
American Studies in China Vol.2, 1996


AMERICAN FILMS IN CHINESE REVIEWS

(1895-1949)


WANG Chaoguang


      Since its birth 100 years ago, film, of all arts, has swiftly 
acquired the biggest influence and won the largest number of audience. 
This youngest art also boasts of the greatest amount of interchanges and 
the closest interactions among nations and holds wide influence not 
only in the field of film itself, but also in the cultural and social, 
and even in the political and economic domains. The United States, 
having the most developed film industry in the world, left the biggest 
impact on the earlier Chinese films. Therefore, it may be of some 
significance to trace their repercussions in China on the eve of the 
centennial anniversary of the world film and the 90th anniversary of 
the Chinese film. An examination of the past may help understand what 
one sees in China today.

I. Moral Conflicts

American Films in Chinese Reviews
American Studies in China
      Film as an art was introduced into China the second year after 
its birth, and the United States was one of the first countries that 
had exchanges with China in this field. In 1897 some Americans came to 
China to make pictures and some American films were shown in China in the same y
ear.
 American technicians and Chinese students studying in the United States played 
an important role in the initial stage of Chinaюs film industry.

      The Chinese audience was stricken with the novelty of the film 
when they first saw it. The first Chinese film review related the 
authorюs impression of an American “play of electric light and 
shadow” shown in Shanghai in 1897. It says, “There are any amount of 
mirageげlike changes in the universe, and so have motion pictures. With 
the invention of electricity, strange things never heard of since 
ancient times have occurred and betrayed numerous mysteries the 
supernatural force created. In motion pictures, we can see all sorts 
of people and things existing tens of thousands of li away without 
going there by the miraculous method of contracting space, and what we 
see resemble so much the figures, characters, floral designs and 
drawings on the ancient tripods and quadripods, now appearing and now 
disappearing. Watching them, one feels indeed like living in a 
wonderland.”1 This, in general, was also how the Chinese audience 
reacted to the earliest US films.

      In the 1920s, the Chinese peopleюs response to the US film began 
to switch from a sense of  novelty to criticism, and gradually to a 
panげpoliticalized criticism at that. Film production had been turned into an 
industry first in the United States since the birth of film, and films 
had been produced and distributed in, and exported from, this 
country. This had been made possible because it enjoyed a powerful 
economy and excellent technology. In that decade, American input in 
the film industry topped 200m US dollars, and over 500 films were 
produced each year. It rose thus to the No. 1 country in the worldюs 
film production. From then on, American films had become one of the 
countryюs most important exports and poured steadily into other 
countries. With their intricate plots, magnificent scenes and 
elaborate manufacturing, these films held attraction for the general 
audience and found easy access to the screens of various nations. Up to 
60 to 90 percent of the films shown across the world in the 20s were 
made in America. The contradictions and conflicts in the exchange of 
films between the United States and China developed against this 
general background.

      The Chinese criticism of the American films arose first of all 
from the ethical conflicts. It dealt with three questions: evil, 
pornography and humiliating China. Most of the US films imported in 
the earliest period were scenic pictures and comic dramas. People drew 
some new knowledge from them, and the scenes of fighting, though 
meaningless, did no great harm. Around the 20s, large amounts of 
serial detective films were made in the United States, and such movies 
as The Great Train Robbery(Tuoche Dao),

Some of the titles of the early American films have been 
retranslated from the Chinese versions of the time, as their original 
English titles are not available for the time being. For titles of 
this kind, the Chinese phonetics has been added to indicate the 
difference.
 The Iron Hand (Tie Shou),
 Robbers in 
Black (Heiyi Dao) and Masked Men (Mengmian Ren) entered China in quick 
succession, taking advantage of the drastic reduction in the 
production of European films in World War I. These films, in spite of 
their endings of criminals tracked down and brought to justice, depict 
in detail how the crimes were committed. Robbers, thugs and criminal 
syndicates seized peopleюs possessions, killed people and committed 
murders on the screen. Undesirables of all sorts followed suit, and 
serious criminal cases like kidnapping, killing and resisting arrests 
were frequently reported in Shanghai. The offenders claimed that they 
copied these tricks from films. According to the oldげtimers, a series 
of robberies would occur each time a film of this kind was shown in a 
concession in Shanghai. These robberies looked like “reproductions of 
American films and old American films shown once more.”2 In 1920 
Shanghai was shaken by a serious criminal offense. Yan Ruisheng, the 
comprador of a foreign firm, murdered a prostitute named Wang Lianying 
for her money. Yan confessed after his arrest that he got the idea 
from an American detective film and borrowed the method it used. Some 
profitげseeking merchants, seeing a good chance of making money, filmed 
this case as it was, and Chinaюs first feature film Yan Ruisheng was 
thus born and shown publicly. This event evoked uneasiness in, and 
criticism from, people of all walks of life.

