1930s Chinese Movies

A businessman moves his family from the city to the countryside to open a school.

A Chinese couple in the 1930s struggle to survive. Things get complicated for them when he enlists to fight the war against Japan.

A Chinese film

The film tells the story of Yang Naifan (Ruan Lingyu) who runs from her arranged marriage to be with her true love, Li Zuyi (Jin Yan). The film details the poverty she must endure for breaking with tradition.

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A foolish wealthy inheritor, whose household is dependent on his wife's competence, finds his estate threatened by a bully neighbor in this allegory of the difficulty of dealing with unchecked aggression and treachery, and of the tension between traditional Chinese customs and early 20th-century European influences. Originally about 100 minutes, only 41 minutes exist.

A young prostitute, who is trying to give her infant son a good start in life, must contend with a coercive pimp and the prejudices of others.

The story of a poor silk farming family in Zhejiang and their hardships.

Bai Le De and Hu Lun tung are military cadets. After graduating, Hu Lin Tung is appointed captain of Guangdong headquarters and goes away. Later, Bae Le De is also appointed to a post at the same place. Hu Lun Ting falls in love with Luo Hua, daughter of the local commander.

The story is about a fisherman's family living near to Shanghai. In the beginning, twin babies are born, a boy and a girl. Their growing-up is briefly sketched, and their friendship with "young master", a boy from rich family about their age.

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Part two of A comedy film set on Shanghai film studio. The background events frequently involve the shooting of other films being made at Mingxing Film Company at the time. This includes a sequence of the 17th episode of the silent wuxia film series Burning of the Red Lotus Temple, which is the only known footage from this historic series to exist.

Twin girls separated at birth are reunited when the one raised in poverty becomes a servant in the household of her sister, now the pampered wife of a warlord general.

This movie is based on the famous Chinese folklore that is more than one and a half millennium old. The same folklore was what the Disney animation Mulan is based on, and similarly, it was what many Chinese movies/operas/plays based on.

Sister Ye lives in a rural village, where everyone makes traditional toys. When Sister Ye's husband dies of an unknown illness, and while Ye is attending to him, her son is kidnapped and sold to a wealthy lady in the city of Shanghai. Shortly after, the village is destroyed during an attack between rival warlords, forcing the villagers move to the city, where they continue to make toys. Ten years pass, and Ye's daughter Zhu'er has become a toy designer. While helping the Nationalist army at the rear, Zhu'er is killed in an attack by the Japanese. On New Year's Eve, Sister Ye is dressed in rags, sitting on the curb, selling toys. A young boy buys toys from her, and it is none other than her son, whom she does not recognize.

In this Chinese version of The Phantom of the Opera, the mysterious Song Danping terrorizes the newly rebuilt opera house and its young star.

A rich businessman's family is in straitened circumstances. He has a son and four daughters, but only the youngest daughter lives a positive life.

Six young men from the city take jobs building roads for the Chinese Army

Historical film based on the life of Wu Zetian, the only female emperor in Chinese history

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A warlord's nephew lusts for farmer Song Ke's sister. When Song refuses, the whole family is thrown into jail and the sister commits suicide. The father dies of grief and Song lives with his cousin abroad. The warlord's nephew loses power and also escapes to the same country.

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To please his dying father, Hong Yu, a college student, is forced to abandon his girlfriend, Little Hong, and marry his cousin, with disastrous results.

An upper-class son of urbane landowners falls in love with a peasant girl. When a pregnancy results, the couple are kept apart by strict societal morays.

Blood on Wolf Mountain tells the story of a village that is beset by a pack of wolves. Made just prior to the commencement of full-scale war with the Japanese, the film itself is often considered an allegory of conflict between China and Japan.

Young sprinter Lin Ying enrolls in a sports college in Shanghai. As she becomes a sports celebrity, she starts to mangle with the upper class and has gradually forgotten the true essence of sports.

Returning home from a long voyage overseas, a man finds his wife and child living with another man. Fuelled by anger, he murders the other man and is forced to flee justice, until he faces death on a deserted island.

