Chinese Classical Films Reviews (1): Long Live the Mistress

Tells a story of a typical Chinese family, the film Long Live the Mistress is about a traditional Chinese hostess who does her best to keep the whole family happy and harmonious. The Mistress marries the Mister for a year, but her wealthy father looks down on her office clerk husband. On the birthday of the Mister’s mother, the Mistress’s brother meets the Mister’s sister in the birthday party and they fall in love immediately. Simultaneously, the Mister visits the Mistress’s parents’ because he wants to borrow his father-in-law’s money, to help him build a company. However, his father-in-law is not willing to lend him any money and criticizes him for not working hard. After the Mister comes back home, he complains to the Mistress about her father’s callousness. Worrying about the Mister, the Mistress lies to her father that the Mister’s family is very rich so that her father can lend money to the Mister.

Everything changes since then. After building his own company, the Mister becomes smug and even raises a secret lover outside family. The Mistress is very sad after knowing all of these but she hides her sadness and pretends not believing the news from her brother, in order to help his husband save his face. Nonetheless, his company goes bankrupt and his secret lover quits the relationship afterwards. The Mistress asks for a divorce when her husband regrets a lot, especially what he has done to his wife. In the lawyer’s office, the couple both shows their love towards each other, making them realize that they still love each other. Finally the Mistress and the Mister make up again.

The film Long Live the Mistress was produced in 1947, by Wenhua Film Company, which was recognized as paying more attention to the artistic and aesthetic quality of cinema. It had produced the prominent Chinese film Spring in a Small Town. The famous film star, Shangguan Yunzhu (The Spring River Flows East), performed the lover of the Mister in the film. More importantly, the famous female writer, Zhang Ailing, wrote the script for the film. She stressed in the notes of Long Live the Mistress, “Long Live the Mistress describes a traditional Chinese Mistress, who represents a lot of average people. We are all familiar with her; maybe she lives downstairs and we can hear her cooking every day. She has her own sadness although she seems happy, but she still strives for life and tries her best to keep the whole family peaceful, just as the Mistress in the film.”

Long Live the Mistress reveals the deep influence of Hollywood classical cinema to Chinese movies. The storyline focusing on the life of middle class people rather than Chinese typical working class people, shows the trend of mimicking Hollywood. Secondly, the techniques that were usually used in classical Hollywood, such as close-up shots, extreme close-upshots and medium shots in the films (Picture 1 and Picture 2), in this regard, represent this influence on Chinese filmmaking. The triple-take gag in the beginning of the film (from the servant breaks the cup to the Mister’s mom finds it,) is an example of Hollywood typical style. The first part of the gag is Mister’s mother goes downstairs after hearing the sound of the broken cup, while the Mistress lies that the sound is from outside and she covers the broken cup pieces with the newspapers. The second part starts from the Mister’s mother takes the newspapers away while the Mistress hides the cup pieces under the cushion. Then the ending is when the Mister’s mother takes the cushion, she finally finds the cup pieces.

In a more historical and societal respect, Long Live the Mistress, discloses the people’s life during ROC (Republic of China) era, before PRC (People’s Republic of China). The film addresses several significant social events including the inflation during 1947-1949, the conflict between the traditional feudalism value and the western and modernist value, and the popularization of the modern technology such as airplane and radio. 

Dooman River

Chang-ho lives with his mute sister and grandfather at the border between North Korea and China. He once made friends with a Korean refugee who was around the same age with him. They bonded to play the soccer together. The two boys stroke a beautiful friendship until another North Korean escapee raped Chang-ho's sister. He imputed it on his North Korean boy and fought with him. However, his friend's father was caught by the Chinese police because of taking North Korea immigrants to China illegally. Chang-ho's friend thus reported the North Korea guy to the police and at the moment that the policeman was about to take the North Korea into the police car, Chang-ho climbed on the roof of a waste school and suicide. As a film stresses sensitive issue, Dooman River is different from its similar due to its narrative and distinctive perspective which leads the story into the average people's daily life, reflects the harsh life condition of North Korean and the tense relationship among the average people of  China, North Korea and South Korea instead of from a political perspective.

