Emily Chen - 2018 Mitra Scholar

2017-18 Mitra FAMILY GRANT Recipient Across Every River: French New Wave Formalism and Fifth Generation Chinese Cinema Emily Chen, Class of 2018

Across Every River: French New Wave Formalism and Fifth Generation Chinese Cinema

Emily Chen 2018 Mitra Scholar Mentors: Mr. Damon Halback, Ms. Lauri Vaughan April 11, 2018

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Framed by national upheaval surrounding the rise of the Fifth Republic, changes in 1950s French cinema reflected individual reactions by filmmakers to social controversy and conflict in art. Consistent stylistic and thematic signatures elevated the standard of an auteur, a director whose personal and artistic control over a films so significant that they are considered the movie’s author.1 François Truffaut, the exemplar of filmic auteurism, spearheaded the short-lived French New Wave movement, a revolutionary effort by a small group of critics-turned-directors who attacked “la Tradition de la qualité.”2 Notably, New Wave directors decreased the importance of plot and dialogue and shifted away from theatricism to focus on visuals. Truffaut’s films combined experimental and descriptive cinematography with personal narrative to contemplate larger social issues, such as the alienation, uncertainty, and urbanization characteristic of surrounding national discord. Spontaneous yet deliberately ordinary, French film of this period subverted artistic expectations for the portrayal of characters through detailed visual and sound imagery, often using montage instead of surface-level story and conversation.3 Paralleling this development decades later and one continent over, post-Cultural Revolution Chinese film was undergoing its own type of reformation. Influenced by their first exposures to foreign films after the strict closed-door policy accompanying Communist reform, directors and academics debated tradition and novelty in Chinese cinema and how to incorporate years’ worth of changing cinematic techniques and language.

Bai Jingsheng’s seminal 1979 essay, Throwing Away the Walking Stick of Drama defined the ethos of this new cinematic era. Bai asserted that filmmakers should “combine sound and

1

Annette Insdorf, François Truffaut (New York, NY: Cambridge University Press, 1994), 20.

2

Ibid., 21.

3

Ibid., 24.

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image together organically so that dialogue, music, and sound supplement one another.”4 The Fifth Generation of Chinese cinema emerged from this new directive. Comprised of the first graduates the Beijing Film Academy following the Cultural Revolution, the Fifth Generation was a group of directors keen on infusing works with the personal and visual elements characteristic of French New Wave cinema. Cognizant of the advances of foreign film, Fifth Generation directors implemented modern technologies and French techniques of montage and editing from overseas to tell their own stories that had been suppressed during the Cultural Revolution.

Guangxi Film Studio directors Chen Kaige and Zhang Yimou became informal leaders of this politically-motivated cinematic movement, achieving international success with their moving reflections on the changing pace of their nation’s social and reformative climates.

Known for his use of political overtones in his movies, Zhang Yimou explicitly depicted the impacts of watershed Chinese historical events on ordinary people. True to his literary origins, Chen Kaige created lyrical films concerned with the individual set against society, studying the emotional consequences of political strife, intergenerational trauma, and isolation on daily life.

Fifth Generation directors’ emphasis on auteurist choice through structural composition enabled them to illuminate the consequences of China’s oppressive regime on individual lives and relationships and depict Chinese social stagnation. Chen Kaige and Zhang Yimou applied artistic regeneration as political reform to achieve personal authenticity and communal enlightenment. They employed aesthetic individuality to criticize the collectivism of Chinese Communism and illustrate the cyclical nature of generational reform. Born into misfortune and growing up amidst currents of political strife, these two directors explore various artistic answers

4

Jinsheng Bai, "Throwing Away the Walking Stick of Drama." to Chinese Film Theory: A Guide to the New Era, ed. George S. Semsel (Westport, CT: Greenwood Publishing Group, 1990), 8.

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to long-running Chinese queries about reform: how to achieve national unification, how to preserve beautiful tradition, and where to find new hope.

French New Wave Film Theory Formalism Formalist film theory refers to the critical interpretative system of utilizing elements of mise-en-scène5 to deconstruct film narratives. Critics use formalism to focus on components of visual and auditory imagery, lighting, montage, and tone to corroborate particular motifs or topics of interest. By analyzing such elements within larger thematic contexts, critics betterunderstand movies from structural and ideological perspectives. The deconstruction of imagery explains the explicit visuals, while parsing it as an analytical component of film offers insight into intentional visual and sound choices to further underlying plot-driven themes. Formalism is also a popular Western framework for literary analysis. Just as examining diction, syntax, tone, and other literary techniques elucidates an author’s intent in producing a work, critically viewing the structural composition of a film is a mechanism for understanding the director’s attitude towards and purpose in depicting specific stories. Formalism is a means of interpreting auteurism because a director’s personal vision and decisions regarding structural filmic components are significant to the entire film production process.

Formalist theory conveying auteurism is characteristic of the French New Wave, a cinematic movement from the 1950s to the late 1960s defined by collective self-conscious experimentation that bridged the individual experiences of directors with larger social advances.

Largely breaking with customary global film paradigm of the twentieth century of heated spectacles and romances featuring celebrity actors, New Wave directors explored

5

Mise-en-scène refers to the design aspect of a staged production, or the visual theme of a cinematic work.

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cinematographic strategies that drew attention to subtle visuals rather than dramatic plot and employed new technologies to uplift film as a medium for auteurist intention. By making explicit decisions regarding the design of their movies, filmmakers moved away from drama towards aestheticism as a vehicle for self-expression.

Hardware and darkroom technological developments in this period influenced French directors’ abilities to spotlight visual and auditory components crucial to formalism. The usage of shadow and darkness in American thrillers, called film noir by French critics, and the refinement of handheld cameras that became a “fluid extension of the filmmaker’s body”6 are examples of technological innovations that improved directors’ manipulation of imagery and expanded the range of shot possibilities.

Critic-turned-director François Truffaut, a founding member of mentor André Bazin’s Cahiers du Cinéma, spearheaded the New Wave with his critical writings and influential movies.

Truffaut’s cinematic magnum opus, The 400 Blows, is considered definitional of New Wave style. According to critic and essayist Andrew Sarris, the first recognized promulgator of auteurist film theory in the United States, “Truffaut was involved in nothing less than changing the course of the French cinema.”7 In his early criticisms, Truffaut focused on the effectiveness of interactions between structural and content-based facets, inaugurating the establishment of formalist theory. He watched a medley of film genres, uninhibited by “A” or “B” distinctions.8 Truffaut took note of

6

Insdorf, François Truffaut, 23.

7

Ibid.

8

Wheeler Winston Dixon, The Early Film Criticism of Francois Truffaut (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1993), 48.

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visuals and aesthetic appeal, sometimes to the point of objectification, so fascinated was he by Marilyn Monroe’s on-screen image and character design.9 He complimented the simplicity of “Z” remake South Sea Sinner’s design, arguing that though the movie may consist of “scarcely more than four sets” and for “economy [have a] soundtrack … exclusively [of] classical music” performed on a single piano, the director was able to adapt mise en scène and sound imagery into an effective medium for plot.10 Before beginning to direct, Truffaut had already recognized the value of small-scale production and eliminating overambitious presentation. He argued that stripping away artifice intended to guard against “defects of the imagination” would reveal a film’s true value in its visual and sound imagery and montage.11 During his transition from critic to director, he admitted “the taste for writing has been pursuing me ever since I concerned myself as a critic with the form of the screenplay. I didn’t think I would become a filmmaker but, rather, a scriptwriter.”12 Preluding his auteurist proclivities in direction, Truffaut was already keen on establishing his voice as the locus of authority in cinematic academia. He wrote on and debated for his perspective of a truly meaningful movie as an act of creativity and poetry.13 Even after commencing his directing career, Truffaut continued writing copiously about cinema, as this duality helped him assess films from multiple angles.14 Truffaut’s unique position

9

Ibid., 8.

10

Dixon, The Early, 20.

11

Ibid., 30.

12

Francois Truffaut, "Notes sur d'autres films" [Notes on Other Films], Cahiers du Cinéma 5, no. 29 (July 1953): 58-59.

13

14

Dixon, The Early, 156.

François Truffaut, The Films in My Life, trans. Leonard Mayhew (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1978; Boston: Da Capo Press, 1994), 9.

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as both a critic and a director allowed him to purposefully maneuver formalist visual, acoustic, and montage elements within his works to express his auteurist vision. He pioneered the search for the intimate and realistic in French cinema, employing simple sets, vernacular dialogue, accessible characters and emotions, and celebration of ordinary experience. By using glass and reflective surfaces, symbolic dark lighting, close-ups and long takes, and musical imagery, Truffaut supplemented character-driven plots with effective visual and aural tools deepening surface movement.15 Truffaut represented a shift away from elaborate theatrical form, polished visuals, and famous stars. His criticisms and films demonstrated the values of improvisation and spontaneity, of “deliberate visual roughness” and the “palpable freedom of the character, camera, and film itself to go wherever they like.”16 Structural manipulation furthered Truffaut’s objective of portraying realistic situations and personas reflective of his own world rather than the artificial construct of stardom.

Formalist critics deconstruct films into their building blocks and repiece them into sensible puzzles that support and clarify messages expressed in cinematic narratives. This unique style of criticism views films holistically, analyzing the interplay of visuals, acoustics, and montage in supplementing plot, dialogue, and characterization. Cinematic techniques can determine the style and tone of filmic content and often elucidate intended perspectives or interpretations. Formalism analyzes how film is made in order to better understand what it means.

15

Insdorf, François Truffaut, 32.

16

Ibid., 24.

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Auteurism Young Truffaut often played hooky to go to the local theater. There, he immersed himself in cinema, and “even as a child, he felt a great need to enter into the films—a need which he fulfilled by sitting increasingly closer to the screen.”17 As a director, he would enter his own creative works by inserting his own agenda and experiences. Truffaut’s radical auteurist approach responded to evolving political circumstances. Post-war France, undergoing power changes as the Fifth Republic took control of the nation, served as a backdrop of revolution and rebirth. Transference in politics correlated with transference in art; the impetus for change was ubiquitous. As France searched for new answers to old questions of stability and governance, French directors searched for means of expressing personal and social ills through intimate frames, using newly-discovered structural components to delineate personal values.18 The auteurist lens likens a film director to a literary author, responsible for the essence and presentation of the final artwork. By focusing on directors’ own insight and input into their films, auteurism champions cinema as a channel for self-expression and a declaration of values.

Auteurist film is a search for personal meaning by the director through cinematic creation. Truffaut sought “the personal touch—the man behind or inside the work—the manifestation of a human sensibility molding an art form to communicate its obsessions.”19 That is, Truffaut underscored the importance of the auteur in filmmaking. He viewed cinematic success as a coagulation of moviemaking factors, including “a fortunate fusion of subject and our deeper feelings, an accidental coincidence of our own preoccupations at a certain moment of life

17

Ibid., 34.

18

Truffaut, The Films, 14

19

Insdorf, François Truffaut, 23.

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and the public’s.”20 The distinction between commercially successful movies and sincere auteurist creations highlights a crucial constituent of auteurism: the transmutation of stories and ideas that are true and personal, not overly conventionalized or unrecognizably fictionalized into fodder for public spectacle.

Believing that “the social and the personal constantly feed upon each other,”21 Truffaut extrapolated real social patterns from two-dimensional film relationships and narratives. For instance, The Great Dictator (1940) and To Be Or Not To Be (1942), two films he mentioned frequently in criticism, both depicted war atrocities through dark comedy. Truffaut would apply this same comedic escape from tragedy during post-German occupation France.22 A people-first focus is apparent throughout Truffaut’s own films as well. He used objects and scenery to delve deeper into the personal and relationship development of his characters. For example, Truffaut framed the relationship between Pierre and Natasha in Shoot the Piano Player (1960) through the glass of car windows and mirrors.23 Truffaut’s attention to human behaviors framed within complex social issues—backdrops of war, abandonment, bildungsroman, and urbanization— limns his interest in the reactions and experiences of ordinary individuals caught in political upheaval, as he was growing up in a France teetering on the brink of national collapse.

The Cahiers du Cinéma aggrandized stylistic consistencies and qualities of certain filmmakers. In doing so, they shifted focus from heavy plot and traditional screenwriting to the director-controlled mise-en-scène determining the means through which a plot is conveyed. By

20

Truffaut, The Films, 15.

21

Insdorf, François Truffaut, 29.

22

Ibid.

23

Ibid., 32.

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ennobling ordinary experiences and stripping plots of complex drama, depicting his characters as flawed individuals in mundane settings, Truffaut drew attention away from sensational storylines and to the composition of the film telling his tale.

Formalism is its own system and means of comprehending auteurism. External to formalist critique, auteurism has individual elements important to film production. Auteurism is the elevation of a director’s idiosyncratic stamp on works to a standard, with directors’ names becoming adjectives typecasted to certain types of cinema. For instance, a “Hitchcockian” movie may involve a platinum blonde or synecdoches involving staircases. Directors achieve this grade of control over their art through casting, metaphors and symbolism, personal history, and directives in the shooting and editing sequences. Ultimately, auteurism leads to films that convey directors’ immediate experiences and aspirations, turning art into an avenue for self-expression and ensuring the preservation of creative legacies and intent.

Auteurism’s import is evidenced through Truffaut’s own writings. From a young age, he had felt a strange pull to the screen, “a tremendous need to enter into the films.”24 This desire to impart a part of himself onscreen served as the basis for his auteurist formalist theory. In 1957, he wrote of the New Wave: “The film of tomorrow appears to me as even more personal than … a confession, or a diary. The young filmmakers will express themselves in the first person and will relate what has happened to them … and it will be enjoyable because it will be true and new … The film of tomorrow will be an act of love.”25

24

Truffaut, The Films, 3.

25

Ibid., 19.

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Fifth Generation Cinema The Fifth Generation was an extended cinematic movement that broke restraints and silence. Active in the 1980s and 1990s, directors of this generation immediately differentiated themselves within the extant domestic industry as pioneers of Chinese art film and adaptive of foreign filmic techniques. Fifth Generation directors transformed Chinese film in three distinct ways. First, by diversifying content, they reconstructed film as inherently personal rather than politically propagandistic. Second, they expanded cinematic style from purely dramatic movies to various forms and aesthetics. Third, inspired by Western and Soviet cinema, they augmented film from the monolithic genre of politically driven films into art films, experimental films, commercial films, and films combining sundry differences. The Fifth Generation embodied movement towards broadening the definition of film and exploring new cinematic possibilities as an assertion of independence from the oppressive Communist state. In short, it was an artistic awakening and rebirth from totalitarian ideological indoctrination. Director and professor at the Beijing Film Academy Zheng Dongtian wrote: This generation, which only reached maturity during the most difficult times, differentiated their films from all others by forthrightly expressing their subjectivity and by possessing and presenting mixed passions of regret and love for the nation, and thoughts obtained from the experiences of the previous generation. The emancipation of thoughts will consequently stimulate the development of new ideas ‌ If I were to make a general statement about the New Era of Chinese film, I would like to say that it went through a process from unconsciousness to consciousness.26

26

Dongtian Zheng, "Only Seven Years: Thoughts on the Explorations of Middle-Aged and Young Directors (19791986)," in Chinese Film Theory: A Guide to the New Era, ed. George S. Semsel (Westport, CT: Greenwood Publishing Group, 1990), 90.

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Prior to the Fifth Generation, the Fourth Generation had focused on “scar” genre movies that told explicit narratives of personal suffering. Filmmakers trained during 1950s China saw their careers halted by waves of Communist reform, beginning with the Great Leap Forward (19581962) and ending with the conclusion of the Cultural Revolution (1976). In the late 1970s and early 1980s, these Fourth Generation filmmakers seized opportunities to maximize their expertise and create works on hardship influenced by toil and hiatus during reform-controlled repurposing of art as state propaganda. Focusing on basic human nature and ordinary characterization, directors produced clear-cut, character-driven narratives and tentatively began exploring cinematography, employing location shooting and natural lighting.27 They were already adults during Communist reform, unlike Fifth Generation directors, who came of age in this period. Their maturity allowed them to contextualize the Communist government comparatively, as unlike the Fifth Generation, they had known a prior model of Chinese society.

While the Fourth Generation characterized its work by trauma and loss, the Fifth Generation was driven by emotion, feeling, and the desire for assertion of self.

Following the Cultural Revolution, Chinese film and film theory began a slow rejuvenation. Critics Zhang Nuanxin and Li Tuo write, “a color film is a painting moving in time and space,” but China’s teetering economy and suppression of higher education made it impossible to quickly advance films’ technical components. 28 Stimulated by Italian Neorealist and French New Wave art, Chinese film language, the images functioning within films

27

John A. Lent and Ying Xu, "Fifth Generation," Film Reference, accessed February 8, 2018, http://www.filmreference.com/encyclopedia/Academy-Awards-Crime-Films/China-FIFTH-GENERATION.html.

