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University of Hawai'i Press
Chapter Title: Two Stage Sisters: The Blossoming of a Revolutionary Aesthetic
Chapter Author(s): Gina Marchetti
Book Title: Transnational Chinese Cinemas
Book Subtitle: Identity, Nationhood, Gender
Book Editor(s): Sheldon Hsiao-peng Lu
Published by: University of Hawai'i Press. (1997)
Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt6wqxw6.7
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Chapter 2
·
Two Stage Sisters
The Blossoming of a Revolutionary Aesthetic
·
Gina Marchetti
On the eve of the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution in 1964, Xie Jin
brought to the screen a story about the changing lives of women in twentieth-century China set against the backdrop of the Shaoxing opera world.
Although rooted in the intimate story of two actresses and the vicissitudes
of their relationship, Xie gave the film, Two Stage Sisters (Wutai jiemei), an
epic scope by showing these women’s lives buffeted by tremendous social
and political upheavals.1 The film covers the years from 1935 to 1950, the
expanses of the Zhejiang countryside as well as Shanghai under Japanese,
Guomindang, and Communist rule.
Chunhua (Xie Fang), a young widow about to be sold by her in-laws,
escapes and becomes an apprentice in a traveling Shaoxing folk opera
troupe. Yuehong (Cao Yindi), who plays the male roles in the all-female
opera company, befriends Chunhua. After the death of Yuehong’s father,
Chunhua and Yuehong find themselves sold to a Shanghai opera theater to
replace the fading star, Shang Shuihua (Shangguan Yunzhu). Eventually,
Yuehong falls in love with their manipulative stage manager, Tang (Li
Wei), and the sisters quarrel and separate.
Inspired by the radical woman journalist, Jiang Bo (Gao Yuansheng),
Chunhua continues her career, giving a political flavor to her performances.
After an attempt to blind and ruin Chunhua by using Yuehong’s testimony
to trick her in court, Tang goes off to Taiwan to escape the revolution.
Although unable to harm her stage sister in court, Yuehong has been
publicly humiliated. Abandoned by Tang, she disappears into the countryside. After Shanghai’s liberation by the Communists, however, Chunhua
manages to track down Yuehong, and the two reconcile.
Two Stage Sisters uses the theatrical world of Shaoxing as a metaphor
for political and social change. The film also represents a search for a
Chinese cinema aesthetic based on these traditions as well as on Hollywood and socialist realist forms. This analysis will explore the intermingling of these aesthetic currents and the ways in which art and politics intertwine in Two Stage Sisters. By placing the film within the context of the
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political and cultural movements that spawned it, the drama of the development of Chinese cinema aesthetics since 1949 can be understood more
clearly.
· The Place of Two Stage Sisters in Xie Jin’s Career
Xie Jin’s own background made him particularly well-qualified to direct this
tale of Shaoxing opera and Shanghai’s theatrical world. Xie was born in
Shaoxing (Zhejiang province) in 1923. At the age of eight, he and his
family moved to Shanghai. From an early age, Xie was fascinated by the
theater and cinema. While growing up in the 1930s, he had the opportunity
to see the work of directors like Cai Chusheng, Sun Yu, and Yuan Muzhi,
the cream of Shanghai film’s “golden era.” Also, he began a life-long enthusiasm for the Shaoxing opera of the region.
During the Japanese occupation, Xie moved to Sichuan province in the
interior and studied theater at the Jiangen Drama Academy. There, he
worked with noted theatrical personalities like Huang Zuolin and Zhang
Junxiang. In Shanghai and Sichuan, Xie encountered both Chinese folk
traditions and Western dramatic and cinematographic forms. This blending
of these two traditions came to characterize his mature work.
When Zhang Junxiang accepted work at the Datong film studio in Shanghai in 1948, Xie went along as his assistant director. After 1949, Xie continued on in Shanghai, codirecting A Wave of Unrest (Yichang fengbo; also
translated as An Incident) with Lin Nong in 1954. His first solo effort was
Spring Days in Water Village (Shuixiang de chuntian; also translated as Spring
Over the Irrigated Land) in 1955. From the mid-1950s to the mid-1960s, Xie’s
style matured in an aesthetic crucible that ground together Hollywood
classicism, Soviet socialist realism, Shanghai dramatic traditions, and indigenous Chinese folk opera forms.
Many of Xie’s films focus on the lives of women, workers, artists, or
students. Woman Basketball Player No. 5 (Nülan wuhao, 1957) explores the
problems that a young female athlete faces in coming to grips with her
ambitions in the field of sports. The Red Detachment of Women (Hongse niangzijun, 1961) deals with the heroism of women who go from peasant life to
guerrilla warfare in the 1930s. Two Stage Sisters explores the lives of women
working on the Chinese stage. In all these films, women’s lives represent
both hardship and oppression as well as the potential for revolutionary
change. In fact, throughout most of his career, Xie Jin has been at the forefront of the exploration of different representations of women within
socialist cinema.
With the condemnation of Xie’s comedy, Big Li, Little Li, and Old Li (Da
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Li, Xiao Li, he Lao Li, 1962), and Two Stage Sisters (1964) soon after,
followed by the complete shutdown of the Shanghai studios, Xie’s output
dwindled to next to nothing during the Cultural Revolution. During that
period, however, Xie did work on two films based on model operas—The
Port (Haigang, 1972; also translated as On the Docks) and Panshiwan (1975).2
Since 1976, Xie has made several films, including Youth (Qingchun, 1977),
Ah, Cradle (A! Yaolan, 1979), The Legend of Tianyun Mountain (Tianyunshan
chuanqi, 1980), The Herdsman (Muma ren, 1982), Qiu Jin (1983), Garlands at
the Foot of the Mountain (Gaoshan xia de huahuan, 1984), Hibiscus Town
(Furong zhen, 1986), and The Last Aristocrats (Zuihou de guizu, 1989).
These films made after the Cultural Revolution show a marked change
in Xie’s oeuvre. Diverging from his earlier films that deal with and ostensibly support socialist revolution, the later works seem to be more nationalistic than revolutionary in character. Several explicitly criticize past party
policies.3
· The Theatrical World of Two Stage Sisters
Two Stage Sisters is one of the few films made at that time in the People’s
Republic of China (prc) to be based on an original screenplay rather than
a script adapted from a well-known and accepted literary or dramatic work.
