Roosters replace the Oscars for China’s maudlin films

Press, 31 August 1984, Page 14

Roosters replace the Oscars for China’s maudlin films

From

"The Economist”,

London

' China’s film-makers award each other golden roosters, but presentation night Chinese-style is just as glamorous and star-studded an event as the annual Oscars in the United States. This year, however, after the coveted statuettes had been handed out in the gymnasium at Jinan, in Shandung Province, and the film-makers had congratulated themselves for last year’s bumper crop of films, the industry got down to some sober self-criticism. China’s film studios produced 127 feature films in 1983, seven more than the target for 1985 set out in the sixth five-year plan. Films are popular- in China. Last year, over 20 billion cinema tickets were bought—2o each for every Chinese man, woman and child. For peasants who cannot get to the big-city movie theatres, mobile projection units trundle around the villages. “Popular Cinema," the bible of China’s film buffs, is the country’s best-selling magazine, with a circulation of more than 5 minion. 4

Under Mr Deng Xiaoping, tne entertainment business, like shoe factories and peasant communes, is theoretically encouraged to make products people will want to pay good money for, instead of relying on Government handouts. Problem: films people want to see may not always be those the party thinks they ought to see. Nowadays the party line is that films should have wholesome characters, a realistic plot and, above all, a clear moral message. “Arty” films are out, as is the escapist fare now titillating movie-goers in the West. As one of China’s veteran film-makers, the 85-year-old Xia Yen, put it, China’s filmmakers should in future pay less attention to style and more to theme and content. Even films that break traditional taboos and show the seamier side of Chinese life are following strict party guidelines. The heroine of “Under the Bridge” is an unmarried mother who becomes pregnant after being sent to the countryside during the cultural

revolution and then finds a fresh start in life in Mr Deng’s new China. The message is that China’s youth should not despair, despite the ravages of those turbulent years. The 1982 golden rooster winner, “At Middle Age”, caused a stir by portraying frankly the plight of China’s intellectuals. A film critic who saw it recently at the Hong Kong film festival, however, found its political content vitiated by sentimentality. This year’s golden rooster winner, “Country Sounds”, is an equally maudlin tear-jerker, with a saccharine heroine. It tells of an obedient, submissive peasant woman, who is properly appreciated by her family only after she develops liver cancer. The moral: feudal ideas that women are inferior to men are benighted. Mr Xia insists that the party does not dictate themes of film scripts. Yet to cross the party line is to risk a life of obscurity or worse. Xie Jin found that when his brilliant 1964 melodrama “Two Stage Sisters” was a victim of the

cultural revolution. That film has now been reinstated, to great critical acclaim in the west. Its director is allowed to work again, but none of his recent films, “The Legend of Tianyun Mountain”, “The Herdsman” and “Qiu Jin—a Revolutionary” is more than a political potboiler. To keep the authorities sweet, China’s film-makers are seeking new scripts about farmers, especially ones who learn the value of Mr Deng’s new agricultural reforms. Two films on that theme have been made already. One is a popular comedy about a band of misfits who find happiness and respect with the help of their local party secretary and the new responsibility system in agriculture. Throw in a few denunciations of the gang of four and official approval is guaranteed. To Westerners, such plots already have the ring of cliche, but China’s cinema-going masses seem happy enough to sit back and be entertained by them. Copyright—The Economist.