The Golden Age

The 1932 Japanese bombing of the Shanghai district of Hongkou had a big effect on the industry, prompting a patriotic fervour epitomised by films coming out of the Lianhua Studio, with its close connections to Chiang Kaishek’s Nationalist Party.

Shanghai’s golden age of filmmaking reached its peak in 1937 with the release of Street Angel, a powerful drama about two sisters who flee the Japanese in northeast China and end up as prostitutes in Shanghai, and Crossroads, a clever comedy about four unemployed graduates. There was still time, however, after WWII and before the CCP took over in 1949, for a final flowering. A Spring River Flows East, dubbed the Gone with the Wind of Chinese cinema, and Springtime in a Small Town, another wartime tear jerker, remain popular films today.

Shanghai Cinema Today

China’s film industry was stymied after the Communist Revolution, which sent filmmakers scurrying to Hong Kong and Taiwan, where they played key roles in building up the local film industries that flourished there. Today’s moviegoers are scarce, as DVD piracy and internet downloads upset the economics of domestic filmmaking. Bucking the trend, however (but perhaps reflecting the Shanghai passion for cars), a drive-in cinema opened in Pudong in 2012.

FILM

The Shanghai International Film Festival (www.siff.com) celebrates international and locally produced films in June every year.

More innovative film studios in Xi’an and Beijing have captured much of the international acclaim of contemporary Chinese film. Co-productions have been more successful for the Shanghai Film Studios, which in 2001 moved from its central location in Xujiahui to the far-western city district of Songjiang.

One critical success was The Red Violin, a coproduction between Canada and Shanghai. Shanghai-born Vivian Wu (Wu Junmei; The Last Emperor, The Pillow Book) returned to her native city with her husband, director Oscar L Costo, in order to focus on their production company, MARdeORO Films. It produced the well-received Shanghai Red, starring Wu and Ge You (Farewell My Concubine, To Live), in 2006. Another actress hailing from Shanghai is Joan Chen (Chen Chong), who started her career at the Shanghai Film Studios in the late 1970s.

Shanghai’s independent films are scarce. Look out for Ye Lou’s Suzhou River (Suzhou He) and Andrew Chen’s Shanghai Panic (Women Haipa). Both were shot with digital cameras and are notable for showing a decidedly unglamorous and more realistic side of the city.

Chen Yifei’s 1920s period drama, The Barber (aka The Music Box), was released posthumously in 2006, while Taiwanese-born Oscar-winning director Ang Lee (Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon and Brokeback Mountain) released Lust, Caution in 2007. A controversial tale of sex and espionage set in WWII Shanghai, based on the 1979 novella by Eileen Chang, the award-winning film was heavily censored for its mainland China release.

Fashion

The Shanghainese have the reputation of being the most fashionable people in China. ‘There’s nothing the Cantonese won’t eat,’ one version of a popular Chinese saying goes, ‘and nothing the Shanghainese won’t wear.’ The generation gap is perhaps starker here, though, than anywhere else: you’re still quite likely to see locals wandering around their neighbourhood dressed in very comfortable (but extremely uncool) pyjamas and slippers, but Shanghai has breathtaking, voguish pockets while the petite figures of young Shanghai women ooze glamour in even the cheapest skirts and blouses.

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