General History of Chinese Film I

1896-1949

Ding Yaping, Jin Haina

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2021
• ISBN:
  9781000434859
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Arte
• Subtopic: Historia del arte

The early years of the history of Chinese film have lately been the subject of resurgent interest and a growing body of scholarship has come to recognise and identify an extraordinarily diverse and complex period. This volume explores the development of Chinese film from 1896 to 1949.

The volume covers the screening of foreign films in Shanghai, Hong Kong and other coastal cities in China, the technological and industrial development of Chinese national cinema, key filmmakers and actors of early Chinese cinema, changing modes of representation and narration, as well as the social and cultural contexts within which early Chinese films were produced and circulated. The relationship between the War of Resistance against Japan and the Chinese civil war and Chinese film is also explored.

The book will be essential reading for scholars and students in film studies, Chinese studies, cultural studies and media studies, helping readers develop a comprehensive understanding of Chinese film.

1 The start of the silver journey and experiments in domestic films (1896–1921)

DOI: 10.4324/9781003204695-1

1.1 The start of the silver journey

1.1.1 The earliest film screenings: The simultaneous dissemination of early screen activities across the globe

Film is considered one of the most important art forms of the 20th century. From 1894 to 1902, the Lumière brothers used the camera they invented to film a number of short films, most less than one minute in length. They held their first public screening, of ten short films they had produced, on December 28, 1895, before a paying audience at the Salon Indien du Grand Café in Paris. It was also the first public debut of the projector they had produced – the cinématographe. Today, we still have intact copies of most of the films they screened. During the 1890s, inventors in the US, UK, and Germany, including Thomas Edison, invented their own moving picture cameras and displayed their films in a number of different ways.¹ The silent film era blossomed, with films screened in cafés, amusement parks, and circuses.

Beginning around 1896, film began to travel to different parts of the world. On June 30, 1896, in a historical first, films were screened in Xu Garden, Shanghai – the debut of the technology in China. The wall of Institut Lumière in Lyon, France records film projection activities all over the world conducted by projectionists dispatched by the Lumière brothers. The projectionists were simultaneously technicians, salesmen, artists, and magicians. Lu Xiaoping has written about the endeavor by the Lumière brothers in 1896 to take the newly invented film projectors all over the world to screen their films.² In the space of a single year, projectionists visited London, Berlin, Moscow, Washington, Shanghai, Tokyo, and Algiers. On July 14, 1896, films made by the Lumière brothers were shown in the Consulate General of France in Hankou, China.³ Liao Jinfeng has traced the route of these early film screenings across the world: South Africa in March; Spain and Russia in May; India, Brazil, and Czechoslovakia in July; Australia, China, and Mexico in August; Egypt in December; Venezuela in January 1897; and Japan and Bulgaria in February.⁴

It has long been known that a foreign projectionist from France arrived at Shanghai’s Huangpu River Wharf in the summer of 1896 with an old film projector. It is likely that he was sent by the Lumière brothers. Exactly what date he arrived in 1896 and whether he first arrived in Hong Kong, Hankou, or Shanghai would appear relatively unimportant.

Figure 1.1 Lumière Brothers.

Some researchers believe that films were first screened in Hong Kong before they were screened in Mainland China. In The Yearbook of the Chinese Film Industry 1927,⁵ Cheng Shuren writes, “It’s been less than 20 years since films came to China, which first arrived in Hong Kong, then in Shanghai and other cities in China.” Yu Muyun believes that “Film was first screened in Hong Kong, then in Shanghai and later in Taiwan.” Yu Muyun and Peng Lijun believe that an advertisement in The Chinese Mail on January 18, 1896, which states that hundreds of Western films were going to be screened at the Victoria Hotel on Hong Kong island, is evidence of the first film screening in Hong Kong.⁶

Newspaper advertisements serve as proof of the film screening in Xu Garden in Shanghai on June 30, August 11, and August 15 in 1896. Xu Garden, a property of the rich merchant Xu Dishan, was located on Xitangjia Street, north of the Suzhou River in Shanghai. The Xu family was Kunqu opera lovers, and “Yet Another Village” was a tea house and performance venue for Kunqu set up in Xu Garden. The June 29 and 30, 1896 editions of the newspaper Shenbao (Shanghai News) and the June 30, 1896 edition of the newspaper Sin wan bao contain an advertisement entitled “Notice from Xu Garden.” It announces, “Various activities such as operas, magic tricks, and Western films will be shown in Xu Garden for the entertainment of visitors.” Another advertisement posted in the supplement of Shenbao from August 10 to 14, 1896 announces, “From August 11, western films will be shown in Xu Garden” – once again, “between magic tricks.” Yet Another Village began to sell tickets for “Western shadow plays” at 0.2 yuan a piece.

