Although the true feudal family is said to have disappeared in China some 2,000 years ago, the system survived well into the twentieth century in the families of wealthy landowners whose influence extended to innumerable members of the “clan.” Family, based on Ba Jin's semi-autobiographical novel, chronicles the enforced marriages, financial corruption, and suicides among a large family suffering under the yoke of a tyrannical patriarch. The earliest film in the series, this melodrama is an excellent example of the stylistic and technical achievements of the Chinese cinema before the Cultural Revolution arrested its development. Scott Meek and Tony Rayns write for the British Film Institute, “One of the most interesting things about Chen and Ye's direction is its refusal of sentimentality: the moments of most intense emotion are precisely those moments that are most ‘distanced' through composition, editing and mise-en-scène.... (The) film's scrupulous attention to matters of design, costume and lighting...is not an indulgence, but a vital factor in connoting the stifling atmosphere of life in a feudal family--quite apart from representing a realistic evocation of the period.”