However, the film still remains deeply indebted to the literary and theatrical world of modern China. In fact, the entire film revolves around the
theater and uses the stage to underscore the changes in its protagonists’ lives
as well as the dramatic political changes that occurred between 1935 and
1950.
The first third of Two Stage Sisters deals with the itinerant opera theater of
Zhejiang province. Shaoxing opera differs considerably from the Beijingstyle opera better known outside of China. Although Beijing opera has set a
certain standard of performance that has influenced regional styles considerably, other non-Mandarin-language opera styles have existed and continue
to flourish in most regions of China. According to Colin Mackerras’ account
of Chinese opera, Shaoxing opera originated in the later days of the Qing
dynasty and is, therefore, a rather recent addition to the history of Chinese
regional theater.4 Arising out of folk music traditions in the countryside,
Shaoxing eventually became popular in urban areas, where it began to be
performed in permanent theaters as well as tea houses and open-air market
pavilions.
The prevalence of all-female troupes makes Shaoxing stand out among
other Chinese regional opera forms. Records show that in 1923 an all-female
company performed in Shanghai. Eventually, schools were started in the
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61
countryside for actresses, and many troupes either added women to their
companies or performed with exclusively female casts.
Because of its elegant costumes, complex gestures, and often intricate
plot lines, many may be under the mistaken impression that Chinese opera
is an art form exclusively for aristocrats, intellectuals, and the wealthy.
Although performed at court and patronized by powerful landlords and
businessmen, Chinese opera has always remained a folk form enjoyed by a
broad range of people in Chinese society. In fact, the opening sequence of
Two Stage Sisters delineates the differences between the glittering fantasy of
the stage performance and the poverty of both the players and their audience. Performed in marketplaces and financed by the passing of a hat, opera
could be listened to and enjoyed by everyone regardless of social station or
gender. The volume and exaggerated articulation of the singing, the use of
stylized gestures in pantomimes, and the elaborate costumes attracted the
attention of passersby, who may have had no intention of watching the
opera but who were drawn in by the commotion.
If nothing else, Chinese opera is loud, and its extensive use of percussion
instruments like the ban (clapper) not only emphasizes important actions for
dramatic effect but also reminds an audience preoccupied with gambling,
bartering, snoozing, or chitchat that something important is happening on
stage. Thus, as Chunhua’s escape from her in-laws causes a tremendous
ruckus in an already cacophonous marketplace, Yuehong, playing the young
gentleman, and Xiao Xing, another actress playing a comic servant, as indicated by the white band of makeup across her nose, barely bat an eye and
continue singing.
Although many urban intellectuals were attracted to and wrote for the
opera stage and although a select few opera performers such as the noted
female impersonator of Beijing opera, Mei Lanfang, achieved super-stardom, most opera singers and musicians were of peasant stock and as poor as
their audiences. Most of these itinerant performers, much like the theater
artists of the Elizabethan stage, were treated like thieves and prostitutes and
considered the lowest rung of society. Despite this stigma, however, desperate women, trying to escape the harshness of the feudal peasant family in
an overpopulated countryside bled dry by greedy landlords, continuously
fueled the Shaoxing opera ranks.
In many ways, the life story of the Shaoxing actress Fan Ruijuan
parallels that of the fictitious Chunhua in Two Stage Sisters. Fan’s account of
her life on the Shaoxing stage reflects the same sense of desperation and
determination evident in the film. As Fan Ruijuan states in her memoir,
hers was not an uncommon life:
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I was only 11 when I joined a Shaoxing opera theater in 1935. At that
time, more than 20,000 of the 400,000 people living in Chengxian
County, my native place in Zhejiang Province and the birthplace of
Shaoxing Opera, had left their homes to become opera singers. Life was
hard. My family was living on bran cakes, sweet potatoes and clover,
which were all we could afford on father’s meager income as an odd job
man. To me, opera singing seemed to be the only alternative to the
miserable life of a childbride.5
Ironically, for Fan as well as for Chunhua in Two Stage Sisters, joining the
Shaoxing opera meant jumping from the frying pan into the fire. Early
opera training for these young girls consisted of beatings, starvation, humiliation, and long hours of hard labor. Virtually enslaved to the troupe’s manager, opera performers often worked for room and board alone in order to
pay for their training. Underfed and often lice-ridden or tubercular, they
were forced to travel miles on foot through winter storms and still perform
flawlessly the moment the troupe arrived at its destination.
Aside from being indentured to a theatrical manager, opera performers
were also looked upon as sexually available to customers. Throughout the
history of Chinese opera, stories abound about young boys taken into opera
companies to play female roles and act as homosexual prostitutes. Traveling female performers also were known to serve as prostitutes. When the
opera troupe in Two Stage Sisters performs an all-night engagement, expectations extend beyond the singing of opera tunes. Lord Ni, a wealthy land
owner, hopes to enjoy more than an evening of opera from Yuehong and
Chunhua as an unspoken part of his agreement.
This incident not only underscores opera performers’ lack of power over
their lives, but it also brings out the ironic contrast between the fantasies
performed on stage and the actual lives of the Shaoxing actresses. Yuehong
as the young gentleman scholar and Chunhua as the innocent ingénue sing
operas about romantic love. Yet, this type of romance was completely
beyond the expectations of young women born into a brutally patriarchal
society of arranged marriages, child brides, concubines, prostitution, and
child slavery.
Many operas feature dynamic female generals, swordswomen, and female
fairy spirits with martial talents supported by a will to exercise them. In
contrast, the lives of the actresses in Shaoxing opera only testify to the
powerlessness of women in the Chinese countryside. In one scene, for
example, the local policeman sent by Lord Ni, after Yuehong refused the
lord’s advances, drags off and pillories a defiant Chunhua, still wearing the
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63
opera costume associated with a female warrior role. Chunhua resists, but
to no avail. Romance and martial victory for women on stage contrast
sharply with oppression, humiliation, and total impotence off stage.
The theatrical world Yuehong and Chunhua enter in the Shanghai of
1941 is, in many ways, as harsh and demanding as the one left behind in
the countryside. However, they also enter an urban environment very
different from rural life. Shanghai was a thriving port filled with Western
concessions not allowed in other parts of China during the late Qing and
early Republican periods. It had a reputation as a wide-open port and city of
intrigue, which continued through the Japanese occupation and civil war
periods depicted in Two Stage Sisters. Shanghai was a center of progressive
ideas and innovative theatrical forms, as well as a haven for those drawn to
its seamier side of money, power, and corruption. Notorious for harboring
revolutionists, the Shanghai theater district was home to many actorsturned-activists from the turn of the century.
