Looking back on seven decades of Chinese cinema
A retrospective look at the film industry shows its changing fortunes over 70 years of New China
In the spring of 1949, Northeast Film Studio — the first movie production company established by the Communist Party of China — finished shooting Bridge, in Harbin, capital of Heilongjiang province.
Widely regarded as the first featurelength movie produced in the year of the founding of the People’s Republic of China, the black-and-white movie opened a new chapter in Chinese cinema.
Over seven decades, China has produced more than 12,000 movies, according to China Film News, an industry newspaper sponsored by the China Film Administration, the country’s top movie regulator.
When Bridge was shot, most of the cast and crew members were novices. But later, many involved in the production went on to become pioneers that shaped New China’s cinematic landscape.
Among them were journalistturned-scriptwriter Yu Min, who cofounded the Golden Rooster Awards — the mainland’s top movie honor — in the early 1980s, and veteran actor Chen Qiang.
Starting almost from scratch, New China’s film industry experienced many ups and downs for almost half a century, followed by an unprecedented period of expansion witnessed over the last two decades.
Now with more than 66,000 cinema screens, the highest number of any country in the world, China is also the world’s second-largest movie market in terms of box-office revenue and the third-largest in terms of annual output.
“I feel so proud to be part of China’s film industry in its golden era. In the past, China produced a limited number of films every year, making it difficult for a youngster to enter the film industry,” top actor Huang Xiaoming told China Daily.
“But in recent years, a number of excellent films have been released, providing more opportunities to newcomers,” said Huang, whose latest effort, The Bravest, has become the highest-grossing film of his career spanning 21 years.
Somewhat a legacy of the formula formed and explored by the earliest filmmakers in New China, today’s mainstream blockbusters — such as Wolf Warrior 2, Operation Red Sea and The Bravest — have continued the long-held cinematic tradition of depicting Chinese heroes.
At a time when the 70th anniversary of the founding of New China is being marked, a retrospective look at how Chinese films have developed since 1949 is useful.
While the founding of New China marked the beginning of a new era, it also changed the course of Chinese cinema, according to The History of
Chinese Cinema, a popular textbook used by domestic film academies.
The period from 1949 to 1966 gave rise to screen heroes to arouse national pride and lift morale.
In the first decade of this period, domestic filmmakers were largely influenced by the cinematic output of the former Soviet Union.
Between 1949 and 1959, the 468 Soviet films released in China — the majority of which were dubbed in Mandarin — attracted nearly 1.5 billion admissions in halls, according to an academic paper written by Hong
Hong, a professor at Nanjing University.
Tales of revolutionary heroes have dominated China’s screens ever since, typified by hits from the era like Daughters of China, Dong Cunrui, Little Soldier Zhang Ga and The Song of Youth.
Films reflecting ethnic groups also achieved a breakthrough, with 47 such films about 18 ethnic groups produced over the course of 17 years, said Lu Hongshi, a cinematic history expert and deputy director of the China Movie Channel.
The best-known titles include
Five Golden Flowers, a 1959 musical romance telling the story of a young man from the Bai ethnic group, searching for his true love, and Liu
Sanjie, a 1961 musical depicting a Zhuang ethnic folk singer’s struggle with a shrewd landlord.
While the new era saw changes in action movies, animated titles also hit new heights, thanks to devoted artists and traditional art techniques like paper-cutting to add appeal.
In April 1957, the Shanghai Animation Film Studio was founded, which gathered some of the leading talents of the time, including the Wan brothers — the producers of China’s first short animated flick Studio Scene
(1926), and Asia’s first feature-length
animated film, Princess Iron Fan
(1941).
With the inception of China’s reform and opening-up in 1978, cinema revived from a decade-long stagnation caused by the “cultural revolution” (1966-76).
In 1979, 65 films were produced. This was a remarkable rise from the recent past, which saw just eight films produced between 1966 and 1973.
One of the most popular films released that year was Little Flower, which propelled actress Chen Chong to overnight stardom.
Most films in 1979 — including Troubled Laughter, The Thrill of Life
and Anxious to Return — showed a shift from previously stereotypical depictions of flawless heroes to indepth examination of human nature, said Rao Shuguang, president of the China Film Critics Association.
“Between the late 1970s and early 1980s, television sets were still too expensive for ordinary families to afford. Watching films was the major entertainment for Chinese people back then,” said Rao.
In the following years, the country saw a stable rise in annual output with 82 films hitting theaters in 1980, 105 titles in 1981, 112 films in 1982 and 127 releases in 1983, according to The History of Chinese Cinema.
The rise of the so-called “fifth-generation directors”, referring to graduates of Beijing Film Academy in the early 1980s, gave further recognition to Chinese films among overseas viewers.
Among them were leading figures like Zhang Yimou, Chen Kaige, Tian Zhuangzhuang and Huang Jianxin, all award-winning directors who are still active today.
Although Zhang’s Red Sorghum and Chen’s Farewell My Concubine both caused a sensation overseas, domestic filmmakers soon encountered a big challenge outside the Chinese mainland.
Amid China’s shift from a planned economy to a market economy, in 1994, the Chinese movie authority decided to import 10 blockbusters each year, mainly from Hollywood, and based on a box-office sharing system — whereby the local distributor secured a percentage of the film’s takings.
The quota was expanded to 20 imported movies in 2001 and was further raised to 34 since 2012.
Interestingly, the world of martial artists and swordsmen drew back the curtain on the new millennium of Chinese cinema. Shaolin Temple, produced in 1982, starring Jet Li, precipitated an almost
feverish trend for learning kung fu in China. Hong Kong director Tsui Hark’s 1991 effort, Once Upon a Time
in China, also helped to build the popularity of the genre.
Following the success of Ang Lee’s Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon
(2000) — the first Chinese film to win an Oscar for best foreign language film — Zhang Yimou directed the martial arts epic Hero, which grossed 250 million yuan ($35.1 million) to become the box-office champion of 2002.
The Chinese movie market was yearning for big movies, boosting a construction spree that saw the rise of bigger screens and better cinemas.
Latest technologies like big data and virtual reality have been exploited by the cinema sector to create a more immersive movie-watching experience.
With the rapid expansion of streaming sites and China’s young internet users making up a huge demographic, online films are making China a global front-runner in that sector.
Additionally, filmmaking is no longer a privilege limited to a small group of professionals, thanks to youngsters studying filmmaking domestically and overseas, and the establishment of thousands of privately owned movie companies in recent years.