Movie Stars in the Cartoonist's Eye

Check out these delightful caricatures by cartoonist P. L. Chang from the May 1934 issue of the Shanghai pictorial magazine Young Companion. For those of you who read Chinese, here are the captions. For those who can't (and that includes myself), I'll attempt to conjecture about some of the situations depicted.


Chen Yumei
Remember Chen Yumei, who battled Hu Die for the title of China's movie queen? Supposedly when rising star Hu Die left the Tianyi Film Company in 1928 and signed on with rival Mingxing, Tianyi boss Runje Shaw (the eldest of the Shaw Brothers) decided to take Chen Yumei — one of his actresses — as his second wife and make her the studio's new top star. In this way, it was rumored, the notoriously stingy Shaw wouldn't have to pay a high salary to his leading lady. Poor Chen Yumei... all she could do was dream of getting that crown, while sleeping with rats on a patched mattress.


Wang Renmei
"Wildcat" Wang Renmei had married Korean hunk (and Shanghai's "Emperor of Film") Jin Yan at the beginning of 1934. Jin Yan was an avid hunter and outdoorsman, and if this cartoon is accurate, then "Wildcat" Wang also shared his love of rifles and campfires.


Ai Xia
This cartoon shows Death coming to claim the rebellious modern girl Ai Xia, who committed suicide during the Lunar New Year of 1934. She was China's second female scriptwriter and had written and starred in the film A Woman of Today (1933) before her death. In a traqic turn of events, director Cai Chusheng — who was rumored to have had an affair with Ai and who blamed the Shanghai paparazzi for her death — made a film about her life called New Woman (1935), starring Ruan Lingyu as her fictional stand-in. The press responded to Cai's attack by hounding Ruan Lingyu, who ended up taking her own life shortly thereafter on March 15, International Women's Day. It clearly wasn't easy being a "modern woman" in modern Shanghai.


Li Minghui
A singer turned movie star, Li Minghui was the daughter of "Father of Mandopop" Li Jinhui. In 1934 she married one of China's most famous athletes, football star Lu Zhongen. To read more about Li Minghui, check out The Chinese Mirror, your one-stop shop for information (in English!) about early Chinese cinema.


Hu Die
Here's Queen Hu Die looking a little uptight. I don't know what's going on in the cartoon, but I wonder if it's a reference to Hu Die's suit against her fiance for the annulment of their long-standing engagement. She also demanded monetary compensation for being taken out of the marriage market for such a long time (I believe they were engaged for three years). According to one American newspaper account, Hu Die was "never loath to use her affairs of the heart as stepping stones for her career" (Salt Lake Tribune, March 1, 1936).


Hu Ping
All I can tell you about Hu Ping is that she played the mad woman in Song at Midnight (1937), an adaptation of The Phantom of the Opera that was later remade in Hong Kong during the 90s as The Phantom Lover, starring Leslie Cheung. I'm curious to know more about her, so please leave a comment if you have any information.


Xu Lai
My buddy Oldflames helped me identify this one and was kind enough to translate the caption, in which Xu Lai says, "I couldn't live another day if I can't dance." I guess she was known for her terpsichorean passion. And to think, I only knew her as the first Chinese actress to do a bathtub scene.


Ruan Lingyu
And last but not least is our beloved Ruan Lingyu, whose winning smile and lanky beauty is perfectly captured by cartoonist P. L. Chang.

I hope you've enjoyed these as much as I have!

The Soft Film Manifesto

Xu Lai, the first Chinese actress to do a bathtub scene (ca. 1932)

Some of you may have wondered what the title of my blog means. It's inspired by a schism in Chinese film criticism that took place in mid-1930s Shanghai. On one side of the ring were the advocates of "soft film", modernist artists and writers who believed in a cinema of attractions ("ice cream for the eyes and a sofa for the soul"). On the other side were the proponents of "hard film", left-wing intellectuals who wanted to use movies as a political tool to educate and mobilize the masses.

In the essay "Hard Film versus Soft Film" (published in the December 1933 issue of Modern Screen), Huang Jiabo bemoaned the fact that Chinese cinema was being "starched" by ideological interests and drained of entertainment. Of course, the backdrop for this debate was the increasing Japanese encroachment on China (as well as the ongoing Western colonial occupation) and the battle between the Nationalist and Communist parties for control of the nation. While the "soft film" advocates may be accused of burying their heads in the sand during a time of crisis, later actions by both the Nationalists and the Communists belie the myth of the moral highground so beloved by political ideologues.

Anyway, as much as I dig the left-wing films of 1930s Shanghai (many of which were nonetheless still quite soft), the arguments of the "soft film" camp really struck a chord with me in regard to my own struggle reconciling my love of film with my decidedly ill-fitting "higher" education in film criticism.

"Soft film" gave me a water pistol to act on my gripes and grudges about academic scholarship and a paradigm to map some of the beliefs and passions that have been guiding me lately:

• "soft" Web publishing vs. "hard" print publishing



• "soft" amateur scholarship vs. "hard" professional scholarship



• "soft" open access vs. "hard" restricted access

Most of all, learning about film should be fun and not like straining to take a crap when you've been constipated for seven days straight (believe me, I've read an unfair share of academic articles and books that successfully approximate that experience).

Anyway, before my collar gets too stiff from all this talk of meaning and mission, let's take a break and enjoy this bathtub scene from the 1968 film No Time for Love featuring sexpot Tina Ti and forget all about the unpleasant anti-colonial, communist riots that happened in Hong Kong that previous year! ;)



For more information about the soft/hard film debate and for a good example of the kind of film writing that I do like (informative and interesting, not obscurantist or politically correct), check out Zhang Zhen's An Amorous History of the Silver Screen: Shanghai Cinema, 1896-1937.