When a demonstration in Beijing on May 4, 1919, led to China’s refusal
to sign the Treaty of Versailles because it favored Japanese interests in Asia,
the Shanghai intellectual community also helped to usher in a new movement begun with the demonstration and called the May 4th or New Culture Movement. Trying to bring China into the modern world, artists,
politicians, literary and theatrical figures, young scholars, and students in all
disciplines looked to both Western culture and a new sense of Chinese
nationalism for inspiration.
Although many artists involved with the May 4th Movement tried to
survive in Shanghai under the Japanese occupation, most involved in radical
politics fled either to the Communist Party strongholds around Yan’an or
the Guomindang-controlled areas in the south. Traditional opera and the
world of light entertainment, however, managed business as usual under
the Japanese.
After World War II, Shanghai once again fell under the control of the
Guomindang. In Two Stage Sisters, the bitter political struggles that ensued
between the Communists and the Nationalists are metaphorically represented by the turmoil within the theatrical world. Jiang Bo, who represents
the spirit of May 4th and its hope for the emancipation of women, and
Chunhua go to battle with the Guomindang-backed theatrical producer
Tang over their right to produce socially conscious operas and compete
with Tang’s more commercial productions.
In 1946, Jiang Bo takes Chunhua to an exhibition commemorating the
tenth anniversary of the death of Lu Xun. A principal motive force behind
the May 4th Movement, Lu Xun stands as a symbol of the interconnection
between revolutionary politics and the arts. Born in Shaoxing, Lu Xun was
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associated throughout his life with the literary and theatrical world of
Shanghai and Zhejiang province. Always a champion of the rights of
women, Lu Xun wrote essays on Ibsen’s A Doll’s House and against enforced
chastity for women and the sexual double standard, as well as several essays
commemorating the deaths of young female student activists.
Lu Xun also dealt with poverty and women’s issues in his fiction. His
terse prose and use of keenly observed detail became the model for a type of
critical realism still favored by many writers today. His novella, The New
Year’s Sacrifice (Zhufu), for example, deals with the plight of a poor widow
in China known simply as “Xiang Lin’s Wife.” When Chunhua sees an
etching of this character, a superimposition of her face with the print shows
Chunhua’s identification with Lu Xun’s creation.
On stage, in an opera based on the novella, Chunhua appears as the
doomed peasant widow, singing an aria in torn rags with whitened hair.
This brief excerpt from the opera acts as a shorthand reference to the quantum changes going on within the Chinese theater at that time and, by
extension, Chinese society. Western influences have been absorbed and
come full circle, so that the plight of a downtrodden peasant widow can
become fit subject matter for an art form that had entertained the imperial
courts and the landed gentry. The opera world had changed significantly.
At this point, the onstage world of Two Stage Sisters parallels rather than
contrasts with the backstage drama of the film. Instead of a world of light
comedy and romance, The New Year’s Sacrifice points to the possibility of a
socially and politically committed theater. This theater takes the plight of
the average woman in China as a metaphor for the oppressive aspect of the
society generally.
After the revolution, Chunhua resumes her life as an itinerant opera
performer—with a difference. Now, she performs revolutionary opera and
travels from village to village as a theatrical cadre to educate the peasantry
about revolution. She performs a type of opera stylistically closer to traditional Shaoxing than the socially committed New Year’s Sacrifice, but with a
clear political message.
In Hangzhou, where Chunhua had been pilloried, the troupe stages an
opera version of The White-Haired Girl (Baimao nü). Written in Yan’an in
1943, this play became the standard for all sorts of revolutionary drama to
follow after 1949. Originally a play, The White-Haired Girl has been produced
as an opera, filmed, danced as a ballet, and has inspired revolutionary
graphic art.
The White-Haired Girl tells the story of Xi’er, a young peasant woman
brutalized by feudal landlords and their minions. After all sorts of violations
and humiliations, she takes refuge in a cave, living like a wild animal.
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65
Because of this adversity, her hair turns completely white, and she acquires
a reputation for fierceness. The local population considers her mad. When
the Red Army liberates the area, she is reunited with her fiancé and joins
the revolution. As Raphael Bassan has pointed out, The White-Haired Girl
(here referring to the earliest film version of the play) contains all the
elements necessary to insure it a lasting place of influence on all revolutionary film and theater to follow in the prc:
It serves as a model, particularly at the level of the presentation of the
conflicts of the people in opposition to the landlords, for all revolutionary realism to come. All is, in fact, judiciously coded: the unfailing will
of the heroine, the courage and abnegation of the disinherited, the
always 100% negative profile of the oppressors, and, finally, the idealistic portrait of the Communist soldiers (who are also party cadres), new
guides of the Chinese nation.6
The spirit of Yan’an drama as well as the theater that followed the revolution can be traced to Mao’s personal interest in art and cultural affairs. In
his famous “Talks at the Yenan Forum on Literature and Art,” Mao took
time out from the arduous tasks of fighting the war against the Japanese
and dealing with the daily difficulties of running the Yan’an soviet to discuss the importance of China’s “cultural army” in the country’s battle
against both foreign enemies and domestic oppressors. He calls for committed artists to draw on a variety of forms, including traditional ones, to both
appeal to and educate the Chinese masses:
We should take over the rich legacy and the good traditions in literature
and art that have been handed down from past ages in China and foreign countries, but the aim must still be serve the masses of the people.
Nor do we refuse to utilize the literary and artistic forms of the past, but
in our hands these old forms, remolded and infused with new content,
also become something revolutionary in the service of the people.7
Not surprisingly, Mao’s talks at Yan’an led to the type of revolutionary
drama exemplified by The White-Haired Girl. Firmly rooted in traditional
theater and folklore, the play presents a clear moral universe with peasants
replacing noble lords and generals as heroes and heroines. Its mythic
elements, magical transformations, and stock character types place it
squarely within folk theater traditions. Later, Yan’an theater became the
basis for Mao’s “revolutionary romanticism” as well as the Cultural Revolution’s model operas.
In Two Stage Sisters, Chunhua’s performance of The White-Haired Girl bears
as much resemblance to The New Year’s Sacrifice as it does to traditional
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Fig. 3.