Figure 1.2 A film screening advertisement published on June 26, 1897, in Peking and Tientsin Times.

The Lumière brothers’ enterprise was successful right from their first screening in 1895. At first, for commercial reasons, they did not want to sell cameras and projectors and instead sent their own projectionists abroad. Only in 1897 did the Lumière brothers begin to sell film equipment. Because of this fact, some scholars, such as Huang Dequan, have speculated that the “Western shadow plays” shown in Xu Garden were not films. The term “Western shadow plays” was used many times in the late Qing Dynasty to refer to any kind of image projection, and it is possible that consecutive slides instead of films were shown in Xu Garden. The slide projector was invented by a Dutch physicist in 1659 and brought to China by missionaries during the middle or late Qing dynasty. The January 18, 1896, The Chinese Mail advertisement from Hong Kong suggests that hundreds of Western films were going to be shown. Law Kar and Frank Bren argue that the time span from the invention and screening of films by the Lumière brothers to the screening of films in Hong Kong is too short for this to be possible and that consecutive slides are the more likely explanation. In their book on early Hong Kong cinema, Zhou Chengren and Li Yizhuang write that “the so-called ‘exquisite stories’ or ‘exquisite pictures’ in the advertisements are actually slides.”⁷ Huang Dequan believes that the first screening of films in China occurred in the Astor Hall in Shanghai on May 22, 1897. A notice on May 15, 1897, North China Daily News reports that “Films were screened again on May 25 and 27.”⁸ Those films were screened once more on June 1 and 3, 1897, and on June 4 in Ankaidi and in the Zhang family’s Weichun Garden. According to Yang Ji’s research, Maurice Charvet, Lewis M. Johnson, and Harry Welby-Cook were all engaged in screening films in China at that time. After these films were screened five times at Weichun Garden, they were shown again in Astor Hall at least three more times before being shipped to Tianjin from Shanghai.⁹ The person who organized the film screenings in Shanghai was an American projectionist named “Yong Song,” which, as Huang Lin has proven, was the Chinese name of Lewis M. Johnson, who was then working in the Astor Hotel.¹⁰ Johnson posted an English-language advertisement for a film screening in the Peking and Tientsin Times¹¹ on June 26, 1897, and the films advertised are the same as those screened in Shanghai. This advertisement not only provides us with the English names of the films, but also the name of Johnson’s colleague Maurice Charvet, and his ingenious device – the cinématographe.¹² In July, Johnson once again organized film screenings in Shanghai at Tianhua Teahouse, Qi Garden, and Tongqing Garden.

Law Kar, Zhou Chengren, and Li Yizhuang speculate that films were first brought to Hong Kong on April 26, 1897, by Maurice Charvet, a French projectionist. Charvet exhibited The Entry of the Czar into Paris and The March of the Regiment of French Cavalry in Hong Kong’s City Hall. Over ten films were screened over a week. As more Western projectionists began to screen films, Westerners from Edison’s company came to shoot travelogues in Hong Kong and Mainland China. By the end of the 19th century, dedicated cinemas were established. Film screening in China was a lucrative business, “attracting more foreign merchants to come to Hong Kong or Mainland China to develop a new film market.”¹³

