The Early Spring of Chinese Cinema, 1922–1964

The history of cinema in China began just one year after the Lumière brothers’ first public film screening in Paris: in 1896, a Frenchman projected the first “shadow plays” in the Xu Gardens, an entertainment complex in Shanghai. From then until the founding of the People’s Republic in 1949, cosmopolitan Shanghai remained the hub of the Chinese film industry and its progressive culture. China and cinema evolved in tandem: from early experiments with projectors during the late Qing Dynasty (a projector reportedly exploded just before Empress Dowager Cixi was to attend a private screening) through the 1911 Revolution that toppled the dynasty; the May Fourth Movement of 1919 (following the Treaty of Versailles), which ushered in socio-political and cultural change; the 1927 coup by Chiang Kai-shek’s Nationalist Party (Kuomintang, or KMT); the Japanese invasion of Manchuria in 1931 and the Japanese occupation of Shanghai (1937–1945); to the civil war between the Communist Party under Mao Zedong and Chiang Kai-shek’s KMT from 1945 to 1949.

This emerging cinema culture was an integral part of Shanghai’s modernity, which predated the cultural modernization of China as a whole. Screenings organized by European companies in Shanghai and other port cities—which served as outposts of European colonial rule on the Chinese mainland—introduced Chinese audiences to films from Hollywood, France, Britain, and Russia. At the same time, the Chinese film industry produced its first generation of directors, screenwriters, and actors.