Cinema and Urban Culture in Shanghai, 1922-1943 (review)

The remarkable precision of the dates in the title of this book belies the breadth of its contribution both to Chinese film studies and to broader understandings of twentieth-century Chinese urban culture. The ten chapters range well outside 1922 and 1943 and beyond films. This is a welcome addition to a growing body of literature that is taking us beyond sweeping assumptions about Shanghai and Chinese popular culture in its pre-1949 guise.

Yingjin Zhang has assembled a strong group of researchers and has managed to instill shared themes in the chapters. His introduction, "Cinema and Urban Culture in Republican Shanghai," nicely sets the scene, placing the book in the context of the historiography of Chinese cinema as practiced by scholars on the mainland, on Taiwan, and in Hong Kong. Like several of the contributors, he properly questions the utility of that hoary term "leftist cinema" and essays the issue of the relation between film and print cultures in Shanghai in these years. Ironically, given the precision of the book's title dates, he misdates the Cultural Revolution to the period 1967-1977 (p. 8).

The next three parts, each with three chapters, cover "institutions and innovations (Part One), representations and practices (Part Two), and construction and contestation (Part Three)" (p. 4). Part 1 is perhaps the most impressive section in the book. Titled "Screening Romance: Teahouse, Cinema, Spectator," it has chapters by Zhen Zhang, Kristine Harris, and Leo Ou-fan Lee. Zhen Zhang's study of the teahouse origins of early Chinese cinema perhaps heaps too much on the fragile remnants of the 1922 film Laborer's Love. But like the other two chapters in this part, she addresses issues of audience and reception, ending with some intriguing observations on the 1980s and 1990s, well beyond the 1943 of the title. Kristine Harris examines the classical-subject film in the 1920s, focusing on The Romance of the Western Chamber. This chapter is one of the best in the volume, offering insight into the position of classical popular culture in urban Republican China and how film had a special role in investing the traditions with modern notions of equality and populism. Leo Lee rounds out the section with a masterly discussion on the "urban milieu of Shanghai cinema" in the 1930s. He ranges widely and to good effect over relations between print culture and film. His suggestion that female Chinese film stars were not as sexualized as their Hollywood counterparts (p. 82) deserves further exploration by scholars.

Part 2 continues this theme, being subtitled "Imagining Sexuality: Cabaret Girl, Movie Star, Prostitute." Andrew D. Field examines dance hostesses in print, film, and politics between 1920 and 1949 (there go those dates in the title again). Five of his twenty-eight pages are on film portrayals. His chapter offers a fascinating look at how conventions of courtship and concubinage were transformed in a modern urban setting. (I doubt that the Xin xianlin was the "New Zealand" dance hall [p. 126].) Michael G. Chang starts his chapter with a quote from Walter Benjamin, which offers little but alludes to his emphasis on the print media's portrayal and reproduction of images of film actresses. This offers a new understanding of these women, including their versatility: Wang Hanlun spent eight months in 1926 touring Southeast Asia giving live kunqu performances in cinemas where her film was playing (p. 135). The exceptional youth of many of these actresses goes unremarked. Prostitution and the negotiation of public and private space is the subject of Zhang Yingjin's chapter. The analysis of Ruan Lingyu's Goddess draws on William Rothman's 1993 study. Zhang as editor extends his considerations to Edward Yang's urban films of the 1980s.

Part 3 is the most mixed section of the book. Zhiwei Xiao treads his familiar path through issues of censorship in the Nanjing...