Scenes from City Life (1935) Context of Shanghai cinema in the 1930 -Cinema defined in its broadest institutional

terms as vernacular modernism. Shanghai was a treaty port, semi-colonial, international city, called the Paris of the East. Much recent research has been done on the circuits connecting cinema, print media, architectureMiriam Hansen herself has found Shanghai cinema to be exemplar of her thesis on VM. Film culture developed here almost simultaneously with other metropolitan capitals of the world. -A hybrid cinema precedent for recycling plots and or scenes from Hollywood films. For example, execution from Dishonored is redone essentially shot for shot in Daybreak (1933). Hybrid genres; Chinese Charlie chaplins, as you see in the advertisement -1931/2 marks the Japanese annexation of Manchuria and clashes between nationalist forces/imperial forces in Shanghai. The film industry sufferedmany film companies studios were bombed in this incident. Nationalist government pursued policy of nonresistance in Manchuria, which led to protests, and generated a leftward drift in the film industry. This is where the Left-wing filmmakers emerged, and also the hard/soft films debates. Nationalist tendencies vs. the decadence of soft films which defines the film industry of the 1930s. This film in particular -Diantong company; short-lived only produced 4 films. Important for work on early sound films. Sound itself has an interesting history synchronization problems both due to production issues as well as theater equipment. Independent cineplexes (as opposed to Hollywood vert. integrated theaters) didnt upgrade so quickly to sound equipment, hence, a niche for extended silent production. Liasons with the communist party which was currently in northwest china. Government pressure and financial difficulties forced it to close its doors in 1935. - Yuan Muzhi, one of two films that he directed. Was mainly an actor and appears in fact in this film as one of the bad businessmen. Maos wife also appears as minor role in this film - I think this film emblematizes a certain kind of reflexive critique of Shanghai commercialism but also cinema that can be seen as a gateway to post 49 cinema. -What interests me about this film is the way in which it ties together genre in politics; and how it frames the diegesis via, as you will see in the beginning, a kinetoscope. Weihong Bao gave a talk sometime last year about the opening sequence, in which peasants-montage-classical Hollywood diegesis are layered on each other and controlled by the seeing apparatus. Peasants who frame the narrative a particularly interestinghow do they function to displace the narrative? And how do they tie into the peasant revolution that would be to come. -Note on contemporary reception Leftist films were the first pre-49 films to be rehabilitated and restored after the Cultural Revolution. Creation of canon, but also its reception in the West