1930s Chinese Movies

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

A Chinese film

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

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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.

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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.

800 Chinese soldiers guard the important warehouse district against the invading Japanese Army. Re-imagination of a famous (bordering on legendary) episode from the battle of Shanghai: 800 soldiers of the 88th regiment against what feels like the whole of Japan’s Imperial Army - think Thermopylae, Chinese version. A splendid, visually amazing gem which, in its own way, is also a last stand: of silent cinema, Shanghai style. (iffr)

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...

The film tells the tragic story of two recent college graduates, Tao Jianping ("Tao" is a homophone for peach), and Li Lilian ("Li" is a homophone for plum). Married, the two hope to change society for the better, but are continuously challenged by the corruption and injustice of Chinese society.

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.

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.

This is a silent film from China made in 1931. It is about two leads in a film, Yan (Raymond King) and Ying (Violet Wong). They meet after hearing Ying sing while another movie is being shot. You, of course, don't get to hear the song, but it catches people's attention. Once they meet and work together, they fall in love. Is it forever?

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

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.

A novelist uses all his money to buy gifts for the woman he loves who in turn is also seeing a business man, using him for expensive presents. As a consequence the writer is unable to pay the rent, whilst the womans family goes hungry as her fathers business suffers. A joyful comedy that expresses the dangers of consumerism for the careless spender.

A country girl and her boyfriend arrive in Shanghai for a better life. They soon find only desperation. She is raped and falls into prostitution as he drifts into revolutionary circles. Her access through her trade grants her greater access which she uses to aid her revolutionary lover with tragic results.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

In 1930, two sisters from the countryside, the serious Zhang Lan and the frivolous Zhang Tao graduate from secondary school where their mother Zhang Jie serves as principal. They both love their cousin Zuo, but have ambitions other than marriage. Their lives change dramatically when both attend university in Shanghai and encounter modern urban life and rapidly changing society. The film also depicts the emergence of Chiang Kai-shek's 1934 New Life Movement. Lianhua Film Studio did the film to appease the Nationalist Party which accused it of primarily presenting left-wing films, which was true.

Ill-fated romance of an orphaned flower girl and a young musician, destroyed by his traditional family and the Shanghai underworld.

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

Three stories about art stages. "Film City", "Drama Group" and "Dance Class".

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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.

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.

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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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.

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

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.

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.

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

A wild country girl moves to Shanghai with her painter boyfriend and experiences exploitation and poverty.

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.