For some reason China ranks its directors by generation. Even though China is ostensibly a communist country I suspect that this generational labeling is Confusion. Now I know writing about the four generations of film-makers that preceded. In fact I assumed, but did not really know, that China had a film industry before this fifth generation brought China to the world stage as a film making country. If you have any interest in the first four film generations and Chinese cinema then I refer you to Chinese Cinema Culture and Politics since 1949 by Paul Clark and Chinese Film: The State of the Art in the People’s Republic by Ed George Stephen Semel. Both end (1987 and 1989) just as the fifth generation takes off. Both unfortunately are referenced at Grand Army Plaza. Without any attempt to be a wise guy I can tell you that the stills in both books make it seem that Chinese film was interesting before the fifth generation.
There are more than three directors in the fifth generation, but I think it is fair to say that only three, probably stretching it from two, have broken out to the outer world. One might almost say naturally all have had censorship problems in China. I say naturally because if China is not a communist country it is certainly a totalitarian country. It may also be fair to say that all of these directors bit the hand that fed them. I believe that Chen Kaige and Zhang Yimou, the two best, were probably poor and at least owe their starts, if not their careers, to the system. I know least about Tian Zhuang Zhuang though he may have had the breakout film of the bunch. His film The Horse Thief was made in 1986. Yellow Earth, made by Chen Kaige in 1984 with Zhang Yimou as cameraman, came to world attention about the same time. Now I always knew of both these films, but I never saw them. Jerry Carlson featured them on his CUNY TV program City Cinematheque in a series entitled Films from The People’s Republic of China. All of Professor Carlson’s programs are followed by a discussion, usually with an expert on the cinema or culture of the particular country being featured. Let me digress to make a point. When the expert on The Horse Thief was asked what it meant, he readily admitted he didn’t know. I add that in the beginning these films were not only obscure, but poring. However, whatever they lacked in cohesiveness and action was made up for in beauty of color and background. In my opinion Yellow Earth was not much different, but it somewhat made up for its slowness with local color, Chinese drummers, and folk dance companies. China was more communist then, and communists love folk dancers. Every province (I should say republic) in the old Soviet Union had its company. I’m sure China is the same to this day.
After the cultural revolution there was a thaw. In fact it even became fashionable to make films showing how bad things were in the bad old Mao days. After all China’s present day rulers were purged in the cultural revolution only to come back later.
To me, and I think to Andrew Sarris. Zhang Yimou is the best of the three. He was married to Gong Li and she starred in all his films that I know. Sarris has called her one of the world’s great actresses. Their divorce greatly injured the Chinese cinema as she headed west. I think her first western film was less than successful and perhaps cinematically they will get back together. She also starred in Chen Kaige’s Farewell My Concubine. Paradoxically, though Yimou may have had more hits, I imagine that Farewell My Concubine is the closest that international Chinese cinema has had to a blockbuster.
Before I saw the Carlson series I saw most of Zhang Yimou’s films. The first film I saw was Red Sorghum, based on the novel of the same name by Mo Yan. Grand Army. Plaza lists the novel in its computers but I’ve never been able to find it. This film is unique in his oeuvre because it is the only film of his I’ve seen that deals with the Japanese invasion in World War II. It also deals with the how and why of making sorghum wine. To a lesser extent it deals with a woman’s lack of rights, and what they did, or at least Gong Li did, to try to get power. By far the most graphic scenes are the tortures inflicted by the Japanese.
Ju Dou stars Gong Li as a woman forcefully married to an older man she does not love. All of Zimou’s films directly or indirectly deal with the place of women in Chinese society. She has an affair with the man’s young nephew. This film, in my opinion, has a tendency to revert to that old Chinese problem, beautiful but boring! This film made the rounds of regular cable stations.
Though it is completely a Chinese film Raise High the Red Lantern has the feel of a Western film. This time Gong Li as a poor peasant girl is forced to become the fourth wife of a rich man. The wives are played off one against the other by the master. When the red lantern is placed on a wife’s quarters the husband will spend the night there. The third wife revolts against the system by having an affair with a young doctor. The first wife, who turns out to be the scheming dragon lady of the bunch, rats her out. The retainers of the estate murder the third wife. Gong Li sees this and loses her mind.
To Live is the story of a man’s struggle, with his wife played by Gong Li, to survive in pre-revolutionary China, and during the cultural revolution. The best scenes are in the beginning when the man as the son of a rich landowner gambles away his estate to a schemer. This turns out to be the luckiest thing that ever happens to him as he watches the reds execute the winning schemer. He becomes a wandering minstrel entertaining red troops and thus he survives round one.
Shanghai Triad is a Chinese gangster story. Not much different from a Chicago saga, but the gangsters operate in the milieu of seducing and blackmailing married women. The code of the gangsters is violated when the male star falls in love, or is that another film? In Shanghai Triad Gong Li seeks too much power over the head of the clan, and she is eliminated. For sure in Chinese and Western ideology Shanghai was a wicked city.
I don’t really remember Farewell My Concubine that well. I know it involved homosexuality. I know it was banned in Boston/Peking (now Beijing). I think Gong Li got between the homosexual, maybe one was bisexual, opera stars. You know the kind where men play all the parts. It also involved the cultural revolution.
Now in Carlson’s series he also screened Women’s Story by Peng Xiao’ lian. This film made me very angry on behalf of the women of China even more than the Gong Li/Zhang Yimou films. My baby granddaughter always plays a part in this kind of thinking. Anyhow three peasant women go to the city to sell wool. They experience triumph and tragedy, but when they return it isn’t a matter of “how are you going to keep them down on the farm?!!, but “what force will you use to keep ’em down on the farm.” He also screened Two Stage Sisters by Xie Jin. Mr. Carlson says: “Two actresses achieve success on the Peking Opera stage, but are separated in the aftermath of the Communist Revolution.” I forgot to tell you that here as in Yellow Earth Socialist realism rears its ugly head. Socialist realism isn’t always bad, but more often than not it’s boring.
Last and probably least, you can see Zubin Mehta conducting Turandot on location in the Forbidden City of Peking/Beijing. Directed by, you guessed it, Zhang Yimou. If you want to see it, video cassettes are out. The reviews were not all bad but I suspect he was one of those things you had to be there to get it. If you care you can check out the cassettes. For that matter Grand Army Plaza has most of these films on video cassette.