Suite Suite Chinatown

As an experimental film, Suite Suite Chinatown explains some typical situations which Chinese American usually have to experience when they try to adapt to the life in the United States. The film uses a parallel film style made up with separated fragments mirroring different aspects of the life of Chinese Americans. For example, the first segment about the animation of Chinese novel Journey To The West, mirrors the nostalgia of the Chinese culture; the learning Cantonese and mandarin section corresponds to the communication difficulty between the old Chinese immigrants dominating by the Cantonese speaking Chinese and the increasing Mandarin speaking new Chinese immigrants. When addressed why this film is named Suite Suite Chinatown, the reason is that most of Chinese American share the memory related to Chinatown in common, although many of them might not live there nowadays. 

Slaying the Dragon

As a film to introduce Asian women in Hollywood films, Slaying the Dragon does a good job in tracking the representation of Asian women in Hollywood history and also the changes of the representation today. In Hollywood films, Asian women used to have the over-sexual and submissive images, which is from the Asian hookers who usually worked for American navy in 1960s during Vietnam War. Nonetheless, as time passed, the representation of Asian Women in Hollywood films change gradually to such as masculine martial arts girls. An example is Michelle Yeoh in James Bond Film; another prestigious case is Lucy Liu whose role is as equal as the other two girls in Love Kills. Nowadays, because of the popularization of social networking sites such as YouTube and the global capitalization, Asian Women's figures are changing both on cultural level and commercial level. Many Asian girls began to upload their video on YouTube, showing their westernization and their own opinions, differentiate themselves from the traditional impression of Asian women. On the other hand, as Asia plays an increasingly significant role in the global economy. As a result, Asian women begin to play more and more important roles in Hollywood films and their multiple aspects, including their life, their opinions and their professionalism.

Passion, when you do not have any income for your career, will you keep your passion?

The film is talking about the severe situation in which the Mongolia filmmakers are suffering. It is a documentary film which is tracing the history of Mongolia films. The whole story is around the filmmaker Binder Jigjid, son of Jigjid Dejid who was a pioneer of Mongolian cinema during the Communist era. Binder won several international film awards but had trouble to screen his low-budget films because his films are not market-driven commercial films. His independent films has to rely on his own publicity from one country to another country and earn very little money which is not enough to pay back for his loans. As a documentary film mirroring the struggling of artistic and independent Mongolia filmmakers, Passion claims respects towards them and represents the dissatisfaction towards the market economy driven film market. Just as what Binder said in the interview, "the society is driven by money, not art. People don't care about the film, they care about publicity." 

Break up a couple if you want to get your loved one back

If there is a website that can help you get your love back, would you like to break up another couple? Joe (Jaycee Chan) is dumped by his girlfriend Flora (Fiona Sit). He told his story and a magical website "breakup club," a website helping people to make up with their lovers to director Barbara Wong (Barbara Wong). Wong is very interested in and gives him a camera to shoot his story. However, to get help from the website, one has to break up another couple by inputting their names. Joe gets Fiona back by breaking up his best friend and his girlfriend. However, things might not go as Joe hopes for because the conflict between Flora and him is not resolved. The discrepancy between Flora's ideal boyfriend and Joe's immaturity makes her very sad, and the appearance of the graffiti artist (Hayama Hiro) intensifies the discrepancy stronger.

Barbara Wong, the director of Break Up Club is always conveniently finding the most sensitive topic in this society. After graduating from Tisch School of the Arts of New York University, she produced several films that got positive critics. Her film Women's Private Parts won the New York Film Festival award for best international film. She was also honored as the Most Outstanding Young Director in The 21th Hong Kong Film Awards. She directed Break Up Club in 2009, in which during shooting Jaycee and Fiona fell in love.

