"Down with luxury and romance!" Guofeng (National Customs) (1935) with Gabriel Thibaudeau, Pordenone Day 2

“We are country people, they come from the city. They are too extravagant and modern, we mustn’t imitate them.”  “If all peasants in China behaved like modern citizens, we would lose the virtues of simplicity and frugality and the country would succumb!”

 

Day Two of Le Giornate del Cinema Muto #39 and I’m already planning to become a schoolteacher in rural China. Frivolity and beauty products are undermining the country’s resilience, culture and productivity and frankly, I think it’s about time I did my bit.

 

Guofeng (National Customs) (1935) was made during a fighting pause in the China’s lengthy civil wars with Chiang Kai-shek’s Kuomintang (KMT or Nationalist Party) advocating a return to core values with its New Life Movement. The movement, sharing values with the opposing Communist Party, was reaction against Western imperialist influence and urged the people to observe social and political responsibilities, practice frugality and to know one’s sense of shame.

 

This period of Chinese history is a complex one yet the interpretation of these issues by director’s Luo Mingyou and Zhu Shilin speaks largely for itself with a clear message that modernity and western ideals are to be at least kept at arm’s length as people work hard to secure social cohesion and prosperity during harsh times. At one point the Principal of the rural school at the heart of the story, appeals to her pupil’s conscience, asking them to recognise their privileged position at a time when many were starving and in poverty. Similarly, the obsession of her daughter Zhang Jie (Li Lili) with make-up, western style and consumerism, is nearly everyone’s downfall.

Lim Cho Cho's Principal

Things have gone and will, in the film, go too far, but there is redemption in working together towards common goals. There’s an almost slapstick ten minutes in which the town councillors see an opportunity in modernisation and Western-style shops pop up all along the main street with the councillors getting western suits, cigars and even "Western socks" to make themselves look younger. This is then juxtaposed by a stirring segment in which Principal Zhang (Canadian born Lim Cho Cho) and her loyal teacher, bring the people back together with forceful speeches that push back the torrents of decadent confusion.

 

I have another love, says Zhang’s other – sensible – daughter Lan, to her former lover, it is for education!

 

Lan is played by the radiant Ruan Lingyu, the star of Goddess (1934) among many other Chinese silents, before she committed suicide aged just 25 in early March 1935, some two months before the film’s release. She is extraordinary here as every time I’ve seen her, gently emoting and disarmingly direct, sometimes straight to camera if not to the audience, she never leaves her character. She has a direction in life and is hardworking, believing in truth, justice and the Chinese way. She is betrayed by her flighty sister Jie played by Li Lili who is superbly sassy, with the “pre-code” “presence” of a Joan Blondell or Glenda Farrell and the cruel sneer of a Barbara Stanwyck.

Li Lili dresses for the part

The film itself is a study in the New Life aesthetic and in the ways that Western culture was absorbed and utilized in new ways. The direction is very “European” with fluid camerawork and plenty of tracking and dolly shots, montage and inventive cross-fades; it’s a very well-made film with state-of-the-art design, costumes and staging. Allowing for the odd drop of pace and it is also clearly addressing a cinema-literate audience with a narrative economy that knows somethings can be un-said or un-shown.

 

“If you love him you have to stop dressing up and behave more seriously…”

 

The story? The two sisters couldn’t be further apart in their view of life, Lan the best in class and gaining a scholarship to Shanghai University and Jie, obsessed with make-up and social excitement. Lan warns her to forget about the foundation and knuckle down but she won’t listen. Yet Lan not only loves her sister she also loves social order and for this reason selflessly backs away so that Jie can marry the man that she loves and who had just proposed to Lan, Chen Zuo (Zheng Junli).

 

Westerngoods undermine cohesion

Lan cannot lie and tells him she loves another, she says this twice and always means it, and departs leaving him to marry Jie. Lan goes to work in an elementary school in Huai’an and three months later… Lan reads of her sister’s marriage just as she is selected to go to Shanghai at the expense of the state for further education… Lan was the best in class. Her sister is already bored with married life and jealous of Lan asks Zuo to pay for her to join her in Shanghai.

 

Meanwhile, handsome Boyang is also sent to Shangai – “what a lively city!” – and we spy trouble ahead. Jie asks for more and more money from Zuo who is tearing his hair out at home whilst she wears make up and goes out more with her flighty friends… meanwhile goody-Lan sends money to her old school to buy books. It is heavy handed to us western sophisticates from the future but was clearly designed as patient propaganda for a rapidly changing society.

 

Boyang also asks for money from his long-suffering parents and whilst he tells them he’s working hard the reality is that he’s skipping lessons and gets reprimanded. We just know the lad is perfect for Jie and Lan tries to put him off by urging them to be good citizens, highlighting the problems of this new generation who come from the country to be city educated and then, when they cannot adjust, bankrupting their parents in their demand for material goods and leisure experiences.

They don’t listen and remind me so much of Gen-X…

Ruan Lingyu battles Li Lili's smarmy bf

“Are you scolding us, we don’t have time to argue with you…”

Lan plans to ask Boyang to marry her but her sister and he use it to humiliate her and to encourage the other students to take revenge on her and her “saintly” ways. She ends up ill and will have to graduate late... giving the film time for its final flourish as the two return to their town laden down with luggage and take up posts as teachers in their old school.

They proceed to make a mess and set the worst of examples for students and the local populace leading to the final fight back from Principal Zhang and the film’s central address and dramatic conscience call. It’s as dramatic as anything you’ll see with Walter Pigeon and, frankly, I was stirred.

Gabriel Thibaudeau accompanied and provided his own discourse between ancient and modern with subtle lines that reflected the film’s central concerns as well as delighted in its dynamism and emotional force. A reminder of the skills of Le Giornate’s musicians and the due diligence they pay to their source material: a fine duet of audio-visual balance.

Zheng Junli and Ruan Lingyu

Before this we delighted in The Brilliant Biograph: Earliest Moving Images of Europe (1897-1902) captured in 68mm with expert accompaniment from Daan van den Hurk.

This was a tour of Europe drawing from Eye Filmmuseum’s The Mutoscope and Biograph Collection – which includes over 200 films on the original 68mm stock – as well as the British Film Institute and The Museum of Modern Art in New York. Some I had seen before but all were a feast for the eyes and you could only wish to see these on the big screen as we had with the BFI’s Victorian film show at the BFI’s Imax a few years back.

It was a stunning compilation though and I especially enjoyed hand-coloured Conwy (1898), Funeral procession in Rome (1898), Venice, Grand Canal and Ponte dei Sospiri (1898) and Captain Deasy promoting Martini cars, Switzerland (1903)!

And, never forget...