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* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * THREE CINEMAS OF CHINA In the last several decades, Chinese cinema has been among the most vibrant film industries in the world. Or, more precisely, it has been three of the most vibrant. Mainland China, Taiwan, and Hong Kong have each produced extraordinary films. As part of the FJJMA's semester-long focus on China, FredFilms is dedicating its Spring 2008 series to an exploration of these three cinemas. Although a series such as this can only scratch the surface of Chinese film, but we will be presenting something of the diversity of Chinese cinema, from classics of the pre-World War II Shanghai film industry to martial arts action films, from Hong Kong musicals of the 1960s to the triad gangster movies of the 1980s, from the films of Taiwan's New Wave to those of the PRC's Fifth Generation. Benjamin L. Alpers, the museum's film series curator and Reach for Excellence associate professor in the OU Honors College, selected the films. A written introduction by Alpers will be provided at each screening. January 17 | Street Angel ( Malu Tianshi ) (China/1937/dir. by Yuan Muzhi) 87 minutes A Chinese reworking of one of Frank Borzage's great silent melodramas, Street Angel concerns two poor sisters living in Shanghai in the mid-1930s. Praised for its mixture of comedy and drama, Street Angel depicts the resilience of the urban poor despite their difficult circumstances. It's considered one of the greatest films from the first golden age of Chinese cinema. January 24 | Spring in a Small Town ( Xiao cheng zhi chun ) (China/1948/dir. by Fei Mu) 85 minutes This exploration of a once-prosperous family trying to remake their lives amidst the rubble of post-World War II China, Spring in a Small Town was banned shortly after its release by the new Communist regime, which considered the film politically reactionary. It reemerged in the 1980s to enormous critical acclaim. In their celebration of a century of Chinese Cinema, the 2005 Kong Film Awards rated Spring in a Small Town the greatest Chinese film of all time. January 31 | No Fred Film February 7 | The One-Armed Swordsman ( Dubei dao ) (Hong Kong/1967/dir. by Chang Cheh) 111 minutes One of the greatest of the then new-style Hong Kong action films, The One-Armed Swordsman was another big moneymaker for the Shaw Brothers. It was the first hit for Chang Cheh, who would become the most prolific of Hong Kong directors. Despite losing his right arm in a swordfight, Fang Gang (Jimmy Wang Yu) becomes a martial arts master and avenges his father's death. The One-Armed Swordsman helped establish the wuxia swordfighting genre and made Yu into a superstar. The first martial-arts movie to win an award at Cannes, A Touch of Zen was directed by King Hu, who had served as an assistant director on The Love Eterne. After leaving Shaw Brothers and Hong Kong in the mid-1960s, Hu traveled to Taiwan, where he directed a series of accomplished action films. Starring Shi Jun as a male scholar and Hsu Feng as a a female fugitive who together challenge a brutal warlord. Featuring elaborate action sequences shot in beautiful settings, this film was a major influence on Croughing Tiger, Hidden Dragon. Listed by Time magazine as one of the hundred greatest films of all time. The third film starring American-born kung fu master Bruce Lee, Way of the Dragon shattered box office records in Hong Kong. Lee also wrote, directed, and produced this film, which was released in a mangled form in the U.S. as Return of the Dragon after Lee's death following the great American success of his fourth, and final, film, Enter the Dragon. Tang Lung (Lee) travels from Hong Kong to Rome to battle gangsters threatening a family friend. Way of the Dragon also features one of the first cinematic appearances of Oklahoma's own Chuck Norris. In the late 1970s, Jackie Chan pioneered
a combination of kung fu and humor that made him Hong Kong's most
popular star. While his early films like Drunken Master
(1978) had historical settings, by the mid-1980s, Chan moved his
humor and self-performed stunts to the modern world. Chan plays
an undercover Hong Kong cop who's framed for a murder by a vengeful
druglord. Made after a failed attempt to break into Hollywood,
Police Story was one of his biggest hits and is often considered
his finest film. Ning (Leslie Chung) is a tax collector who has to free soul of a beautiful spirit, Nie (Joey Wong) who he encounters in a haunted temple. Combining martial arts with elements of the supernatural, A Chinese Ghost Story was a huge hit throughout Asia and spawned a series of fantasy-action films. April 10 | Chungking Express ( Chung Hing sam lam ) (Hong Kong/1994/dir. by Wong Kar-Wai) 102 minutes Wong Kar-Wai is one of the most accomplished of the Hong Kong directors who, in the late 1980s and early 1990s, began to move beyond the popular genres that had made Hong Kong one of the world's largest film industries. Chungking Express is considered one of his finest films. The movie tells two unconnected stories, each involving a Hong Kong cop and a woman with whom he's in love. Rated among the top ten films of the last quarter century by Sight and Sound magazine in 2002. Although he was voted director of the decade for the 1990s in a poll of world film critics, Hou Hsiao-Hsien's work remains little known in this country. Part of the Taiwanese New Wave that began in the 1980s, Hou is known for slow-moving, but intensely lyrical movies. Goodbye South Goodbye is Hou's take on a gangster film. Voted one of the three best films of the 1990s by Cahiers du cinema. In the last two decades, more and more Chinese filmmakers are working outside their home countries and languages. In many ways the most successful in doing so has been the Taiwanese director Ang Lee. The Ice Storm, Lee's second English-language film, is a dark satire of American life in the 1970s and features Kevin Kline, Joan Allen, Tobey Maguire, Christina Ricci, and Sigourney Weaver. Along with Hou Hsiao-Hsien, Edward Yang (who passed away at the age of 59 in the summer of 2007) was generally considered the most significant Taiwanese director of his generation. Yi Yi is considered his masterpiece. The film tells the story of a middle-class Taiwanese family through the perspective of three of its members, a father (Nien-Jen Wu), a son (Jonathan Chang), and a daughter (Kelly Lee). Yi Yi won numerous awards, including being designated as one of the top ten films of the last quarter century by Sight and Sound magazine in 2002. A man who sells watches on the streets of Taipei (Lee Kang-Sheng) sells one to woman who is about to go off to Paris (Chen Shiang-Chyi). The man becomes obsessed with the woman and begins to set every clock in his life to Paris time. Now in Paris, the woman, too, becomes lonely. A funny and sad movie about our need for synchronicity, What Time is It? was made by one of the finest younger Taiwanese directors. Perhaps most famous in the U.S. for having been remade by Martin Scorsese as the Oscar-winning The Departed (2006), Infernal Affairs stars Tony Leung as a cop who goes undercover in a triad gang and Andy Lau (no relation to the similarly named director) as a triad who has infiltrated the police department. This star-studded, intricate thriller, which owes as much to Michael Mann's Heat as it does to earlier Hong Kong gang films, reinvigorated Hong Kong cinema after several lean years. Following the great international success of Ang Lee's Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon (2000), the PRC has produced a number of big-budget wuxia movies designed to succeed with Western audiences. Created by legendary Fifth Generation director Zhang Yimou, House of Flying Daggers is most notable for its stunning visuals and creative action sequences. "Movie imagery, which has grown brutal and ugly in many of the new high-tech action pictures, may yet be redeemed by the elegance of martial arts pictures from the East," noted Roger Ebert in his review of the film. House of Flying Daggers suggests both the impact of Hong Kong and Taiwanese action cinema on the mainland, as well as the new importance of Western markets for the cinema of China.
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© 2002 The Board of Regents of the University
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