The Arch

The Arch

(Dong fu ren)

T’ang Shushuen
Hong Kong, 1968

4K Digital Restoration

  • Introduction
    Weihong Bao

    Weihong Bao is Pamela P. Fong and Family Distinguished Chair in China Studies and a Professor of Film & Media at UC Berkeley. She is the author of the forthcoming book Background Matters: Set and Design, Mind and Environment.

featuring

Lisa Lu, Roy Chiao, Hilda Chou,

One of the early precursors of the Hong Kong New Wave, this intriguing experimental melodrama—directed by Hong Kong filmmaker T’ang Shushuen; shot by Satyajit Ray’s regular cinematographer, Subrata Mitra; and coedited by none other than Les Blank—was one of the first Chinese-language films to achieve international acclaim, praised by such unlikely sources as Henry Miller (“medicine for the West”) and Anaïs Nin (“a film of poetic beauty”). In seventeenth-century Ming dynasty China, a pious young widow must weigh her own desires for a visiting soldier against not only the expectations and traditions of her village, but also the hopes of her own daughter.

Jason Sanders

FILM DETAILS

Screenwriter

  • T’ang Shushuen

Cinematographer

  • Subrata Mitra
  • Chi Ho-Che

Language

  • Mandarin
  • with English subtitles

Print Info

  • B&W
  • DCP
  • 87 mins

Source

  • M+, Hong Kong

Additional Info

  • The original black-and-white 35mm negatives of the film have been lost. The restoration was made using extant materials from 1968, including a 35mm release print preserved at BAMPFA and a 35mm release print preserved and scanned at the BFI National Archive. The digital restoration was undertaken at Silver Salt Restoration. Special thanks to the descendants of Paul Lee, Les Blank Films, and the Hong Kong Film Archive, Leisure and Cultural Services Department. The Arch is one of the films under M+ Restored, an initiative supported by CHANEL.

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