D. W. Griffith and the Rise of Chinese Cinema in Early 1920s Shanghai

Datos Bibliográficos

ID23458587
AutoresJianhua Chen (0000-0002-4068-3956, University of Hong Kong, autor de correspondencia)
Año2013
Fecha de publicación2013-04-11
Open AccessNo
TipoBOOK
RevistaOxford Handbook of Chinese Cinemas (SOURCE_BOOK)
EditorialOxford University Press (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199765607.013.0002
OpenAlexW2587089193
ISBN9780199765607
IdiomaEN
Citas recibidas2

This chapter argues that the development of the Chinese film industry is inseparable from the success of D. W. Griffith and Lillian Gish in early 1920s China. Touched by the magnificent cinematography of The Birth of a Nation and Lillian Gish’s tragic performance in Way Down East, critics came to recognize cinema as a complex art as well as a powerful medium for mass education and therefore urgently called for the birth of national film. An investigation of advertisements and commentaries in newspapers and popular magazines reveals how issues of race and gender in Griffith’s work were translated into formal terms mediated by local politics and cultural tradition. The cinematic narration of “imagined communities” is enhanced by interactive responses between movie theaters, films, newspapers, and magazines, ramified with cosmopolitan, nationalist, and metropolitan perception and discourses. Moreover, the sensational reception of Lillian Gish in China is characterized by deep layers of sentimental ethos, articulating women’s social mobility of the time.

Art · China · Ethos · Literature · Media studies · Movie theater · Narrative · Nationalism · Newspaper · Political science · Politics · Sociology · Chinese history and philosophy · Cinema and Media Studies · Gender Studies · History · Hong Kong and Taiwan Politics · Law