      Earlier, in 1918, the Commercial Press founded its Department 
of Moving Pictures. It was the first time Chinese national capital 
invested in the movie industry. One of the purposes of the press was: 
in view of the fact that foreign films, “trivial and insidious, are 
being shown unrestrictedly everywhere and doing great harm to public 
morals,” they hoped Chinese films would be made and “distributed to 
provincial capitals and commercial ports and shown in selected 
cinemas, so as to resist obscene foreign films and help in the popular 
education on the one hand, and to export them to foreign countries to 
commend our culture, mollify foreignersю scorn of our country and 
strengthen the affection of overseas Chinese for their native land on 
the other.”3 Following the incident of Yan Ruisheng, the Shanghai 
General Chamber of Commerce and the Jiangsu Society of Education all 
demanded “banning films detrimental to public morals” with the reason 
that “if these films are allowed to imbue the Chinese people with 
their ideas, the effects of years of compulsory education will be 
offset imperceptibly altogether.”4 Hong Shen, who had just returned 
from the United States, set forth in clearげcut terms his earliest view 
on the film art: The film is a “sharp weapon for spreading 
civilization,” it “can popularize education, raise the level of the 
nationals,” “demonstrate the spirit of a nation and promote friendly 
relationship among countries.” So no films propagating sex and 
violence, depicting exclusively the base qualities of the humanity and 
exposing the shortcomings of our nationals should be produced.5

      This criticism of the American detective films showed the 
Chinese peopleюs moral reflection on the onrush of the Western 
culture. In a country of “loyalty, filial piety, rites and 
righteousness,” where ethics have always been held in high esteem, the 
chain reactions set off by the American detective films would, as a 
matter of course, cause great pains among its nationals and made them 
think that these films were an “evil,” even saying that “China now has 
robbers of the foreign fashion that it never had before and has 
foreignげstyle robberies that it had never known.”6 This is obviously 
an exaggeration, as we can see now. But it was the common reaction of 
the Chinese nationals in a sense at the time, which gave rise to the negative 
criticism of the American movies. It is not at all strange that they 
should receive such unhappy comments in a nonげWestern country; “evil,” 
in fact, was almost invariably one of the first instinctive reactions 
the nonげWestern civilizations have towards the Western civilization. 
What merits our attention here is that it was the Chinese national 
bourgeoisie and their intellectuals growing up rapidly in World War I 
who started this criticism. Can it be construed that this had 
something to do with the Chinese national bourgeoisieюs demand for 
national independence and wish to develop the national culture?

      In any case, Chinaюs criticism of the American films was 
neither an artistic nor a commercial one, but a moral one with a panげ
politicalized tendency. This forms a sharp contrast with Europeюs 
artistic and commercial confrontation with the American films. The 
European Avantげgardists, usually despising movies, had a keen interest 
in the American detective films; they observed in them an 
extraordinary, mobile way of expression. From this it can be seen that 
the underdevelopment of the Chinese film theory and the strong social 
nature of the Chinese mainげstream films after the 30s were no 
accidental phenomena.

