Dianying;: An account of films and the film audience in China

by Jay Leyda

Films have for some time been an important element in Chinese art and society, and filmmaking is a strenuous business--characterized by "the old problem of official Chinese sensitivity about Chinese reality," by deep conflicts, and by the necessity of designing films for and transporting them to millions of peasants throughout the Republic.

Because he worked with the Chinese film industry in Peking from 1959 to 1964, Jay Leyda has had access to more Chinese films and relevant documents than any other Western scholar. In "Dianying" he describes both historic and current film production, using the films themselves as primary source material. He covers the film industry (the rise and fall of film studios, the influence of foreign filmmakers, the problems of film distributors), gives synopses of important and representative films, and introduces us to the notable filmmakers, actors, and actresses of China.

"Dianying" also throws light on the larger social and political scene in twentieth-century China. It reveals a dramatic and astonishing period of Chinese film history during which an underground group of revolutionaries made films that continued to reach large audiences despite Kuomintang and Japanese oppression. What is significant, Leyda points out, is that the most expressive and lasting Chinese films resulted from these bitter and often bloody circumstances--films that were superior to what came before and in many respects superior to films made well after the triumph of the Chinese revolution.

Almost all periods of film development have yielded something of value: "Seeing a steady quantity of Chinese films," Leyda remarks, "I found myself imagining, too easily, that if there had been films in the Middle Ages, this is what they would have looked like. Here are the conformity, the self-satisfied and defensive insularity, the almost scientific reduction of personal interpretation to its minimum, the rigid stratification of social groups..., the fixed place for each individual, and the molding of people to types that we find in medieval arts, with rare exceptions. There are the same rare exceptions in Chinese cinema, I'm glad to see, for it's only from such brave exceptions, recognizing the value of humanity and art, that we can expect any progress to grow--or a socialist cinema to tear itself away from feudalism. These exceptions make me hopeful for China's future and film future; without this hope there would be little point in this book."

Genres: China

533 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1973

About the author

Jay Leyda was an American avant-garde filmmaker and film historian, noted for his work on U.S, Soviet and Chinese Cinema. His The Melville Log (1951) was a day to day compilation of documents which he had painstakingly collected on the life of Herman Melville. He was a member of the Workers Film and Photo League in the early 1930s. He participated in the filming of Sergei Eisenstein's lost film Bezhin Meadow (1935–37).[1] In the 1940s he translated Eisenstein's writings.
He was awarded the Eastman Kodak Gold Medal Award in 1984.

Reviews

[Chet]

This has been out of print I believe for decades. Meanwhile Leyda's work on Soviet cinema is still widely read and commented on. Here's why: Leyda knew Russian, and he spent a lot of time of time in the USSR. He knew their greatest filmmaker personally and interviewed him many times. It's safe to call Leyda an expert on Russian cinema. But Leyda then thought I suppose he could repeat this approach with China ("they're all just commies, right?"). That parenthetical might be an unfair strawman, but Leyda does in the intro admit he doesn't know of word of Chinese, he hasn't seen many of the films he'll be discussing, and he only spent about a year total in China itself. So why have the nerve to take on a history of Chinese cinema? Well it's not too valuable as a secondary source, as the project it claims to be. But there are some gems: toward the end of the text we learn Leyda happened to be in China at the beginning of the Sino-Soviet split, and his memories suddenly become valuable as a primary source of that time, particularly his discussion of the film "In the Name of the Revolution", which is free on YouTube and is a fascinating Chinese movie telling the story of Russian orphans caught up in the revolution who then gain inspiration from Lenin. All the Russians are portrayed by Chinese actors, it's an early-split attempt of the Chinese communists claiming the legacy of the October Revolution, which the Khrushchev bureaucrats were in the process of butchering (Khrushchev had delivered his "Secret Speech" 4 years prior).
Basically, if you really want to get into weeds on Chinese film and some comparisons with Soviet film you might get something out of this but if you just want a general overview of Chinese cinema the Chinese scholar Ding Yaping is much better, more reliable, thorough, consistent, oh, and did I mention he actually knows Chinese?

[Jeff · Rating 4 out of 5]

Valuable as the first English-language survey of Chinese cinema. Jay Leyda spent significant time in China in the 1950's collaborating with Chinese filmmakers and historians. He worked at the Beijing Film Academy and his views correspond with the prevailing politics of the time.