28

Nuanxin Zhang and Tuo Li, "The Modernization of Film Language," trans. Jianping Hou, in Chinese Film Theory: A Guide to the New Era, ed. George S. Semsel, Xiaohong Li, and Yuan Fan (Westport, CT: Greenwood Publishing Group, 1990), 11.

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analogous to words in literature,29 began moving from theatricism to nondramatic cinema. No longer purely plot-driven, cinema began to represent life with ordinary events and simple details.30 Observing the technical and literary prowess of foreign directors, Chinese theorists were concerned with stimulating internal progress through modernizing film language and technique.

By promoting propaganda, Jiang Qing’s echelon of high-ranking officials, the Gang of Four, had damaged the tutelage of cinema as a free art rather than a means to a governmentdriven end. The first students to be matriculated to the Beijing Film Academy following the Cultural Revolution (1978) were educated with principles embracing foreign advancements and independent thought. This group of Class of 1982 film scholars would become the group of auteurs considered to represent the wave of modernization in Chinese film—the Fifth Generation. Influenced by the failed reform and oppression they had grown up within, Fifth Generation directors “did not want to violate their own artistic judgement, which was born out of their own life experiences and their reflections on history”31 in an echo of French New Wave ideology. Their young age during and after the Cultural Revolution allowed them to more profoundly reflect on personal experiences, foreign film theory, and globalized culture through contemplative works seeking different answers to questions surrounding Chinese national and cultural identity.32 The Fifth Generation reacted to the state first as children whose adolescences

29

Edward W. Hudlin, "Film Language," The Journal of Aesthetic Education 13, no. 2 (April 1979): 47, http://www.jstor.org/stable/3331928.

30

Zhang and Li, "The Modernization," 15.

31

Zhen Ni, Memoirs from the Beijing Film Academy: The Genesis of China's Fifth Generation, trans. Chris Berry (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2002), 108.

32

Zheng, “Only Seven,” 92.

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were robbed by the state, then as auteurs with powerful cinematographic means of telling the emotional stories of survival and grit of the Chinese people.

Ultimately, the Fifth Generation’s objective was to tell human stories through art and image. It is credited with being the first Chinese generation to openly embrace cinematography as a purposeful tool, utilizing components of imagery, light contrast, location shooting, lens use, montages, and fluid camera movement to shape storytelling.33 Its directors frequently told stories through metaphor and allegory, both simplifying the drama of previous theatrical cinematic works while elevating the abstract significance and narrative ambiguity of their works.34 The Fifth Generation’s beginning is credited to Zhang Junchao and Chen Kaige for their films One and Eight (1983) and Yellow Earth (1984), respectively, which shifted away from propagandistic and highly stylized movies, notably Taking Tiger Mountain by Strategy (1970), to humanist commentary on struggles of common people amidst the political turbulence they understood personally. Zhang Yimou served as cinematographer for both, imbuing the Fifth Generation with his distinctive New Wave-influenced visual design of space, light, and montage depicting interpersonal closeness and growth.

Alongside waves of academic and technical film knowledge from abroad, the Soviet concept of “multiple compositions” entered Fifth Generation cinema. This included shooting with wide arrays of camera angles and movements and building different levels and scenes within a single long shot. The dynamic camera restored vivacity in a plot- and dialogue-heavy movie industry. New methods, such as splitting screens and high-speed shooting, contributed to

33

John A. Lent and Ying Xu, "Fifth Generation," Film Reference, accessed February 8, 2018, http://www.filmreference.com/encyclopedia/Academy-Awards-Crime-Films/China-FIFTH-GENERATION.html.

34

Ibid.

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intense cinematography.35 With new capabilities, directors examined human emotions through well-framed faces, lengths of shots of expressions, and the space between bodies interacting onscreen. Additionally, the careful use of flashbacks, adapted from the French New Wave, allowed directors to incorporate personal history and witnessed events into character-building.

Fifth Generation directors were criticized by traditionalists wary of adopting slews of foreign techniques. As China entered a “New Era” under Deng Xiaoping, directors were advised to avoid problematic nationalization that had been the downfall of previous reform and to adapt “good and progressive art of foreign film in order to turn it into our own element through the power of nationalization.”36 Zhang Junxiang, chief of the Shanghai Film Bureau, firmly believed in the concept of national form: “The Chinese way of thinking and feeling must be of Chinese national style. It cannot be replaced by that of foreigners. The living habits, language, and ethics of characters should also be national.”37 Skepticism arose about bold experiments in narrative that neglected the plot-driven, literary value of cinema. Zhang furthered, “the director’s task is to fully represent literary values in films through the cinematic techniques he commands,” positing that the focus of a film should still be on content rather than style.38 Though film as an open canvas for intertwining time and space opened new doors for structural elements such as montage, lighting, and imagery to enter cinema, traditionalists feared films involving avant-garde techniques of stream of consciousness and abstractions, departing from narration- and dialogue-

35

Zhang and Li, "The Modernization," 17.

36

Ibid.,19.

37

Junxiang Zhang, "Essay Done in Film Terms," trans. Jianping Hou, in Chinese Film Theory: A Guide to the New Era, ed. George S. Semsel, Xiaohong Li, and Yuan Fan (Westport, CT: Greenwood Publishing Group, 1990), 35.

38

George S. Semsel, ed., Chinese Film Theory: A Guide to the New Era (Westport, CT: Greenwood Publishing Group, 1990), 21.

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focused stories, would become too complicated for Chinese audiences.39 Hence, Fifth Generation directors faced extensive censorship throughout their careers.

This class of directors believed they better-reflected the Chinese humanist experience through films centered on emotion and regeneration, paralleling cyclical political reform with renewed artistic vigor. Critic Yu Min wrote in 1983: Our screen can become the mirror of our times only when all our filmmakers rid themselves of the airs of highbrow artists and take a step closer to ordinary people, and when they speak more frequently not only of the ‘secrets’ of foreign movies, but also of the changing lives in Chinese society, the people involved, the conflicts they are facing, and ways to embody and depict their ideas.40 This concept of a uniquely Chinese art that is at once respectful of human troubles and perspicaciously aware of societal grievances but is, above all, truthful and grounded, served as the basis of Fifth Generation auteurism. The Fifth Generation marked a turning point in Chinese art history: for the first time, directors could categorically apply foreign techniques to personal narrative, elevating movies to art. Film purists debated those in favor of Bazin’s “new concept of film,” but progress was irresistible and irreversible. China was undergoing artistic upheaval, and film was being reborn at an upstart academy housed in empty dance studios in Zhuxin Village.

39 40

Zhang, “Essay Done,” 36.

Min Yu, "Diversification Not Prescriptions," in Chinese Film Theory: A Guide to the New Era, ed. George S. Semsel (Westport, CT: Greenwood Publishing Group, 1990), 52.

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Zhang Yimou: Storyteller “The most admired and reviled film director China has ever seen”41 came from humble, politically unfavorable beginnings. He dissected, extrapolated, and reconstructed personal injustice he faced resulting from his family’s Kuomintang connections into humble narratives of common people—like himself—riding the battering waves of political tension and reform.

Zhang’s early work was cutting and direct. He lambasted the economic ramifications and tragedies caused by Communist policies and used his experience as a cinematographer to portray them effectively in variously composed shots. Zhang is considered an “adept professional storyteller”42 who translates reality onto the screen in an incisive and humanist way.

Zhang Yimou’s father and two uncles were officers at the Kuomintang Huangpu Military Academy and were branded as “double counterrevolutionaries.” Consequently, Zhang was born in his lineage’s sullied shadow.43 Zhang notes the distinctions between his experience of Communist reform and that of others in a metaphorical quote whose influence is visible in his early oeuvre of personal alienation and nonconformity: “They say you spend thirty years on the bad side of the river then thirty years on the good side, meaning that your fate is always unpredictable. But I was always kept on one side of the river.”44 Zhang’s auteurist style reflects the difficulties of social belonging and political survival he underwent as an adolescent. By embracing rivers as symbols of dichotomous sides and focusing on stories of characters unable to

41

Wendy Larson, Zhang Yimou: Globalization and the Subject of Culture (New York: Cambria Press, 2017), 1.

42

Ni, Memoirs from, 2.

43

Yimou Zhang, "Zhang Yimou: Flying Colors," interview by Michael Berry, in Speaking in Images: Interviews with Contemporary Chinese Filmmakers, by Michael Berry (New York: Columbia University, 2005), 111.

44

Ni, Memoirs from, 44.

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perfectly conform to surrounding systems, he enfolds elements of personal experience into art.

Despite Zhang’s many obstacles, Beijing Film Academy cinematography instructor Ni Zhen describes Zhang as “more serious, mature, optimistic,”45 with the ability to transform his own observations into eye-opening art.

As an “educated youth” in 1968, Zhang was sent alongside a flood of urban adolescents to perform hard labor in rural China. Cognizant of his political disadvantage, Zhang strived to secure the villagers’ good will. Though it was snowing heavily the day he arrived in Beini Village, Zhang painted an enormous portrait of Chairman Mao on the door to the production brigade’s livestock pens, writing a couplet down the sides of the depiction: “Limitless Loyalty to Mao Zedong Thought! Firmly Implement Chairman Mao’s Revolutionary Line!”46 Praised as a “good educated youth,” Zhang worked in the countryside until 1971 as an agricultural laborer and painter. He would represent this experience in his highly personal film To Live.

Zhang was a skilled cinematographer and was originally matriculated into the Beijing Film Academy’s Cinematography Department. Almost entirely self-taught while he labored as a rural worker, Zhang began with photography, copying tomes on photographic art by day and developing crude film by night. Years of obsessive effort made him adept at a professional level of film developing and printing.47 His background in cinematography allowed him to master aesthetic approaches to his films, effectively constructing strong visual narratives that were as important to the message of his works as their content.

45

Ibid.

46

Ibid., 45.

47

Ibid.

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Zhang’s first three films—Red Sorghum (1987), Ju Dou (1990), Raise the Red Lantern (1991)—are referred to as the Red Trilogy. Within these works, he employed alluring visuals and purposefully brilliant, melancholic hues to amplify the despondency and courage of his female protagonists while building aesthetic discourse on the excess of the “socialist period.”48 Zhang’s preliminary exploration of complex visuals and color theory demonstrates the Fifth Generation’s propensity for treating images as integral to cinematic storytelling. After working as a cinematographer for co-graduates, Zhang maintained that he wanted to work as a director to realize his personal artistic vision. In a 1998 interview, he affirms, “When I make movies, it is subjective—my own interpretation of the novel, my way of organizing the movie scenes. The director’s reflection is not objective because we are expressing our own point of view and from the angle of what interests us.”49 This typified Chinese cinematic auteurism and Zhang and Chen’s determination to express their stories and beliefs through individualistic lenses.

When Zhang directed Red Sorghum, he produced a romantically stylized film filled with intense color and passionate life, a rush of freedom from the restraint of both the Cultural Revolution’s artistic suppression and other directors’ creative helms. After this period of vigor in the late 1980s, he shifted his visual focus to ordinary experience in the 1990s and began incorporating aspects of his own life in his narrative and visual decisions. Describing Zhang’s concentration, Chen Kaige specifies, “his greatest concern is the joy and woe of the common people, among whom he includes himself.”50 Hence, even at the beginning of his career, Zhang

48

Larson, Zhang Yimou, 3.

49

Yimou Zhang, "Not One Less," interview by Cynthia Wu, in Zhang Yimou: Interviews, ed. Frances Gateward (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2001), 130.

50

Ni, Memoirs from, 11.

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represented a deviation from theater language and filmic drama and involved illustrative measures in strongly politicized works.

Zhang was unable to appease either polar end of stalwart criticism for the same reason.

His works, including To Live (1994), Keep Cool (1997), and Not One Less (1999) are still heavily censored for sullying China’s international image, and domestic critics, though they may appreciate his content, disparage his method, accusing him of dramatizing “national ugliness” to curry foreign favor.51 Chen Kaige: Poet Chen Kaige approached art film like poetry. Focusing on lyricism and the beauty of hardship’s raw emotion, his 1990s movies probed macro topics of nonconformity and individualism. Developing protagonists who swam against the current, defying societal expectations and control, Chen asserted himself as an auteur through the implicit. Though most of his works do not directly reference specific Communist policies, he depicted the poignant and sensitive reactions to them by people in search of free, open waters.

Chen told the near-quintessential youth of the Cultural Revolution story. He was a contemplative child without any explicitly fatal household history, yet the period’s paranoia and political strife deeply affected him and his relationship to his family. Chen explicitly recalls an episode from childhood when his own father, Chen Huai'ai, who came from a Nationalistcontrolled area,52 was being publicly shamed and Chen Kaige instinctively rose up and punched

51

Zhang, "Not One Less," interview, 138.

52

Ni, Memoirs from, 123.

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him before a jeering crowd.53 The impact of politics and maturity on filial duty pervades his films, especially Life on a String (1991), Farewell My Concubine (1993), and Together (2002).

Chen originally hoped to study in the Literature Department at Peking University but did not have the academic scores needed to enter the school.54 Consequently, he enrolled in the Beijing Film Academy’s Directing Department. There, he claims that he discovered a means of telling his own story, the ten years of education and youth that he had been deprived of: “Before film came into our lives, I really didn’t know how to express my experience or what to say, but suddenly I came face to face with so many films that were able to express life so powerfully and in such a moving way.”55 Additionally, he identified the literary connection between himself and film: “Back then we looked at films in the same way we read literary works, and suddenly I realized that I had found a method to express my feelings, emotions, and ideas.”56 Regarding the Fifth Generation at large, Chen greatly identifies with its wave of novelty in style and content: “[Fifth Generation directors] wanted to create a new kind of cinematic language. We were fed up with the way Chinese films relied so heavily on dialog. We wanted to create something fresh, something visually based. You can see that in our first movies. The color, the light, and so on, are more noticeable than the dialog.”57

53

Ibid., 18.

54

Kaige Chen, "China Goes to the Movies," TIME Asia, last modified September 27, 1999, accessed April 8, 2018, http://www.cnn.com/ASIANOW/time/magazine/99/0927/film.html.

55

Kaige Chen, "Chen Kaige: Historical Revolution and Cinematic Rebellion," interview by Michael Berry, in Speaking in Images: Interviews with Contemporary Chinese Filmmakers, by Michael Berry (New York: Columbia University, 2005), 86.

56 57

Chen, “Chen Kaige,” interview, 86.

Kaige Chen, "Changing the Face of Chinese Cinema: An Interview with Chen Kaige," by Richard James Havis, Cineaste, Winter 2003, 8.

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22

As an auteur, “Chen can be said to resemble a deeply thoughtful poet,”58 adopting lyrical tones and artistic language that differentiate him from the other Fifth Generation directors.

Specifically, Chen utilized poetic allegories, metaphors, sound imagery, and dramatic lighting and setting contrast to suffuse his works with extrospective melancholy. As with Zhang’s works, this uniquely auteurist appeal made his films internationally recognizable. Chen is associated with subtle social commentary rather than explicit condemnations. His films “were less challenging to establishment critics and industry figures than their radical break with China's traditional realist film style: they used visual imagery as much or more than dialog or plot to carry meaning.”59 He discussed the “tradition of negation” and his explicit desire to reject an entire age of film preceding Yellow Earth, trying to “get the train back on its tracks and start paying attention to people and the state of what it meant to be a human being.”60 Rather than frankly tackling specific Communist policies or censuring particular officials or events, Chen angled his movies towards broader human struggles, including topics of disaffection, intergenerational trauma, and incomplete love.

As exemplified in Farewell My Concubine, Chen was “drawn to the struggles of the individuals with nature and culture, as fate hurls them up and down in the torrent of history.”61 In an interview with Ni, Chen indicated that the scene from Hiroshima, Mon Amour (1959) of a French woman who is shaved as penance for her affair with a German soldier represents a “sort

58

Ni, Memoirs from, 2.

59

Kaige Chen, "Breaking the Circle: The Cinema and Cultural Change in China," Cineaste, 1990, 28, http://www.jstor.org/stable/41686987.

60 Chen, "Chen Kaige," interview, 87.

61

Ni, Memoirs from, 2.

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of dilemma, between humanitarianism and responsibility, [that] is eternal and universal.”62 Interested in preserving raw emotion in his works, Chen also commented that Hiroshima, Mon Amour “is like a heart monitor … it makes me feel its vibrations.”63 His focus on a narrative contextualizing an individual within social circumstances and skillful use of structural elements speaks to Chen’s literary roots and dedication to the subliminal. However, given the Fifth Generation’s dedication to expressing human struggles resulting from radical reform efforts, it is impossible to ignore the charged undertones of Chen’s work. He repeatedly asserted, “the experience of the Cultural Revolution was the most important experience in my life. My whole life’s creative work is being spent in the expression of this experience.”64

The Beginning: 1978-1982 In 1970, Jiang Qing ordered the transformation of an abandoned agricultural university in little-known Zhuxin Village into a university of multidisciplinary arts. Beijing Film Academy, Central Conservatorium, Beijing Dance Academy, and Beijing Opera College moved from their city addresses to the outskirts of the capital. The other three institutes quickly returned to the city, their chancellors complaining of students being outcast from artistic life, leaving only the Beijing Film Academy (Academy) stretching across the rural estate.65 Although periods of reform severely affected the Academy’s enrollment and faculty, in 1978, the wholesale

62

Ibid.,104.