Jaycee Chan stars Joe in Break Up Club. As Jakie Chan's only son, it seems hard for him to disconnected with his super-star father. However, it can be seen in the film that he has been able to be judged independently from Jakie because of his amazing performance of an immature and stressful boy who is expected high but unable to achieve the expectation. Based on his relationship with Fiona in reality, their performance make more sense and the chemistry between them is so reliable.

The shooting method of this film is very documentary such as the use of handhold camera, location shooting. The documentary style is very emotionally powerful in the film because it renders a sense of reality, thus making spectators more self-related to the film and more easily find sympathy from the film. The plot is ingenious designed to keep the audience in suspense until the end, spectators finally find that many plots are indicative. For example, there is a scene that Joe picked up an anonymous phone call and in the end, it is shown that the call is from Joe's best friend after he saw Flora dating with another guy.

However, the only thing that makes the film imperfect is the happy ending in that it is so accidental for Flora to change her minds within only last 20 seconds in the film. Moreover, the happy ending totally destroy the all the suspense Babara made in the film in that the film delicately designed to show the discrepancy between reality and fantasy, that even though Joe got Flora back, he could not stay with her forever because their different values and different understanding for life. As a result, such a happy ending is a complete opposite direction towards what the film is trying to say.

A hard day's Night-or, hard?

Based on the story of The Beatles, the film A Hard Day's Night not only mirrors the personal life of the four members of The Beatles, but also reflects the Britain's life during the 1960s. As a famous New Wave film, A Hard Day's Night, emerges a lot pop-cultural elements of Britain youth during 1960s such as the hairstyle, fashion (the student girl's school costume), pop music, fan culture and etc. We can see from this film that it criticized the traditional, or conventional Britain culture, regarding to making fun of the gentleman on the train, and the traditional plays in the theatre.
Also, in this film, numerous new film techniques are utilized. For instance, the hand-held camera, location shooting, jump-in cuts. These new techniques in some extend, also suggests the new identities that Britain young filmmakers want to achieve during producing the film.
Britain New Wave, as a major film activity in British, is remarked for its concentration on working class's life and pop culture. A Hard Day's Night, jointing the two elements perfectly, thus attained huge success.

Perceive the world with your heart, convey your heart with the camera

Beginning with a couple (Andrzej and Krystyna) driving a car on a narrow road in countryside, stopped by a hitchhiker. They decided to take him with them and they took this young man to their sailing trip. Everything seems good but the situation changed when Andrzej found his wife and the young man talking while he slept. He got mad at them two and began to the provoke young guy and finally dropped his knife into the water. The young man was extremely angry and fought with Andrzej. The young man fell into water and disappeared, which made Krystyna thought he dead and thus she blamed Andrzej for killing the young man. Andrzej consequently jumped into water to look for the young guy. However, the young man did not die and instead he climbed on the boat, making sex with Krystyna and left. Krystyna navigated back to the harbor and Andrzej was waiting her there. He wanted to drive to the police office and the film ended up with the scene that the car stopped at the sign which written with "10 miles from the police office."
For the content, Knife in the Water is a typical art film because of its ambiguous storyline. It is hard to tell the protagonists and the antagonists in the films and the main roles lack a clear goal to achieve. It seems like the director just followed what was happening during the whole trip, using his own povs to perceive the whole world and film what he perceived from the world around him. The ambiguous ending also illustrates the director's personal choice, which gives audiences a broad imagination to think about what's going on. Or what if the most important of the film is not whether the couple went to the police office, but what's going on in the film and how the actors react to all the randoms happened to them.
In the technique respect, the filmmakers utilized a more "documentary" format to express the whole film due to the considerable location shooting within the whole film. Also, the deep focuses which were in the films are also great. Moreover, the composition is another good part of this film. For example, when the young man came closer to Andrzej, the shot of Andrzej's legs composed a perfect triangle. It is not hard to see that the director was trying to use the camera to make the audiences follow his povs. All the delicate design track shooting is very elegant and fluent, such as the boat sailing in the lake.
Knife In the Water exemplified how art film illustrated a filmmaker's perception towards the world and how he conveyed his perception into films, taking a giant leap which influenced mainstream films a lot in the future. Art cinema, as an increasingly important film style in post war era, began to draw more and more attentions from the mainstream.