The Astor Hotel in Shanghai, the predecessor of today’s Pujiang Hotel, was established in 1846 by Peter Felix Richards, an English merchant. It was located near the Waibai bridge, at the boundary between the British Concession and Qing-administered Shanghai County. Along with its many hotel rooms, it also contained recreational rooms, bars, and a theatre on the first floor, where musical, dramatic, and dance performances were held. Circus performances were held in the Astor Hotel at least since June 1882. In 1893, foreign puppetry troupes held a series of performances.¹⁴ The Astor Hotel was one of the best hotels in Shanghai at that time: The first hotel in Shanghai to use gas, in 1867; the first place in China where electric lights were installed, in June 1882; and in 1883, the first building in Shanghai with indoor plumbing. The old Astor Hotel was demolished in 1903 and rebuilt and expanded in 1910. A Japanese merchant admired the Astor Hotel so much that he opened an Astor restaurant in Ginza Tokyo, and the restaurant was so popular that he later opened nearly 40 restaurants under this name. No one at the Astor Hotel watching “Western shadow plays” expected touching stories of profound depth from this new toy. The early screening activities were interesting, fun, and novel for the audience. At the same time, these screenings attracted a decent audience and were lucrative.

Zhang Garden was a residence built for a British merchant, who occupied it from 1872 to 1878. In February 1882, it was purchased by Zhang Shuhe, a rich Chinese businessman who worked in the Ship Investment Bureau. He named it the Weichun Garden of the Zhang Family or Zhang Garden. In 1885, Zhang Shuhe opened this private garden to the public. Ankaidi Foreign House was a large two-story building constructed in October 1893 that could accommodate over 1,000 people. Zhang Garden was a recreational area that showcased a foreign lifestyle: “Many new things were first displayed in Zhang Garden.”¹⁵ The report “Film Watching Experience in Weichun Garden,” published in two parts in Sin wan bao on June 11 and 13, 1897, records the 1897 screening of films in Zhang Garden – one of the earliest documents of an early film screening in China. Screenings were also held in Tianhua Tea Garden, Qi Garden, and Tongqi Tea Garden in 1897, and in the Shengping Tea House on Fuzhou Road, the skating rink on Zapu Road in Hongkou, and the Golden Grain Foreign Food Restaurant on Hubei Road in 1899. On February 8, 1898, an advertisement for Tongqing Tea Garden stated that over 100 shadow plays had been brought for screening. Outside of Shanghai, films were shown in Beijing, at the Fushou Tang in Qianmen Grinding Mill in 1902, Tianle Tea Garden in 1903, Qingle Opera House and Sanqing Garden in Qianmen, Wenmin Tea Garden in Xidan, and the Dangui Tea Garden in Dong’an Market in 1903. Most early films shown in China were shown at tea houses.

Tianhua Tea Garden offered different tiers of seating, with first-class seats priced at 50 cents, second class at 40, the third class at 20 cents, and the fourth class seating at 10 cents. Different seats offered different entertainment experiences. “Watching Western Magic in Tianhua Tea Garden,” an article published issue 54 of Youxi bao on August 16, 1897, provides a detailed description of the film screening: “A curtain was hung in front of the stage, the lights were turned off, and another stage was set up opposite the first stage. Foreigners stood on that stage and turned on a machine to project light onto the opposite curtain. At first, it was blurry, but then everything became so clear. On the curtain, beautiful women were dancing, children were walking in circles, and an old man woke up from his bed. Trains and carriages and trees in a palace were shown on the screen. Viewers could even see the colour of people’s clothes. The transformation of the shadows was amazing. During the screening process, a Chinese interpreter helped the audience to understand the pictures.”

The article “Watching American Shadow Plays” was published on September 5, 1897, in volume 74 of Youxi bao, a paper established by Li Boyuan in Shanghai on June 24, 1897. This article documents both the films screened by Lewis M. Johnson in Qi Garden as well as the author’s film-watching experience. The author was amazed by the rapid shifts in American films. Once the guests were gathered, the lights were turned off and the show began, “In one film, two Western women were dancing. Their golden hair looked so lovely. In another film, two Westerners were wrestling. In another film, two Russian princesses were dancing face to face and a musician was playing music. In another film, a woman was bathing in a bathtub.… Electric lights illumina...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• List of figures
• Acknowledgment
• Introduction
• 1 The start of the silver journey and experiments in domestic films (1896–1921)
• 2 The start of Chinese national cinema and movie stars (1922–1931)
• 3 The reconstruction of left-wing films (1932–1933)
• 4 The construction of image and spirit (1932–1937)
• 5 Context and identity (1938–1941)
• 6 Films in the occupied period (1941–1949)
• 7 Society, films, and responsibility (1945–1947)
• 8 Film of the dramatically changing era (1948–1949)
• Index