      “Pornography” was the second ethical objection the Chinese 
film reviews held against the American films. They were accused of the 
crime of “using women, songs and foreignersю extravagant way of life 
to lure the young people of our country.”7 The Chinese people have 
always regarded “pornography” as floods and fierce animals and 
maintained that a gentleman should not let his eyes wander to where he 
is not supposed to see and let his ears listen to what he is not 
supposed to hear. Now that such vivid “pornographic scenes” appeared 
on the screen, “how could we turn a blind eye to them”? But the word 
“pornography” has very different connotations in China and the West. 
Let us look at the advertisement of an American film, Song of the 
Broadway (Bailaohui Zhi Ge), carried on the first page of Beiping 
Daily, April 27, 1930: Two hundred blonde beauties, above 5 feet 2, 
about 110 pounds in weight and below the age of 20, have been handげ
picked as its actresses. Advertisements like this, plus sensational 
titles willfully translated to attract audience, such as The Magic 
Power of Women (Nuren De Moli), Wine and Women (Jiu Yu Nuren), Love 
Affair on the River (Chunshui Qingbo) and Love in the Palace (Chungong 
Yanshi), gave one the impression that the screen was full of 
“pornography.” Some people went so far as to appeal that “Women should 
be strictly barred from watching movies.” To speak objectively, 
Hollywood did produce some soげcalled pornographic pictures in the 20s. However,
 with the publication of the Hays Law by the Motion Picture Association 
of America in 1930, strict limitations were imposed on producing such 
pictures. Even performance with sexual appeal was prohibited, to say 
nothing of “sexual relationships.” European artists held that, from 
that time on, “the American film gradually lost its artistic value” 
and “became stereotyped,”8 deriding it as a child that could never 
grow up, whereas in China “pornography” has become a standing feature 
of the American film.

      The ethical negation of the American film was finally ascribed 
to the resistance of the Chinese culture to foreign cultures and 
became a banner of the Chinese national film. The Lianhua Motion 
Picture Corporation, one of the most influential in the days of the 
Republic of China, stated that the aim of founding the corporation was 
“to promote the innate merits of the nation and point out the right 
course forward so as to resist the cultural aggression of the foreign 
movies” and “to unite with the Chineseげfunded motion picture theaters 
and purchase the foreignげfunded ones so that Chinese films can be 
shown and the infringements upon our rights and interests be 
avoided.”9 In the advertisement of Dream in the Ancient Capital, 
Lianhuaюs first film, pictures were described as “a revolutionary 
force to invigorate the Chinese film and the vanguard for resisting 
foreign motion pictures.” The ethical negation of the American film 
even won some support from the Kuomintang, which was advocating then 
the “Eastern culture” and the “innate old Chinese morals.” The film 
censorship law promulgated by the Kuomintang government on November 3, 
1930, stipulated that “No pictures, either Chinese or foreign, can be 
shown until they are examined and approved according to this law.”10 
Though its spearhead was directed mainly against the movies made by 
the Leftげwingers, the law had a stipulation against films “detrimental 
to good customs,” and it could be applied to the American films. The 
film censorship law prohibited all pictures with 
pornographic, incestuous and suicidal contents and with details of 
women improperly undressing themselves. Among the 9 movies banned in 1934, 
6 were American, including Invisible Man, Dracula, Captured and 
The Notorious Sophil Long produced by American big studios. Cuts were 
made in some other films, a case in point being Grand Hotel, in which 
the scene of flirtation between the boss and his female shop assistant 
in the bedroom was deleted. The film steering committee of the central 
committee of the Kuomintang adopted a decision that year to exercise 
strict censorship over foreign films and ban those with sensual and 
romantic contents and to reexamine the bad foreign movies being shown 
currently in the theaters.11 

      Resenting and protesting against debasing the image of the 
Chinese people formed the third aspect of the Chinese ethical 
criticism of the American film. “Chinese plotters” began to appear 
frequently on the screen with the showing of the Hollywood serial 
detective films. These characters were usually played by short, queer 
Cantonese living in the United States. They were either ferocious, 
cruel villains killing people to seize their possessions, or slowげ
witted ignoramuses of wretched appearance, the males usually wearing a 
long pigtail, and the females, with bound feet. These films, 
reflecting Americaюs bias against and disdain for China, naturally 
excited repudiation and resistance from knowledgeable critics in 
China. In the spring of 1920 Chinese nationals in the United States 
protested strongly against the showing of a film humiliating China in 
New York, and the representative of the Guangdong Military Government 
in America took up the matter with the US government. To challenge 
these American films, some young Chinese in the United States set up 
the Great Wall Motion Picture Corporation to make films representing 
the real situation in China. They returned to China later and made 
“problem” pictures to “point out prevailing questions and offer 
salutary advice to alter old customs and habits.” They became the 
“Great Wall Group,” which had considerable influence in the Chinese 
filmdom in the 20s.

