II.

Cinema in the People’s Republic, Taiwan, and Hong Kong

The establishment of the People’s Republic in 1949 split Chinese cinema into three kinds. In China itself, the Communists set about reinventing cinema as a popular medium for the vast rural hinterlands, which had never seen films before; most films became vehicles for government propaganda, challenging feudal traditions and superstitions, offering ideological education, and publicizing national movements and campaigns. Soon after 1949, foreign film imports were limited to titles from other Communist countries. New state-run film studios were opened in many regions, while distribution and exhibition were expanded to reach the furthest-flung parts of the country. Some 600 films were produced in the years between 1949 and 1966, which marked the start of the hugely disruptive Cultural Revolution and the enforced shutdown of the film industry for six years. Some films from the first 17 years of Communist rule did their best to revive the old Shanghai traditions of entertainment value, style, and sophistication; the best were Xin Juzhang Daolai zhi Qian (1956; Before the New Director Arrives), a Gogol-esque satire by the ex-actor Lü Ban, and Wutai Jiemei (1964; Two Stage Sisters), a sumptuous melodrama about the theatre world by Xie Jin.

The retreat of KMT Nationalists to Taiwan in 1949 laid the foundations for film production on the island. The KMT’s own Central Motion Picture Corporation (CMPC) was the first (and for many years the biggest) producer, specializing in anti-Communist propaganda films, historical dramas, and middle-class melodramas. The CMPC’s example gradually brought other producers into the field, and a thriving subculture of low-budget features in Taiwan’s own dialect took shape alongside the “prestige” productions in Mandarin Chinese. However, the most prominent directors—Li Hanxiang, King Hu (Hu Jinquan), and Li Xing—were all ex-mainlanders dedicated to upholding pre-Communist cultural traditions.

The most prolific centre for the production of Chinese films after 1949 was Hong Kong, where the many companies producing films in the local Cantonese dialect were joined by as many new companies producing films in Mandarin. Production in Cantonese remained extremely prolific until the advent of broadcast (as distinct from cable) television in 1967: averaging 125 features a year throughout the 1950s, production peaked at over 200 films a year in 1960 and 1961. Mandarin production got off to a hesitant start (6 features in 1946, 15 in 1950), but was up to nearly 80 films a year by 1970. Both film industries had dissident left-wing factions determined to raise difficult social questions, but both were dominated by Hollywood-style entertainment films with a Chinese twist. The single most popular genre was the swordplay/martial arts film, which, in its early 1970s incarnation as the kung fu film, gave Chinese cinema its first palpable international successes and made Bruce Lee the first globally famous Chinese star.