Although Hui-Ying is now married to a husband that offers a life of stability and comfort, over ten years ago her first husband (Jia-Hu) fled from Shanghai to Nanyang (old name for Southeast Asia) to escape capture by a warlord - leaving her and their toddler daughter (Shao-Mei) behind in helpless desperation. Despite the mother's emotional attachment to her absent husband, she has never told the daughter about Jia-Hu so the daughter believes the stepfather is her biological father. But the mother begins to have second thoughts about the stepfather when she sees the teen daughter zealously follow the path paved by him - a path that the mother fears will lead to her daughter's moral decline.

Four students in Shanghai have recently finished university. All are unemployed. Xu contemplates suicide but his friend Zhao talks him out of it. Zhao lives in a shabby room with just a flimsy wall of planks separating him from the room behind. Miss Yang, in town to take a factory job, moves in behind. Her nails into the wall knock Zhao's photos down. The unseen neighbours start playing tit for tat... Zhao gets a job as proofreader at a newspaper. He sees that pretty girl on the tram to work every day. He doesn't know her, but it's Miss Yang... Zhao is assigned to cover labour conditions for the paper. He is sent to a factory, the one where Miss Yang works...

After a thousand years, the Taoist master Huang Hua Guan and his disciples regained human forms, as did the seven spider spirits, who vowed to abandon evil. To warn others, the Taoist priests told this story: Fifteen hundred years later, student Xiao Liu mistakenly entered a women’s bathroom and saw Wenxia bathing, leading to his public humiliation. When his sister Liu Cui reported it, Wenxia framed her, prompting Liu Cui to swear revenge. Wenxia, who had many boyfriends, stirred rivalry between Lu Xing and Chunfeng. During a trip, Wenxia and Chunfeng were attacked by someone bribed by Liu Cui, and both were injured. Daxiong saved Wenxia but had bad intentions, leading to a fight in which Lu Xing, Chunfeng, and Daxiong died, and Wenxia was trapped. Liu Cui was arrested for murder. Hearing this story, Wukong appeared, scaring the demons into releasing the Tang Monk.

Lady Windermere's Fan, Oscar Wilde's play on moral values, is adapted for a setting in Shanghai. Young wife Meilin mistakenly believes her husband is having an affair with a social butterfly and decides to leave for a suitor. Her reputation, about to be ruined because of a misplaced fan, is saved by the social butterfly who turns out to be …Unlike typical Chinese scripts on parental love, the understated familial love in the original play is aligned with Li's preference for the undramatic. Motherly love is portrayed indirectly while emotions run strong yet subdued in the film. Poking fun at social culture of the times, this is Li's earliest extant feature film in a modern setting and a showcase of his modernistic and crisp directorial approach.

In old Shanghai, two sisters, a prostitute and a singer, try to escape from the local scoundrels with the help of a trumpet player and a newspaper seller.

Overnight, the sexy Wei Ming will become a successful novelist. But, desperate to get the money that she needs to cure her little daughter (and harassed by a rich, unscrupulous rake), she will end up eventually engage in luxury prostitution.

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A primary school teacher rallies the citizens of a small town to resist the corruption of the local government and unite to build reinforcements against an oncoming flood.

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The young poet Xin Baihe flees Shanghai with his friend, Liang. Liang soon joins the resistance against the Japanese invaders, but Xin chooses to pursue a relationship with a glamorous and westernized widow in Qingdao. After hearing that Liang has been killed, Xin has a change of heart and rushes to join the war effort.

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Probably the most sheerly entertaining of all the films made in 1930s Shanghai by 'underground' leftists, this riff on The Prisoner of Zenda is funny and engaging from first to last. The irresistible Yuan Muzhi (director of Street Angel the following year) plays both Li Tao, a revolutionary on the run, and Liu Yuanjie, an American-Chinese teacher visiting China with his fiancée. Liu is mistaken for Li and thrown into jail; Li teams up with the fiancée (Chen Bo'er, Yuan's real life wife) to get him out of prison and into the spirit of revolution. Ying Yunwei (who started out playing female roles in Chinese opera) uses chiaroscuro lighting, highly mobile camerawork and zippy pacing to give it maximum impact, but it's Yuan who really keeps you watching.

Silent film, with musical accompaniment. Originally released as a silent motion picture in 1935. Directed by Wu Yonggang,