So these are two essential periods of cinema, the ‘30s-40s and the ’80s-present. It’s good, particularly in the former case, that we now remember (thanks partly to Kwan’s and Cheung’s efforts I’m sure) and talk about all these amazing, unappreciated-by-Cannes Chinese classics, and in the latter case, I find even many of the most superficial efforts of the Fifth Generation aesthetically worthy, and even some aesthetically poorer films of the sixth admirably honest. Chinese cinema this decade has been in an interesting place. Jia is one genius- today it seems there are more, though the exposure in the English-speaking world for Wang Bing and other current innovators remains terrible.
In contrast I’ve seen barely any films from from the 1950s-60s. And if even an ideologically left, aesthetic innovator and risk-taker like Xie Jin couldn’t hope to go against the tide of a cinematically conservative and politically repressive period (or didn’t exhibit the personal courage or insight to do so- which after all would probably have got him killed by the end of the Cultural Revolution- risks Chen never really faced, though some censorship remained) yes, perhaps we can predict that overall, the Maoist era of cinema would yield fewer rewards than any other time. Even as it was, Two Stage Sisters went unseen until the late 1970s, the beginning of the contemporary era of Chinese film. It wasn’t the feel-good propaganda blockbuster of the summer of 1965- it was too busy being banned and in a crazed fit of Mao’s powerful wife Jiang Qing, taking nearly all of cinema along with it (partly for Xie’s producer’s connections to the old Shanghai film scene much-hated by Madame Mao, an actress herself- she had a brief part in Scenes of City Life, Myra’s 1930s selection- who bore personal vendettas for those she’d once worked with). Anyway, since the film in question was never seen until after Mao’s death either in China or elsewhere, that makes it more a suppressed late climax to the period than a typical example, but it also undermines the anti-Xie Jin arguments being expressed, since its ban clearly demonstrates the director had been caught on the wrong side of the preferred aesthetic- whatever his own role in helping develop it through earlier propaganda. Anyway, the Chinese who remember it from growing up would belong to Jia’s generation of Deng Xiaoping babies- for which it could have been an excitingly weird alternative to the more westernized, homogenized popular art beginning to enter the mainland in the ’80s- rather than having been indoctrinated by it growing up in the famine of the ’50s or the ’60s purges and “sending downs.”
Regardless of the fact those things were occurring throughout the ‘50s and ’60s, and that the earlier films of Xie Jin and others could be said to justify the repressive rule of Mao- and much worse, lead the way to the Gang of Four- through their essential dishonesty or disinterest in the present state of society, they are still- as with the films of pre-1982 Taiwan under its repressive right wing dictatorship- worthy of more attention. The absolute lack of discussion of this 17 years of cinema (plus the 10 of the Cultural Revolution if Dimitris is correct there were some works produced- maybe only the “eight model plays”?) alone justifies the effort to introduce Xie, one of the period’s most influential filmmakers, to a wider audience of those outside China whose politics may vary, or who may even have no interest in the events and politics of 20th century China (shame on them) but whose cinematic interests, as with your own, should require them to understand and appreciate the original aesthetics of Xie’s work, however repugnant it may be to you or some others ideologically. Not too many people here would argue if one called Riefenstahl an aesthetic master worthy of study, and perhaps she’s a bit more innovative than either Xie or Chen, but certainly more ideologically repugnant than any Chinese filmmaker I’ve heard of (except maybe whoever did Serfs, a ‘60s film about the army’s “liberation” of Tibet, which I have yet to see, but in any case Xie didn’t make it).
On the basis of politics it’s undeniable Xie Jin conformed. So would Chen have, probably. I mean, from what I’ve read of Xie’s evolution by the ‘80s (Hibiscus Town is unavailable with Eng subs too!!!!!) it does seem he became slightly more openly critical than Chen has ever been, and Chen neither suffered the kind of threats Xie did nor had the firsthand memories of the hope of 1949 that it would have been hard to lose completely for someone of Xie’s age. Yellow Earth is one of my favorite films of the ‘80s and I’ve been trying to convince Myra to select it for the World Cup- I like that one better than what I’ve seen by Xie too- but it does remind me of Soviet films with its formalism, and in terms of true Chinese innovation or meld of influences, Two Stage Sisters is more unlike anything I’ve seen elsewhere. Yellow Earth is also more of a propaganda film in a way- certainly more so than either Chen or Zhang’s later work, but it’s also more effective propaganda for the party than something like Two Stage Sisters which confuses with its garishly adorned story and many perspectives. It lacks the landlord villains, etc. (who Xie Jin rendered quite realistically as humans, if unsympathetic ones) but Yellow Earth is comparable to his Red Detachment of Women in going back to the glory era when the party were going around the countryside genuinely opening minds and freeing people from millennia of slavery, or so it seemed for a while, especially to women who enlisted. The backward-looking focus of both films- as with plenty of good Hollywood or Soviet productions- effectively aroused nationalist feeling and quieted dissent with the contemporary government by reminding people of its origins. So even if Xie has always made pretty nationalist- if complex- films, so has Chen.
