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Aesthetic paradigm

The Aesthetic Paradigm

Cinema is made of divers influence, in China as elsewhere. It was an art and a technology coming from the West and during the early period, in a context of economical, cultural and political domination of Western powers on China, there was a permanent question: how to adapt locally this imported medium?

The answers were plural: from thematical and formal adaptation of Hollywood style films, the search for endogen genre and art forms, the heterogeneity of visual influences; the discovery of the educational and political power of film.

It is was permanent negotiation that gave many films a kind of hybridity.

I. The Role and influence of Hollywood cinema

After the First World War, Hollywood became the predominant model. People learnt their art by watching Hollywood productions.

From the 1920’s to late 1940’s, many Chinese films were adaptation of or modeled after Hollywood films. It goes from mere imitation (Laurel et Hardy, Shirley Temple) to a deep influence. But most of the time, the process was a process of original re-appropriation.

TO READ

Chen Jianhua , “D. W. Griffith and the Rise of Chinese Cinema in Early 1920s Shanghai”, in  

Carlos Rojas and Eileen Cheng-Yin Chow (éd.), The Oxford Handbook of Chinese Cinemas, Oxford, New York, Oxford University Press, 2013

Gauthier Christophe, Kerlan Anne, Vezyroglou Dimitri (dir.), avec la collaboration de Nicolas Schmidt, Loin d’Hollywood ? Cinématographies nationales et modèle hollywoodien (France, Allemagne, URSS, Chine), 1925-1935, Paris, Nouveau Monde, 2013

Hansen Miriam, « Fallen women, rising stars, new horizons: Shanghai silent film as vernacular modernism », Film Quarterly, Autumn 2000, vol. 54, n° 1, p. 10-22

Harris Kristine, « The Romance of the Western Chamber and the Classical Subject Film in 1920’s Shanghai », in Yingjin Zhang (éd.), Cinema and Urban Culture in Shanghai, 1922-1943, Stanford (CA), Stanford University Press, 1999, p. 27-50

Harris Kristine, « Two Stars on the Silver Screen: The Metafilm as Chinese Modern », in Christian Henriot et Wen-hsin Yeh (éd.), History in Images: Pictures and Public Space in Modern China, China Research Monograph 66, Berkeley, University of California Press, 2012, p. 191-244

Harris Kristine, « Ombres chinoises: Split Screens and Parallel Lives in Love and Duty », in Carlos Rojas and Eileen Cheng-Yin Chow (éd.), The Oxford Handbook of Chinese Cinemas, Oxford, New York, Oxford University Press, 2013, p. 39-61

Kerlan Anne, A Chinese production with Hollywood taste. Love and Duty (Lian’ai yu yiwu), by Bu Wancang” (under print).

Kerlan Anne, “Chaplin à Shanghai: premiers éléments d’une popularité, 1916-1936” (to be published)

Xiao Zhiwei

“For Better or Worse, Don’t Change Your Husband! Remake and Appropriations of American Films in Republican China, 1911-1949” in Lisa Funnell and Man-fung Yip eds., American and Chinese-Language Cinemas: Examining Cultural Flows, London and New York: Routledge, 2014

“Translating Hollywood to Chinese Audience: The Role of Agency and Appropriation in Transnational Cultural Encounter” in Philippa Gates and Lisa Funnell eds., Transnational Asian Identities in Pan-Pacific Cinemas: The Reel Asian Exchange, New York and London: Routledge, 2011, 88-100.

“A Century of America on Chinese Screens” in Journal of American East-Asian Relations, 17:4 (2011): 305-323.

“The Reception of American Films in China” in Ying Zhu and Stanley Rosen eds., The Interplay of Art, Politics and Commerce in Chinese Cinema, Hong Kong: University of Hong Kong Press, 2009, pp. 55-69.