      The showing of such American films in China evoked wideげ
spread indignation, which turned into a disturbance involving various 
strata of the Chinese people. On February 22, 1930, the renowned 
Chinese film artist Hong Shen was invited by a friend to see a movie. 
Not wanting to go to one played by Douglas Fairbanks Sr., who had 
acted in films humiliating China, Hong and his friend went to the 
Daguangming Cinema to see an American picture named Undaunted (Bupa 
Si), only to find it was also one disgracing China. Unable to put up 
with the disgusting, mean behavior of the Chinese in the picture any 
more, Hong Shen went on to the stage to “vehemently enumerate the 
absurdities against the Chinese people and ask the audience to walk 
out.” He was taken to the police station in the foreign concession as 
a result. This picture had been repudiated as “utterly disgracing the 
Chinese people” before, and when the incident of Hong Shen was known, 
the public went into an uproar. Innumerable people voiced their 
support for him, and units and personages in the dramatic and film 
circles issued statements one after the other, denouncing the picture 
for “making repulsive, misleading propaganda and turning things upside 
down to befuddle people” and demanding for “the destruction of this 
movie.”12 At last the Shanghai Film Censorship Committee banned the 
picture on the ground that it contained “insults to the Chinese people 
that make one bristle with anger,” and the American Paramount Pictures 
Corporation could not but retrieve this film and apologize.

      These activities of opposing films humiliating China made even 
the Kuomintang authorities feel that the consequence of these American 
films was serious indeed. Therefore, a stipulation was laid in the 
film censorship law that no films “detrimental to the dignity of the 
Chinese nation” were allowed to be shown, and the Central Film 
Censorship Committee made “watching out for foreign films impairing 
our national dignity” one of its duties. Apart from this, it sent Luo 
Minyou, General Manager of the Lianhua Motion Picture Corporation, to 
the United States “on a tour of investigation,” to make Chinaюs 
attitude known to the American filmdom so as to forestall producing 
such films again.13 In 1934 the American MetroげGoldwynげMayer Inc. came 
to China to shoot Earth. The screenplay was examined and revised by 
the Chinese department concerned,!and the shooting was done under 
Chinese supervision. From then on, American filmげmakers showed certain 
restraint in shooting similar pictures.

      This moral criticism of the American film did not come by 
chance; it has its firm roots in the soil of the Chinese traditional 
culture. Since modern times, China has been experiencing an 
unprecedented change. Western culture, relying on its economic 
might, overran the Chinese land, and the conflicts between Western 
and Eastern culture became inevitable. The Chinese moral criticism 
of the American film was but a reflection of these conflicts. The 
Chinese traditional culture stresses the educational role of writings, 
using them to regulate the relationships between spouses, parents and 
children and among different kinds of people and to improve morals. 
They have always had a heavy panげmoral and panげpoliticalized flavor. 
With the invasion of the imperialist powers, writings were required to 
assume the additional function of having the practical use of helping 
rule the country. Intellectuals regarded literature and other liberal 
arts means of salvaging the nation, as the famous scholar Liang Qichao 
said, “To imbue people with new ideas, it is necessary first of all to 
update a countryюs novels and stories.” The film entered China at this 
stage. With the audioげvisual effects and influence the film possesses, 
though it has been considered a common commodity in the eyes of 
Americans, it was only natural that in China the film was taken as the 
product of an alien moral civilization.  However, against the great 
cultural background of the present century, Chinaюs moral repulsion of 
the American film seemed rather impotent, and the panげpoliticalized 
ethical criticism of “evil” and “pornography” was not strong enough to 
frighten away the Chinese audience. To a certain extent, it did 
publicity for these movies. Such an antimonial outcome was something 
the critics did not want to see.

II. Political Criticism

      The 30s witnessed the radicalization or extremalization of the 
Chinese panげpoliticalized criticism of the American film: the turning 
from a mainly moral criticism to a political one.

      The repudiation and resistance of the American films 
humiliating China, though mainly a moral one as far as the norms of 
judgment go, assumed the form of politicalized criticism. This became 
a link between the moral criticism and the political criticism and 
would logically develop into the latter. The basis and motivating 
force of the political criticism was the rise of the Leftist cultural 
movement led by the Chinese Communist Party.

