Fei Mu
Fei Mu | |||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Born | October 10, 1906 | ||||||
| Died | January 31, 1951 (aged 44) | ||||||
| Occupation(s) | Director, screenwriter, film producer | ||||||
| Years active | 1933-1951 | ||||||
| Children | Barbara Fei | ||||||
| Chinese name | |||||||
| Traditional Chinese | |||||||
| Simplified Chinese | 费穆 | ||||||
| |||||||
Fei Mu (October 10, 1906 – January 31, 1951), also romanised as Fey Mou, was a Chinese film director of the pre-Communist era. His Spring in a Small Town (1948) was declared the greatest Chinese film ever made by the Hong Kong Film Critics Society.[1]
Biography
[edit]Fei Mu's ancestral hometown is Suzhou, Jiangsu Province. He was born in Shanghai, China in 1906. Before becoming a director, he worked as an assistant of the film pioneer Hou Yao.[2]
Known for his artistic style and costume dramas, Fei made his first film, Night in the City (1933), produced by the Lianhua Film Company), at the age of 27, and he was met with both critical and popular acclaim; the film is now lost. Continuing to make films with Lianhua, Fei directed films throughout the 1930s and became a major talent in the industry, with films like Blood on Wolf Mountain (1936) which is often seen as an allegory on the war with Japan,[3] and Song of China (1935), a glorification of traditional values that was part of the New Life Movement. Later, Song of China became one of the few films that had a limited release in the United States.[4]
Fei's legacy as one of China's greatest directors was sealed with Spring in a Small Town (1948) about a love triangle in post-war China (it was later remade by Tian Zhuangzhuang in 2002 as Springtime in a Small Town).[5] Director Wong Kar-wai called him the only film poet he knew in China. In 2005, Spring in a Small Town was declared the greatest Chinese film ever made by the Hong Kong Film Critics Society.[6] Fei remained active in this so-called "Second Golden Age" and also directed China's first color film A Wedding in the Dream (1948), which incorporated Beijing Opera and starred Mei Lanfang.[7] Following the Communist revolution in 1949, Fei Mu, along with many other artists and intellectuals fled to Hong Kong. There he founded Longma Film Company (Dragon-Horse Films) with Zhu Shilin and Fei Luyi and produced (under the Longma name) Zhu Shilin's The Flower Girl (1951).
Following his death from a heart attack in Hong Kong in 1951 while working at his desk, Fei Mu and his work temporarily fell into obscurity, as much of his filmography was forgotten or ignored on the mainland and rejected by leftists as indicative of rightist ideologies.[8] It was not until the 1980s, when the China Film Archive re-opened after being closed down during the Cultural Revolution, that Fei Mu's work found a new audience. Most significant was a new print made by the China Film Archive from the original negative of Spring in a Small Town.[9]
Filmography
[edit]Director
[edit]| Year | English title | Chinese title | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1933 | Night in the City | Also known as City Nights; silent | |
| 1934 | A Sea of Fragrant Snow | Also known as A Nun's Love; silent | |
| 1934 | Life | Silent | |
| 1935 | Song of China | Also known as Filial Piety; co-directed with Luo Mingyou | |
| 1936 | Blood on Wolf Mountain | Also known as Bloodbath in Langshan and Bloodbath on Wolf Mountain | |
| 1937 | Martyrs of the Northern Front | Chinese opera film | |
| 1937 | Gold-Plated City | Also known as the Gilded City; Chinese opera film | |
| 1937 | Murder in the Oratory | Chinese opera film | |
| 1937 | Nightmares in Spring Chamber | Episode in Lianhua Symphony | |
| 1940 | Confucius | Thought lost, rediscovered in 2001 | |
| 1941 | Children of the World | Co-directed with Jacob Fleck and Luise Fleck | |
| 1941 | The Beauty | ||
| 1941 | Songs of Ancient China | Chinese opera film | |
| 1948 | The Little Cowheard | Chinese opera film | |
| 1948 | A Wedding in the Dream | First Chinese color film; also known as Happiness in neither Life nor Death; Chinese opera film | |
| 1948 | Spring in a Small Town |
Screenwriter
[edit]| Year | English title | Chinese title |
|---|---|---|
| 1934 | Life | |
| 1936 | Blood on Wolf Mountain | |
| 1936 | On Stage and Backstage | |
| 1937 | Martyrs of the Northern Front | |
| 1937 | Nightmares in Spring Chamber | |
| 1940 | Confucius | |
| 1941 | Children of the World | |
| 1941 | Songs of Ancient China |
Producer
[edit]| Year | English title | Chinese title |
|---|---|---|
| 1951 | The Flower Girl |
See also
[edit]Notes
[edit]- ^ Christopher Rea, Chinese Film Classics, 1922-1949 (Columbia University Press, 2021), ch. 10.
- ^ Rojas, Carlos; Chow, Eileen (2013). The Oxford Handbook of Chinese Cinemas. Oxford University Press. p. 63. ISBN 978-0-19-976560-7.
- ^ "A Blue Apple in a City for Sale". Time. March 27, 1977. Archived from the original on May 24, 2011. Retrieved April 15, 2007.
- ^ "Song of China, aka Filial Piety (Tianlun)". UCSD Chinese Cinema Web-Based Learning Center. January 10, 2003. Archived from the original on August 14, 2007. Retrieved July 18, 2007.
- ^ Chinese Film Classics online course, Module 10: Spring in a Small Town: https://chinesefilmclassics.org/course/module-10-spring-in-a-small-town-1948/
- ^ "Welcome to the 24th Hong Kong Film Awards". 24th Annual Hong Kong Film Awards. Archived from the original on October 22, 2019. Retrieved April 14, 2007.
- ^ Zhang Yingjin, Chinese National Cinema, (London: Routledge Press, 2004), 101.
- ^ Li, Cheuk-to (2000), "Spring in a Small Town: Mastery and Restraint", Cinemaya, 49
- ^ Artificial-Eye.com staff. "Then and Now: Two Versions of Springtime in a Small Town". Artificial-Eye.com. Archived from the original on October 29, 2006. Retrieved April 14, 2007.
Further reading
[edit]- Pang, Laikwan (2002), Building a New China in Cinema: The Chinese Left-Wing Cinema Movement, 1932-1937, Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc., ISBN 0-7425-0946-X
- Rea, Christopher (2021), Chinese Film Classics, 1922-1949, Columbia University Press, ISBN 9780231188135
External links
[edit]- Chinese Film Classics: Fei Mu: The scholarly website chinesefilmclassics.org contains information about Fei and English-subtitled versions of Song of China and Spring in a Small Town (course module)
- Fei Mu at IMDb
- Fei Mu at the Chinese Movie Database
- A brief biography of Fei Mu
- A biographical article on Fei Mu and the making of Spring in a Small Town Archived March 21, 2019, at the Wayback Machine
- Fei Mu Documents, Suzhou Art Museum, 2018.10.20-2018.11.25 “诗人导演”费穆
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