Springtime in a small town: A telling and timely film
Springtime in a Small Town (Chinese title: Xiaocheng zhi Chun) is a remake of - and homage to - Spring in a Small Town, a 1948 B&W Chinese film classic. The new film has been enthusiastically received and highly praised by reviewers unfamiliar with the original film version[1]. Those of us who love the first version are inclined to be less enthusiastic – a common response to re-makes of great films.
Fei Mu’s 1948 film was a Shanghai studio production, which was eclipsed by political events. Its focus on private life, specifically on a bourgeois romantic triangle, and its seeming disregard for big ideological issues like nation and class, made it seem reactionary to the incoming Maoist regime. But it has been recently rediscovered and re-evaluated by Chinese film scholars, who have applauded its subtlety and lyricism, and its refreshing departure from the strident melodramatics of the mainstream Chinese cinema. Avoiding dramatic cutting, it employs long takes, which create a mood of brooding melancholy and bring out the emotions simmering beneath the surface in the four central characters, without the need for explicit dialogue or dramatic confrontation.
This re-make, directed by Tian Zhuangzhuang, pays homage to the original in its use of slow prowling camera work and the way in which it repeatedly frames all four central characters within one shot. (Its celebrated Taiwanese cinematographer, Mark Lee [aka Li Pingbin], has not only shot six Hou Hsiao Hsien art movies; he was also responsible for the stunning camera work in Wong Kar Wai’s In the Mood for Love and Ang Lee’s Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon.) But it is much more melodramatic and explicit than the original film, which was all based on inference and subtle suggestion. The new film explicitly informs us of the facts, and employs European melodies (Johann Strauss’s ‘The Blue Danube’ and an Italian operatic aria) to express innocent joy and tortured guilt. The facts are spelt out in dialogue, rather than allowed to seep out by inference, and the narrative builds up to a melodramatic climax, rather than keeping the tensions under restraint (and thereby remaining all the more potent). The simmering undercurrents between the characters and the unbearable tension they generate are gone, in favour of a mannered style and full-blown melodrama.
The principal actors in this remake are newcomers to the screen and the central role of the wife in particular is performed rather coldly and unsympathetically. She seems more like an object in the art design than a conflicted human being. Her point-of-view, which was marked in the original by her retrospective voice-over, and which drew us right into the emotionally charged situation, has been replaced by an omniscient camera that prowls around the interior décor and the landscape and seems almost disdainful of the characters.
The director, Tian Zhuangzhuang, is one of the so-called Fifth Generation of Chinese filmmakers who was trained at the Beijing Film Academy alongside Zhang Yimou and Chen Kaige. His early films, On the Hunting Ground (1984) and The Horse Thief (1986), documented the lifestyles of members of national minorities – Inner Mongolian and Tibetan. His last film, The Blue Kite (1992), focused on the experiences of one Beijing family, in a pointed and poignant portrayal of the human suffering caused by the political swings of CP policy, and resulted in him being blacklisted and unable to work as a director for ten years. Perhaps for this reason he has opted for a safe project this time, one set well in the past, before the CP came to power. However, the subject would seem to be closer to Zhang Yimou’s than to his interests. When interviewed by their former teacher in 1994, it was Zhang Yimou who named Spring in a Small Town as a masterpiece that made a deep impression on him. Tian named Scorsese as his favorite director and a Third Generation film director, Shui Hua, as his favorite Chinese director[2]. However, he now claims that, during his period of forced inactivity, he rediscovered the virtues of Fu Mei’s film and viewed it many times, becoming inspired to remake it[3].
The Chinese film industry suffered a severe downturn during the 90s, when movie attendances plummeted and the number of movies produced was almost halved. Desperate to survive against increased Hollywood competition at home, the industry, with government endorsement, has become more commercially oriented[4].
Tian Zhuangzhuang’s project of remaking a Chinese film classic, in glorious colour, with high production values, and more explicitly accenting the melodrama (in action and music), would seem to suit the current needs of the industry: to appeal to local audiences seduced by Hollywood values and at the same time to pay homage to China’s own film history, with its own “great tradition”.
Freda Freiberg
[1] See Peter Kemp’s review in Sight & Sound, July 2003, and Peter bradshaw’s review in The Guardian, Friday, June 13, 2003.
[2] Ni Zhen, Memoirs from the Beijing Film Academy: The Genesis of China’s Fifth Generation, Duke University Press, 2002, pp 102-3.
[3] Interview with Tony Rayns, January 20 2002, in Press Kit for film.
[4] See Wan Jihong and Richard Kraus’s article, ‘Hollywood and China as Adversaries and Allies’, in Pacific Affairs, Vol 75, No 3 – Fall 2002, for a full account of the economic crisis in the industry and measures taken to cope with it.