Chinese Cinema Classics: Screen Idols and Stardom Reexamined

October 5–14, 2018

Critic, collector, and Chinese film expert Paul Fonoroff is our guest for this series of films featuring some of pre-World War II China’s greatest screen stars.

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  • Crossroads

  • New Women

  • The Goddess

  • The Spring River Flows East

  • Rouge Tears

  • Upcoming
    Films
  • Upcoming
    Events
  • Selected
    Objects
  • Past
    Films
  • Past
    Events

Past Films

  • The Goddess

    Wu Yonggang
    China, 1934

    Digital Restoration

    Friday, October 5 7 PM
    Paul Fonoroff and Peter Zhou in Conversation. Judith Rosenberg on Piano

    Ruan Lingyu delivers one of her most luminous performances as a mother forced into prostitution in this classic of the Golden Age of Shanghai cinema, a film that could make even jaded denizens of pre-Code Hollywood blush.

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  • New Women

    Cai Chusheng
    China, 1935

    Digital Restoration

    Sunday, October 7 4 PM
    Introduction by Paul Fonoroff. Judith Rosenberg on Piano

    A strong-willed teacher and writer (Ruan Lingyu) is driven to despair by gossip and lecherous men in this intriguing, hard-hitting melodrama given further power by Ruan’s own real-life suicide after filming.

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  • The Spring River Flows East

    Cai Chusheng, Zheng Junli
    China, 1947
    Thursday, October 11 7 PM
    Introduction by Andrew F. Jones

    Included on the Hong Kong Film Awards list of the greatest Chinese-language films of all time, this decades-spanning epic following a Shanghai’s couple separation during the Sino-Japanese War has been termed China’s Gone with the Wind.

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  • Rouge Tears

    Wu Yonggang
    Hong Kong, 1938

    Digital Restoration

    Friday, October 12 5 PM

    This 1938 talkie remake of The Goddess offers a chance to see how another leading star, Butterfly Wu (Hue Die), interpreted the role made famous by the late Ruan Lingyu.

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  • Crossroads

    Shen Xiling
    China, 1937
    Sunday, October 14 4:30 PM

    This inventive Depression-era comedy follows unemployed young graduates trying to succeed—or at least survive—in thirties Shanghai, and marked the emergence of Zhao Dan and Bai Yang as major stars.

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