- Economical paradigm
- Movie magazine
- Movie Theater
- Production world
The production world: the film companies
Chronology
We propose here a periodization based on the industrial and economical development of Chinese cinema. One aspect of this chronology is to consider the war not as a single period for the cinematographic production but as a two sequences period.
- 1905-1927: The age of experimentations
- 1928-1941: The development of a private film industry: the golden age of the studios
- 1941-1952: The nation and the cinematographic industry: The apparition of governmental studios.
1905-1927: the Age of experimentations
Cinema arrived in China probably through the Lumières brothers in 1896. The beginning of the cinematographic industry in China are closely linked with the Western world: western films were screened and later the first film companies or movie theater were owned by westerners.
Such was the case of Asia China Film Cie, founded by Benjamin Brodsky in Shanghai in 1909. In 1912, this company, will coproduced two of the first Chinese fiction films
Nanfu nanqi 難夫難妻 (The Difficult Couple), by and with Zhang Shichuan 張石川 and Zheng Zhengqiu 鄭正秋.
Benjamin Brodsky also produced with Li Minwei 黎民偉 (Lai Man-wai) another fiction film in Hong Kong : Zhuangzi shi qi 莊子試妻 (1913) which was distributed in the United States as well.
On Li Minwei, pionneer of Hong Kong cinéma and who played an important rôle in the development of Chinese cinema in Hong Kong as well as Shanghai see : Li Xi 黎 錫, Law Kar 羅 卡 , Li Minwei : Ren, Shidai, Dianying 黎 民 偉 ﹕ 人 ， 時 代 , 電 影 (Li Minwei, the man, the times and its cinema, Hong Kong, Mingchuang chubanshe, 1999.
Other film companies were formed in the 1910’s :
- The Shangwu yinshuguan 商務印書館
The famous Commercial Press, based in Shanghai bought in 1917 a Pathé camera and other equipment. It opened its Motion Picture department with material and glass studios in 1918. The Company produced 40 shorts that were conceived as material parallel to the publishing of educational material - The Mingxing 明星
The Star Motion Picture Cie was founded in Shanghai in 1922 by Zhingxing became one of the biggest film company, it closed in 1938 with 192 featured films, including 50 sound films.
On Mingxing see Huang Xuelei, Commercializing Ideologies, Intellectual and Cultural production at the Mingxing Motion Picture Company, 1922-1938, inaugural dissertation, Heidelberg University, Institute of Sinology, July 2009.
By the end of the 1920’s, small companies flourished. It was a time of experimentation: experimentation of economical structures, technical tools, and national genres. However, economical problems, in a highly competitive environment were important and the young Chinese film industry was weak: journalist as well as people from the industry proposed a diagnostic of crisis.
1928-1941 : The development of a private film industry: the golden age of the studios
In 1927 there was 179 Chinese owned film companies, by 1930 only a dozen stayed active. The economical crisis, the arrival of the sound system, the very aggressive politic of Hollywood majors pushed the Chinese film industry to concentrate.
The main companies were:
- Mingxing, 1922-1938
- Tianyi 天一 : 1925-1937
-
Lianhua 聯華 (United Photoplay Service), 1930-1938
On Lianhua see: Anne Kerlan-Stephens, “La Compagnie Lianhua et le cinema progressiste chinois”
http://www.scribd.com/doc/22885624/La-Compagnie-Lianhua-et-le-cinema-progressiste-chinois-1930-1937 - Xinhua 新華 1934-1942
The war and Shanghai occupation in 1937 put an end to three of these Majors; however, the industry structures did not disappear and in Shanghai, during the Orphan island period, and with very closes tights with Hong Kong, the private film industry was booming. See Poshek Fu, Between Shanghai and Hong Kong: The Politics of Chinese Cinemas, Stanford, 2003.
1941-1952: The nation and the cinematographic industry: The apparition of governmental studios.
Between 1941 and 1952, the Japan, as an occupying power, the Guomindang in Chongqing and then in liberated China and finally the Communist Party, tried to establish a governmental controlled industry in the zones they were ruling. After the advent of PRC, the private film industry was slowly but surely absorbed by state owned studios through operation of merging. The last private studios shot down in 1952.
Archival material
Zhongguo dianying nianjian 中國電影年鑒, 1934, reprint Zhongguo guangbo dianshi cbs, 2007.
Readings
There are no studies in English on Chinese cinema from the angle of the production. In Chinese, one can look at
- Li Suyuan 酈蘇元 Hu Jubin 胡菊彬， Zhongguo wusheng dianying shi 中国无声电影史 (A history of Chinese silent film), 1996.
- Jay Leyda gives also some good indication on the film industry
- Jay Leyda, Dianying, an Account of Films and the Film Audience in China, Cambridge, Mass., MIT Press, 1972
The best is also to look at what have been done for Hollywood as, as we will see, Hollywood is the economical model for the Chinese film industry during our period.
- Robert Allen, Douglas Gomery, Film History: Theory and Practice, McGraw-Hill Humanities/Social Sciences/Languages, 1993
- Tino Balio, Grand Design: Hollywood as a Modern Business Enterprise, 1930-1939 (History of the American Cinema), University of California Press, 1996
- Bordwell, David, Staiger, Janet, Thompson, Kristin, The Classical Hollywood Cinema, Film Style & Mode of Production 1917-1960, New York, Columbia University Press, 1985.
- Douglas Gomery, The Hollywood Studio System: A History (1986), reprint London, British Film Institute, 2008
Last update Thursday 3 June 2010 by A. Kerlan Stephens