1983. Dir: Chen Kunhou. Scr: Chu Tien-wen, Hou Hsiao-hsien.
"Zhu Tianwen came into the film industry as a result of publishing a prize-winning piece, “Growing Up” (Xiaobi de gushi, “The story of little Bi,” published in the United Daily News, 1982). Hou Hsiao-hsien and Chen Kunhou were interested in the story of Xiaobi and arranged to meet Zhu in a coffee shop. Thus began a rich creative partnership that continues to this day."
"However, within a sclerotic institution this took a certain amount of guile. To pass the studio’s conservative line of ideology, these assistants would prepare “creative” proposals that disguised the real intent of the films. For instance, Growing Up is about a boy who turns to juvenile delinquency and drives his mother to suicide. He fails to live up to her ambition for him to go to college, and goes to military school instead. Xiao Ye wrote this up as a pitch that promotes the military academy
as a place to straighten out wayward boys..."
"Take Chu Tienwen’s first screenplay, Growing Up, as an example. Zhu’s title of the source, “The Story of Little Bi,” suggests a strong biographical and autobiographical inclination. Here Zhu was interested in documenting the true life of an ordinary boy growing up in a small township with a stepfather old enough to be his grandfather. The boy is sensitive and energetic, but the fact that he was born a bastard and adopted as a stepson of a military man predestines his troubled childhood. As the title indicates, it is a “story,” the fictionalization of an ordinary life that makes it extraordinary. If Zhu were a regular biographer, she might have taken the precaution of observing the codes of biographical writing to keep her story objective, true to the life of her real-life subjects. But in the poetics of auto/biography, the story is written in the first-person point of view of a grown woman remembering her childhood. This textual device repeats itself in the film. On many occasions, the otherwise omniscient narration is accompanied by the voice-over of the neighbor girl, to inform the spectator of her own reflections on the troubled boy next door."
Growing Up, to the surprise of the filmmakers (including the scriptwriter herself), was a commercial success.
Friday, 10 April 2015
Tuesday, 7 April 2015
A City of Sadness (Film)
1989. Dir: Hou Hsiao-Hsien. Scr: Hou Hsiao-Hsien, Chu Tianwen, Wu Nianzhen.
Music composed by Naoki Tachikawa, who also composed music for Raise the Red Lantern. (which was also produced by ERA International)
Context:
The first film to make allusion to February 28 Incident (aka 228 or 'ererba') and the massacre of tens of thousands (estimated 18,000 to 28,000 casualties) by the KMT in 1947. Martial law had been lifted in 1987, and historical topics which had been suppressed and taboo to even mention, could now finally be researched and discussed.
First film in Taiwan to be fully recorded with synchronised sound (no post-production dubbing).
Much research was carried out by Hou and his writers, including first-hand testimonies. Part of the film's narrative was based on a piece of reportage by Lan Bozhou, 'The song of the covered wagon', published in 1988 and documenting the lives of the socialist underground during the colonialist period [More info in Island on the Edge, 55-56.]
Billed as 'The saga of a family, the saga of a nation'. (In Taiwan?)
The Film:
'Private history': as opposed to another Big History. History told from below, from perspective of those affected, even indirectly. Use of diary entries and family photographs.
Official vs. Unofficial History
The Lin family as microcosm of the nation.
Family tree:
Initial optimism at rejoining China at the beginning (a new birth, the light after the blackout) later foiled and deflated.
The oldest brother's line about Taiwanese 'mistreated by all, pitied by none'... also the name of the Lins' restaurant Little Shanghai -> ironic as Shanghai gangsters will be responsible for much of their troubles.
Use and meaning of traditional songs in the film (see Chiao essay in Suchenski).
"While listening to Beethoven, Kuanmei explains to Wenqing in writing that the music is based on a legend in which several fishermen, intoxicated by the beautiful voice of a siren, perish in their sinking boat. Like the fishermen in the legend, these intellectuals devote their lives to a beautiful but intangible ideal, which will seductively lead them to destruction"
Reception:
Winner of the 1989 Golden Lion at Venice.
"Later Hou instigated another, even bigger, cultural debate with the first film of his Taiwan trilogy. The criticism of City of Sadness (1989) culminated in the 1991 anthology Death of the New Cinema (Xin dianying zhi si). Contributors from various disciplines and backgrounds were not happy with Hou’s distant photography and obscure storytelling in his depiction of the regime’s brutality toward Taiwanese in the February 28 Incident, a major uprising against the Nationalists’ neocolonial rule. As the most horrific incident in Taiwan’s modern history, the February 28 Incident was then a collective trauma and has become a national scar. People were waiting to see some justice done in the film. But they did not. As a result, Hou was seen as a complacent, conservative artist who had yet to see the political light. The troubled local reception of Hou’s City of Sadness manifests the difficulty of coming to terms with history and historical representation of Taiwan’s scarred past."