63

Ibid.

64

Ibid., 142.

65

Ibid., 51-53.

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24

turnaround towards socialist economic construction under paramount leader Deng Xiaoping saw a revitalized student body of eager freshmen and the return of many former faculty members.66 The matriculating class of 1982 studied under the Soviet educational model the Academy was founded upon in 1956. The resuscitated Directing Department offered three core courses designed after consulting foreign materials: The Art of Film Direction, Film Montage Theory, and Screenwriting.67 Instructors Wang Suihan and Situ Zhaodun warned their aspiring directors that films were expensive to produce and distribute in a still-impoverished country and encouraged them to produce original works that would reflect well upon their tutelage.68 This directive was adopted into the Fifth Generation’s auteurist inclinations, as the core of the class would move in professionally and artistically disparate directions with their works, with Zhang Yimou shooting historical dramas, Chen Kaige developing character-driven allegories, Tian Zhuangzhuang focusing on Chinese ethnic minorities, and Zhang Junchao nearly disappearing from the film scene altogether after One and Eight. Their respective paths arose from the geographically varying studios to which the directors were assigned after graduation, personal history before and during the Cultural Revolution, and interest in humanity.

The influx of foreign influence after the stringent closed-door policy broadened students’ understandings of possibilities within cinema. Following the death of Stalin in 1953, Soviet visual and literary creations exposed and criticized government-espoused oppression. Due to the similarity in circumstance—the ability to react to political injustice with art and personal narrative—Chen Kaige and Zhang Yimou both acknowledged Soviet films as directly influential

66

Chen, "China Goes," TIME Asia.

67

Ni, Memoirs from, 56.

68

Ibid.

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25

over their early works.69 Though the collective efforts towards individual liberation and amends for the past were politically similar, Chinese cinema was still rudimentary, lacking the Soviet realist and visual style.70 Zhang and Chen would work towards shooting visual storylines in their 1980s and 1990s works, especially in their collaborative film Yellow Earth, for which Zhang was the cinematographer.

Updated materials from countries with better-developed cinematic techniques made their way into the Academy and local film archives.71 Though Chinese film production was largely halted until 1974, Jiang Qing and her inner circle enjoyed secret showings of American and European films. During the 1970s, to improve the taste of Chinese screenwriters, cinematographers and directors, Jiang Qing granted select individuals tickets to these foreign works, a tradition that continued into the 1980s.72 A testament to the students’ determination to learn from established auteurs, Production Design and Cinematography students forged tickets to “internal reference material films.”73 Therefore, students gained access to polished pictures that shaped their professional inclinations.

In an interview with Ni after watching a collection of foreign films, Zhang delineated a high regard for realist and truthful cinema, as well as consideration of the fact that movies are made to be seen: “First, films must be enjoyable, and their deeper meaning must be experienced

69

Ibid., 95.

70

Ibid.

71

Chen, "China Goes," TIME Asia.

72

Ni, Memoirs from, 99.

73

Ibid., 100.

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26

by the audience through their enjoyment.”74 He specifically stated that Truffaut’s The 400 Blows “made an enormous impression” on him, likely alluding to the work’s vast resonation with audiences.75 Elements of The 400 Blows, such as autobiographical traces and significant visual imagery, are visible in Zhang’s 1990s works.

Classical Chinese cinema served as part of the curriculum as well. Physical distance from human society and company beyond fellow scholars instilled anti-authoritarian proclivities in Academy students, and when combined with personal experiences with exploitation and repression led to a mass rejection of China’s mainstream movies. Disregarding filmic propaganda, the students were largely indifferent to commercial products of the 1950s and 1960s, preferring to study the unorthodox creations of the 1930s and 1940s.76 Farewell My Concubine depicts elements of nontraditionalism in its near-taboo characterization of Dieyi as an individual questioning his gender and sexual orientation, referencing the influence of the experimental 1930s on Chen’s nascent career. Students displayed no regard for most of Chinese and Hollywood cinema from the early 1970s as well, attending screenings of American movies just to mock them and dismissing these later Chinese creations as possessing “falseness.”77 Ultimately, foreign art and Jiang Qing’s decision to move the Academy to the hinterlands produced a group of rebels who “were not willing to pretend or to compromise, or to blur the distinction between the true and the false in art.”78 The desire to portray the Chinese search for

74

Ibid., 102.

75

Ibid.

76

Ibid., 96.

77

Ibid., 95.

78

Ibid., 108.

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27

authenticity speaks to the rise of auteurism—the personal signature and story gracing narrativedriven films—and formalism—the usage of filmic composition to drive a visual chronicle furthering superficial plot. Directors infused their creations with personal experiences and skills and drew upon structural elements to illustrate settings and characters devoid of elastic drama.

The first film shot by students at the Academy did not involve Chen Kaige and Zhang Yimou. It was directed by Tian Zhuangzhuang, Xie Xiaojing, and Cui Xiaoqin and shot by Zeng Nianping.79 Based on Shi Tiesheng’s short story “The Sunless Corner” about three disabled men and the lone woman who befriends them, this preliminary work set into motion clashes between Fifth Generation directors and the state. The directors were determined to remain true to Shi’s auteurist intentions and their own interpretations of the work’s “sad but not sentimental, simple and restrained”80 mood. However, the censors deemed it too dark and claimed that it portrayed Communist society negatively, as surely many others besides a single girl would assist the three disabled men.81 It was consequently not televised nor disseminated broadly. Though higher-ups tried persuading Tian to film a brighter television drama, he and his fellow students were unwilling to abandon the first work they had written and filmed as realistically and naturally as possible.82 These interactions foreshadowed issues with Yellow Earth, Farewell My Concubine, To Live, Blue Kite, and countless others, as well as the fate of directors seen as “subversive.”

After graduating in 1982, the new class of directors were scattered far and wide in small regional studios. Zhang Yimou and Chen Kaige, alongside peer Zhang Junchao, were assigned

79

Ibid., 113.

80

Ibid., 118.

81

Ibid., 119.

82

Ibid.

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28

first to Beijing Film Studio, but found the competition with well-established directors stifling.

They instead applied to the southern Guangxi Film Studio.83 To this day, Guangxi remains significantly underdeveloped compared to urban China. At Zhuxin Village, the 1982 graduates had been accustomed to working in areas with little supervision. Now, isolated from authority, they were granted more independence and freedom to direct and shoot as they wished.

Chen was originally assigned to Yellow Earth but ignored the project directive in favor of adapting King of the Children—a novel by Ah Cheng about educated youth—exemplifying his desire to focus on the Cultural Revolution, children, and humanistic experiences.84 However, he undertook Yellow Earth’s script after persuasion from his studio managers. Yellow Earth marked the incipience of the Fifth Generation in its raw portrayal of country tradition and infiltrative urban politics. The cinematography of Yellow Earth sharply deviated from traditional stylized shooting, with plainness and openness serving as its defining factor. Chen would look back on Yellow Earth as exemplary of the breathtaking power of simplicity in style, something he would regret forgetting as his career grew into commercial moviemaking.85 Formalism in Chinese Cinema

Yellow Earth Yellow Earth (1984) ranks among Chen’s most politically and artistically distinctive films because of its overt criticism of Communism as a corruptor of Chinese tradition and emphasis on cinematography rather than plot. It was the first Chinese film “at least since the

83

Chen, "China Goes," TIME Asia.

84

Ni, Memoirs from, 142.

85

Chen, "Chen Kaige," interview, 97.

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29

1949 Communist Liberation to tell a story through images rather than dialog.”86 Like Fourth Generation pictures, it is set in the countryside. However, instead of following the lines of “scar drama,” or the portrayal of the anguish of cadres and intellectuals during the Cultural Revolution and rule of the Gang of Four, it exemplifies the role of the image in complicating a story.87 Though the plot of Yellow Earth is simple, symbolism lurks in Chen’s employment of visual and sound imagery and montage. Yellow Earth, alongside One and Eight, brought the first important Western recognition to Fifth Generation directors and cinematographers.

Despite its reasonable global renown, due to mainland censorship efforts, it was barely known in other Sino territories in 1984.88 This wider issue of censorship affected nearly every Fifth Generation director. Efforts to criticize the government and Chinese Communist reform at large led to the suppression of films and bans from filmmaking. After his incriminating piece de resistance The Blue Kite (1993) sharply criticized Communism’s inculcating effect on small communities, Chen and Zhang’s classmate Tian Zhuangzhuang was banned from direction for ten years. His films were mostly smuggled out of the country for editing and global distribution, earning him international acclaim and domestic censure.89 Censorship meant Academy graduates faced protracted approval processes, were ordered to cut countless scenes from final products,

86

Chen, "Changing the Face," interview, 8.

87

Liu Wu, "Above Ground or Under Ground: The Emergence and Transformation of “Sixth Generation” FilmMakers in Mainland China" (master's thesis, Beijing Film Academy, 1996), 19, accessed April 10, 2018, http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download;jsessionid=9A086B56212A2126383B77D2FFA0182F?doi=10.1.1.55 2.4026&rep=rep1&type=pdf.

88

Alvin Lu, "Chen Kaige," Film Comment 33, no. 5 (September/October 1997): 73, http://www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/43454517.pdf.

89

Marcelle Clements, "'The Blue Kite' Sails beyond the Censors," The New York Times, last modified April 3, 1994, accessed February 8, 2018, http://www.nytimes.com/1994/04/03/movies/film-the-blue-kite-sails-beyond-thecensors.html?pagewanted=all.

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and were frequently forbidden to show their works at Chinese or overseas film festivals.90 Censorship marks another hallmark of Fifth Generation cinema: combating authoritarian efforts to suppress directors’ free will and auteurist decisions. Directors achieved this end through provocative subject material criticizing and depicting the ramifications of Chinese Communist reform efforts and refusing to conform to artistic norms approved by the government.

Chen paid close attention to the mise-en-scène of Yellow Earth, utilizing natural scenery in images and green hues to accurately portray rural life in place of rich coloring or ornate staging. However, the starkness of Shaanxi and cold distancing of intimate life, shot with cool neutral tones and dissociated from customary warm emotionality in portraying family scenes, led to its initial ban: “The startling reality of the film was completely at odds with traditional Chinese cinema and it proved too much for [the censors]. They were used to films that were not only overly staged but also had all of the actors wearing make-up and hiding behind masks.”91 Chen was banned because of his cinematic style rather than his rejection of Communist sympathies, insinuating how intertwined politics and art are. Yellow Earth’s revolutionary style enabled implicit, substantive criticism of Chinese Communism. The unity of formalist imagery and auteurist values speaks to French New Wave values of framing personal vision in stylistic decisions. Chen’s deviation from dominant cinema marked the change he wanted to see in Chinese film, the birth of a new era of artistic reform. Chen believed he and Zhang had a collaborative responsibility to spearhead a movement away from theatricism and towards

90

Chris Berry and Luke Robinson, eds., Chinese Film Festivals: Sites of Translation (New York: Springer, 2017), 243.

91

Chen, "Chen Kaige," interview, 89.

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humanism: “all we did was answer the call of the time and carry out what the era dictated needed to be done.”92 Through Yellow Earth’s stripped-down visuals, Chen conveyed personal experiences in nature uncontaminated by politics and modernity, demonstrating the auteurist component of the movie. Before Chen even dreamed of being a filmmaker, he was a youth sent down to chop trees in the Xishuangbanna forests in Yunnan.93 There, he witnessed countless tragedies. A sixteen year old crushed by an immense tree and his father traveling to the site to silently mourn his son’s death. A forestry worker stung to death by a swarm of angry bees whose hive he had accidentally destroyed.94 He was strongly influenced by these mortal repercussions of Communist policies against educated youth, and he would criticize Communism’s impact on personal ability to live in Yellow Earth through Cuiqiao’s implied death.

Though political and familial strain made him feel as though he had lost touch with spirituality, while on a cigarette break in the forest, Chen realized the comfort nature brought him. “Nature suddenly became a stimulus. All I could see at that time was a huge jungle—the birds, snakes, and wild animals. I realized I was a part of that. All of a sudden I felt there was something inside of me that I needed to express. Today, I feel that my initial creative stimulus was this experience of nature and the jungle.”95 Because Chen had spent time in this sequestered region only loosely touched by Communism, he was able to make films like Yellow Earth and Life on a String that captured Chinese tradition in its purest form. Chen’s revelations arising

92

Chen, "Chen Kaige," interview, 89.

93

Ibid., 9.

94

Ni, Memoirs from, 19.

95

Chen, "Changing the Face," interview, 9.

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from isolation in Yunnan led to multiple feature films with emphasis on natural scenery and the purity of the countryside, beginning with Yellow Earth.

Chen wrote of his pilgrimage to the Yellow River plain, describing the undulating earth and mountains and infertile land barely lined with vegetation: “We made out an almost bare birch-leaf pear tree perched like a pavilion at the top of a distant slope. Silent and lonely, its outline on the exposed winter wilderness seemed to affirm the existence of life.”96 Chen’s employment of topography as a narration device in his writing translates to film. In both this travel account and Yellow Earth, Chen utilizes natural landmarks and imagery to uphold nature as purity juxtaposed with corruptive politics. At Yellow Earth’s beginning, craggy yellow mountainsides bloom across the screen, barely leaving room for the dim skyline. The stark depiction of a barren countryside is purposeful. The spirit of undiluted and pre-censored China and its rich history oppose the costs of modernity that stifle individuality and artistic freedom, as Chen witnessed firsthand in Yellow Earth’s censorship. Chen referenced the failure of reform efforts to economically progress rural areas, instead depressing the entire nation and forever altering the fates of countless individuals.97

96

Chen Kaige, “Qianli Zou Shanbei: Pinqiong he Xiwang de Shouji” (A thousand miles through northern Shaanxi: Notes on povety and hope), Dianying Yishu, no. 4 (1986): 29. Translated by Ni Zhen.

97

Chen, "Changing the Face," interview, 9.

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33

Cinematography in Yellow Earth

Figure 1. Opening montage of Yellow Earth directed by Chen Kaige (1984).

Communist soldier Gu Qing first appears framed against the sky, his determined form small and lonesome against unconquered land in a series of crossfades. He is a prototypical educated youth sent down to the country by the Chinese government, entering a vast canvas of untamed land and untouched culture that he does not understand.98 His responsibility, to preserve and corrupt Shaanxi folk songs, mirrors the efforts of the Communist Party: “They appropriate folk customs, arts, and traditions and transform them into something that they can make use of.”99 He claims the history behind the songs will help young soldiers understand the country and traditions they are protecting, though he is rewriting the stories to fit Communist agendas. Gu Qing’s role is a metaphor for the artifice of state appropriating natural ways of being in traditional Chinese society and homogenizing diverse Chinese culture that had been distinctive of various geographic regions for centuries.

This opening montage’s puckered canyons and the faded daylight moon portray an unsettling feeling of vastness and incompleteness. Primitive in its scenery and visual cues, Yellow Earth is a first declaration of presence and perspective by both Chen and Zhang before

98

Chen, "Chen Kaige," interview, 90.

99

Ibid.

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34

they moved into more cinematographically polished movies.100 As a cinematographer, Zhang adopts a wandering approach. Through disestablishing long pans across the rugged Shaanxi landscape which interrupt nonverbal and verbal conversations between the human characters, he draws focus to the empty earth as a blank canvas of possibility, while simultaneously highlighting the villagers’ and Cuiqiao’s solitude. The disproportionate emphasis on naked scenery as opposed to human interaction demonstrates the impact of stagnation on relationships.

Figure 2. Scene on the plains from Yellow Earth directed by Chen Kaige (1984).

Chen and Zhang evoked the concept of “high heaven, thick earth” in the proportions and angles of their shots.101 The northwest Shaanxi plane is all soil and sky with barely any foliage to soften the rift between grounded reality and airborne possibility. In a representative scene, Cuiqiao’s father is shown standing and praying to heaven. The low angle initially renders him weightless, as if he were floating above the earth. However, when he sits down, the camera claustrophobically corners him in a high-angle shot, the opposite effect is attained in hiding the

100 101

Lu, “Chen Kaige,” 73.

Ru-shou Robert Chen, "Bazin at work: the concept of realism in Chinese-language films," Journal of Chinese Cinemas 4, no. 1 (2010): 60, EBSCO.

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35

sky.102 This particular shot symbolizes possibility challenging restraint: the battle of the individual against the oppression of modern institutions. Chen would explore similar themes of religious symbolism and the dangers of cults of personality in Life on a String. The extremities of Yellow Earth’s shots violate the artistic Golden Ratio and indicates Chen and Zhang’s departure from traditional standards of aesthetic form and beauty.103 By basing the beginning of the Fifth Generation on stylistic experimentation, rather than overtly criticizing Communist policy, Chen and Zhang established this cinematic movement’s direction as revolution in aestheticism.