TO WATCH (among many others)

The Romance of the Western Chamber (Xixiang Ji 西厢记), Hou Yao, 1928

Kisses Once (Qing hai chong wen情海重吻), Xie Yunjing, 1928

An Orphan (Xue zhong gu chu雪中孤雏), Zhang Huimin, 1929

//Way down East, D.W. Griffith, 1920

Two stars of the milky way (Yin han shuang xing银汉双星), Shi Dongshan, 1931

Daybreak (Tian ming天明), Sun Yu, 1932

//Seventh Heaven, Frank Borzage, 1927 (in particular : climbing the stairs)

// Dishonored, Joseph von Sternberg, 1931 (to compare the two endings of both films)

Song at midnight (Ye ban ge sheng 夜半歌声), Maxu Weibang, 1937

//The Phantom of the Opera, Rupert Julian, 1925

II. The discovery of soviet film

In their search to build a national cinema, different from the Hollywood model, filmmakers looked for counter-model. The Soviet film was one of them. However, this happened quite late as up until 1932, soviet films were prohibited. They were seen only in small circles. However, when, in 1932, diplomatic relations were reestablished with USSR, several soviet films were screened in China with success. Translation of theoretical texts came along the discovery of this cinema. What films, what filmmakers influenced them?

In 1932, Road to Life (Poutievka v Jizn, 1931) by Nikolai Ekk was the first film screened in Shanghai. It inspired Cai Chusheng in a later film, The Lost Lambs (Mitu de Gaoyang 迷途的羔羊, 1936). Other important films were the films by Pudovkin, like Mother (Mat, 1926) or Storm over Asia (Potomok Chingis-Khana, 1928). Pudovkin’s writing were also translated into Chinese.

This influence of Soviet cinema increased during and after the war, when a filmmaker, Yuan Muzhi organized in Yan’an a Film Corp to shot few documentary films. He was sent to USSR to finish the production of one of the documentary. In this zone, several soviet films were shown after 1945. This allowed the training of the first communist filmmakers, who would take over some of the Changchun studios in October 1946. Among the films produced there, Along the Sungari River - Song hua jiang shang 松花江上 (Jin Shan, 1947). The Studio then changed name and became The North East Studio, this is where the first communist films (The Bridge-Qiao , Daughters of China-Zhonghua nüer 中华女儿, 1949; The White Haired Girl – Bai mao nü 白毛女).

TO READ

Laikwan Pang, Building a New China in Cinema: The Chinese Left-wing Cinema Movement, 1932-1937, Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2002

III. In search for a national style

The question of a national cinema, and of a national style, of the appropriation of cinema by Chinese and Chinese culture had been since the beginning of the century important in China. Modeling films after Hollywood production or Soviet films was not the goal, the goal was : learning from foreign cinematography and transforming the model into something else.

Chinese culture brought also its specificities to make Chinese cinema unique.

1. Theater and Opera

The relationship between theater /opera and cinema is ancient: the first Chinese film was Mount Ding Jun (Ding jun shan), a film of the performance of a famous Peking opera actor.

Several aspects of Chinese opera are important in cinema

The characters: a set of fixed personalities: the fiancée, the married woman, the young hero, the bad guy, the fun one

Artificiality and the importance of he accessories:

The importance of the songs

TO READ

Chris Berry: “Operatic Modes: Opera Film, Martial Arts and Cultural Nationalism” in Chris Berry, Marry Farquhar, China on Screen, Cinema and Nation, Columbia University Press, New York, 2006

Geremie Barmé: “Persistance de la tradition au royaume des ombres”, in Jean-Loup Passek, Marie-Claire Quiquemelle, (éd.), Le cinéma chinois Paris : Centre Georges Pompidou, 1985

2. Cinema and Literati Arts

Painting, calligraphy and poetry have also influenced Chinese cinema.

One must for instance compare the settings of some of Tianlun (Song of China, Fei Mu, 1935) sequence with a Chinese painting, where the perspective is constructed by the addition of small spaces included one in each other rather than according to a geometrical construction.

Fei Mu is certainly one of the filmmaker who explored the most in early Chinese cinema the potentiality of Literati arts for cinema. A very good example is his last film, Spring in a Small town (1949)

TO READ:

“Le printemps d’une petite ville, un film qui renouvelle la tradition chinoise”, by Li Cheuk-to in Jean-Loup Passek, Marie-Claire Quiquemelle, (éd.), Le cinéma chinois Paris : Centre Georges Pompidou, 1985

« Les théories du cinéma chinois et l’esthétique traditionnelle », Lin Niantong, in Jean-Loup Passek, Marie-Claire Quiquemelle, (éd.), Le cinéma chinois Paris : Centre Georges Pompidou, 1985



Last update Thursday 25 June 2015 by A. Kerlan Stephens