Description
Book SynopsisThis volume aims both to establish cinema as a vital force in Shanghai culture and to direct attention to early Chinese cinema, a crucial chapter in Chinese cultural history long neglected by Western scholars. The book will appeal to scholars whose interests lie not just in film studies and Chinese history, but in the fields of modernity, urban studies, and popular culture.
Trade Review"This landmark volume on early Chinese cinema is testament to the burgeoning of high-quality American-based research on Chinese cinema in general . . . .A substantial contribution to scholarship both on Chinese cinema and Republican China . . . .The achievements of the essays are threefold. They produce new empirical knowledge about areas hitherto neglected. They correct existing misapprehensions. And they open up important debates for further consideration." --
Journal of Asian HistoryTable of ContentsList of illustrations; Acknowledgments; Note on romanization; List of contributors; 1. Introduction: cinema and urban culture in republican Shanghai Yingjin Zhang; Part I. Screening Romance: Teahouse, Cinema, Spectator: 2. Teahouse, shadowplay, bricolage: laborer's love and the question of early Chinese cinema Zhen Zhang; 3. The Romance of the Western Chamber and the classical subject film in 1920s Shanghai Kristine Harris; 4. The urban Milieu of Shanghai cinema, 1930-40: some explorations of film audience, film culture, and narrative conventions Leo Ou-fan Lee; Part II. Imaging Sexuality: Cabaret Girl, Movie Star, Prostitute: 5. Selling souls in sin city: Shanghai singing and dancing hostesses in print, film, and politics, 1920-49 Andrew D. Field; 6. The good, the bad and the beautiful: movie actress and public discourse in Shanghai, 1920s-1930s Michael G. Chang; 7. Prostitution and urban imagination: negotiating the public and the private in Chinese films of the 1930s Yingjin Zhang; Part III. Constructing identity: Nationalism, Metropolitanism: 8. Constructing a new national culture: film censorship and the issues of Cantonese dialect, superstition, and sex in the Nanjing decade Zhiwei Xiao; 9. Metropolitan sounds: music in Chinese films of the 1930s Sue Tuohy; 10. 'Her traces are found everywhere': Shanghai, Li Xianglan, and the 'Greater East Asia film sphere' Shelley Stephenson; Filmography; Notes; Selected bibliography; Character list; Index.