      Beginning from the 30s, the main stream of the Chinese arts 
took on a radical turn. This was a natural reaction to the internal 
and external troubles confronting China and the conservatization of 
the Kuomintangюs politics after the Northern Expedition. The 
participation and guidance of the Chinese Communist Party swiftly lent 
this tendency of radicalization a proletarian inclination. “Changes in 
culture are caused by the ways of the world, and ups and downs are 
decided by the trend of the times.” The film, of course, can not be an 
exception to this rule. In September 1931 the Chinese Association of 
the Leftist Dramatists passed a “Program of Immediate Actions,” which 
said it was to “start a proletarian film movement and wage struggles 
against the bourgeois and feudalist tendencies.”14 After that, the 
Communist Party sent cadres to work in big film studios and set up a 
film group and a film review group successively. A vigorous Leftist 
film movement soon took shape. As this movement became the main 
stream in the Chinese filmdom, the Leftist view on the American film 
began to dominate Chinese criticism of the American film.

      The Leftist film reviewers inherited the basic views of the 
past criticism of the American film, holding that it was guilty of 
“evil” and “pornography.” They also maintained that “the ways and 
means used in the American films have been copied by bandits, and the 
sexual behavior and love affairs in them are being imitated by young 
people.”15 So the sexy, sensual American films “are indeed 
intolerable.... Young people obsessed with such films all day long 
will inevitably give themselves up to wide fancies, go astray and land 
in dreadful straits.”16 The basic arguments of the Leftist reviewers 
were not based on ethics, but rather, on politics. They held that the 
American film served the imperialist cultural policy, “trying to 
replace the priests throughout the world with their movies, so as to 
redouble their efforts a hundredげfold to spread their philters to 
poison the minds of the multitude of the weak nations,” Therefore, it 
was necessary to “smash the imperialistsю film strategy and kick their 
anesthetics out of the Chinese cinemas!”17 From this it can be seen 
that the Leftげwingersю criticism of the American film had been made 
part of the antiげimperialist and antiげfeudal total revolutionary 
strategy of the Chinese Communist Party. It was only natural that 
their attitude towards the American film should fall in line with this 
strategy and the political judgment, superseding the artistic, 
commercial and moral ones, became the first criterion in evaluating a 
film.

      The criticism of the American film by the Leftげwingers was 
done mainly through film reviews. From 1932 on, the film pages of big 
newspapers in Shanghai, such as Shen Bao, Shi Bao, Chen Bao, Da Gong 
Bao, Shishi Xinbao, were mostly controlled by Leftげ
wingers. The organized theoretic criticism of the American film they 
launched swayed the public opinion on movies.

      The film reviews of the Leftげwingers included Western films 
into the category of “imperialist films,” and their basic assessment 
of them was that “over 90% of them are meant to assail the colonies 
and used as the tool of imperialism to poison the people.”18 
“Preaching, and poisoning, cheating and seducing people” were the 
functions of the cultural aggression attributed to the American film, 
and the task of the Leftist film review was “to take on the task of 
opposing imperialism in the film domain and to launch magnificent 
assaults on the imperialist films.”19 Under this prerequisite, they 
adopted basically the attitude of putting the political criterion 
first in evaluating the American films. Therefore, they said, for 
instance, that It Happened One Night was “tasteless to the extreme”; A 
Song to Remember “was too ugly and vulgar to be endured”; The Three 
Musketeers was “a poison” and “of vulgar taste”; Love Parade was “a 
philter” which “uses wine, women, songs and dances to poison peopleюs 
mind.”20 The films they had a positive opinion of were all those 
exposing the darkness of capitalism. I Am a Fugitive from a Chain 
Gang, for instance, “brought to light the darkness of American 
prisons,” “telling people what a weapon the law is for man 
slaughtering”;21 Flames (Nu Yan) depicted American lynching; and the 
Chaplin films exposed the economic crisis of American capitalism.