What makes Sun Yu more attractive to me cinematically than Xie (or Chen, from what I’ve seen) isn’t that he exactly has great ideological differences- I don’t know, but in fact Sun and Xie may share similar views on the ridiculousness of the party’s official artistic standards, with Xie not being permitted even to include romance in a patriotic film, and the one post-1949 film Sun was allowed to make bringing a personal denunciation from Mao (and an end to Sun’s career) because its leftist message was too honest about the fact that inequalities hadn’t instantly disappeared in 1949. It’s that Sun’s work wasn’t backward looking. He was living in the moment of those female detachments, and though he couldn’t hope for any sympathy from the nationalist authorities, the Japanese invaders or the western colonialists for making the leftist films he did, he made them anyway, because his commitment was to expressing how things were and how they should be. I don’t know what kind of films different directors would have made had they lived at different times. My own greater enjoyment of Chen’s work and its now-acceptable minor risks is outweighed by my greater admiration for the innovation and aesthetic wonder Xie did inject even into a time which didn’t allow artists to try to be honest, and I guess I both enjoy and admire the ‘30s filmmakers more than either, both for their aesthetic power and for working so honestly in a mode of dissent to envision the better future (even if the “better” one didn’t turn out to result from Maoism, which sadly ruined many lives even of leftists) rather than justify the present by nostalgia as both the “17 years” and Fifth Generation have mostly done.
In a way most of the now-familiar innovations of the Fifth Gen- the focus on the problems of society, on strong women’s struggles, and the technical perfection achieved through cinematography and editing- only seem extremely new relative to the quiet period for Chinese cinema that preceded them. In a way the films of Zhang- stunning as the best of them are, and I will argue anyone who disses Red Lantern, Ju Dou, even Shanghai Triad- have been nothing more than a full color recapitulation of the feminist tragedies of Sun. But these beloved Fifth Generation films also bear the marks of Xie Jin.
There’s a great irony in KF’s discussion (besides the fact I just spent way too long in this thread when I could have been over in the World Cup forum preparing to vote for Xie). Hopefully it’s ok if I reveal this- The King of Children was actually Myra’s first choice to use in the slot now occupied by Xie. She asked me for help in getting a copy but I dropped the ball by not planning ahead far enough (or maybe still prioritizing Jia’s 24 City, which a subsequent rule change disallowed for being too recent) and we weren’t able to find one with English subs that could be delivered, ripped and uploaded within the required time. However, she really made me want to see the film in all its glory- there’s a very low quality Tudou.com rip we could have synced with subtitles kindly provided by Arsaib, but this may not give a proper image of the glory of Yunnan.
Thanks for the insightful comment, Paul. I agree with you and also think that while critizing Xie Jin´s films one should bear in mind the times when they were making their films, the difficult situation for filmmakers in the 1960´s and almost impossible task to get around censorship. I think that Xie Jin went as far as he could, and considering what Mao did to the Chinese culture (and Opera) the parallels between the Kuomintang that is being portrayed and the Communist regime become the more appearant. He was able to criticize Maoism and the fatal consequences of the Cultural Revolution more directly in the mid-1980´s while Chen Kaige around the same time filmed an ode to the Communist´s attempt to liberate people from barberous tradition, an irony when thinking of the barberous destruction of the tradition during the Cultural Revolution, and that´s why I actually refered to him as more of a conformist than Xie Jin was, although equally appreciating his films from an aesthetic point of view. “The King of Children” attempts to be rather apolitical which is one of the reasons for me to prefer it to “Yellow Earth”, hopefully that film may get an adequate release in the future.
Great post on an interesting subject. Thanks for the Two Stage Sisters link.
Myra- Oh, it wasn’t defensive at all, I was just trying to clear the air. It;s very difficult to figure out what people thought 40 or 50 years ago, and the more perspectives we have, the sharper our understanding will be. Center Stage was reissued in a region 0 remastered director’s cut, that is absolutely stunning, it went out of print but here’s a link to it from Amazon http://www.amazon.com/Center-Stage-Remastered-Directors-Cut/dp/B000II94OC/ref=pd_cp_d_0
(The auteurs should really set up a secret bit torrent where we can upload and download each other’s rare dvds)
Paul- Thank you for the thorough and thoughtful post. I never suggested the Xie’s work (or anyone’s for that matter) be buried, I was just giving an explanation as to why his earlier films are so obscure; they’re very traditional, conservative, and their style is ingrained in every Mao era propaganda that people were subjected to at the time. I never brought Concubine into the conversation, a film that has its pleasures, but always struck me as Bertolucci light- I was referring solely to his Pre Concubine films, and the non Yimou – fifth gen works from 84-90, which consistently fall under the radar. The dichotomy I was referring to with early Chen and early Xie is purely an aesthetic difference- the traditional style of Xie Jin to the formalism of early Chen.