Chunhua (back) and Yuehong (front) in Two Stage Sisters (Wutai jiemei),
directed by Xie Jin, PRC, 1965. British Film Institute.
Shaoxing opera. Within the film, The White-Haired Girl functions as a synthesis of the old and the new, China and the West, spoken and opera
forms, and as the culmination of all the other, often contradictory, aesthetic
currents to which the film refers. Although it relies on the stylization of
traditional opera for its effect, it also deals with contemporary life, with
actual change, and with current political and social concerns. Performing in
the public square of Hangzhou, Chunhua comes full circle. Her performance melds a May 4th, urban critical realism with the fantastical nature of
folk opera.
Taken as a whole, Two Stage Sisters transcends the insular world of Shaoxing opera to make some far-reaching statements about the nature of oppression and the power of change in twentieth-century China. Shaoxing
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67
serves as a metaphor. Events of historical, social, political, and cultural
import (from the feudal countryside through Shanghai enterprise to revolutionary promise) occur in the theater that functions as a microcosm of Chinese society at large. Chunhua, Yuehong, and Jiang Bo stand in as “every
woman,” extraordinary because of their notoriety, but only a step away
from the peasantry. The structural parallels are obvious but effective. The
personal dramas of the stage sisters parallel the fictional worlds of the plays
they perform, which, in turn, parallel the political changes occurring in Chinese society.
Perhaps the most important parallel to consider, however, is the connection between the aesthetic of the film itself and the aesthetic development
of the fictional theatrical world it chronicles. Two Stage Sisters is itself very
much like Chinese opera. Its episodic narrative structure, for example, relies
on often disjointed, autonomous sequences to give it a sweeping scope and
an ability to deal with all aspects of society.
Moreover, like opera, the film relies on music to both frame and underscore important dramatic moments and to place these moments within a
broader social and narrative context. For example, the film opens with a
sweeping crane shot that takes in the expanses of the Zhejiang countryside
before settling on the opera being performed in the marketplace. A female
chorus accompanies the crane shot. The same chorus also accompanies
similar crane shots later in the film as well as several montage sequences
that interrupt and comment on the narrative flow. Similarly, traditional
opera narrative may be interrupted by arias or by physical-action sequences
choreographed to instrumental music.
As in traditional opera, an orchestra punctuates moments of intense
drama with percussion or full orchestral musical phrases. For example, the
music swells when Chunhua and Yuehong face each other after Chunhua’s
acceptance into the opera troupe and at other similarly dramatic moments.
In addition, the gestures, speech, and movement of the characters in Two
Stage Sisters often take on the highly stylized air of traditional opera.
Opera training, for example, involves hours of exercises devoted to making eye movements more expressive by following a candle flame in a darkened room. Many of the eye movements within the film draw on this
aspect of opera tradition (e.g., Chunhua’s passionate glances at Yuehong
when the latter begins to drift away from her in Shanghai and Yuehong’s
startled and terrified glance at Tang after he slaps her across the face before
their appearance in court).
The similarity of the characters in Two Stage Sisters to some traditional
opera heroines must also be noted. In many ways, Chunhua appears as a
modern recreation of the wudan or daomadan, martial heroines like Mu Gui68
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ying, the famous female general.8 Like the female warrior characters she
performs on stage, Chunhua is aggressive, physically powerful, morally
upright, and inevitably victorious. In fact, the representation of the revolutionary heroine in the preponderance of films made in the prc owes a great
debt to traditional opera characterizations. Similarly, the villains take on
characteristics of wicked generals, evil-spirited demons, or monks from their
stage counterparts.
However, although Two Stage Sisters’ aesthetics may be rooted in traditional opera in many important respects, the film also gathers stylistic
momentum from the other developments in theater to which the film’s
plot alludes. In many ways, Two Stage Sisters owes a great deal to the same
May 4th impulses that gave rise to Lu Xun’s mature style, represented in
the film by The New Year’s Sacrifice. Like Lu Xun’s novella, Two Stage Sisters
uses central female characters to concretize all sorts of social ills. In addition,
Two Stage Sisters makes full use of the naturalistic detail characteristic of May
4th literature. Seemingly insignificant images take on dramatic weight (e.g.,
laundry washed in the river after sunset, drops of blood in a bowl of water
or on a white sleeve, the straw hats an abandoned woman must make to
survive in the countryside).
Although epic in scope like traditional opera, Two Stage Sisters also has the
chamber quality of a literature influenced by Ibsen and Western critical realism. Jiang Bo cooks rice that boils over as she discusses sexism, class differences, and the theater with Chunhua. A montage sequence shows the daily
routine of the traveling troupe from calisthenics for martial roles to memorizing lines while walking from town to town. This attention to what may
appear to be nearly irrelevant detail creates a sense of the particularity of the
social fabric, a concrete feeling for the historical period, as it does in the best
of critical realism globally.
Just as the narrative of Two Stage Sisters culminates with the performance
of The White-Haired Girl and the reunion of Chunhua and Yuehong, the
aesthetic strivings of the film itself find their culmination in the performance of this play. Mao’s vision of a “revolutionary romanticism” is
wedded to critical realism. Indeed, it is tempting to look at Two Stage Sisters
as an example of revolutionary romanticism. The film’s plot, for example,
follows the trials of a young peasant woman, who, instead of ending her
life as an obscure beggar like the peasant widow in The New Year’s Sacrifice,
almost magically transforms herself into a revolutionary heroine. With a few
exceptions, Two Stage Sisters deals with crystal-clear conflicts, between
masters and servants, lords and peasants, powerful men and helpless
women, in which traditional power relations are overturned. As in all revolutionary romanticism, the revolution becomes the most important motive
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69
force for change. Its coming resolves virtually all of the narrative conflicts.
Just as Xi’er joins up with her lover and the Red Army in The White-Haired
Girl, Yuehong, transformed by her suffering at the hands of Tang, joins up
with Chunhua and the revolutionary opera troupe at the end of Two Stage
Sisters. Individual concerns find public resolution in the political arena.
Two Stage Sisters seems to conveniently contain the seeds of its own aesthetic unraveling within its plot. On closer examination, however, it becomes clear that this discussion does not do justice to the aesthetic complexity of the film. Although profoundly indebted to traditional opera, the May
4th Movement, and Mao’s revolutionary romanticism, Two Stage Sisters
takes up aesthetic concerns that transcend Chinese drama. Like most Chinese films of its era, Two Stage Sisters walks a tightrope between indigenous
dramatic forms and foreign influences, between revolutionary romanticism
and what Godard has called “Hollywood Mosfilm.”
