• 神女 (The Goddess)

11/9/24 (Sat)

This masterful Shanghai-based silent movie of 1934 was amazingly the prolific Wu Yonggang’s debut work, setting a pretty high standard for his career. It’s impressive that he was able to pull this off at all given the censorship under Nationalist Guomintang rule, though it does have an (overly) explicit moral message that might have helped. It’s still considered one of China’s greatest films.

The title, The Goddess, was also used euphemistically to refer to prostitutes. Both meanings would apply to the unnamed heroine, played by the irreplaceable Ruan Lingyu. Continue reading →