Figure 3. Cuiqiao’s father from Yellow Earth directed by Chen Kaige (1984).

102

103

Chen, "Bazin at work," 60.

The ratio of 1:1.618 of the upper and lower parts of an image. The Golden Ratio is considered a standard of aestheticism in Western painting and art.

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36

Figure 4. Cuiqiao’s family from Yellow Earth directed by Chen Kaige (1984).

Zhang’s cinematography is crucial to the obscurity of Yellow Earth’s ending. In a reference to his elusive metaphorical quote about being kept “on one side of the river” because of his patrilineal family’s political inclinations, he filmed Cuiqiao’s despairing attempts to cross the Yellow River as unclear in outcome, but symbolically futile. That she tries to remove herself from her destiny speaks to the efforts of millions of “little people” going against the grain of political change but often failing. By pairing her blind hope with destitute nature scenes, Zhang displayed the hopelessness in Cuiqiao’s quest for freedom. Auteurist connections surface in Zhang’s self-identification as one born on the wrong side of the river and stymied at every attempt to cross to the greener side through self-expressive art by censorship and the Communist stronghold over Chinese media. As he detailed in his own later films, one can never be unburdened of the crime of not belonging.

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37

Figure 5. Cuiqiao’s escape on the Yellow River from Yellow Earth directed by Chen Kaige (1984).

When Cuiqiao leaves her home, she uproots herself from a community in which she has been entrenched for an enticing freedom she does not understand. She has minimal ideas of what Communism entailed, only that Gu Qing sang songs of its surefire triumph and liberation of the poor. Cuiqiao drowns chasing an impalpable dream. Chen Kaige would continue to explore ideas of becoming blind to the consequences of ideology in Life on a String. However, for Zhang, Cuiqiao’s symbolic act of failing to cross the river is his professional and personal life. Because of his Kuomintang familial history, Zhang would never be able to be fully accepted in mainland China as long as the CCP is in power. Despite his efforts to adapt to his political milieu, he would always be seen as an outcast by the censors and mainland audience. Since arriving at Beini Village, Zhang has been “banished” to the corners of China, forbidden from working on films, and chased by official censors for nearly every work. In his effort to display a truthful personal history, he solidified himself as a nonconformist framed within a society unforgiving of difference. In Yellow Earth, crossing the river is an effort to escape malaise to find purpose and independence.

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38

The film closes on the villagers performing a rain dance because their crops have withered beneath the oppressive sun beaming down upon them. An overt allusion to Mao Zedong’s favored solar symbol and the impact of his ideologies on common life, it also bridges tradition and philosophy. Stylistically, the metaphorical reference to Mao exemplifies the Fifth Generation’s commitment to cinematic style as its medium for political critique. Though the villagers’ songs and totems cannot replenish their food, they are part of Shaanxi heritage that remains untouched by modern political turmoil. From this aspect, the village’s isolation and Cuiqiao’s ambiguous success in crossing the Yellow River can be viewed as preservation.

However, the physical death of their crops symbolizes the consequences of reform and modernity. After Gu Qing takes their songs and Communism takes one of their daughters, their sustenance withers away along with the music of their heritage.

Figure 6. Village rain dance from Yellow Earth directed by Chen Kaige (1984).

Where It All Began The Yellow River is thought to be the origin of Chinese civilization, and songs born on the Shaanxi plains are the root of all branches of Chinese family and culture. Zhang Junxiang wrote that “songs should be used to stimulate situations and express emotions. They should not

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39

be independent.”104 Yellow Earth represents one of the earliest examples of music’s formalist influence in Chinese cinema because of its usage of orchestral soundtracks and plaintive peasant songs which amplify the piercing harshness of Chen and Zhang’s visual imagery. Chen grew up in a family of musicians and played the violin. However, in 1966, when he was fourteen, the Red Guard he would later join entered their home and smashed the entire collection of instruments.105 Many of Chen’s films incorporate soundtracks or music as an element of traditionalism or spirituality, returning to the idea that music forms the basis of artistic culture.

Yellow Earth’s storyline centers around music’s malleability and its role in the formation of culture. The Communist party sought to adapt musical traditions into their own tools to boost troop morale. Chen depicts the purity of rural culture and the perverting influence of political reform when Gu Qing arrives to transform peasant songs into Communist propaganda. Chen noted the singularity of Shaanxi peasant songs in his records of his travels: This silent land produced our xintianyou folk melodies. Many years ago—there was a high hill, a flock of sheep, and a shepherd. After lingering for a long time, he sang in a high, sonorous voice that could be heard for miles around. Once the song was over, all returned to silence. Standing on that hilltop made me think of many things, including how the earliest adventures of the nation were linked to this grand and majestic natural environment, and how its earliest culture was born out of this silence.106

104

Zhang, "Essay Done," 34.

105

The College of Wooster, "Chen Kaige, 1952," Courses in Chinese Language and Culture, accessed February 8, 2018, https://chinesecourses.voices.wooster.edu/chen-kaige/.

106

Chen Kaige, “Qianli Zou Shanbei: Pinqiong he Xiwang de Shouji” (A thousand miles through northern Shaanxi: Notes on povety and hope), Dianying Yishu, no. 4 (1986): 29.

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40

Xintianyou peasant songs serve as a formalist symbol of sanctified tradition. The connection between the Yellow River valley, which the Chinese believe to be the origin of their civilization, and culture built from music represents the omnipresence of traditional value alongside its corruption by modern reform at the hands of the Communist Party.

Cuiqiao is introduced mid-song, and the movie is filled with haunting dances by Shaanxi peasants and Communist youth corps alike in a testament to music’s ability to transcend generations and lifetimes.107 The first time she is seen near the Yellow River, she sings a chilling song: “The ice on the Yellow River will not even melt in June. When I start to sing the truth, my heart feels like bursting. Of the fine grains, the pea is the roundest. Among human beings, a girl’s life is most pitiable. Pity the poor girls, the poor girls.”108 She continues this tune as she works late into the night, intertwining themes of crops and the challenges of womanhood: “The gourds in the valley and the melons on the hill, I don’t want to sing that I was beaten. In the embroidered purse is a round coin. Suffering is forever, sweetness is short. The handsome cockerel crows on the window sill, but to whom can I speak of my bitterness and hardships?” As Gu Qing repeatedly discusses changes in the south advocating for equality for women, Cuiqiao is swayed into leaving the crops to dry in favor of an elusive brighter future with Communist troops across the river. A perversion of the natural Shaanxi way of life occurs, as the area’s music is corrupted and its values changed.

Gu Qing teaches Hanhan, Cuiqiao’s younger brother, a Communist propaganda song: “With sickle, hammer, and pick, we make the new road for the poor. Our methods will achieve

107

Lu, "Chen Kaige," 73.

108

Yellow Earth, directed by Kaige Chen, Guangxi Film Studio, 1984.

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41

plenty. The Communists will save the people.” As she crosses the Yellow River, Cuiqiao sings this song, cut off mid-tune when her makeshift canoe likely capsizes. The failure of Communism to alleviate her suffering and her demise caused by chasing illusory doctrine contribute to Chen’s critique of Communist ideology and its sweeping, mindless influence.

From Gu Qing’s side of the tale, Communists are shown sweeping over the plains in droves, chanting their anthems in rehearsal for battle. In a counterpart, after believing they have heard from the Dragon King to whom they are praying for rain, the bereaved Shaanxi peasants rush madly across the parched grasslands in a roar of song. Counter to the flow, Hanhan spots Gu Qing’s outline against the sky and races backwards towards him and the camera, demonstrating Chen’s belief that the youth commit themselves to reform and opportunity.

Figure 7. Communists on the plains from Yellow Earth directed by Chen Kaige (1984).

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42

Figure 8. Hanhan among the villagers from Yellow Earth directed by Chen Kaige (1984).

A specific song, “The East is Red,” has its lyrics altered in the movie to demonstrate the corruption of Chinese regional culture by Communism, which eventually becomes a de facto Communist anthem. Chen’s usage of mutated music and traditional dance echoes the themes of preserving culture in the face of fast-paced progress. The ritualized dance concluding the film is a means of rejecting modernity and oppression by sacralizing the past, recommitting to extant tradition with passion. However, the movie’s final message is more paradoxical. While preserving the old, Chen, like old Chinese reformers, still believed in the power of the future to find the right way to cross rivers of hardship and misfortune. Yellow Earth is reflective: Cuiqiao’s enigmatic fate and determination to seek a better life for herself depicts Chen’s eternal hope “that there will be more children like that in the future.”109 Life on a String Life on a String (1991) marks Chen Kaige’s return to reformative film after a period of political disillusionment. Chen continued employing rural imagery and the metaphor of music as Chinese culture’s origin. Cinematography is a vehicle for political ideology and veiled critique of

109

Chen, "Chen Kaige," interview, 91.

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43

Communist indoctrination, born of Chen’s new experiences with religion and spirituality abroad.

Life on a String is considered among his most abstruse films because “allegory is foregrounded and realism seeps through” in a reversal of Yellow Earth.110 Chen asserts, “You could read the film as Chen Kaige’s spiritual autobiography; that’s always how I’ve looked at the film … I think all so-called auteur directors or serious writers of literature go through a phase where they make a very personal statement like this.”111 Adapted from Shi Tiesheng’s novella Like a Banjo String, Life on a String is a continuation of Chen’s involvement with natural imagery and visual metaphors. Literary auteurism pervades the original written work as well. After becoming paralyzed waist-down in an accident after being sent to the countryside as an “educated youth,” Shi Tiesheng penned this story about a blind man reliant on his young disciple to assist him with daily functions.

While denouncing religious absolutism, Life on a String reflects Chen’s exploration of folklore as a response to grievances with oppressive Communist ideology. Chen made this film during a low point in his life, a return from a four-year hiatus on filmmaking after King of the Children (1987) during which he spent time in New York working on small-scale media projects. Due to his disillusionment with the suppressive events of Tiananmen Square in 1989, he chose to direct a film grounded in nature and rural culture in the Gansu province.112 He asserted that Life on a String was a film of questions that he refused to answer: “Who are we, where are we from, and where are we going? Everyone knows that these questions will forever remain

110

Lu, “Chen Kaige,” 75.

111

Chen, "Chen Kaige," interview, 94.

112

Chen, "Changing the Face," interview, 9.

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unanswerable.”113 Life on a String remains Chen’s most obscure and unconventional work, renowned for its powerful imagery and emphasis on spiritual salvation.

The questions Chen posed encapsulate a distinctly Chinese experience. With families and friendships torn apart in the quest for cohesive national identity, Chinese people adopted myriad reforms to unify those of different origins through politics. However, by picking a front to uphold, reformers abandoned those left on the other side of the river—often not by choice—and forcibly standardized answers to Chen’s questions. Through Life on a String’s intergenerational differences and the dichotomous solutions of faith in higher power and strength in individuality, Chen proposed that it is not reaching the bank that is important, but the process of swimming through the metaphorical river. He commented that the intensity of the Yellow River juxtaposed with bare chasms and rocks reminded him “of the Chinese people; great, powerful and making an enormous noise, but essentially helpless.”114 While the Chinese clamor to find definitive remedies to universal questions through repetitive cycles of reform, they are eager to reach a hazy destination without knowing how to approach the journey.

During his time in New York, Chen was “struck by the incredible spiritual and cultural world that exists in that City.”115 Traveling abroad altered his view of the role of director and film: “I always wanted to teach people through film, to give them a big message. But now what I feel I want to do is more to dream through film, hoping that maybe the film itself will be able to

113

Chen, "Chen Kaige," interview, 94.

114

Orville Schell, "FILM; Back to China Laden with New Ideas," The New York Times, last modified January 27, 1991, accessed February 7, 2018, http://www.nytimes.com/1991/01/27/movies/film-back-to-china-laden-with-newideas.html?pagewanted=all.

115

Chen, "Chen Kaige," interview, 94.

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tell more than I can.”116 Life on a String’s fantastical elements, such as the enchanted noodle station and the mystical waterfall, reinforce the film’s basis in spirituality. By realizing his auteurist dreams through film in lieu of practicing explicit pedagogy, Chen was able to create more personal, honest art that encapsulated his personal experiences within and reflections upon the Cultural Revolution and China’s political history.

Figure 9. Child at the mystical falls from Life on a String directed by Chen Kaige (1991).

Chen draws a parallel between figures of authority, the Old Master and Mao Zedong, as elusive and intangible. During a key point of the film, the Old Master stops a battle between two rival villages with his eerie music. He commands the combatants’ attention like an allpowerful.”117 He can be contrasted to the role of Mao in Zhang’s To Live; both are ethereal figures, capable of manipulating people’s actions and decisions. However, the Old Master grounds himself in physical proximity to those he directs; one must be within earshot to become hypnotized by his music. Mao has thousands of well-intentioned representatives who both further and distort his original policies. He damages lives and economic infrastructure without

116

Schell, “Film; Back,” The New York Times.

117

Yellow Earth.

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46

ever lifting a finger. Nonetheless, both figures flourished through cults of personality and achieved insubstantial power only justified by image and widespread renown.118 The role of the authoritarian, steeped in mythology like the Old Master or contemporary politics like Mao, remains constant: inflexible and unadaptive to change and consumed by ideology over reality.

National Allegories in Life on a String Life on a String reflects Chen’s ideological deviation from and disenchantment with predominant Chinese politics and academia. The entire work is founded on a quasi-religious premise, with the Old Master seeking to regain his sight and achieve salvation. However, the conclusion of the film reveals his faith’s foundation to be false and devoid of spirituality or magic.119 Chen referred to the adage, “At the end of the day, your whole life is just empty paper.

You think that you have found a philosophical position that will save your life, something which will help you to see the truth. But these things turn out to be false.”120 Approaching the past through a changed prospect from Yellow Earth, Chen suggests that the past is not necessarily sacred. The Old Master’s dependence on fairytales of magical, ancient times leads him to pursue the past instead of enjoying the present, while Shitou is able to break the cycle and look towards the future with clear eyes and heart.

The Old Master’s dedication to his instrument and the words of his master highlight the relationship between teacher and disciple, embodying traditional Confucian principles. However, Shitou’s lack of reverence for his master showcases the evolving social dynamic in Chinese culture resulting from efforts at equality through Communism. In this light, Chen underscores

118

Schell, “Film; Back,” The New York Times.

119

Chen, "Changing the Face," interview, 10.

120

Ibid.

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the duality of reform: while it leads people to follow cults of personality and bodies of thought they do not understand, it also provides individuals with the opportunity to assert themselves and their beliefs. The Old Master dedicates his entire life to an ideal that he wishes would be true and is disillusioned and driven to insanity, much like Chinese people were disenchanted with Communism. However, Shitou seeks rewarding interpersonal relationships and personal freedom unrestricted by esoteric didacticism, allowing him to achieve liberation, as the movie’s final uplifted shot shows a bright butterfly kite soaring to new heights away from impoverished plains.

Figure 10. Butterfly kite from Life on a String directed by Chen Kaige (1991).

The Old Master’s power depends on his trust in a prescription his own master told him was hidden inside his sanxian, or Chinese lute: only after breaking his thousandth sanxian string could he dislodge the prescription and find the cure. However, when he completes his task, he discovers that the prescription is blank and loses his sanity, as his entire life was based upon this single belief in a mysticism that could cure his affliction. Chen extrapolates this metaphor of the blank piece of paper, positing that unconditional trust in Communist ideology would lead to disillusion and regret. At large, the Old Master represents the debilitated Chinese political system and its indiscriminate belief in the higher power of governmental reform. Chen criticizes the act of succumbing to intangible ideas providing threads of hope and losing sight of material

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priorities, such as individuality, education, and diversity in thought. He remarked on the cinematic parallel, “Chinese are always trying to find a godlike leader to look up to, and the young boy does not like it when the old man acts as if he were a God. Actually, I guess I am happy when the old man dies, because his death liberates the boy and allows him to start making decisions for himself, decisions that were impossible under the old man's tutelage.”121 However, the Old Master’s young disciple is not convinced of the superstition that sustains his mentor. Against the Old Master’s advice, Shitou seeks fulfillment through personal relationships, specifically through romance with Lanxiu. Representing a break from reliance on immaterial spirituality, Shitou’s ability to thrive furthers one of Chen’s favored messages: that hope lies within children and newer generations that can think with greater clarity to avoid prioritizing hypocritical ideology over humanity. His implication can be related to his own filmmaking as well; Chen believed the Fifth Generation would introduce much-needed radical content and style to an industry recovering from the blow of censorship and state control during the Cultural Revolution, moving away from commercialized and propagandistic products.122 While French New Wave directors explored social change amidst national collapse through exploratory visual and sound imagery and montage, Fifth Generation directors armed themselves with art in response to nihilism in oppression.