      The Leftげwingers endeavored to “ascertain by the political 
content of an American film whether it is good or bad, whether its 
artistic form, subordinate to the content, serves to coat the poison 
with sugar.” 22 The exertion of American films on artistry in 
presentation and production, consequently, was said to be making 
“sugarげcoated poison.” Even affirming only the artistic value of a 
film was considered “an incorrect tendency,” for “the better the 
artistry of a film, the greater its effects in helping spread the 
influence of its content, and publicizing the artistry of a film is 
tantamount to advertising its content” and enabling it to “better 
cheat and taint the audience.”23 In spite of the fact that the Leftげ
wingers did say “it is not that all films of imperialist countries are 
to be repudiated,” they, in dealing with concrete films, invariably 
evaluated them with the yardstick of films being “the greatest weapon 
of the class struggle” and “embodying, in the final analysis, the 
world outlook of their own class.” Putting the political criterion 
first often became making the political criterion the only guideline 
in film review. This view of content deciding form and putting content 
ahead of form came from the Marxist theory on arts, but it also had 
much to do with the Chinese traditional literary theory. This theory 
regards the content of a writing to be of fundamental importance, and 
its form, only of minor significance. It demands that content should 
precede form and writings should carry moral teachings. The moral 
criticism and the political criticism of the American film were, in 
essence, analogous, both emphasizing content, social effects and 
reaction. The difference lay only in the fact that moral criticism 
unfolded from the society to the film circles, while political 
criticism, the other way round. So it was not strange that even Zheng 
Zhengqiu, who was good at making films expressing the Chinese 
traditional ethics and did not belong to the camp of the Leftげwingers, 
accepted the Leftist groupюs view on the American film. He raised the 
slogan of launching “a struggle against three evils,” meaning 
imperialism, capitalism and feudalism, in an introspective article, 
and said the American films were covered with “a cloak of peacock 
feathers, beautiful in appearance but mostly empty inside.”24

      The emergence of the Leftist film reviews had naturally its 
social and political background and had, therefore, its rationality. 
What is more, these reviews, having discarded the old way of writing 
from oneюs impressions and following just oneюs bent and an 
advertisement style, were guided by a clearly defined theory. They had 
thus raised the level of the Chinese film reviews. But they had the 
obvious shortcomings of oversimplification and conceptualization. Some 
people raised the question “Is this a review?” at the time and said 
that writings like this were just “essays on socialism,” “not quite 
matching up to the term юfilm reviewsю by any standard.”25 Some 
reviewers, it was reported, did not understand dialogue in foreign language, 
but the reviews they wrote tolerated “no argument.” Obviously, such 
reviews had their subjectivity. 

      The Leftげwingers had met some challenge from the advocators of 
“the soft film” in the midげ30s. These advocators stressed the 
recreational function of the film, advancing the “aesthetic view” and 
arguing that “film is iceげcream for the eye and sofa for the soul.” 
The Leftげwingers, they contended, “prattled about ideology at every 
turn,” based their reviews on whether “the European and American films 
produced in the bourgeois society had a Leftist inclination or not 
and insistently force them to turn Leftist. As a result, they found 
none of these films worth looking at.”26 Some of the contentions made 
some sense. But the whole polemic had been conducted under the 
background of the political confrontation between the Kuomintang and 
the Communist Party, and it was also an indisputable fact that these 
advocators had likewise an obvious political inclination. Otherwise, 
they would not have attacked the Leftげwingers as using the “shoddy 
yardstick procured from Siberia” in their reviews and demanded that 
“the antiげimperialist and antiげfeudal work of the Chinese film circles 
should at the most be undertaken in parallel and cooperation with the 
Chinese political authorities and other social movements.”27 The few 
reasonable ideas they had were thus inundated in the polemic of 
political confrontation and met with the fierce rebuffs of the Leftげ
wingers. Besides, they did not oppose altogether the instructive and 
propagation functions of films and also accused the American films of 
money worship and profitげseeking. Therefore, their polemic with the 
Leftげwingers failed to alter the Chinese peopleюs criterion of judging 
the American films and ended with the Leftげwingers gaining the upper 
hand. This further affirmed the Leftげwingersю approach to the American 
film: “making film reviews with emphasis on idology.”

      Since film reviewing had become political criticism, 
evaluation of the American films could not but change with the change 
of political environments. During the War of Resistance Against 
Japanese Aggression, for instance, a moderate praise replaced the 
former censure of the American films, for “we should oppose only one 
at present, the Japanese imperialistsю aggression of our country!”28 
Under the pen of the reviewers, thus, “even Hollywood, the юgay 
centerю of US film production, changed its feature. They 
have mastered out and out this modern art of propaganda and are 
concentrating their efforts on waging struggle against fascists 
now.”29 In the review of a Chaplin film, The Great Dictator, the 
author wrote that “Hollywood was called юa workshop of dreamsю before. 
With heroes and beauties as the main characters of its films, it 
created numerous sweet and fond dreams for those folks throughout the 
world whose will had been crushed by hardships. However, when this 
weapon is handled by progressive workers of arts, it has changed all 
of a sudden into a weapon to smash dreams instead of creating them.”30 
Obviously, even though Hollywood did change somewhat in war time, such 
an assessment could only be born out of a political environment, for 
then the United States had become an ally of China in the War of 
Resistance.

