Part I: Wartime Separation (Ba Nian Li Luan); Part II: Darkness and Dawn (Tianliang Qian-Hou).Made in the wake of the 1937-1945 War of Resistance Against Japan and on the eve of the Communist Revolution, The Spring River Flows East is an epic melodrama often said to be China's Gone With the Wind. Like all great melodramatic tragedies, it shows human beings swept up by forces beyond their control. And as is usual in the Chinese film melodrama, the focus is on the group rather than the individual. A family is divided by war. While wife, son, and grandma suffer in Japanese-occupied Shanghai, the husband escapes up river to Chongqing (Chungking) with the KMT government. With no news from home, he slides into a decadent lifestyle and joins up with a rich mistress. A lachrymose denouement inevitably follows his return to Shanghai after the end of the war. The personal tale perfectly parallels popular disappointment with the KMT during the same period.-Chris Berry