I think aesthetically, “Yellow Earth” is light years beyond any Xie Jin film (including his most recent ones), but even politically there are different things we must consider when looking at it. Despite its style, yes, its content is very much a glorification of the old communist party, but one must question how this relates to Maoism itself. As we’ve said before it doesn’t resemble to old communist propaganda films in terms of its style, but even its content seems more like a reclamation of the original rhetorical intents of the Revolution (not that I agree with this either, but its hardly a call for purges and the cultural Revolution or the tenets of Mao himself). If anything its a re imagining of the traditional propaganda film, while a rejection of the stiff, traditional, didactic style that those films work with.
This is not an uncommon thing for youth to express things of this nature when growing out of post Revolutionary turmoil. Just look at the Iranian college students in last Summer’s protests , many of whom were attempting to reclaim the country in the name of the original tenets of the revolution (along side of ex revolutionary guard members who defected in the 80’s like Malkhmalbaf ). Would we dare call these people reformists? reactionaries? nostalgic conservatives? It’s not easy to say one war or another, but when we look at it this way I think its hard to pin down as “Yellow Earth” as boiler-plate propaganda (even in the nostalgic form). I think it’s a little more complex than that
Many of Ruan’s films are available on Amazon in somewhat dodgy prints, but they’re better than nothing- I particularly love “The Goddess” and “New Woman,” (or “New Female”) here are some links
http://www.amazon.com/Goddess-Lingyu-Ruan/dp/B000LP50DG/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=dvd&qid=1260906776&sr=8-1
http://www.amazon.com/New-Female-Lingyu-Ruan/dp/B000LP50EA/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&s=dvd&qid=1260906776&sr=8-3
I have regretfully never seen any of Sun Yu’s films, but I’ll definitely try to track some down now that you mention it.
As an aside, I forgot to mention a few brief thoughts I had that I think are worth tossing around.
The main reason I find a lot of Xie’s work distasteful (Hibiscus Town being an exception- I watched a decent vhs subtitled version when I was in College, a version that my native Chinese speaking professor approved, so it must be available somewhere) is that they FEEL fascistic. They’re stylistically very close to the kind of Stalinist propaganda film being produced in the Soviet Union at the time, and my class studied the relation between the two rather closely. I also don’t think that Xie’s instincts changed very much over time- “The Opium War” (1997) is very much a stuffy ,didactic, Ridley Scott style costume drama.
I would also challenge that Xie’s films represent a pivotal, or vital source of “feminism” in Chinese cinema. The Chinese have always made art depicting strong heroines (Ruan’s “New Women” and “The Goddess” among them). The views of women (however admirable they might be) expressed in Xie’s work seems to be rather commonplace when viewed in context of greater Chinese culture, and I don’t particularly feel that they should be singled out, but this is view is of course subject to scrutiny, and I welcome all to chime in.
Do you mean to say that his particular cinematic depiction of women is the source point for Chen and others? Are there other films that could have influenced them as well, or was he the artistic leader of strong female depictions for the Chinese? or was this something that was just apart of the Zeitgeist? I don’t know for sure, but I would love to hear your thoughts/explanations
I just read this whole thread, after looking for info on Xie Jin on Mubi. Thanks for the great effort!
I recently watched “Woman basketball Player No. 5” and found it not only fascinating, touching and surprisingly humanistic, but revealing the directorial touch of a masterful filmmaker. I knew that Xie Jin was (and apparently still is) a very controversial filmmaker, and expected some reactonary stuff watching one of his early films – what i got was the exact opposite of anything fascist. I would actually call this film modern, liberal, etc. (place an adjective to your liking that may resound in your ears with notions of freedom).
So, I guess it still depends on how one perceives different sets of aesthetics (on a side-note: i was totally bored and angered by a recent viewing of terrence Malick’s latest film which in its formal conception in my opinion goes completely Michael Bay – although I disliked it and its supposed ideology, which stems from its aesthetic, a frind of mine found it a spiritual masterpiece).
Paul
Ever notice how, when people like us talk about a Chinese film, it’s almost invariably post-1983, or, if we’ve been lucky to go deeper, from the two Golden Ages of Shanghai half a century earlier?
See! Xie Jin’s! 1966! Two Stage Sisters now (color problems, but still beautiful, the best subtitled print available to North Americans- extremely hard to find too, off YouTube)
Essential reading on Two Stage Sisters (the essay is not essential to enjoying the film, but it’s essential to understanding much of what Xie is doing)
Further recommendations on films of 1949-1966, the first 17 years of the People’s Republic of China
The year after Two Stage Sisters came out, cinema was banned for 10 years. This film was one reason.
Enjoy. Extended (deleted) rant will follow if no one replies.