The Chinese Mirror

1925: a Pivotal Year

    By 1925, China’s young movie industry was emerging as a major source of urban entertainment, and showing signs of maturing as a truly competitive industry.  With bustling Shanghai having no lack of well-heeled entrepreneurs and investors eager to get into the game, film studios were beginning to proliferate:.  While the Mingxing studio continued its numerical dominance, with 9 movies released that year, all full length features, others were getting into the game, with 14 more studios producing 2 or more films, and 15 “poverty row” studios jumping in with one each.  Of the 62 films released and exhibited in Shanghai in 1925, 54 were features, the first time full length productions outnumbered shorts. 
    In addition to product statistics, the industry was showing other signs of healthy development, such as the opening of movie houses, theaters built specifically for showing movies, not adapted stage venues.  The most opulent of these were large facilities intended to exhibit the Western motion pictures which still predominated, but there were countless smaller facilities set up to show Chinese productions.  But perhaps the most outstanding sign of development was the infusion of new talent, both before and behind the camera, that the various film schools that emerged in the early 1920s were beginning to turn out in batches, removing the dependence on veteran stage and operatic artists that had been the standard in the earlier years.

Han Yunzhen (? - ?)

    Han Yunzhen (韩云珍) was born in Beiping (now Beijing).  Her family moved to Shanghai and later Suzhou and after graduating from a girls' secondary school in Suzhou, she took a teaching job there.  The details as to how the transition to acting came about are unrecorded, but in 1923 she joined Dan Duyu's Shanghai Film Company, and after making several films for that studio she largely free-lanced for several Shanghai studios throughout the 1920s, retiring in 1932.
   In most of her movies Han was cast as a sexpot, a woman of easy virtue and strong desires who, regardless of social status, was not above a bit of the old slap-and-tickle when the opportunity arose.  From the pictures here, one might assume she was convincing in such roles.
*************
Filmography (all as actress):

1923:
The Widow Wants to Remarry
Heaven's Book
Abandoned Wife

1925:
Back Home From the City
Yanghua's Hate
A Stormy Night

1926:
Transparent Shanghai
Live on Love
Three Girls in Shanghai

1927:
A Dissolute Young Lady

1928:
Bloodshed in the Lion Chamber

1929:
Confessing her Sins
The Beauty Under the Blade

1930:
The Burning of Red Lotus Temple (parts 4 - 16)

Zhu Shouju (? - ?)

    First generation screenwriter and director Zhu Shouju 朱瘦菊 had established a solid literary reputation before turning to film, authoring three best-selling novels under his pen name, "The Ocean Dreamweaver".  In 1920 he worked with artist-turned-filmmaker Dan Duyu and veteran stage director/actor Guan Haifeng to found the Shanghai Film Company. then the Baihe studio.  In 1924, Zhu became editor-in-chief of "Movie Magazine" (电影杂志), as well as writing the script for two films that year, "The Abandoned Wife" and "Tea-picking Girl".   He made his directing debut for Baihe in 1925 with "Old Love",  and in that same year negotiated the merger with Da Zhonghua, becoming the head of the resulting new studio.  In his film career, Zhu wrote and/or directed 24 feature films, the last in 1948.

Yang Jingwo (? - ?)

     Although she made just a few films in the late 1920s, and most of those in supporting roles, the films were major ones.  Yang Jingwo 杨静我 was a native of Shanghai, and after a public school education joined the Baihe Film Company as an actress in 1925, working at Baihe and its post-merger successor Da Zhonghua Baihe her entire career.  Yang's first screen appearance was in "A Student's Hard Life", written and directed by Guan Haifeng, and her only lead role was in 1927's "Redress of Grievance", a film treatment of the classic detective novel, "Casebook of Judge Bao".  Her last appearance was in a 1930 martial arts series, "The Burning of Seven-Star Mansion".

Filmography (all as actress):
1925:
A Student's Hard Life
The Young Factory Owner
1926:
Live on Love 
Ma Jiefu
Mother's Happiness
A Visit Home
1927:
Redress of Grievance
The Beauty Trap (pts.I-II)
1928:
A Complicated Plot
1930:
Red Heroine (pt.II)
The Burning of Seven-Star Mansion (Pts.I-VI)

Wang Xieyan (? - ?)

     Wang Xieyan (王谢燕), was a familiar lao dan (an older female character, usually an important supporting role) in silent era films.  Her first screen appearance was in 1924 in the Baihe studio's "Tea Picking Girl."  She subsequently worked in more than 20 movies at the Mingxing, Minxin and Fudan studios in such significant motion pictures as "Roses Bloom Everywhere in April (1926)," “A Beauty of 16 (1927)," "The Wandering Songstress (1927)," "A Dream of Red Mansions (1927)," "She Wants to be Free (1928)," "Yang Xiaozhen," and "The Burning of Seven Star Mansion I-V (1929-30)."

