NO FILM FRILLS IN CHINA

Korero (AEWS), Volume 2, Issue 3, 14 February 1944, Page 32

NO FILM FRILLS IN CHINA

By

in the New York Times

The scene was the spacious livingroom of a wealthy Chinese in Burma. His wife, bayoneted by a little bull-necked - Japanese, started to sink slowly to the floor, pressing her side with her hands. The body of her son, also bayoneted, lay sprawled face down behind her. The daughter, whose careful coiffure had been enhanced by the addition of yellow flowers over her left ear, stepped to the mother’s side, holding her in her arms. The mother went completely limp and the daughter, in this last embrace, cried out, “ Mama, mama ! ”

Then a man in a brown tweed suit yelled “ cut ! ” Another scene of “ The Border Front,” current production of the China Motion Picture Corporation, had been filmed.

The girl in this scene was Lily Lee, a favorite at the box offices in Free China, who, it seemed to this old neighborhood movie-goer, should rate in any league. As the heroine of “ The Border Front ” she will join the Chinese forces who fought in Burma, will help bring to book a Japanese spy, who sends messages on a secret radio transmitter hidden in a coffin, and will fall in love with a handsome young Chinese officer, who cannot return her love because of the call of duty. The movie industry in free China is a weapon of war and conforms to the conditions of a country all but cut off from the rest of the world. The China Motion Picture Corporation is affiliated with the National Military Council and employees are paid on a military scale. Miss Lee’s pay, figured between that of lieutenant-colonel and colonel, does not exceed, with subsistence allowances, two thousand Chinese dollars monthly—-one hundred American dollars at the official rate. Miss Lee and the other players use the same make-up room. They live together in dormitories within the compound occupied by the corporation. Off the set she wears a sport shirt,

slacks, and sport shoes. She works by night and sleeps by day with no sleepingmask. The municipal electric-power supply is so inadequate that studio shooting commences only around midnight, when most of Chungking has turned out its lights and gone to bed.

The China Motion Picture Corporation’s one old model camera is a refugee from the Japanese occupation of Shanghai, Nanking, Hankow, and Hongkong. Camera noise is muffled from the microphone with a home-made square of cotton quilting. The mike, when not in use, is swaddled in soft cloth and guarded like the crown jewels of a Manchu emperor.

Directors rarely shoot more than three takes of any scene. With only one camera there is no cross cutting of a scene. There is no printing of “ rushes.” In editing the best takes are selected directly from the negative. A director may have to work without knowing where his next reel of unexposed film is coming from.

Production was started on “ The Border Front ” with only 10,000 ft. of fresh film on hand. At a three-to-one ratio in takes at least 20,000 more feet of film will be needed to complete this io,ooo-foot feature. Ho Fei-Kwan, the director and author, hopes to get film from India before his stock runs out. Excluding the cost of the film (two Chinese dollars a foot at the old rate), “ The Border Front ” is expected to cost 1,700,000 Chinese dollars, approximately $85,000 in American currency. Technicians and actors work both in front and behind the camera. The Japanese soldier who bayoneted Lily’s mother and brother is a cameraman picked for his face and figure. The author-director, who laboriously penned the script, camera directions, and sound specifications is himself an eminent actor. Miss Lee has ambitions to become a director and is looking forward to a Hollywood research trip when the film is completed.