During his sojourn in China, Jay Leyda found himself quite taken aback
by the Chinese film industry’s indebtedness to Hollywood:
The influence of Hollywood, and in one of its worse aspects, was a
shock. First, it contradicted everything that I heard and read here about
the poisons and falsehoods of Hollywood being discarded by a revolutionary, bold, new Chinese cinema. The Soviet cinema had been occasionally tempted in the same way, but never so unblushingly as here.
And I was shocked to find here a part of the past revived that was long
since judged as a sham and embarrassment, while a new important Chinese film [Song of Youth (Qingchun zhige; dir. Cui Wei and Chen Huaikai, 1959)] turned away deliberately from the progress being made in
world cinema, even so near as Moscow and Warsaw.9
The influence of Hollywood on Two Stage Sisters cannot be denied. In
fact, if the character of Jiang Bo and the revolution were erased from the
script, the film could quite easily be mistaken for a Hollywood backstage
melodrama. It has all the classic elements of that genre, for example, the
hard struggle to the top of the theatrical profession, the bitterness of the
aging actress’ lot, the inevitability of decline, sour romances, misguided ambitions, competition, romantic needs vying with the dream of theatrical success, the hardships of exploitation by unsympathetic bosses.
In addition to this indebtedness to Hollywood and despite Leyda’s comment that Chinese film tends to ignore Soviet cinema, Two Stage Sisters also
owes much to Soviet socialist realism. In fact, a careful examination of the
film underscores the similarities as well as the fundamental differences
between classical Hollywood realism and Soviet socialist realism.
With some exceptions, for example, Two Stage Sisters strives for that
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transparency and clarity so prized by both Hollywood and socialist realism.
The film creates a self-contained world. It is lit, photographed, composed,
edited, and scripted in a self-effacing, Hollywood style. Characters are not
as psychologically complex as their Hollywood counterparts, but they
are more than one-dimensional. The narrative is linear, if episodic. The
familiar codes of narrative and aesthetic form allow disbelief willingly to be
suspended.
Despite their similarities, Hollywood classical realism and socialist realism differ fundamentally. Like other films of its era, Two Stage Sisters perhaps
owes a greater debt to Moscow than Leyda would be willing to admit.
Characterization in Two Stage Sisters, for example, follows many of the
conventions traditionally associated with socialist realism. Each character
represents a certain class position and the contradictions associated with a
specific historical period. Lord Ni and Tang, for example, represent a position of power through ownership, and they exploit the women peasants
and workers in the film. Although individually quite distinct, these characters function as “types,” exemplary of the ruling order in both rural and
urban prerevolutionary China.
Typification by gender and class does not rubber stamp a character. It
does, however, allow for possible points of identification. Each character
embodies a particular idea and has a certain abstract potential. Chunhua, for
example, functions as an icon beyond the narrative, an abstraction of a
“typical” woman’s awakening into class and social consciousness. She represents both a psychologically credible Hollywood-styled character and an
abstract idea, that is, a type in the socialist realist mold.
With history foregrounded as a narrative force in socialist realism, other
classical realist narrative techniques also change. In the socialist realist text,
a tension surfaces between polemics and plot; plot structure becomes subordinated to the rhetorical necessity of making a political point. Narrative
structure seems to be transformed by this injection of history and the necessity for generalization and abstraction operative in socialist realism.
For example, although Two Stage Sisters’ narrative is, for the most part,
linear, it certainly does not follow the Aristotelian dramatic unity so dear to
most types of classical realist fictions. In order to broaden the geographic,
temporal, and social scope of the issues dealt with in the film, the episodic
narrative presents incidents often only tangentially related to the development of the principal plot line. The device of the itinerant theatrical troupe
provides an excellent vehicle for this. Both before and after the revolution,
the troupe drifts along the river in the countryside, encountering peasants
and wealthy landowners. Characters appear, are used to make a point, disappear, occasionally reappear to make another point, or simply vanish.
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In addition, the film structures events into a series of dialectical relationships. Chunhua’s and Yuehong’s lives not only parallel one another, for
example, but have a profound effect on one another. They each represent
distinct choices and attributes that contradict one another at an abstract level.
By seeing their lives juxtaposed, the viewer can synthesize certain ideas about
the treatment of women, the limitations on their lives, and their struggles.
In the cases of Chunhua and Yuehong, two approaches are explored.
Thus, Chunhua’s choice to work against the system is understandable only
in relation to Yuehong’s decision to live within it. When the two clash in
the courtroom, the whole system explodes, and the revolution arrives in the
streets of Shanghai in the following scene, a direct result of the dialectical
conflict within the narrative.
· The Brecht Connection: Chinese Opera and Epic Theater
After looking at Two Stage Sisters’ roots in Chinese theater, Hollywood
melodrama, and socialist realism, the aesthetic sum of all this seems to be
something rather different from the aggregate of its parts. Xie Jin has taken
from a genre at the edges of Hollywood classicism—the melodrama. The
place of the melodrama within the tradition of classical Hollywood realism
must be taken into account in order to better understand the textual operation of Two Stage Sisters.
Recent criticism has pointed out that melodramas often strain the formal
foundations of classical Hollywood realism to their limits.10 If Two Stage
Sisters resembles classical Hollywood cinema or Soviet socialist realism, it
remains at the edge of those forms. It must be placed at the boundary
between classical realist conventions and something quite different.
There seems to be something within the formal structure of Two Stage
Sisters, coupled with the film’s revolutionary politics, that places it very
close to Brecht’s notion of epic theater. Although Xie Jin would be the first
to deny any conscious similarity between his work and Brecht’s, a closer
look at both the film and Brecht’s writings reveals some interesting aesthetic parallels.11
Despite the notoriety of his debates with Lukács on the applicability/
inappropriateness of taking up the nineteenth-century realist novel as a
model for socialist art, Brecht, while arguing against that form of realism,
never placed his own aesthetic ideas outside of a broader realist tradition.
Anti-illusionist and anti-Aristotelian rather than antirealist, Brecht sought to
break down the illusion of transparency created by bourgeois theater as well
as the emotional identification and catharsis invited by Aristotelian drama.