Consequently, Life on a String exemplifies the cyclical nature of political and artistic reform. By concluding on a hopeful note instilling confidence in a younger generation, the film represents age-old beliefs that the passage of time leads to novelty in ideology and better answers to social plagues. Similarly, Chinese cinematic history is framed by “generations,” movements of

121

Schell, “Film; Back,” The New York Times.

122

Chen, "Changing the Face," interview, 8.

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directors espousing different auteurist perspectives and building upon older works and techniques. However, though the Fifth Generation is situated within macro trends of changing cinematic movements, its members, whose childhoods were singularly disrupted by ceaseless reform, seek meaning in themselves and each other through auteurist messages. Each generation brings a unique take on art defying traditional paradigms, and each is seen as an artistic advancement. Life on a String is considered an early Fifth Generation movie and its production symbolizes the broader circularity of reform.

Sound Imagery in Life on a String Life on a String is a continuation of Chen’s exploration of music in film, beginning in Yellow Earth and dominating King of the Children. Most of Life on a String is silent, with actors interacting through pantomime and fervent gesticulations.123 The haunting peasant tunes the Old Master sings are amplified by stark visuals and scarcity, from the vast tribal battle plains to his final songs eerily framed by torchlight. Life on a String’s near-fantastical setting—from the enchanted noodle station to the mystical waterfall—is bolstered by the spiritual strains filling otherworldly silence and longshots. The film’s tranquility and reliance on musical dialogue is a continuation of Yellow Earth’s sound imagery, illustrating the levels of emotional complexity music adds to visuals.

123

Kaige Chen, dir., Life on a String, screenplay by Kaige Chen, Beijing Film Studio, 1991.

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Figure 11. The Old Master’s last performance from Life on a String directed by Chen Kaige (1991).

Farewell My Concubine Chen Kaige’s bona fide global blockbuster, probed into gender and sexuality, and most renowned work is an investigation of identity. Chen Kaige claimed an affinity with the protagonist, opera singer Cheng Dieyi—“We always carry overly high hopes for our ideals. Even today, I still cannot free myself from this.”124 Though their ideals are different—with Dieyi searching for taboo homosexual love and belonging in society beyond the stage and Chen attempting to realize his artistic vision—both navigate complications of identity and history.

Chen relates Dieyi’s unconventionality to his difficulty in finding social belonging: “My own family was never really able to completely integrate itself into society. If I was forced to attend dinner parties all the time and do all those things most people do every day, it would make me very uncomfortable.”125 Chen’s family were artists, which separated them from many of their neighbors because musicians were traditionally disdained by Chinese society. Hence, his more

124

Chen, "Chen Kaige," interview, 95.

125

Ibid.

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isolated upbringing enabled him to immerse in literature and art, which developed an identity and personal vision influenced by loneliness and the beauty of traditional art. Chen characterized Dieyi as “a rebel down to the bone” and “fundamentally unable to work with society as it presently exists”126 in a powerful connotation of nonconformity and disaffection with human nature and society. Dieyi serves as an avatar for Chen’s upbringing.

Like Zhang Yimou’s To Live, Farewell My Concubine spans five decades, following the relationship between Beijing opera stars Cheng Dieyi and Duan Xiaolou through their harsh training, rise to stardom, and struggle to maintain traditional Beijing opera and survive with each other against the This epic temporal scope is used to show that multiple generations of politics produce the same plights, just as multiple generations of artistic and cinematic reform produce the same efforts to answer questions about origins, identities, and authenticity. The film centers on the disintegration of Dieyi’s ability to distinguish between fantasy and reality. Enveloped by his character as Concubine Yu in the title opera, he falls obsessively in love with Duan Xiaolou, his male stage partner, and develops an unclear gender identity, reflecting his fluid relationship with reality. His inability to conform to reality leads to his suicide at the closing of the movie.

Despite its critical acclaim and commercial success, Farewell My Concubine is criticized for its implementation of melodramatic coloring and false “pandering” to Western audiences.

However, Chen argued that Farewell My Concubine was “true” and “real” in its conception, more so than his later creations, in that art and technique supplemented the underlying narrative

126

Ibid.

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instead of entirely dictating the packaging of the movie.127 Following Farewell My Concubine, Chen believes, he “had forgotten the power of simplicity.”128 All the World's a Stage Cheng Dieyi’s character was emotionally alienated from his mother, a hard-pressed prostitute. When the fact that he has an extra finger on one hand is the reason the Master originally rejects him as a member of the troupe, she hastily chops it off before abandoning him.

His alleged deformity is the first indicator that he is unlike others and will walk a bloody path.

Chen worked on Farewell My Concubine with his father, a renowned filmmaker who had made many Beijing opera films.129 Though the complexities of their father-son relationship would not be fully explored until Together, their estrangement during the Cultural Revolution and Chen’s forced denunciation of his artist father provide a personal backdrop to the opera troupe’s unhealthy family scheme of countless orphans and Dieyi’s abandonment.

As he ages, Dieyi’s development enters a “grey area” of identity and self-perception.

Trained to perform as the female dan, he develops an ambiguous gender identity. Beginning in the months before his initiation into the troupe, young Dieyi continuously recites the monologue “Dreaming of the World Outside the Nunnery” incorrectly, stating, “I am by nature a boy” instead of “I am by nature a girl” leading to beatings from his Master. The close shot of his bloodied hand and teary gaze emphasizes that he had his budding masculinity was beaten out of him. Though young Xiaolou is initially sympathetic to Dieyi’s struggles, his desire for success

127

Chen, "Chen Kaige," interview, 97.

128

Ibid.

129

The College of Wooster, "Chen Kaige," Courses in Chinese Language and Culture.

Chen

eventually trumps his devotion to Dieyi, as he later abandons him and is complicit in stripping him of his role as Concubine Yu. Notably, when Dieyi incorrectly recites the gendered line again, Shitou aggressively rams his mouth with an opium pipe. Dazed and bleeding, Dieyi repeats the correct line as if in a trance. Dieyi later develops an opium addiction to cope with losing Xiaolou to Juxian in a demonstration of the cyclical nature of his relationship with Xiaolou and his futile desire to change into someone Xiaolou can love.

Figure 12. Dieyi’s incorrect recitation from Farewell My Concubine directed by Chen Kaige (1993).

Figure 13. Dieyi’s opium addiction from Farewell My Concubine directed by Chen Kaige (1993).

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Ambiguities regarding gender spread into Dieyi’s perception of stage and reality across the decades. For Dieyi, “theatre in some sense attempts to make up for the inadequacies of life, and is hence colored with fantasy and dream-like elements.”130 His shattered identity precludes his ability to cross the metaphorical rivers of political change and heteronormativity: his humble origins, unwillingness to change himself to suit current political expectations, and relationships with men. Hence, understanding that he will never be able to achieve Xiaolou’s love and pristinely preserve Beijing opera in reality, Dieyi eternalizes himself as Concubine Yu. As long as Farewell My Concubine is performed, he will always be the Chu King’s concubine, and he will always sacrifice himself for the one he loves. Chen avows, “That is really what his life on stage and off represents—the conflict between fantasy and reality.”131 Chen’s romantic depiction of Dieyi’s fantasizing is evident in Farewell My Concubine’s opulent red and blue imagery of the stage juxtaposed with the neutral tones of reality.

Figure 14. Cheng Dieyi from Farewell My Concubine directed by Chen Kaige (1993).

130

Xuelai Zheng, Shi Jie Dian Ying Jian Shang Ci Dian (Fuzhou: Fu jian jiao yu chu ban she, 1995), 928.

131

Chen, "Chen Kaige," interview, 95.

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Chen described Dieyi as “someone who never changes even as the world surrounding him is in constant fluctuation”132 in a testament to the unwavering dilemma of the Chinese identity which seeks resolution through variations of the same change. Two constancies of Farewell My Concubine are Dieyi’s faith to art and Xiaolou and the staged performance of Farewell My Concubine. The iterations of performance amidst political turmoil speaks to the longevity of Beijing opera. Despite cycles of reform and change, Dieyi always finds authenticity in art when the real world around him is meaningless because he cannot be with Xiaolou. When Douzi and Laizi first run away from the troupe, they are inspired to return by a performance.

Over the fifty years of its performance, the opera Farewell My Concubine retains its vivid hues and mystical overcast, representing illusion and constancy in the face of an ever-changing brutal political landscape. Dieyi, “faithful until death” to Xiaolou and trapped in a bitter love triangle, recognizes in the closing of the film that the only way to be with Xiaolou for eternity is to die with him in the midst of ethereal performance.

Figure 15. Dieyi’s suicide from Farewell My Concubine directed by Chen Kaige (1993).

132

Ibid.

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Chen instinctively knew Cantonese actor Leslie Cheung Kwok-wing was the right fit for Dieyi. Cheung, who was hounded by scandals concerning his bisexuality and long-term relationship with a male banker until Cheung’s suicide in 2003, exhibited starlet-like narcissism and conflict within his own identity, much like Dieyi. Chen stated in an interview, “I felt he was very elegant. When I was explaining the plot of the film, Leslie spent most of the time looking off into the distance, delicately smoking his cigarette. After I finished speaking, he told me, ‘Director Chen, I am this character.’”133 Cheung did not disappoint and became so enraptured by his role that he frightened his co-star Zhang Fengyi with his intensity on and off stage. In Farewell My Concubine, character, actor, and director share the same inability to conform to social and aesthetic convention, representing different forms of the same theme.

Figure 16. Dieyi’s trial from Farewell My Concubine directed by Chen Kaige (1993).

The intensity of Dieyi’s nonconformity and self-expression on-stage speaks to Chen’s personal desire to use art to convey his own ideology, deviating from Communist paradigms with which he had grown up.

133

Kaige Chen, "A Date with Luyu: Elegant Leslie Moved Chen Kaige," interview by Luyu Chen, video file, 11:04, YouTube, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mgtgxP-diDQ.

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To the Screen Farewell My Concubine was originally adapted from a novel by Lilian Lee of the same title. Chen acknowledges the significant impact of her literary work on the film’s success, particularly the elaborate design of the characters of Dieyi, Xiaolou, and Juxian.134 However, Lee’s novel does not end with Dieyi’s suicide; Dieyi lives to old age and reunites with Xiaolou one more time before the two say goodbye for good.135 However, Chen, differing in auteurist perspective because of his personal story and contention with drama, viewed Dieyi’s suicide as “a larger ending.” Dieyi’s unwillingness to compromise his love and obsession—his inherent defiant nature—means he will never belong beyond the stage. Chen believed there is no possibility that a character like Dieyi would live a half-life until dying in solemnity and peace.136 In a parallel, Yellow Earth’s Cuiqiao refuses to accept her fate as merely someone else’s wife and tries to forge a future for herself, willing to risk her life in the process. However, Zhang Yimou depicted Fugui and Jiazhen in To Live as complacent at the film’s closing, lamenting what was lost but bearing weary hope in their grandson’s future. Dieyi is unique because of Chen’s personal identification with this character. Just as Dieyi would not fade away slowly, Chen made an artistic statement that he, as an auteur, would not leave the art film scene quietly.

However, Chen’s auteurist decision to close the movie with a suicide also led to its initial ban. Censors insisted that because China had begun economic reform anew in 1977, it was politically inappropriate for a film to depict someone so dissatisfied with life that he kills

134

Chen, "Chen Kaige," interview, 95.

135

Lilian Lee 李 碧 华 Farewell My Concubine《 霸 王 别姬》 . 1985 (1994 reprint). Harper Perennial. Translated by Andrea

Lingenfelter.

136

Chen, "Chen Kaige," interview, 95.

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himself.137 These censorship efforts further the idea that China undergoes repetitions of the same suppression of dissent to artificially assemble national unity. The state is a meta-stage, another manifestation of fantasy trumping reality. As the Communist Party tried to cover and hush the scars it left behind, reality reared up in the form of individual stories and enduring art.

We Brought This Upon Ourselves A criticism of Communism comes in the role of Xiao Si, the abandoned youth Dieyi rescues. When Master Guan passes away, Dieyi witnesses Xiao Si kneeling with a board and bowl of water balanced over his head, the exact form of punishment Shitou had to endure during Dieyi’s first night with the troupe as Douzi. Dieyi, dressed in white, is shot in wide frame as he attempts to convince Xiao Si to leave as the troupe had been disbanded, implying that he has taken on the role of a savior. However, the low angle and distance imply the emotional and authoritarian barriers that will complicate their relationship.

Figure 17. Xiao Si and Dieyi’s first meeting from Farewell My Concubine directed by Chen Kaige (1993).

137

Chen, "Changing the Face," interview, 11.

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Years later, Dieyi and Xiao Si are caught in an argument regarding physical punishment in opera training, and Xiao Si walks out on Dieyi to join the Red Guards in hopes of finding equal power dynamics. Though Dieyi had attempted to create a father-son relationship between himself and Xiao Si, through beating him and using the same board and bowl of water punishment his own Master had exacted on Shitou and himself, he exhibits his inability to escape cyclical violence born from childhood trauma.

Figure 18. Xiao Si’s punishment from Farewell My Concubine directed by Chen Kaige (1993).

Xiao Si rises up in rank in the Red Guards and coordinates a humiliating public struggle session for the troupe. This scene parallels the complexities between Chen and his own father when Chen publicly attacked him while part of the Red Guards.138 Chen depicts Communism as the mechanism for splintering the relationship between Dieyi and Xiao Si, bringing out the worst in Xiao Si as he robs Dieyi of his role as Concubine Yu, leading to Dieyi’s fall into opium addiction as he is unable to compensate on stage for his inability to actually be with Xiaolou.

138

Ibid., 9.

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Figure 19. Xiao Si’s usurpation of Dieyi’s role from Farewell My Concubine directed by Chen Kaige (1993).

However, Xiao Si’s fate is unclear; he is caught by the Red Guards admiring Dieyi’s opulent jewelry and costume and in full robe of Concubine Yu. He is last seen circled by advancing Red Guards, tightening in on him. Believing Beijing opera as crucial to China’s national identity, Chen criticizes Communist reform for attempting to bury Chinese heritage through condemning culturally traditional opera.

Figure 20. Xiao Si’s and the troops from Farewell My Concubine directed by Chen Kaige (1993).

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Depicting the explicit consequences of Communist absolutism on families and relationships, in the struggle session that culminates in Juxian’s suicide, Xiaolou forsakes both Dieyi and Juxian. He claims the former was an opera-obsessed maniac who would perform for anyone of any class or background and asserts he would “hua qing jie xian,” or cut off all ties with the latter because of her history in prostitution. As the crowd chants, “Lenience for those who confess! Punishment for those who resist!” Xiaolou cracks beneath the pressure and alienates his family—his wife and stage brother. Stage and reality bleed together in how family is defined, just as Dieyi’s stage persona as Concubine Yu and his “real” identity as Douzi become inseparable. Xiaolou’s renouncement of his loved ones urged by a jeering, power-hungry crowd depicts the repercussions of collectivism Chen critiques.

Figure 21. Struggle session from Farewell My Concubine directed by Chen Kaige (1993).

Farewell My Concubine is a story of survival. Framing two individuals clinging to each other and to traditional art against unforgiving politics and the subsequent unraveling of their identities, the film explores the consequences of nonconformity and abandoning history. Chen develops Dieyi’s inability to belong from his own unconventional artistic journey, representing the omnipresent role of the auteur in his magnum opus.

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Figure 22. Photo of Dieyi and Xiaolou from Farewell My Concubine directed by Chen Kaige (1993).

Beauty in Tradition For Chen Kaige and Zhang Yimou, art represented the beauty within Chinese tradition.

Though the Chinese state and film industry are continuously swept into a cycle of reform, like French New Wave directors, Fifth Generation auteurs bore respect for their predecessors, with Chen specifically expressing respect for Third Generation directors of the 1950s and 1960s.139 The Han Chinese are proud of their history and nationality, and Fifth Generation directors were no exception—they criticized the government, the present state and vulnerability of the people, and the blindness of reform, but they upheld cultural tenets manifested in Chinese art. Just as Zhang employed puppets as a symbol of “old China,” Chen centered Farewell My Concubine on Beijing opera as a testament to the elaborate history of Chinese theater.

Dieyi condemns modern opera as visually lacking, believing Beijing opera must be inherently beautiful. He focuses on opera’s traditional formalist elements of colorful backdrops

139

Ni, Memoirs From, 96.

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and indulgent vocals that were stripped down by Communism reform. Dieyi finds beauty and meaning in the richness of Chinese history and art. Unlike Xiaolou, who draws a distinct line between himself as Xiaolou and as the Chu King when undergoing questioning, he refuses to relinquish that meaning for his physical life, as he sees no value in a reality where he is unable to be with Xiaolou.

Figure 23. Dieyi on stage from Farewell My Concubine directed by Chen Kaige (1993).

Chen chose to create an opera film because he believed Beijing opera was the essence of the city’s culture. Born and raised in Beijing, Chen reminisced, “When I was a child, no matter what lane or alley you walked down, you could always hear the sound of someone singing.