      This political tolerance shown to the American films ended 
with the ending of the War of Resistance. A severe political 
repudiation followed. The American films were denounced as “poisonous” 
stuffs. “Most American films are questionable, and their farげremovedげ
fromげrealities themes, sentimental, romantic mood and gray, forlorn 
tone are harmful to the Chinese audience today.”31 “Some reservations 
must be made” even for the film For Whom The Bell Tolls, a film based on a no
vel 
of the same name by Ernest Hemingway. “As to the soげcalled recreational films 
(or what some people call the indirect educational movies) that keep 
pouring into China from across the Pacific Ocean, they are toxin in 
our eyes and merit our serious vigilance.”32 The reviewer warned the 
audience that “if there were an instrument to test the American films 
with, we would have been surprised by the harm they have done us. They 
are manufacturing idiots for us every day, using the fascinating 
colors and easy performance to train unthinking people.”33 Such 
reviews pushed Chinaюs panげpoliticalized criticism of the American 
film to the extreme. This extremity, following the Communist Partyюs 
seizure of political power on the mainland, inevitably led to the 
banning of the American films in the country in November 1950. So the 
negative image of the American films fixed in the minds of the Chinese 
people over a long period of time.


III. Failure in Achieving the Desired Effect

of the Criticism

      On the whole, the American films appeared in a negative light 
in the Chinese film reviews beginning from the 20s. In both moral 
criticism and political criticism, the Chinese reviews showed a panげ
politicalized tendency. The general trend being such, study and 
analysis of the commercial effects and artistry of the American films 
were reduced to a position of secondary importance. The commercial 
relationship of the Chinese and American films is another subject 
worth studying, which I will not go into here. But, starting from the 
30s, Chinaюs reaction to the US capitalюs entry into the Chinese 
filmdom and the commercial effects of the American filmsю penetrating 
into the Chinese market were also categorized in the political domain, 
and commerce and politics were often lumped together. What people 
worried most was that the US capital entered the Chinese filmdom with 
the intention to turn it into “a slave training center, obliging you 
to accept their rule and oppression obediently.”34 What is more, the 
American filmsю entry into China with the victory of the War of 
Resistance was imputed to the Kuomintangюs “flinging open the gate and 
bowing in the gangsters” as a result of signing the SinoげUS commercial 
treaty, and the commercial interests that came in its wake were left 
out of account.

      We should remember that whatever political attitude 
was taken towards the American films, Chinese film workers did not, in 
fact, reject their cinematographic art and methods. Many screen 
writers of commercial films imitated and copied the American films, 
and even a number of Leftist film workers admitted in the privacy of 
their thoughts that “the American films are indeed a little bit better 
than others” and said they would “learn from their ways of artistic 
expression and tricks.”35 They studied certain films scene by scene in 
the projection room, subjecting themselves to the strong influence of 
Hollywoodюs film art. Xia Yan, a noted personage marshaling the Leftげ
wing film movement, maintained that “the first influence on the 
Chinese films came from the American movies,” and “the Western films 
had great influence on the Chinese films, especially in the way of 
narration, structure and film language.”36 He frankly admitted that he 
had drawn inspirations from the American films in creating his Lunar 
New Year Gift and Girls. Wu Yonggang, a famous director, was also 
deeply impressed by the American filmsю stories, frames, tricks and 
techniques of direction. The famous saying of Samuel Goldwyn, the 
renowned Hollywood producer, about the success or failure of a film 
depending on its story was often cited by the Chinese film workers. A 
contradiction appeared, consequently, in the American filmsю standing 
in China. On the one hand, Chinese reviewers showered moral and 
political criticism on it, and, on the other, Chinese film workers 
imitated, in fact, its artistry. Such imitation helped the Chinese 
audience to become accustomed to the American way of storyげtelling, 
thereby unwittingly expanding the influence of the American films and 
counteracting the effect of the ethical and political criticism. The 
profitげoriented propagation of the Chinese film merchants, 
advertisements in the newspapers and comments in tabloids all combined 
to make the American films popular. The panげpoliticalized film reviews 
underrated or neglected these factors. This, plus some degree of 
oversimplification and subjectivity on the part of the reviewers, 
alienated them somewhat from the audience and the realities of film 
production, so they failed to achieve the results they anticipated. 
Though the American films were driven out of the Chinese screen for 
political reasons and the panげpoliticalized criticism had its way for 
years, they have made a comeback as soon as the political pressure 
vanished. This fact shows that the past practice in this field needs a 
good summingげup.

