Transnational Chinese Cinemas: Identity, Nationhood, Gender, and: Film in Contemporary China: Critical Debates, 1979-1989 (review)

The study of Chinese film has developed from almost nothing fifteen years ago to a lively area of Chinese studies today. These two books illustrate the promise and pitfalls involved in this growth. Sheldon Lu's Transnational Chinese Cinemas brings together a disparate range of articles (several previously published) on films from the mainland, Taiwan, Hong Kong, and elsewhere. Like most conference volumes this is an uneven work, but it deserves attention and will serve advanced students and graduates well. As a contribution to extending the borders of Chinese film studies, it is more problematic.

The book is divided into three parts, preceded by a "historical introduction" by Lu. In this he clearly, though somewhat laboriously, sets out what is meant by "transnational cinema," at least in its Chinese guise. The discussion ranges widely but leaves readers with an uncertainty as to whether the concept of "transnationalism" is much more than a convenient label to cover a broad spectrum of Chinese-foreign interactions in the film arena. Films have always been "transnational," but it is not clear what we learn about Chinese film by acknowledging that it has this quality. There is little obvious theoretical utility in the concept as presented here.

Part 1, "Nation Building, National Cinema, Transnational Cinema," comprises four chapters, two of them reprinted from an earlier journal publication. One of the latter of these, Gina Marchetti's "Two Stage Sisters: The Blossoming of a Revolutionary Aesthetic," is an exemplary and sensible discussion (from 1986) of Xie Jin's 1964 masterwork. Marchetti brings out well the connections between local opera and the film's structure, style, and narrative. The other previously published chapter in part 1 is Yingjin Zhang's exploration of national minority films. Zhang makes some good points on the slippery issue of ethnicity, though these are almost lost in his unfounded claims to originality and somewhat unfair dismissal of earlier laborers in this field.

Zhiwei Xiao writes on censorship in the Nanjing decade (1928-1938). His analysis is weakened by an apparent willingness to accept uncritically polemical statements from his 1930s Chinese sources as evidence of social reality. A claim (p. 48) that Chinese censors actively encouraged nationalistic films poses the question of why the makers of The Highway (Dalu) (1934), among others, were unable to name the enemy (the Japanese army). Sheldon Lu rounds out this part with a discussion of the films of Zhang Yimou, illustrated in part by a full-page photo of the author with one of Zhang's actors. Lu explores how Zhang creates a national cinema in a transnational industry. His argument that Zhang makes films for the world and not for Chinese (p. 126) is questionable. Zhang himself has consistently maintained for the last fifteen years that his target audience is the Chinese in China. But in discussing this issue, Lu brings out the volume's theme more directly than his fellow authors.

Part 2 includes five chapters of widely varying quality on films from Taiwan and Hong Kong. June Yip on the historical films of Hou Hsiao-hsien offers one of the highlights of the volume, even if she does feel obliged to make passing reference to Benjamin, Bakhtin, and Lyotard. Her analysis of City of Sadness and other films is persuasive enough without needing ritual obeisance to these theoreticians. Jon Korwallis unexpectedly combines a discussion of Allen Fong's Ah Ying and Stan Lai's The Peach Blossom Land and, with some journalistic breathlessness and lengthy quotes from Brecht, illuminates very little about Hong Kong or Taiwan cinema. Although they treat critics' reviews with perhaps too much solemnity, Wei Ming Dariotis and Eileen Fung discuss Ang...