Classic Era Interview: the Asia Film and Theater Company

[In October, 1956, the China Film Press 中国电影出版社 of Beijing launched a new periodical, Zhongguo Dianying 中国电影 (Chinese Cinema).    In addition to reviews and commentaries on current film, the new publication in each issue took a look back at China's motion picture history, including the first-person recollections of some pioneer filmmakers.  These were collected and republished in book form by the China Film Press in 1988.  While prowling one day through Beijing's many bookstalls, looking for materials on the early history of Chinese movies and the people who made them, the editor came across this out-of-print item that gives us some unique and valuable insights into China's early movie industry.  These oral histories will be translated and published here in the hope they may prove useful to film scholars and historians in the West.  Full bibliographic citation is given at the end of the article.  Items in brackets, like this one, are Chinese Mirror editorial notes, provided for clarification.  The subject of this first interview, Qian Huafo 钱化佛, while an accomplished actor who specialized in comic roles, achieved his greatest fame as an artist, one of China's foremost painters of the first half of the 20th century.]

[left, Qian Huafo in an undated newspaper photo]

     I guess I'm qualified to talk about the Asia Film and Theater Company, because I was involved in the making of nearly all of that studio's films, either as an actor or writer.  So here is what I know.
    The studio had been started by an American named Benjamin Brodsky, and another central figure in the business was an Englishman familiar with the Chinese language.   I never knew the Englishman's name:  everyone just called him "Blondie," (黄毛) so "Blondie" became his name at the studio.
    The company was set up with an investment of US$30,000, and was located in a large building at No.5 Hong Kong Road in Shanghai.  The empty space had advertising on all the walls up to about 3 meters from the ceiling, so we just covered one wall with a white sheet, and considered that to be our movie stage.

Michelle Yeoh Interview: "This is the best phase of my career"

[This is a slightly abridged translation of an interview originally published in the June 11, 2008 issue of the Shanghai magazine Bund Pictorial, with byline by Li Jun 李俊.  A few paragraphs have been omitted because they just reviewed parts of Michelle Yeoh’s career that are generally common knowledge or recorded in her IMDB entry.  The full original interview is online.  Notes in brackets, like this one, are translator’s notes, added for clarification.]

    It was not until she had made "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon" at age 38 that Michelle Yeoh, the first truly Chinese Bond girl, began gaining recognition as having completed the transition to being an actress.  When she accepted this publication's request for an interview, Yeoh expressed her deep gratitude to an [unnamed] American director and to Ang Lee.  In discussing her, Lee himself has said, "Michelle Yeoh is not an acrobatic fighting star, she is an actress, a very talented one, and that is more important."  In the past year, she has received the Chevalier award of the French Legion d'Honneur, and with friends has established a film company.  At the same time, four of her movies are currently being shown on Chinese screens, including 'Mummy 3," which opened in July, and also starring Jet Li.  Michelle Yeoh, who turns 46 this year, says "This is the best phase of my performing arts career."

Zheng Xiaoqiu (1910-1989): a lifetime devoted to Chinese film

    The history of motion pictures is littered with the (often) sad stories of child stars who faded after reaching maturity, and in too many cases were psychologically destroyed by the loss of that early stardom.  But some, like Shirley Temple, adjusted to adulthood and went on to a fulfilling life outside of movies; a few, like Jackie Cooper, Dean Stockwell and Natalie Wood, went on to successful adult acting careers; and of course Ron Howard is today one of America's top directors, with two Oscars to his credit.  In China, Zheng Xiaoqiu went even further, covering the gamut of filmmaking in his nearly 80 year lifetime, from juvenile star of silents to marquee leading man in the early sound era, and then becoming one of the country's top directors, of both narrative films and scientific documentaries.

Cao Yuankai (? - ?)

     Cao Yuankai 曹元恺, actor and writer.  Native of Chuansha, Jiangsu (now a part of metropolitan Shanghai).  In early youth, he and some friends started a small film study society, publishing a film magazine for which he edited and wrote articles commenting on cinema art.  These were popular with readers, and led to his joining the Guoguang (Light of the Nation) Film Co., making his first screen appearance in 1926's "Flowers of Shanghai."  Beginning in the following year he concentrated more on writing, and also directed one film.
**********

Filmography
1926:
Flowers of Shanghai                    (actor)

1927:
Strange Happenings Onstage      (actor, co-writer)
Wishful Thinking                         (writer)
Wusong Kills his Sister-in-Law    (writer)
1930:
Ghost of the Gold                       (director)
1935:
Three Daughters-in-Law             (writer)

Cao Dahua (1915-2007)

    Cao Dahua 曹达华 (Cantonese:  Cho Tat-wah).  Actor and Producer.  Born September 15, 1915 in Taishan, Guangdong, raised in Hong Kong and educated there at St.Peter's Academy.  Began in film at age 15 with the Yue Ming (Bright Moon) studio in Shanghai, first appearing onscreen in several episodes of the silent series "Guandong Daxia"  关东大侠 (A Warrior of the Northeast).  Returned to Hong Kong in 1935, and joined his family's agricultural business, while continuing part-time acting, appearing in several movies in the late 1930s.  During the Japanese occupation of Hong Kong, he was fully engaged in business, but became a fulltime filmmaker, establishing with relatives a movie studio and theater, specializing in Cantonese dialect swordsman and kungfu films.  Cao became closely identified with a recurring role in the popular Wong Fei-Hung series of films in the 1950s and 60s, as the loyal apprentice of the titular martial arts legend.  Joined the Shaw Brothers studio in 1979, while also appearing often in television movies and miniseries.  Retired after 1990, but returned for one more appearance in 1996, the 318th acting role of his career.  Died in London, UK, January 13, 2007, age 91.