      The relationship between the American films and China contains 
several interesting subjects closely associated with realities. This 
article has chosen certain periods in the history of the exchanges 
between China and the United States in this field and made an initial 
study of the Chinese reviews on the American films. It is meant to 
arouse some interests in the Chinese academic circles and promote the 
study on this subject.


NOTES


1Cheng Jihua, The History of the Chinese Cinema (Chinese 
Cinema Publishing House, Beijing, 1981), p. 9.

2Cheng Bugao, Recollections of Events in Chinese Filmdom 
(Chinese Cinema Publishing House, Beijing, 1983), p. 39.

3See Note 1, p.39.

4See Xin Wen Bao, March 18 and April 8, 1923.

5See Shen Bao, July 9, 1922.

6See Note 2. 

7The Lianhua Yearbook, 1934-1935, pp. 15-16.  

8George Sadoul, Histoire du cinema mondial (Chinese Cinema 
Publishing House, Beijing, 1982), pp. 248, 285.

9See Note 7, p. 20. 

10Cited from The Chinese Leftist Film Movement (Chinese 
Cinema Publishing House, Beijing, 1993), p. 1089.

11See Note 7, p. 53.

12The Republican Daily, February 26, 1930.

13Du Yunzhi, The History of the Movies of the Republic of 
China (Taibei, 1988), p. 194.

14See Note 10, p. 18. 

15Tang Na, “On the Enlightening Effects of the Movies and the 
Chinese Movies,” Shen Bao, June 30, 1934.

16Ding Xiaoti, Annals of Filmdom (Chinese Cinema Publishin
g House, Beijing, 1984), p. 21.

17See Note 10, pp. 21-2. 

18See Note 10, p. 64. 

19Collected Works of Ma Jiliang (Tang Na) (Shanghai: East
ern China Normal University Publishing House, 1993), p. 367.

20Chen Wu, “Down with All MindげBlowers and Poisons, Films 
Must Become Food for the Public,” Shi Bao, June 1, 1932.

21Situ Huimin and others, “On I Am a Fugitive from a Chain 
Gang,” Shen Bao, April 7, 1934.

22Lin Ho, “The Film Review Group of the Leftist Drama 
Association and Other Things,” The Film Art, 1980, No. 9.

23Selected Chinese Film Reviews Written in the 30s (Chines
e Cinema Publishing House, Beijing, 1993), pp. 696, 786.

24Ibid., p. 616.

25Ibid., pp. 707-709.   

26Ibid., pp. 843-844.

27Ibid., pp. 853, 850.

28Ibid., p. 395.

29Films Shown in Chongqing During the AntiげJapanese War of 
Resistance (Chongqing Publishing House, 1991), p. 480.

30Bo Yue, “Creating and Smashing Dreams,” Xinhua Ribao, 
November 23, 1942.

31Zhou Xiaoming, History of the Chinese Modern Film 
Literature (Higher Education Publishing House, Beijing, 1987), Vol. II, 
pp. 176-177.

32Liu Nianqu, “From Yesterday to Tomorrow,” Da Gong Bao,
 September 22, 1948.

33Ke Ling on Films (Chinese Cinema Publishing House, Beij
ing, 1992), p. 54.

34Hong Shen, “Why Have Americans Come to China to Run Film 
Studios and Shoot Pictures on China?” Chen Bao, July 21, 1932.

35See Note 23, p. 325.

36Xia Yan, “Answers to the Question by Hong Kong's Association of Chi
nese Films,” Chinese Film Studies, Vol.1, Hong Kong 1983.


(Translated by Wang Huaiting)