1994: "Today": "What is the Internet, Anyway?"

Ladri di biciclette

Bicycle thieves, an Italian Neorealism film which is directed by Vittorio De Sica, is a very impressed and influential film as long as it was screened. It is a significant cinematic artwork in the postwar era not only because it contained several new trends of postwar films and changed the way people regarded films, but also because it drew worldwide audiences' attentions towards to the hard time and bad situations that the whole European people went through after the WWII.

As a film in which the director utilized less film skills and kept it as real as possible, the term "realism" went into audiences' eyes more often than ever before. In the films, the actors were not professional ones, giving the film a sense of reality that made audiences feel like the film was like their daily life. Also, the filmmakers tried not to use so much reverse shots or montage, which made the film more "documentary". Instead of giving audiences a specific and small frame, the directors made more long shots and long takes to enlarge audiences' views and consequently rejected the subjectivity that filmmakers often gave to audiences.
The film focused on the three-days life of a normal family in the after war Italy, where there was high unemployment and people went through a tough period. In the family, the husband was unemployed for a long time and finally got a job from the welfare department. However, the requirement was he had to have a bicycle. Selling the bed sheets, the man bought a bicycle and went to work happily. Unfortunately, his bicycle was stolen in his first working day so as he had no money to buy a new one, he had to find it or he would lose the job.

What happened afterward was the most interesting part because although he did the best to find the bicycle with his son, there were several obstacles which blocked him from finding it. He found an old guy who knew how to contact the thief, however, the old guy was so callous that he only thought about himself. He did not want to offer the guy's address even though he lost nothing from it. From my pov, this part was interesting because it represented how cold and scared people were in that era. They only cared about themselves and even others might die, they did not care at all. The humanities shown here made me pretty sad because it was not the problem of the old guy, it was the problem of the whole society after the war. People never trusted others and they became extremely selfish in the extreme impoverished situations. Also, there was another plot which interested me a lot. When the man finally found the thief, all the neighborhood rejected him and stopped him from taking his bicycle back or asking the young thief, which made the thief seemed like not that bad, or he wouldn't win so much supports. Conversely, the man who was stolen the bicycle, also went to steal another one's bicycle, which made it like a recycle system that everyone was no good or bad. People were just determined by the life conditions they experienced.

As a Academy Award winner, Bicycle Thieves provides a new view of what we should shoot in the film and what filmmakers should consider about. It was this new trend which made a explosive influence and discussion around the whole world.

Rashomon, an art film about humanism

In postwar era, the development of modernist art and the influence the war brought to people, culturally and socially affect the emergence of art cinema. During this period cinema does not any more have the straight storyline and characters do not have clear-cut persona any longer. Oppositely, filmmakers were trying to search another way to express their inner thought with camera, using multiple-persona characters and complex structure of storyline.

At this point, Rashomon is a good example to illustrate this occurrence, by using parallel storyline to tell a story about complexity and selfishness of humanity. Everyone in this film is a representation of deceit and feign. For example, the robbery lies because he wants to seem strong enough and show his masculinity; the woman lies because she wants to keep an image of her innocence and her faith to her husband; the man lies because he wants to let others respect and honor him after he died; the witness lies because he stole the expensive dagger. As a result, there are four stories of the same affair, which shocked the Buddha and the witness, simultaneously shocking the audiences and showing the fact that people are selfish creatures. If the deepest humanism is dig out and shown in front of people, it is hard to accept the coldness of the fact.

However, at the end of the film, the positive aspect humanism is shown since the witness' adoption of the kid. The hope is lit up again when the heavy rain stopped, and maybe the kid is the representation of the new generation of Japanese after World War II, hope and bright future.