Beijing opera is the life of the city, and it is a terrible shame that this cultural tradition has been destroyed—but we destroyed it ourselves.”140 His musical background and strong emotional connection to the city led him to conduct research into the history of Beijing opera and enlist the help of his father in movie production. As the performance of Farewell My Concubine endures in the film itself, Chen offers commentary on the permanent thread of tradition and culture, even in a city charged with modern technological and social change. The basis of Chinese collectivism

140

Chen, “Chen Kaige,” interview, 96

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and cyclical reform is explicit pride in Chinese identity and heritage. Though political absolutism may change what being “Chinese” means, Chen argues it cannot erode the cultural value of art and seeks meaning in the beauty of the origin of Chinese civilization—music.

Figure 24. Dieyi burning his costume from Farewell My Concubine directed by Chen Kaige (1993).

To Live To Live’s (1994) filmic complexity begins with its title. The Chinese name—huozhe, which can be translated into English as to live, living, or to be alive—represents the twofold narration of Zhang’s story: an attestation to the forbearance of Chinese citizens, and the age-old question of what it means to live meaningfully.141 As these themes span decades of Chinese political struggle, Zhang argues the emotional endurance and survival of individuals in the face of oppression from an “invisible sovereign” is a problematic trait unique to Chinese history.142

141

Shi Liang, "The Daoist Cosmic Discourse in Zhang Yimou's 'To Live,'" Film Criticism 24, no. 2 (Winter 1999): 3, http://www.jstor.org/stable/44018936.

142

Larson, Zhang Yimou, 168.

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To Live is a film concerned with “ordinary folk,” a return to the uncorrupted focus on the simple purity of individual lives that reform was supposed to accentuate.143 The concept of “the people” and their experiences emerges through Zhang’s analysis of Chinese history through the lens of characters whose stories would be typical of their time: “To Live looks back to events of the past through a look at some ordinary people—the Xu family—whose saga runs from the late 1940s to the 1970s.”144 Despite state reforms’ abuses, “little people” continue to stay alive and form lasting relationships with each other.

Figure 25. Jiazhen packing Youqing dumplings from To Live directed by Zhang Yimou (1994).

Zhang emphasized the toll Communist reform takes on multiple familial generations. The deaths of Fengxia and Youqing, Fugui and Jiazhen’s children, are a criticism of regime’s impact on interpersonal relationships and Chinese tradition. Filial duty is a Confucian tenet and enormous part of Chinese society, but Fugui and Jiazhen lost both children as indirect results of Communist principles. The doctor could have saved Fengxia had he not been so malnourished

143

Rey Chow, "We Endure, Therefore We Are: Survival, Governance, and Zhang Yimou’s To Live," South Atlantic Quarterly 95 (1996): 1040, accessed February 5, 2018.

144

Ibid., 1043.

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from tribulations in labor camp, and Youqing could have lived had Fugui not insisted he attend a propaganda meeting out of fear for the family’s reputation and security. Communist state control overshadows the traditional cornerstone of familial prioritization and protection, indirectly leading to both deaths. In Yu’s original novel of the same name, Erxi, Jiazhen, and Mantou die as well, though from illness and accident. In that situation, Fugui trudges ahead without successor or support. The loss of children and filial stability is an unseen cost of Communist reform that Communism was meant to protect.

Portrait of Mao Zedong as an Old Icon Mao’s image is ubiquitous in To Live and Zhang Yimou’s personal life, showcasing the impact of cult of personality on the actions of commoners. Though Mao is not physically present in their lives, his ideology is often a matter of life or death for them .Notably, Zhang references his own arrival to Beini Village. After risking his health to paint Mao Zedong’s likeness on livestock pens, Zhang was accepted as a reliable worker and supporter of Communist ideals by the suspicious villagers. When initially courting Fengxia, leader of the local Red Guards Erxi bears iconized gifts: Mao badges, a hat with Mao’s badge on it, and literary works of Mao.

Figure 26. Mao propaganda from To Live directed by Zhang Yimou (1994).

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Erxi and Fengxia paint a portrait of Mao Zedong on the house and in the courtyard. Next to the mural, Erxi writes: “The worker class leads everything.” As Zhang painted Mao to be received in Beini, Erxi paints Mao to indicate his adequacy and suitability as Fengxia’s husband despite his disability. Mao paraphernalia is piled upon a table at their wedding ceremony, and the band sings a song lavishing praise upon Mao.

Figure 27. Erxi and Fengxia painting mural of Mao from To Live directed by Zhang Yimou (1994).

After Fengxia’s death, the screen passes to black, simply saying “Later” and opening to young Mantou walking next to Fugui. Exaggerated Comunist reform has failed, yet the family unit perseveres. Fugui and Mantou stop next to a courtyard image of Mao, paying it and its peeling paint no heed. In a sweeping long take, the camera also catches another fading depiction of Mao off to the side. However, a sickly and aged Jiazhen is surrounded by Mao materials and revolutionary visuals: posters and pages trumpeting Mao’s character and achievements paper the walls. The slow pan over Jiazhen’s post-Mao environment and dusty visuals intimate reminiscence of a bygone age. Though the years spill by, Jiazhen and Fugui still evidently hold to the past, as Fugui muses at Fengxia’s grave when they bring dumplings and Mantou’s new

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photographs to share with their deceased children: “If I hadn’t given Dr. Wang the dumplings, he could have saved our Fengxia.”

Figure 28. Fugui and Mantou caring for chicks from To Live directed by Zhang Yimou (1994).

The Mao portraits are a strong auteurist component of To Live. Representing acceptance and fear in one—Erxi’s confidence in his ideological position belied by the drag in his step from his lame leg, youthful Zhang’s desperation to survive and blend in—these artworks were created as a means of self-preservation. Those at the fringes of society, unable or unwilling to conform, are compelled to maneuver their ways into the good graces of communities that supposedly champion the efforts of the individual.

Mao is an invisible, omnipresent hand manipulating the lives of human puppets. The distance parting Mao and his administrators creates subjectivity in local governance; interpretations of orders are the responsibility of village and district chiefs. However, Mao’s oblique and opaque rule accompanies a “grand implied context more strongly suggesting implications for the larger social body.”145 Like the Old Master in Chen Kaige’s Life on a String,

145

Larson, Zhang Yimou, 182.

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the Mao of To Live wields near-religious power, growing bodies of loyal constituents out of cult of personality.

Mao is manifested in red hues, in the beating sun lighting the puppets behind the screen, in each death across the decades. For Zhang, the color red is a simultaneous nod to and rebellion against traditional Chinese aesthetic. He shapes it into backgrounds and clothing, emphasizes its symbolic role in divisive politics, and uses it as a metaphor for vitality. He once said, “We Chinese have been too moderate, too reserved … the boundless red of sorghum fields arouses sensory excitement … it encourages unrestrained lust for life.”146 Though Mao does not personally interact with his subjects, he is ever-watchful, lighting the screen for Fugui’s puppet shows and shining over villagers’ mundane activities. As Fugui was ultimately unable to salvage the puppets, the ending of the movie appears to posit that Mao cannot determine the fates of the Xu family. Zhang alters the original sequence of Yu’s novel so three more characters survive in a nod towards new beginnings and everlasting faith.147

146

Yimou Zhang, "From the Fifth to the Sixth Generation: An Interview with Zhang Yimou," by Tan Ye, Film Quarterly 53, no. 2 (Winter 2000): 2.

147

Larson, Zhang Yimou, 178.

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Figure 29. Fengxia examining the puppets before burning them from To Live directed by Zhang Yimou (1994).

Shadow Play The enduring visual symbol of To Live is Fugui’s shadow puppets. His only form of livelihood after he gambles away his entire family fortune is the articulated puppets, which are barely hidden behind a translucent screen, though viewers can clearly make out their intricate constructions.148 Fugui himself is the mastermind of this creation—the “invisible sovereign”— and remains unseen, literally pulling the strings and dictating the narrative and lives of his puppets. The puppets’ material details further render them a formalist symbol of human survival and determination. Made of thin rice paper or worn animal skins and constantly manipulated by the hidden puppeteer, they represent the physical fragility of people whose every actions are observed and controlled by surrounding politics.149 The puppets are saved from incineration twice, with the reasoning that workers and soldiers—Nationalist and Communist alike—need recreation during war and labor. From this perspective, the puppets can represent an engagement

148

Larson, Zhang Yimou, 177.

149

Ibid.

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separate from the worries of politics.150 Much like values of family and love, which Fugui asserts throughout the film are the most important qualities of life, the puppets are a persisting element of human unity.

Figure 30. Fugui’s puppet show from To Live directed by Zhang Yimou (1994).

Because of their roots in counterrevolutionary old wisdom, the puppets are burned at the start of the Cultural Revolution. Fugui pleads with Comrade Niu to spare them, saying they are the only remembrance Jiazhen has of her dead son. Niu asks them to forget the past and look towards the bright future, referencing a recent edict that proclaims, “the older, the more reactionary.”151 The association between the art of Chinese puppetry and tradition is Zhang’s testament to the idea of beauty in tradition and the corrupting influence Communism had on Chinese artistic history. When art forms that have endured for centuries are declared illegal and are literally burned, China loses key pieces of its heritage.

The wooden chest that stored the puppets is unharmed and eventually houses Mantou’s chicks, an attestation to Zhang’s allegedly sentimental final note that hope lives on in the next generation through tragedy. He had jokingly told Youqing, then Mantou, when they were young,

150

Ibid.

151

Larson, Zhang Yimou, 180.

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that chicks would grow into geese, geese would grow into sheep, sheep would grow into oxen, and oxen would grow into prosperity and happiness. The hope staked on the future and the cynicism of the truth behind the joke—since chicks cannot actually blossom into wealth and good fortune—illustrate the jaded perspective of current reform embodied by the older characters. However, they still take pride in their children and raise them to become strong citizens who may live more meaningfully and in better times. Living meaningfully comes in placing hope in the children, anticipating a brighter future for them as the cycle of reform begins anew. Mantou and the chicks will grow, blooming into a new generation that “will get better and better.”

Figure 31. Mantou’s chicks in the puppets’ chest from To Live directed by Zhang Yimou (1994).

External Auteurist Components Fugui was played by Ge You, an actor best known for comic roles and New Year’s movies. Casting him as the tragic protagonist was an explicit auteurist decision Zhang made that altered the direction of the work. Since To Live was a filmic adaptation of Yu Hua’s original novel, it had to remain faithful to certain elements of plot, but Zhang chose to infuse his movie with dark comedy in line with Ge You’s acting and to adjust the ending so some characters

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stayed alive.152 Though Yu Hua was unhappy with the changes, Zhang asserted that due to censors, “Filmmakers face a lot more difficulties than novelists. We don’t have the freedom to adapt stories exactly as we might like to. It never would have worked if we’d let the whole family die.”153 Even so, he added that personally, he “felt that killing everyone would be a bit too much. After all, although my family went through hell during the Cultural Revolution, none of us died. It seemed to me more representative that most families survived that era, even if they did experience terrible hardships.”154 By altering the story’s conclusion while maintaining its fundamental structure, Zhang exerted his auteurist influence on the film to match it to his own experiences. The changing of the ending to reflect hope speaks to Zhang’s belief as a young reformer of art himself that change begins with the children.

Zhang’s choices in casting and humor—based on pressure from the Central Ministry of Propaganda and his own feelings about the Cultural Revolution—represent the strong auteurist component of his 1990s films. Remaining true to his own experiences and ideas and attempting to subvert the scrutiny of censors without relinquishing artistic control, Zhang transformed the adaptation of To Live into a story based on his own life and an irrefutably “Zhang Yimou” film in its realist visuals, flawed characters, and emphasis on the fragility of human nature. To Live’s comedic character offers hope and happiness amidst trial and tribulation. Zhang believes in political and personal regeneration, looking ahead to futures of Mantou and Chinese children growing up in post-Cultural Revolution society.

152

Larson, Zhang Yimou, 129.

153

Ibid.

154

Ibid.

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Out With the Old, In With the New To Live is a sharp observation of the consequences of nonconformity. Though Mao is absent, his influence molds the lives and deaths of every inhabitant of the movie. Those who deviate from predominant beliefs are dealt with abruptly and mercilessly. A case in point is Long’er, who refuses to donate Fugui’s old property to the commonwealth and burns it following a fight with a cadre. He is summarily publicly executed for his dissidence. For the sake of survival, Fugui abandons him in the eleventh hour and races home to find his certificate of service in the People’s Army that proves he is no longer gentry because he fears paying for the crime of being a landholder with his life.

Figure 32. Long’er’s execution from To Live directed by Zhang Yimou (1994).

When Niu relates the incident to Fugui, he calls it “typical counter-revolutionary sabotage” and jokingly adds that Fugui’s house’s wood was superb, burning for days. Fugui quickly responds, “That wasn’t our wood—that was counter-revolutionary wood.”155 He is forced to divorce himself from generations of his heritage in order to blend in with the herd.

155

Yimou Zhang, dir., To Live, screenplay by Wei Lu, Shanghai Film Studios, 1994.

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However, To Live demonstrates that the real threats come from within, that the desire to shed the old order and embrace the new has created a dictatorship of the proletariat.156

Figure 33. Fengxia burning the puppets from To Live directed by Zhang Yimou (1994).

Holistically, To Live is an exploration of fate and survival. Focusing on the prospects of “little people” such as Fugui and Jiazhen framed against the uncontrollable waves of history, it uses location shooting and red symbolism to represent ordinary experiences in the Cultural Revolution.157 Zhang stated that To Live is the film closest to him, claiming, “There are countless stories from [the Cultural Revolution] waiting to be told—not political stories, but stories about life and human nature. That era represents a key time in my development, from the ages of sixteen until twenty-six.”158 To Live mirrors Zhang’s own experience growing up during the Cultural Revolution and witnessing the disintegration of nuclear families and cohesive villages as a result of propagandistic and ideological forces.

The question of what constitutes living meaningfully is raised through Fugui’s relationship with Chunsheng. Having escaped the “valley of death” together by surviving while

156

Larson, Zhang Yimou, 186.

157

Hsiao-peng Lu, Transnational Chinese Cinemas: Identity, Nationhood, Gender (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1997), 167.

158

Larson, Zhang Yimou, 127.

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conscripted to the revolutionary army, Chunsheng accidentally kills Fugui’s only son, robbing him of heir and legacy. Chinese tradition dictates that the son bears the family name, and Youqing’s death means Fugui’s bloodline stops with his father. The event haunts Chunsheng for decades. Jiazhen, in grief and rage, demands that Chunsheng remember he now owes the Xu family a life. When Chunsheng is deemed a capitalist roader, he comes to the Xu residence to give them all his money, as he is about to commit suicide. However, Jiazhen reminds him he still owes her a life, and Chunsheng is motivated to live through his trial because of his dedication to the Xu family. This demonstration of personal resistance against the oppressive accusations and influence of capitalism speaks to the central theme of To Live: “little people” who cannot control their fate adapt and cope by finding meaning in those around them.

Figure 34. Jiazhen bidding Chunsheng goodbye from To Live directed by Zhang Yimou (1994).

To Live highlights the innocence and resilience of children and the strength of family.

After Fengxia loses her hearing and voice, she still fulfills her responsibilities as a dutiful daughter and cares for Youqing. When Fengxia is bullied, Youqing dumps a bowl of noodles over one of the bully’s heads, leading Fugui to beat him to protect the family’s image. To get his father back, Youqing plans a prank with Jiazhen and brings Fugui tea steeped in vinegar while he is performing a puppet show. The children’s spirit is apparent in the family’s ability to enjoy bits

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of daily life together, though it is constantly overshadowed by fear of being labeled traitors to the Communist cause. Zhang’s naturally humorous disposition is apparent in this film, and he chose to film To Live as a comedy to showcase the hope Chinese reformers have in new generations and the future.

Figure 35. Youqing watching Fugui’s puppet show from To Live directed by Zhang Yimou (1994).

As a consequence of censorship, Zhang claims that other Cultural Revolution films had been “watered down” in order to be shown, while To Live has yet to be publicly screened in China.159 Nevertheless, Zhang hoped to create additional films exploring emotional hardship and human suffering within large-scale catastrophe: Amid that great tragedy, human nature was nakedly exposed—and all the weaknesses of human nature came out. The way that people were tortured, twisted, and bent is unbelievable … Today, in the era of peace, all people care about is entertainment and fun … People are living good lives, but what they think about and what consumes them is all

159

.

Larson, Zhang Yimou, 127.

