Crossroads

This popular film marked the emergence of Zhao Dan and Bai Yang as major stars. Shen’s promising career was cut short by his early death in wartime Chongqing in 1940. “A funny, inventive Depression comedy about the trials facing unemployed young graduates in thirties Shanghai. The central fraught romance comes straight from Hollywood, but the overall realism and the hints of looming political turmoil are purely Chinese. . . . Location shooting on the streets of Shanghai is used whenever possible, and the film enhances its sense of direct contemporary relevance by inserting several brief documentary sequences” (Scott Meek and Tony Rayns, Electric Shadows).