Resources:
Berenice Reynaud BFI Classics
Peggy Chiao essay in Suchenski
Music composed by Naoki Tachikawa, who also composed music for Raise the Red Lantern. (which was also produced by ERA International)
Context:
The first film to make allusion to February 28 Incident (aka 228 or 'ererba') and the massacre of tens of thousands (estimated 18,000 to 28,000 casualties) by the KMT in 1947. Martial law had been lifted in 1987, and historical topics which had been suppressed and taboo to even mention, could now finally be researched and discussed.
First film in Taiwan to be fully recorded with synchronised sound (no post-production dubbing).
Much research was carried out by Hou and his writers, including first-hand testimonies. Part of the film's narrative was based on a piece of reportage by Lan Bozhou, 'The song of the covered wagon', published in 1988 and documenting the lives of the socialist underground during the colonialist period [More info in Island on the Edge, 55-56.]
Billed as 'The saga of a family, the saga of a nation'. (In Taiwan?)
The Film:
'Private history': as opposed to another Big History. History told from below, from perspective of those affected, even indirectly. Use of diary entries and family photographs.
Official vs. Unofficial History
The Lin family as microcosm of the nation.
Family tree:
Initial optimism at rejoining China at the beginning (a new birth, the light after the blackout) later foiled and deflated.
The oldest brother's line about Taiwanese 'mistreated by all, pitied by none'... also the name of the Lins' restaurant Little Shanghai -> ironic as Shanghai gangsters will be responsible for much of their troubles.
Use and meaning of traditional songs in the film (see Chiao essay in Suchenski).
"While listening to Beethoven, Kuanmei explains to Wenqing in writing that the music is based on a legend in which several fishermen, intoxicated by the beautiful voice of a siren, perish in their sinking boat. Like the fishermen in the legend, these intellectuals devote their lives to a beautiful but intangible ideal, which will seductively lead them to destruction"
Reception:
Winner of the 1989 Golden Lion at Venice.
"Later Hou instigated another, even bigger, cultural debate with the first film of his Taiwan trilogy. The criticism of City of Sadness (1989) culminated in the 1991 anthology Death of the New Cinema (Xin dianying zhi si). Contributors from various disciplines and backgrounds were not happy with Hou’s distant photography and obscure storytelling in his depiction of the regime’s brutality toward Taiwanese in the February 28 Incident, a major uprising against the Nationalists’ neocolonial rule. As the most horrific incident in Taiwan’s modern history, the February 28 Incident was then a collective trauma and has become a national scar. People were waiting to see some justice done in the film. But they did not. As a result, Hou was seen as a complacent, conservative artist who had yet to see the political light. The troubled local reception of Hou’s City of Sadness manifests the difficulty of coming to terms with history and historical representation of Taiwan’s scarred past."
Resources:
Berenice Reynaud BFI Classics
Peggy Chiao essay in Suchenski
Chu Tien-wen (Industry)
Aka Zhu Tianwen. Born: 1956, Taipei.Best known as a key writer within the Taiwanese New Cinema, and particularly a key collaborator of Hou Hsiao-Hsien's.
"Zhu Tianwen (b. 1956) comes from “the most noted literary family” in Taiwanese literature; her father Zhu Xi’ning (1926–1998), a Christian mainlander, is a celebrated novelist and a cultural officer, and her Hakka mother, Liu Musha, is a respected translator of Japanese fiction. Growing up in a congenial literary circle and raised in Confucianism, Christianity, Chinese and Japanese literature, Zhu Tianwen began to publish in various newspapers’ literary supplements when she was still in high school."
Zhu Tianwen came into the film industry as a result of publishing a prize-winning piece, Growing Up ( published in the United Daily News, 1982). Hou and Chen Kunhou were interested in the story of Xiaobi and arranged to meet Zhu in a coffee shop. Thus began a rich creative partnership that continues to this day. They worked together on the screenplay of Growing Up, which Chen would end up directing. From then on she and Hou would form a close artistic connection and collaboration. It was she who first introduced him to mainland Chinese literature, such as the autobiography of Shen Congwen, that would be so influential for his desire of an 'objective camera' --- leading to long takes and long shots.
That same year Chu wrote the screenplay for Hou's semi-autobiographical The Boys from Fengkuei. She then offered up an incident from her own childhood as the basis for Hou's next film, A Summer at Grandpa's, which she also wrote. She worked on several of his following films.. She also wrote, along with Hou, Edward Yang's 1985 film Taipei Story.. For A City of Sadness, she, Hou and Wu Nianzhen worked together, gathering tremendous amounts of research into the 1945-49 period of Taiwanese history.
She describes her working collaboration with Hou as rooting in words the great quantity of visual ideas Hou threw at her. She also developed and fleshed out his female characters, giving a stronger insight into their internal worlds.
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