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marked by mediocrity. Back then, we were all consumed by a very special spiritual state.160

Not One Less Not One Less (1999) is one of Zhang’s final works before the true emergence of the Sixth Generation and his shift towards Hollywood-style movies. Its most apparent auteurist component is Zhang’s decision to use non-professional actors for the entire cast. Eleven starring children— including Wei Minzhi and Zhang Huike, who performed with their own names—were chosen out of over ten thousand candidates from Zhang Jiakou (literally, “the village of Zhang’s residence”). Producer Hu Xiaofeng stated, “During the filming, we tried our best to keep her the way she is. She is not allowed to watch TV because we believe television would make her know too much of the outside world. And the worst scenario would be that some not-so-healthy information might make her mature quickly.”161 Villagers played themselves in their own reallife jobs, as the credits show, superimposing reality over drama. Zhang’s formalist emphasis on the preservation of reality returns to his work on Yellow Earth when he and Chen sought to preserve the natural starkness of the Shaanxi plains. Fifteen years later, Not One Less exhibited the same commitment to uncorrupted rural culture within a village seemingly out of reach of the city-centered Chinese Communist Party but suffering all the same from its economic policies.

160 161

Ibid., 128.

Yimou Zhang, "Not One Less," interview by Cynthia Wu, in Zhang Yimou: Interviews, ed. Frances Gateward (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2001), 128.

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Figure 36. Wei Minzhi arriving at the schoolhouse from Not One Less directed by Zhang Yimou (1999).

Docudrama Though he shot Not One Less in a realist documentary style, Zhang clarified, “While making a fiction film, we are using the documentary style to reflect the reality … I think [a fiction film] is a process of emulating, reflecting what has happened in reality.”162 The role of the camera is unique to Not One Less and The Story of Qiu Ju (1992). In both films, the camera is hidden when filming scenes.163 That way, the natural interactions of actors formed the basis of dialogue and cultivated an undramatized setting reflective of their actual lives as “ordinary people.” Zhang claimed that aesthetically, “It is beautiful even though it is imperfect. It is something we could never copy or create in reality …We could never reach such a high state of naturalness, being so real and true.”164 This cinematographic style speaks to a value intrinsic to Not One Less: there is beauty in imperfection, resolution in flaw. terms of plot, Minzhi’s inability

162

Zhang, "Not One Less," interview, 130.

163

Ibid.

164

Ibid., 131.

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to blend in with the city inspires sympathy in those around her and begins the widespread search for Zhang Huike. Critically examining the Not One Less, its naturalistic style is the most stripped-down version of Zhang’s art. He intended to depict the real, unmanipulated poor village conditions and the suffering of rural inhabitants after failed Communist reform. Thus, his documentary approach is two-pronged: it illustrates the simple, intimate lives of real people, and it criticizes the political system.

Figure 37. The rundown schoolyard from Not One Less directed by Zhang Yimou (1999).

Zhang’s use of visual overlay during Minzhi’s desperate search for the stationmaster to broadcast Zhang Huike’s disappearance serves two purposes.165 First, it emphasizes her status as an outsider, the lone consistent figure beneath shifting waves of adults dressed smartly and walking or driving purposefully. Second, it represents the passage of time; as the hours go by, the people are moving towards destinations, but Minzhi is unsure of what to do in an unfamiliar location. Zhang thus evokes audience sympathy for her perseverance through manipulating footage editing.

165

Yimou Zhang, dir., Not One Less, screenplay by Xiangsheng Shi, Guangxi Film Studio, 1999.

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Figure 38. Minzhi waiting for the station-master from Not One Less directed by Zhang Yimou (1999).

New Hope Not One Less marked a return to Zhang Yimou’s interest in captivating the lives of children as symbols of hope first observed in Yellow Earth. It proposes commentary and veiled criticism on failed reform and its impact on children’s education. The producers’ attempts to maintain Minzhi’s innocence throughout the shooting demonstrate the desire to portray a child from an isolated as she is: ignorant of the wider realm of human society, uninvolved and content in disposition. The direct translation from reality to screen criticizes the failure of social reform to improve the quality of life in secluded areas, even as bustling cities—such as the nearby small metropolis Zhangjiakou—are witnessing immense technological and social development.

While Zhang, Chen, and their crew were shooting Yellow Earth, they visited villages down the Yellow River. Zhang noticed that nearly every village had an elementary school, and he would always visit to hear the students recite lessons: “We’d hear them read aloud the text, which explained all kinds of vocabulary like ‘ocean’ and ‘mountain,’ but they probably didn’t

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understand what they were and would probably never see them.”166 His ruminations on the education and professional opportunities of rural youth, juxtaposed with his experience as an urban adolescent sent down to the countryside as a consequence of having too much schooling, led to his auteurist fascination with representing childhood and children in his creations.

Figure 39. Village children saluting the Chinese flag from Not One Less directed by Zhang Yimou (1999).

Belying the happy ending of funding for the mountain village school and media attention, Zhang focused on rural backwardness through his portrayal of the rundown countryside, schoolhouse pulling apart at its seams, and the symbolism of chalk. In a turning point of the film, Minzhi reads a student journal entry reproaching Minzhi for carelessly breaking the chalk, not demonstrating respect for the precious few resources afforded to their isolated mountain school.

Through enveloping images in earthy neutral tones—or literal earth—Zhang draws attention to the underfunded, failing school within an economically struggling village.

166

Yimou Zhang, "Zhang Yimou: No Going Back," interview by Wai-lan Yeung, in Zhang Yimou: Interviews, ed.

Frances Gateward (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2001), 148.

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Figure 40. Minzhi receiving her allowance of chalk from Not One Less directed by Zhang Yimou (1999).

Fundamentally, Not One Less is intended to showcase the immensity of the will of children; though they may be powerless in the face of society and hardship, they retain natural intensity and passion that fades to cynicism by adulthood. For this reason, Zhang’s production crew sought to maintain Minzhi’s childlike purity for as long as they could to capture the essence of youthful innocence.

Not One Less is also Zhang’s warning against China’s increasing proclivity to be moneydriven, even in the aftermath of the Cultural Revolution when everyone had too little. Havis argues, “Zhang is concerned that traditional, age-old Chinese ideas of community are being obliterated by the influx of a crude capitalism.”167 Minzhi initially seeks out Huike because she wants her additional monthly bonus, though the story evolves into the emotional connection between the two individuals. The stationery shop owner and the bricklayer were unwilling to help with Minzhi’s cause and were after her money. Hence, Zhang offers a critique of the

167

Richard James Havis, "Not One Less by Zhao Yu, Zhang Yimou, Shi Xiangsheng," Cineaste, 2000, 47, http://www.jstor.org/stable/41689267.

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increasingly capitalist and materialist nature of Chinese society brought on by selfish reform and Western influence.

Figure 41. Minzhi and her students at the bricklayer’s from Not One Less directed by Zhang Yimou (1999).

The film’s conclusion depicts Minzhi and Huike reunited, camera crews capturing the rundown essence of the village, and an inundation of donations from urban sympathizers to rebuild the schoolhouse and provide the students with colorful chalk. This arguably sentimental conclusion demonstrates belief in education for children to continue bettering Chinese society.

As Zhang exits the world of art film in favor of the Hollywood blockbuster market, he leaves a note of optimism for the new generation: education and resources provided by well-meaning people can overcome economic ramifications of Communist reform, and there is always room for new beginnings.

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Figure 42. Donations after Minzhi and Huike’s return from Not One Less directed by Zhang Yimou (1999).

Figure 43. Writing with new chalk from Not One Less directed by Zhang Yimou (1999).

French New Wave cinema advanced the concept of auteur theory in film by elevating the director’s cinematic idiosyncrasies to defining elements of film. Revolution in film occurred as France rebuilt itself after World War II, redefining aspects of society analogous to artistic values.

Through his critical focus on formalist mise-en-scène—specifically, visual and sound imagery and montage—as significant in developing cinematic narrative, critic-director François Truffaut paved the way for French films to move away from elaborate constructs to concentrating on

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ordinary human experiences. Truffaut utilized formalist components of his own movies, including acclaimed works such as The 400 Blows and Stolen Kisses, to further plot and dialogue, demonstrating formalism’s capacity as a mechanism for auteurism in film.

Paralleling French cinematic development, China underwent slow artistic recovery following the Cultural Revolution. The Chinese Fifth Generation, the emergent graduating class of 1982 from the rejuvenated Beijing Film Academy, used personal background and the impact of experiencing Communist reform in its films. Like French New Wave filmmakers, Chinese Fifth Generation directors radically shifted from plot-heavy drama and theatricism to visualdriven narratives, telling personal tales through images. The Fifth Generation accomplished this by implementing advances in cinematography learned from foreign countries while developing unique styles of filmmaking shaped by Chinese culture.

Zhang Yimou and Chen Kaige are often identified the defining directors of the Fifth Generation. Through internationally renowned works including Life on a String, Farewell My Concubine, To Live, and Not One Less, Zhang and Chen utilized structuralist elements of film to convey their personal histories. Throughout their respective careers, they were indubitably influenced by the hardships of growing up during the turbulence of Communist reform, and they reflected their desire to break away from dominant Chinese cinematic archetypes and introduce creative criticisms of what they viewed as broken political and artistic systems.

However, Zhang and Chen’s backgrounds led to personal and artistic alienation from their homeland. Zhang spoke of being unable to cross a metaphorical river—a river that would stretch into his past, censorship, domestic audiences, traditionalist critics, and the pull between art and commercialization. Chen faced a similar dilemma, holding himself apart from the rest of Chinese society and refusing to conform or compromise until the power of the international

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movie market and censorship swayed him to abandon subtle politics and masterful imagery for Hollywood-style action movies. The forces of history and government may have trapped Chen and Zhang on one side of the tumultuous river of vicious reform, but the messages of their early works have rippled through the world and forever altered Chinese art.

Chen insists, “This is the reality: Our films have been banned … But we must keep going. That's why I think we must make an effort to let foreign audiences see our films. It's the only way to survive. And maybe it's the best way to make the films come back to China.”168 As China struggles to answer questions regarding Chinese identity and tradition through iterations of destructive reform, Chen and Zhang responded with artistic regeneration. They explored possible solutions in preserving cultural origins and traditional beauty, prioritizing family and Confucian values, and believing strongly in the next generation of young reformers. Their films eternalized impassioned hardships as well as threadbare optimism for the future. Chen and Zhang understood that China would continue cycling through trauma and amendments but, like most others, held hope that life “will get better and better.”

Critic Alvin Lu interprets Chen and Zhang’s auteurist vision as paradoxical. There are stories that are uniquely Chinese, suffering that can only be accurately represented through the beautified lens of Chinese art, and yet, the ordinary people for whom Chen and Zhang have honed their craft will never see the films telling their tragedies. “Inevitably they suggest the possibility that such films, no matter how beautifully crafted or redolent of personal vision, may end up as rootless hybrids, neither here nor there artistically—unseen on home ground.”169 They

168

Lu, "Chen Kaige," 36.

169

Lu, "Chen Kaige," 39.

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face dilemmas between professional obligation and personal credence: what matters more, creating something that people will see, or creating something beautiful and eternal?

Chen and Zhang’s inability to cross an infinite river of harrowed politics through art has led them to turn towards Hollywood and commercial movies. However, their artistic legacies extend across the waters, spreading the Chinese narrative and the true reaction of youths to the collapse of integrated Chinese society and art. Chen and Zhang did not cross political rivers of strife and error. Instead, they dared to venture into an ocean of artistic and personal liberty, rejecting the river’s unforgiving ebb and flow in favor of novel, uncharted waters.

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Bibliography Bai, Jinsheng. Throwing Away the Walking Stick of Drama to Chinese Film Theory: A Guide to the New Era, edited by George S. Semsel, 5-9. Westport, CT: Greenwood Publishing Group, 1990.

Bai Jinsheng is a graduate of the Department of Literature at China University and is an associate professor at the Beijing Film Institute's Department of Literature. He is known for writing critical essays on literary qualities of films as well as short stories. His essay "Throwing Away the Walking Stick of Drama" was crucial in opening discourse on the artistic character of Chinese film and its shift away from drama and theatricism. Bai's argument paved the way for Fifth Generation directors to embrace visuals and imagery over purely plot-driven narrative.

Berry, Chris, and Luke Robinson, eds. Chinese Film Festivals: Sites of Translation. New York: Springer, 2017.

Chris Berry was a Professor of Film & Television Studies at the University of London and writes frequently on topics of Sino cinema. Dr. Luke Robinson is a lecturer in film and media studies at the University of Sussex specializing in Chinese-language cinema, transnational cinema, theory and criticism, and East Asian cultural studies. This book delineates the importance of international film festival for Chinese indie filmmakers and discusses the Chinese government's history of banning Chinese directors from showcasing their films overseas, especially in the mid-1990s.

Chen, Kaige. "Breaking the Circle: The Cinema and Cultural Change in China." Cineaste, 1990, 28-31. http://www.jstor.org/stable/41686987.

In this article adapted for Cineaste, Chen Kaige discusses some of his earliest films, including Yellow Earth and The Big Parade and delves into some of the censorship elements that complicated their respective production and distribution processes. Having the firsthand perspective of the director telling his story is important to understand the auteurist intentions behind the filmic ideological and artistic adaptions of various scripts.

———. "Changing the Face of Chinese Cinema: An Interview with Chen Kaige." By Richard James Havis. Cineaste, Winter 2003, 8-11.

Richard James Havis is a journalist and film critic specializing in Chinese news and art.

His interview with Chen Kaige elucidated many of Chen's personal motivations for creating renowned early works and discusses Chen's shift to more personal, family-driven commercial films in the production of Together. Havis's interview clarifies my thesis by providing firsthand background information on Chen and how his individual experiences in the Cultural Revolution directly influenced his creative works.

———. "Chen Kaige: Historical Revolution and Cinematic Rebellion." Interview by Michael Berry. In Speaking in Images: Interviews with Contemporary Chinese Filmmakers, by Michael Berry, 82-106. New York: Columbia University Press, 2005.

Michael Berry is an author, translator, and researcher at the University of California at Los Angeles' Department of Asian Languages and Cultures. His work covers the breadth of Sino cinema in China, Taiwan, and Hong Kong, and he is regarded as a prominent

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Western scholar in Sino arts. His interview compilation Speaking in Images explores the motivations behind a wide range of films from prominent Sino directors, including Zhang Yimou and Chen Kaige. Zhang and Chen's interviews provide insight into the role of auteurist background and visual cues in their works.

———. "China Goes to the Movies." TIME Asia. Last modified September 27, 1999. Accessed April 8, 2018. http://www.cnn.com/ASIANOW/time/magazine/99/0927/film.html.

This English-language article by Chen Kaige discusses his origins, initial lack of interest for filmmaking, and experience at the Beijing Film Academy and as a nascent director.

He mentions the difficulties he overcame to adapt the script for Yellow Earth into a film with limited financing and support from the state-run Guangxi Studio. Chen also expresses concern and sympathy for the new generation of impassioned filmmakers, recognizing they need to jump hurdles of state censorship and severely restricted financing. He laments the persevering need for directors to go underground to pursue passion projects and the increasingly commercialized nature of the Chinese movie industry.

———. "A Date with Luyu: Elegant Leslie Moved Chen Kaige." Interview by Luyu Chen.

Video file, 11:04. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mgtgxP-diDQ. A Date with Luyu is a popular Chinese television show that airs on Phoenix Television.

Chen Kaige appeared on the show to discuss his recent works, and specifically, he mentioned his decision to cast Leslie Cheung Kwok-wing as Cheng Dieyi in Farewell My Concubine. The role of the director in deciding casting is a part of auteurism, as the background and experience of actors can influence their presentation as specific characters. In this interview, Chen reveals that Leslie strongly identified with Dieyi's character, which affected his acting and time on set.

———, dir. Farewell My Concubine. Screenplay by Lillian Lee. Shanghai Film Group, 1993.

———, dir. Life on a String. Screenplay by Kaige Chen. Beijing Film Studio, 1991.

———. "Qian li zou shanbe: Pinqiong he xiwang de Shouji" [A thousand miles through northern Shaanxi: Notes on povety and hope]. Dianying Yishu, no. 4 (1985): 29-31.

Chen Kaige's personal record of his travels through Shaanxi detail the rural culture and economic struggles of villagers he witnessed. He references the Yellow River plain as the birthplace of Chinese civilization and views it as a point of cultural origin. Chen's experiences shooting in Shaanxi and perceptions of simple village life and traditions greatly influenced the shooting of Yellow Earth.

Chen, Ru-shou Robert. "Bazin at work: the concept of realism in Chinese-language films."

Journal of Chinese Cinemas 4, no. 1 (2010): 57-64. EBSCO. Ru-shou Robert Chen is the chair of the Department of Radio-TV at National Chengchi University and has published several essays and books on Taiwanese cinema. Chen's broad analysis of prominent Sino directors' usage of visual and narrative realism in films explicitly links back to the French New Wave, specifically, critic-director André Bazin's "new concept of film" and ties together the theory and film sections of this paper. Chen's

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specific visual framing of Yellow Earth and its deviations from traditional artistic style is important for analyzing Yellow Earth as a revolutionary work that essentially began the Fifth Generation movement.

