• 雷雨 (Thunderstorm, 1983 film)

9/26/20 (Sat)

One of numerous film versions of Cao Yu’s seminal 1934 stage work. Sun Daolin (孫道臨), a major film star of the 1950s to 1970s, adapted, directed and starred in this 1983 version. The groundbreaking stage show was immensely influential in China as the first successful Western-style drama, helping to transform the entire course of Chinese theatrical history. The story comes off as melodramatic, involving as it does family struggles, class warfare (making it popular in the Communist years) and incest. But the characterizations are compelling, and the story flows nicely, though depending on one questionable coincidence.

The story takes place in the rich household of a domineering mine operator. A female servant has been brought into the home by her father, who works there as well. He has also arranged for his stepson to work in the mine. The stepson has become a rebel rouser and is trying to organize a strike in protest at the severe working conditions at the mine. The mother works several hours away and is only able to meet them infrequently.

The female servant is joyous to learn that her mother is coming to visit the rich home for the first time. She is less happy, however, when she hears the circumstances. The father reveals that the master’s unhappy wife has been having an affair with her stepson (who is not much younger than she is) and is none too pleased at his relationship with the lowly servant. It is she who has called the mother, and the female servant worries that this could mean her dismissal and affect her relationship with her lover. Meanwhile, the stepson, sick of it all, is planning to go away, and the master’s desperate wife wants him to take her with him. A subplot has the lady’s gentler and much younger son also in love with the female servant.

When the mother arrives, she is shocked to realize from a photograph that this is the household of her long-lost ex-husband, who deserted her years ago. The room has been arranged exactly the way it was in their old home, including the same furnishings. That is, her daughter is the master’s child, and it is her son with her second husband who is causing the troubles at the mine. She is disgusted that the man who threw her away is now lording over their daughter as a servant. She tries quickly to get away but encounters the master, who doesn’t recognize her at first given the toll that the years have taken on her and his long-held belief that she had drowned herself with their infant son. Realizing finally who she is, he immediately suspects her motives. She tells him that they were rescued and recounts bitterly of her difficult life since. He tries to pay her off, but she rejects it, assuring him that she had no idea of the household’s identity. She just wants to take her daughter away and be gone forever.

The woman then learns of her daughter’s affair with the master’s son, realizing that the daughter is thus unwittingly dating her own stepbrother. When the daughter reveals that she is pregnant with the lover’s child, the appalled mother is forced to tell all. Things do not go well.

We have to accept that the daughter just so happened upon the household of a man who turns out to be her long-lost father and happens to have fallen unknowingly for her stepbrother. Once past that improbable set of events, the story is set up well with its two triangles (servant and mistress both doing stepbrother/son, and brother and stepbrother both aiming for servant), realistic language and dizzying developments. The show had little humor for balance, so it was pretty heavy-going from start to finish. Ibsen was an obvious influence here. If you’re going to drag Chinese theater out of the fantastical Beijing opera world, this sensationalistic approach is probably the best way. Interesting show.