Instead, Brecht tried to distance the spectator from the drama by break72
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ing the illusion of an invisible fourth wall. This was done by distancing
the spectator from the actors on stage by making the audience constantly
aware of the fact that the players were simply presenting a role constructed
for them. In this way, Brecht hoped to create a critical distance between
the play and the spectator, so that the playgoer would be inspired to
think about the social and political issues under discussion rather than
become overly involved with the characters as “real people” with individual
problems.
Similar principles of distanciation can be seen at work in Two Stage Sisters.
For example, the film revolves around the performance of other fictions,
that is, operas, that constantly alert the viewer to the fact that the film, too,
is a constructed fiction. Moreover, Two Stage Sisters’ structure resembles
opera; for example, it has disjointed episodes, major leaps in time and place,
choral interludes, and many other elements that foreground its structuring
principles and place it far outside Aristotelian traditions. Both the orchestra
and the camera intrude self-consciously on the drama, acting as storytellers,
commenting and reflecting on the characters’ placements within the historical moment.
Also, just as Sirk and Fassbinder create compositions that frame characters within doorways and windows to place them figuratively outside the
drama, Xie uses the same techniques for political analysis. This distance
allows the viewer room for reflection on issues outside of any emotional involvement with the characters as individuals.
For example, after a scene that features a political discussion in Jiang Bo’s
apartment, a storm develops outside. Chunhua and Jiang Bo go to the rooftop apartment’s doorway. The camera frames them inside and dollies back.
With this shot, the camera figuratively places the characters’ lives in perspective. The narrative comes to a temporary halt, allowing the viewer to
reflect on the position of these characters within history, within the developing political struggle. Political changes break like a storm, and the implicit
metaphor takes the viewer away from the drama for a moment. As Brecht
hopes “the spectator stands outside, studies” in epic theater, Xie Jin’s camera
allows the viewer this same critical distance in Two Stage Sisters.12
The similarity between Two Stage Sisters and Brecht’s notion of epic
theater goes beyond mere coincidence. However, although Two Stage Sisters
postdated epic theater and achieves several of its hoped-for effects, it would
be taking the argument too far to say that Brechtian aesthetics directly influenced Xie Jin. Rather, the common roots and purposes of Brecht and Xie
must be kept in mind.
Brecht and Xie both owe a considerable aesthetic debt to traditional Chinese opera. Although originally a folk form, Chinese opera developed a high
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degree of stylistic sophistication within its long history. Outside of traditions of Western realism, Chinese opera formed its own aesthetic standards,
with its own perspective on the relationship between art and actuality.
Brecht particularly admired Chinese opera’s aesthetic self-consciousness and
delight in conventionality.
In an essay titled “Mei Lanfang, Stanislavsky, Brecht—A Study in Contrasts,” Huang Zuolin notes that Brecht was particularly taken with the
famous opera star Mei Lanfang’s acting technique and with the Chinese
opera’s attitude toward performance in general. In fact, Huang traces Brecht’s
notion of “quotation” acting to traditional Chinese storytelling techniques:
In the course of his work, Brecht actually adopted a number of techniques from the traditional Chinese theater. One of these is his method
of ‘quotation.’ He makes an actor ‘quote’ the character played, like a traditional Chinese storyteller who steps in and out of the role at will,
sometimes into the part, sometimes making comments in the first person. This shifting of position facilitates the unfolding of the story, the
delineation of character, and the elucidation of the author’s intention.13
In his essay, “Alienation Effects in Chinese Acting,” Brecht states:
Above all, the Chinese artist never acts as if there were a fourth wall besides the three surrounding him. He expresses his awareness of being
watched. This immediately removes one of the European stage’s characteristic illusions. The audience can no longer have the illusion of being
the unseen spectator at an event which is really taking place. A whole
elaborate European stage technique, which helps to conceal the fact that
the scenes are so arranged that the audience can view them in the easiest
way, is thereby made unnecessary. The actors openly choose those
positions which will best show them off to the audience, just as if they
were acrobats. . . . The artist’s object is to appear strange and even surprising to the audience. He achieves this by looking strangely at himself
and his work.14
Similarly, in Two Stage Sisters, as the narrative bandies back and forth
between onstage and offstage life, characterization takes on a quality of
quotation.
In addition, the visual presentation of the self to be looked at by others
operates as an “alienation effect.” To cite one example, when Chunhua and
Yuehong first arrive in Shanghai, they see Shuihua for the first time backstage as she puts on her makeup. The camera’s position allows the viewer
to see Shuihua looking at her reflection in the mirror as well as the dumbfounded faces of Chunhua and Yuehong. Whether the two young actresses
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are open-mouthed because of the older actress’ age or because they are
simply star struck is never elucidated.
In this shot, however, the film viewer confronts a character, aware of
being watched within the narrative, preparing to be watched within
another fictional drama, that is, the opera to be performed on stage. Chunhua and Yuehong seem aware of their own similar positions as actresses
aging within the theater. Perhaps the viewer becomes aware, at this dramatically charged moment, of yet another element, that is, the fact that all
three are portrayed by screen actresses who may face similar career problems. (Since this film was not released to the general public until after the
Cultural Revolution, this effect may have been further heightened by the
fact that the actress who portrays Shuihua, Shangguan Yunzhu, had died
during that period. Her death was subsequently blamed on the stress she
underwent during the Cultural Revolution.) This moment allows the
viewer to think critically about women’s lives, class struggle, and the nature
of oppression. The spectator can reflect on the drama as Shuihua reflects on
her aging image in the mirror.
Two Stage Sisters’ allusions to other dramatic works, its narrative ellipses,
its stylistic self-consciousness must be regarded as very sophisticated aesthetically by Western standards. The film has certain affinities with Western
modernism and international developments in Marxist aesthetics. Beneath
this complexity, however, there is also an innocence, a moral directness, an
ingenuous hope for a brighter future.
Coming from traditional theater and its folk aesthetic, Two Stage Sisters
has a “naive” quality, and this quality finally brings the film close to Brecht’s
dream of a drama that is both didactic and popular, critical and supportive of
revolutionary change. Alan Lovell has astutely observed: “Increasingly,
Brecht described the quality he was searching for in his art as ‘Naïveté.’ ”15
Perhaps Two Stage Sisters comes close to Brecht’s longing for “naïveté,”
since it draws on the folk art roots of Chinese opera to shape a modern aesthetic, to reform a relationship between art and the people obscured within
modern, industrialized, commercial culture.