Chow, Rey. "We Endure, Therefore We Are: Survival, Governance, and Zhang Yimou’s To Live." South Atlantic Quarterly 95 (1996): 1039-64. Accessed February 5, 2018.

Rey Chow is among the most prominent modern-day critics of Chinese film, fiction literature, and postcolonial theory. She is currently Anne Firor Scott Professor of Literature at Duke University and is renowned for her critical essays and full-length publications analyzing Fifth Generation Chinese cinema. Her short essay "We Endure, Therefore We Are" focuses on Zhang Yimou's To Live and Zhang's desire to portray the lives of ordinary people in the face of national struggle. Chow's analysis substantiates my argument that Fifth Generation directors shifted away from elaborate drama to visuals portraying common experiences and criticizing broader sociopolitical systems.

Clements, Marcelle. "'The Blue Kite' Sails beyond the Censors." The New York Times. Last modified April 3, 1994. Accessed February 8, 2018. http://www.nytimes.com/1994/04/03/movies/film-the-blue-kite-sails-beyond-thecensors.html?pagewanted=all.

Marcelle Clements is a novelist, essayist, and critic and is a current professor at New York University. Her article on Tian Zhuangzhuang's The Blue Kite brings to light issues with domestic censorship faced by the balance of the Fifth Generation and explicates how that censorship led to directors smuggling their works out of the country to greater international reception.

The College of Wooster. "Chen Kaige, 1952." Courses in Chinese Language and Culture.

Accessed February 8, 2018. https://chinesecourses.voices.wooster.edu/chen-kaige/.

This college course listing provides a brief biography for Chen Kaige and a summary of his major works.

Dixon, Wheeler Winston. The Early Film Criticism of Francois Truffaut. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1993.

Wheeler Winston Dixon is a filmmaker, digital historian, and scholar specializing in Francois Truffaut, Jean-Luc Godard, and horror and experimental films who currently teaches film at the University of Nebraska in Lincoln. He has published multiple books on different genres of film and has been featured in renowned cinematic publications including Cineaste and Film Quarterly. His analytical text on Truffaut's early film criticism frames Truffaut's perspective of film as a storytelling medium and sets him against his period and among his New Wave peers. This is instrumental in understanding Truffaut's outlook of film and formalism before he became a director.

Havis, Richard James. "Not One Less by Zhao Yu, Zhang Yimou, Shi Xiangsheng." Cineaste, 2000, 46-48. http://www.jstor.org/stable/41689267.

Richard James Havis reviews Zhang Yimou's film Not One Less, praising its cinematography and storytelling but criticizing its propagandistic overtones. Havis argues that Zhang painted a romanticized view of modern China that does not live up to reality

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and that he is playing into the hands of the Chinese government. He also points out the Iranian influences in this particular film.

Hudlin, Edward W. "Film Language." The Journal of Aesthetic Education 13, no. 2 (April 1979): 47-56. http://www.jstor.org/stable/3331928.

Edward W. Hudlin was a Professor of Philosophy at Southern Illinois University. His paper "Film Language" explored the constructs of cinematic language through structural elements, comparisons to literary visual imagery, and logomorphic editing. He analyzes the translation of linguistic language in literature to cinematic language. Because both the French New Wave and Fifth Generation sought to redefine filmic language, Hudlin's conceptualization of what film language is is crucial to this paper.

Insdorf, Annette. Franรงois Truffaut. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press, 1994.

Insdorf introduces the oeuvre and criticism of leading director of the French New Wave Francois Truffaut in context of shifting cinematic trends, describing auteurist influences on Truffaut's work and his use of new visual and form concepts. Annette Insdorf is a professor in Columbia University's Graduate Film Program and the author of multiple books on renowned directors and the historical contexts of film. Insdorf's portrayal of Truffaut's stylistic and auteurist decisions exemplifies French New Wave formalism, which is used as the basis of analysis for the fifth generation films in this paper.

Larson, Wendy. Zhang Yimou: Globalization and the Subject of Culture. New York: Cambria Press, 2017.

Wendy Larson, professor emerita at the University of Oregon, has written multiple books on Chinese literature and film in connection with culture. Her recent publication focuses on Zhang Yimou and several of his specific works in the context of cultural change and Communist policies. This book frames his works as symbolic of adaptive culture and the abstract influence of Mao on commoners, which is a part of my three-pronged thesis.

Lee, Lilian. Farewell My Concubine. Translated by Andrea Lingenfelter. New York: Harper Perennial, 1994.

Lilian Lee originally wrote the novel Farewell My Concubine, which Chen Kaige adapted and altered into his 1993 international blockbuster of the same title. Lee's novel concluded with Dieyi and Xiaolou meeting once more in Hong Kong after decades of separation before peacefully parting ways permanently. However, Chen changed this ending to Dieyi's suicide, representing the role of the director in ultimately shaping the narrative of the film. Chen also made significant alterations to Shi Tiesheng's Life on a String when adapting it for cinema.

Lent, John A., and Ying Xu. "Fifth Generation." Film Reference. Accessed February 8, 2018. http://www.filmreference.com/encyclopedia/Academy-Awards-Crime-Films/ChinaFIFTH-GENERATION.html.

This reference source provides a brief contextualization of the origins, motives, and creations of prominent Fifth Generation directors, with a focus on Zhang Yimou.

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Liang, Shi. "The Daoist Cosmic Discourse in Zhang Yimou's To Live." Film Criticism 24, no. 2 (Winter 1999): 2-16. http://www.jstor.org/stable/44018936.

Liang Shi is a crosscultural actor, with experience in French, Italian, and Chinese films.

His critical piece examining the presence of Daoism and natural harmony in Zhang Yimou's To Live focuses on the nature of human relationships and the role of the individual in larger society, offering an alternate frame of analysis through spirituality of Zhang's central message of nonconformity.

Lu, Alvin. "Chen Kaige." Film Comment 33, no. 5 (September/October 1997): 72-77. http://www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/43454517.pdf.

Author and digital publisher Alvin Lu explicates several of Chen Kaige's films from graduation to the 1990s, spanning the time period covered by this paper. By focusing on elements of visual and sound imagery, Lu utilizes aspects of formalism to understand holistic narratives of the works. His interpretations are useful in understanding specific politically and/or spiritually significant symbols present in Chen's watershed films.

Lu, Hsiao-peng. Transnational Chinese Cinemas: Identity, Nationhood, Gender. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1997.

Lu Hsiao-peng (Sheldon Lu) is Associate Professor of Chinese, Film Studies, and Cultural Studies at the University of Pittsburgh. His book on Transnational Chinese Cinemas examines multiple theories related to individual identity, national identity, and gender identity. Lu's examination of gender in Farewell My Concubine is important for understanding Dieyi's nonconformity and existence between established binaries.

Maslin, Janet. "Review/Film Festival; Music and Metaphor in Life on a String." New York Times. Last modified September 21, 1991. Accessed January 24, 2018. http://www.nytimes.com/movie/review?res=9D0CEFD7163DF93AA1575AC0A967958 260.

Maslin notes the usage of music and spirituality in Chen Kaige's abstruse film Life on a String, which is important for this paper's examination of the metaphor of salvation as an allegory for the Chinese national state. Maslin is an American journalist, film and literary critic, and essayist at the New York Times.

Ni, Zhen. Memoirs from the Beijing Film Academy: The Genesis of China's Fifth Generation.

Translated by Chris Berry. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2002.

Ni Zhen provides an insider's view of the Beijing Film Academy's most notable years immediately following the Cultural Revolution, following major fifth generation directors (including Zhang Yimou and Chen Kaige) as they study at the academy and then break into the film world. Ni Zhen served as Professor of Art Direction and Professor of Film Theory at the Beijing Film Academy from 1980 to 2000 and has written screenplays for many well-known Chinese films, including Zhang Yimou's Raise the Red Lantern. Ni's work is crucial; it depicts the formative academic years contributing to Zhang and Chen's future successes as auteurs and delineates in detail the production of Yellow Earth (directed by Chen with cinematography by Zhang), which is considered the first true fifth generation film.

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Schell, Orville. "FILM; Back to China Laden with New Ideas." The New York Times. Last modified January 27, 1991. Accessed February 7, 2018. http://www.nytimes.com/1991/01/27/movies/film-back-to-china-laden-with-newideas.html?pagewanted=all.

Orville Schell is an American writer, academic, and activist, and is the Arthur Ross Director of the Center on U.S.-China Relations at the Asia Society in New York. He specializes in Chinese history, and his article on Chen's filmic hiatus and experience living abroad contextualizes Chen's return to direction with Life on a String. His interview elucidates Chen's motivations for making a film of disillusion with higher powers of governance and religion.

Semsel, George S., ed. Chinese Film Theory: A Guide to the New Era. Westport, CT: Greenwood Publishing Group, 1990.

George Semsel is a Professor Emeritus of Film, Literature, and Writing and an acclaimed film critic. His compilation of essays by Chinese film theorists from 1980 to 1990 helps explain the dramatic changes in film style and content immediately preceding the Fifth Generation. By exploring differing critical perspectives on modernizing film language, incorporating foreign cinematic techniques, and presenting content departing from traditional drama-based film, Semsel's collection offers a comprehensive perspective of changes in Chinese film industries impacted by the Cultural Revolution.

Truffaut, François. The Films in My Life. Translated by Leonard Mayhew. Boston: Da Capo Press, 1994. First published 1978 by Simon & Schuster.

The Films in My Life contains personal statements on Truffaut regarding the relationship between film criticism and direction as well as multiple critical essays and reviews he wrote of Western films during his time. This book explicates Truffaut's formalist angle in critiquing films and how his formalist criticism allowed him to successfully maneuver visual and sound imagery and montage in the films he would later direct himself.

Truffaut, Francois. "Notes sur d'autres films" [Notes on Other Films]. Cahiers du Cinéma 5, no.

29 (July 1953): 58-59.

This article is among many Truffaut wrote for Cahiers du Cinéma, the journal spearheaded by the group of critics of the same name and founded by André Bazin. It describes some of his perspectives on other contemporary films, as well as motives behind his transition from critic to auteur.

Wu, Liu. "Above Ground or Under Ground: The Emergence and Transformation of “Sixth Generation” Film-Makers in Mainland China." Master's thesis, Beijing Film Academy, 1996. Accessed April 10, 2018. http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download;jsessionid=9A086B56212A2126383B77D 2FFA0182F?doi=10.1.1.552.4026&rep=rep1&type=pdf.

Wu Liu draws comparisons between the Sixth Generation and previous cinematic movements within China. By discussing similarities between the Sixth Generation and the Fourth Generation regarding their portrayals of grief and incorporation of "scar" trauma, Wu makes the case that the parallels of cinematic regeneration are clear in contemporary Chinese cinema.

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Yellow Earth. Directed by Kaige Chen. Guangxi Film Studio, 1984.

Yu, Min. "Diversification Not Prescriptions." In Chinese Film Theory: A Guide to the New Era, edited by George S. Semsel, 47-54. Westport, CT: Greenwood Publishing Group, 1990.

Yu Min is a screenwriter, critic, and consultant to the China Film Association. His critical works explore foreign dramas and the interactions between character and personality development and plot in cinematic narratives. His essay "Diversification Not Prescriptions" criticizes the proposal for the divorce of drama and movies as simply mitigating symptoms of a larger problem in Chinese film — lack of artistic diversity. He also cautions against eagerness to modernize cinematic language, warning that new means and techniques can only be useful when applied aptly instead of being used for the sake of novelty. Yu suggests that building narrative foundations of first-hand material about real lives and experiences will lead to diversification in filmmaking.

Zhang, Junxiang. "Essay Done in Film Terms," translated by Jianping Hou. In Chinese Film Theory: A Guide to the New Era, edited by George S. Semsel, Xiaohong Li, and Yuan Fan, 10-24. Westport, CT: Greenwood Publishing Group, 1990.

Zhang Junxiang elevates the responsibilities of the auteur to transcend political barriers and create non-formulaic works with complex social relations and representative characters celebrating the ordinary man's achievements while retaining the literary value of films through mise-en-scene. Zhang was a film director and a playwright, well-known in the international film world and serving as a jury member at the 1st Moscow International Film Festival. This essay, though prioritizing nationalism and a Chinese audience, delineates the importance of structural elements and cinematography in conveying the director's narrative.

Zhang, Nuanxin, and Tuo Li. "The Modernization of Film Language," translated by Jianping Hou. In Chinese Film Theory: A Guide to the New Era, edited by George S. Semsel, Xiaohong Li, and Yuan Fan, 10-24. Westport, CT: Greenwood Publishing Group, 1990.

This essay discusses the importance of developing film language to modernize Chinese film and keep pace with foreign film production and the use of new technologies to introduce new compositions and cinematic techniques into narratives breaking away from traditional theatre. Zhang Nuanxin is a 1972 graduate of the Beijing Film Academy and a Fourth Generation film director with direct insight on and experience within the impacts of communist reform on Chinese arts. Through focusing on the structural components of film and its worldwide modernization, Zhang demonstrates emergent formalist interpretations of Chinese film mirroring those of the French New Wave.

Zhang, Yimou. "From the Fifth to the Sixth Generation: An Interview with Zhang Yimou." By Tan Ye. Film Quarterly 53, no. 2 (Winter 2000): 2-13.

Dr. Tan Ye is a professor of Comparative Theater and the Confucius Institute Director at the University of South Carolina and has served as a visiting scholar at the Beijing Film Academy. He has written hundreds of essays and chapters on Chinese cinema, culture, and theater and has assisted with the screenwriting and production of Chinese films.

His interview with Zhang Yimou touches upon Zhang's opinion of the emergence of yet

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another generation seeking to differentiate itself from the subsiding Fifth Generation, the usage of red color symbolism and visual cues in Zhang's films, Zhang's less didactic and philosophical auteurist role compared to Chen Kaige, and Zhang's evolving cinematic style. Comparing the styles of Zhang Yimou and Chen Kaige clarifies the artistic relationship between the two directors for this paper.

———, dir. Not One Less. Screenplay by Xiangsheng Shi. Guangxi Film Studio, 1999.

———. "Not One Less." Interview by Cynthia Wu. In Zhang Yimou: Interviews, edited by Frances Gateward, 127-32. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2001.

Critic Cynthia Wu has written multiple articles on Zhang Yimou's works in the late 1990s, probing into the motivations for their conceptions and Zhang's external personal and artistic influences. Her in-person interview centering on Not One Less demonstrates the importance of Zhang's auteurist casting choices and the unique "hidden camera" filming process designed to render the film as realistic as possible.

———, dir. To Live. Screenplay by Wei Lu. Shanghai Film Studios, 1994.

———. "Zhang Yimou: Flying Colors." Interview by Michael Berry. In Speaking in Images: Interviews with Contemporary Chinese Filmmakers, by Michael Berry, 108-40. New York: Columbia University Press, 2005.

Michael Berry's interview with Zhang Yimou explores the role of Zhang's personal backstory and familial history in his films, as well as the explicit significance of Zhang's experience as an educated youth during the Cultural Revolution. Reflective of the Fifth Generation's overall tendency to criticize the impact of Communist reform on individual people and relationships and reflect upon their own experiences, this interview provides personal context for several of Zhang's films, including To Live.

———. "Zhang Yimou: No Going Back." Interview by Wai-lan Yeung. In Zhang Yimou: Interviews, edited by Frances Gateward, 147-50. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2001.

Yeung Wai-lan interviewed Zhang Yimou about honest documentaries and production differences between The Story of Qiu Ju and Not One Less, censorship and artistic "survival" in China, Zhang's external inspirations for his unique style, and Zhang's perceptions of the evolving movie market in China. A part of a larger collection of interviews with the director, this interview conducted in 1999 reflects the more cynical approach to film Zhang adopted after battling with censorship and domestic authorities for years over the controversial content of his creative works.

Zheng, Dongtian. "Only Seven Years: Thoughts on the Explorations of Middle-Aged and Young Directors (1979-1986)." In Chinese Film Theory: A Guide to the New Era, edited by George S. Semsel, 89-96. Westport, CT: Greenwood Publishing Group, 1990.

Zheng Dongtian is a Chinese film director and a professor at the Beijing Film Academy.

He has made nine films to date, with many receiving both domestic and international accolades. His essay on the progression of the Fifth Generation as a generation of regeneration—especially from his then-perspective of nascent director and academic—is

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important to understand the contemporary theoretical and industrial understanding of the Fifth Generation's purpose. Zheng's dual role as an academic and filmmaker fortify his forward-thinking perceptions of multilateral, increasingly globalized Chinese cinema.

Zheng, Xuelai. Shi Jie Dian Ying Jian Shang Ci Dian. Fuzhou: Fu jian jiao yu chu ban she, 1995.

Zheng Xuelai is a renowned scholar of Sino film whose compilation "Shi Jie Dian Ying Jian Shang Ci Dian" offers insight into the plots and themes of multiple works of Chinese cinema alongside film reviews. Published two years after Farewell My Concubine's release, this compendium provides a mainland domestic perspective of the film.

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