Seventy-four years ago today, on International Women's Day, Chinese silent film actress Ruan Lingyu took her own life in response to problems in her personal life that were exacerbated by the mean-spirited scrutiny of the tabloid press.
Seventy-four years later, the alternately pathological and moralistic obsession with the personal lives of Chinese actresses has remained remarkably unchanged. (Click here if you don't know what I'm talking about.)
Anyway, I don't want to start a rant but merely pay my respects to the memory of one of the world's great actresses: Ruan Lingyu. It was largely her story and the clips of her films in the biopic Centre Stage (1992) that spurred my interest in vintage Chinese cinema.
To celebrate her life and career, I'd like to share this contemporary (though deliberately antiqued and often sold as vintage) reprint of a pictorial magazine devoted to the radiant star. Click here for the 4MB PDF file.
0 comments:
Post a Comment