· Two Stage Sisters and the Cultural Revolution
After tracing the aesthetic roots of Two Stage Sisters from folk opera through
Lu Xun to Brecht and Mao himself, it seems unlikely that anyone could
come up with another Chinese film indebted to as many strains of Marxist
aesthetics so vividly described through narrative devices and cinematographic techniques. However, Two Stage Sisters was not released to the
public until after the Cultural Revolution had ended, and the film was
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75
viciously attacked politically while it was still in production. In order to
understand the reasons for the suppression of Two Stage Sisters, the film must
be placed within the context of the political events going on at the time of
its production.
In 1958, Mao Zedong launched China on an exceedingly ambitious
project of reform called The Great Leap Forward. Designed to quicken the
transformation of China into a model socialist society by increasing the size
and power of both rural and urban communes, the program rather quickly
collapsed the following year. In 1959, Mao stepped down as chairman of
the People’s Republic in favor of Liu Shaoqi, although Mao remained head
of the Communist Party.16
Paul G. Pickowicz has noted that the end of the Great Leap Forward and
Mao’s temporary loss of power had some significant effects on the Chinese
film industry.17 Even though there was a decrease in production, greater
emphasis was placed on quality filmmaking and carefully crafted stories.
As Pickowicz points out, the publication in 1961 of an essay by Xia Yan
titled “Raise Our Country’s Film Art to a New Level” ushered in the new
era for the Chinese cinema. One of the best known of the “left-wing” filmmakers during the golden age of the Shanghai studios in the 1930s, Xia Yan
had risen in the party ranks after 1949 to become vice-minister of culture. In
this 1961 essay, implicitly critical of the Great Leap Forward, Xia calls for
greater autonomy for artists and for more diversity within the cinema.
Xia’s directives had a definite impact. The period between the Great Leap
Forward and the Cultural Revolution was characterized by a tremendous
diversity in both form and subject matter within the cinema. Production
ranged from domestic comedies like Li Shuangshuang (dir. Lu Ren, 1962) to
dramas about life in prerevolutionary China like The Lin Family Shop (Linjia
puzi; dir. Shui Hua, 1959). Stories about intellectuals and their romantic as
well as political exploits like Xie Tieli’s Early Spring (Zaochun eryue; a.k.a.
Second Lunar Month, Threshold of Spring, 1964) were produced alongside films
about revolutionary activities like Xie Jin’s The Red Detachment of Women
(1961).
This period came to a rather abrupt end, however, with the reassertion
of Mao’s power in the mid-1960s. The Cultural Revolution saw the mobilization of youth in the guise of the Red Guard, further radicalization of
peasants and workers, dismantling of huge chunks of the bureaucratic
superstructure, and purge of many party cadres.
Interestingly, many of the Cultural Revolution’s most heated battles
were fought in the aesthetic realm, and the Shanghai film industry became
one of the prime targets. In fact, during much of the Cultural Revolution,
feature-film production ceased. Because of his calls for reform after the Great
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Leap Forward, Xia Yan stood out for censure. As Xie Jin has pointed out,
Two Stage Sisters fared particularly badly because of Xia Yan’s association
with the project:
“Wutai jiemei” [Two Stage Sisters] and “Zaochun eryue” [Xie Tieli’s Early
Spring] were attacked above all because of Xia Yan who had made corrections and suggestions on the screenplay. By attacking the films, they
wanted to attack him. For “Wutai jiemei,” Xia Yan not only helped me
a lot in writing the screenplay, but it was he himself who encouraged
me to make the film. And that was one of the ‘crimes’ of which he was
accused during the Cultural Revolution.18
Jiang Qing, Mao’s wife and head of the “Gang of Four” in power during the
Cultural Revolution, had a particular dislike for Xia Yan that extended back
to her days as an actress in Shanghai. Beyond the personality clashes, Jiang
Qing also had very clear and firm ideas about what a Chinese revolutionary
drama should look like. The controversy became divided along geographic
lines, which paralleled political camps. Revolutionary art outside the boundaries of the aesthetics developed in the Yan’an soviet during World War II
lost all validity and was thought of as somehow “impure.”
If Two Stage Sisters is looked at not as a harmonious mixture of Yan’an
and Shanghai influences but as a battleground between two notions of
what a politically progressive art should look like, then perhaps the bitterness of the film’s condemnation can be better understood. Although indebted to Yan’an’s The White-Haired Girl and Mao’s “revolutionary romanticism,” Two Stage Sisters’ aesthetic heart remains in Shanghai, and this
aesthetic debt assured its condemnation.
Even in works like Two Stage Sisters that so fervently support the party
and the revolution, the Cultural Revolution’s proponents could unearth a
bourgeois, Western sensibility. In literary and dramatic works, characterization became a politically charged issue. A notion of the “middle” character
developed. In Two Stage Sisters, for example, Yuehong stands out. Neither
heroic nor villainous, she aids her own oppressor because of avarice and
sheer stupidity. She is, however, sympathetic. She is a victim and a “sinner”
who is eventually “redeemed” by the love of her stage sister. The morally
ambivalent nature of this character places her somewhere outside the realm
of heroics or infamy. In the “middle,” her moral ambivalence leads to textual ambiguity and, in turn, the possibility of counterrevolutionary readings. Likewise, the illusion of psychological complexity that characterizes
the “middle character” places Yuehong squarely within a Western tradition
of naturalism. Descriptive detail outweighs didactic precision, and, once
again, the possibility of a subversive reading appears.
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77
In retrospect, this reasoning seems strained, to say the least. More importantly, however, no degree of censure should rob Two Stage Sisters of its right
to be taken seriously within the history of Marxist aesthetics. In its attempt
to locate a peculiarly Chinese socialist aesthetic that can do justice to the
representation of women, Two Stage Sisters merits attention. Beyond this,
Two Stage Sisters remains at the cusp of aesthetic currents that still rage not
only within Chinese cinema but within cinemas committed to social change
worldwide.
