Wuya yu maque (Crows and Sparrows)

This leftist masterpiece by Zheng Junli was written around the turn of the year 1948–49, during the civil war, the Nationalists’ retreat to Taiwan, and the Communists’ impending victory. The corrupt Nationalist official Hou and his mistress Yu are forced to flee and must first sell the house he had illegally appropriated. The tenants—the journalist Kong, the teacher Hao with his wife and child, and the family of the street vendor Xiao with their three children—are all to be evicted. Fear threatens to divide the community, but through the ensuing (meticulously depicted) conflicts, a collective, self-assured resistance against their oppressor emerges. The film symbolically ends at the very moment the Communist army liberates Shanghai. One of the greatest revolutionary films, illustrating how solidarity arises and how it triumphs.