· Notes
1. Most of the research for this essay was done in Paris, France, in the fall of 1982
and spring of 1983 under the auspices of a French Government Grant. I would like
to thank Janet Yang of World Entertainment, Inc., for arranging for me to interview
Xie Jin while he was in the United States and for translating for us. A shorter version
of this paper was presented at the 1985 Society for Cinema Studies conference at
New York University. I am grateful to Sheldon Lu, the editor of this volume, for
giving me the opportunity to have this essay reprinted with corrections and some
minor changes. I would also like to thank Chuck Kleinhans, Julia Lesage, John Hess,
and the other members of the editorial board of Jump Cut, where this essay originally
appeared.
Two Stage Sisters’ Chinese title, Wutai jiemei, is also translated as Stage Sisters, Two
Actresses, Sisters of the Stage. For an overview of film in the People’s Republic of China,
see Jay Leyda, Dianying–Electric Shadows: An Account of Films and Film Audience in China
(Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1972), or Régis Bergeron, Le cinéma chinois: 1949–
1983 (Paris: L’Harmatton, 1984). Kwok and M.-C. Quiquemelle, “Le cinéma chinois
et le réalisme,” Ombres électriques: panorama du cinéma chinois—1925–1983 (Paris: Centre
de Documentation sur le Cinéma Chinois, 1982) is also informative.
At the time Jump Cut decided to devote two special sections to cinema from the
People’s Republic of China in 1986 and 1989, little existed in English on Chineselanguage film. Since this essay was first published, however, there has been a welcome blossoming of scholarly works on Chinese cinema. Thankfully, Xie Jin and
his oeuvre have not been ignored. Chris Berry, ed., Perspectives on Chinese Cinema
(London: British Film Institute, 1991), includes a biography and other critical material
on Xie Jin. Nick Browne, “Society and Subjectivity: On the Political Economy of
Chinese Melodrama,” in New Chinese Cinemas: Forms, Identities, Politics, ed. Nick Browne,
Paul G. Pickowicz, Vivian Sobchack, and Esther Yau (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), 40–56, contains extensive discussion of Xie’s Hibiscus Town.
Other useful works include Paul Clark, Chinese Cinema: Culture and Politics Since
1949 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1987); Da Huo’er, “An Interview
with Xie Jin,” Jump Cut 34 (March 1989): 107–109; John A. Lent, The Asian Film In78
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dustry (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1990); Ma Ning, “Spatiality and Subjectivity in Xie Jin’s Film Melodrama of the New Period,” in New Chinese Cinemas: Forms,
Identities, Politics, ed. Nick Browne, Paul G. Pickowicz, Vivian Sobchack, and Esther
Yau (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1994), 15–39; George S. Semsel, ed.,
Chinese Film: The State of the Art in the People’s Republic (New York: Praeger, 1987); and
Timothy Tung, “The Work of Xie Jin: A Personal Letter To the Editor,” in Film and
Politics in the Third World, ed. John D. H. Downing (New York: Praeger, 1987). The
latter volume also contains a translation of the Kwok and Quiquemelle article mentioned above.
2. For information on film during the Cultural Revolution, see Paul Clark, “Filmmaking in China: From the Cultural Revolution to 1981,” China Quarterly 94 (June
1983): 304–322.
3. For more biographical information on Xie Jin, see Marco Muller, “Les tribulations d’un cineaste chinois en Chine,” Cahiers du cinéma 344 (February 1983): 16–21.
Same interview in Italian: Marco Muller, “Intervista con Xie Jin,” in Ombre Electriche:
Saggi e Richerche sul Cinema Cinese (Milan: Gruppo Editoriale Electra, 1982). Charles
Tesson, “Xie Jin: Celui par qui le mélo arrive,” Cahiers du cinéma no. 344 (February
1983): 12–15.
4. Colin Mackerras, The Chinese Theater in Modern Times: From 1840 to the Present Day
(London: Thames and Hudson, 1975).
5. Fan Ruijuan, “An Actress’ Life in Old China,” in When They Were Young, ed.
Women of China and New World Press (Beijing: New World Press, 1983), 158.
6. Raphael Bassan, “Ombre électrique sur la cite interdite: La longue marche du
cinéma chinois,” La revue du cinéma 380 (February 1983): 77. My translation.
7. Mao Zedong, “Talks at the Yenan Forum on Literature and Art,” in Selected
Readings from the Works of Mao Zedong (Beijing: Foreign Languages Press, 1971), 259.
8. Opera terms are in Mandarin, taken from Dong Chensheng, Paintings of Beijing
Opera Characters (Beijing: Zhaohua Publishing House, 1981). For more information on
the relationship between Chinese opera and film, see Geremie Barmé, “Persistance
de la tradition au ‘royaume des ombres’. Quelques notes visant à contributer à une
approche nouvelle du cinéma chinois,” in Le cinéma chinois, ed. Marie-Claire Quiquemelle and Jean-Loup Passek (Paris: Centre Georges Pompidou, 1985).
9. Leyda, Dianying, 247.
10. For example, see Griselda Pollock, Geoffrey Nowell-Smith, and Stephen
Heath, “Dossier on Melodrama,” Screen 18, no. 2 (1977): 105–119.
11. Interview with Xie Jin, translation by Janet Yang, San Francisco, April 1985.
12. Bertolt Brecht, Brecht on Theatre: The Development of an Aesthetic, ed. and trans.
John Willett (New York: Hill and Wang, 1964), 37.
13. Huang Zuolin, “Mei Lanfang, Stanislavsky, Brecht—A Study in Contrasts,”
in Peking Opera and Mei Lanfang: A Guide to China’s Traditional Theater and the Art of Its
Great Master (Beijing: New World Press, 1981), 16.
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79
14. Brecht, “Alienation Effects in Chinese Acting,” in Brecht on Theatre, 91–92.
15. Alan Lovell, “Epic Theater and Counter Cinema’s Principles,” Jump Cut 27
(July 1982): 66.
16. For more information on the relationship between revolutionary politics and
aesthetics in twentieth-century China, see Jonathan D. Spence, The Gate of Heavenly
Peace: The Chinese and Their Revolution—1895–1980 (Middlesex, England: Penguin
Books, 1981). Chapter 12 includes extensive background information on the period
under discussion here.
17. Paul G. Pickowicz, “The Limits of Cultural Thaw: Chinese Cinema in the
Early 1960s,” in Perspectives on Chinese Cinema, ed. Chris Berry (Ithaca, N.Y.: ChinaJapan Program, Cornell University, 1985), 97–148.
18. Muller, “Les tribulations,” 19.
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