The "Poet" and "The Emperor"

Wild Rose (1932)
Monday May 25, 1.30pm, The Egyptian

A wealthy artist (Yan Jin) travelling the countryside is smitten with an impudent girl (Wang Renmei) and lingers in her village to paint. He returns to the city with her, where they find hardship.
Influential director, screenwriter Sun Yu introduced Chinese cinema to the crane shot in Wild Rose (Ye mei gui), a film credited with raising production standards throughout the industry. The energetic title character was intended to symbolize Chinese defiance against invading Japanese Imperialist forces of the time. (82 minutes)

Wild Rose will be presented for one showing only, with live musical accompaniment performed by pianist Donald Sosin.

This will be the only silent-era archival film presentation at The Seattle International Film Festival for 2009.

Post-show update...

The crane work in this film is indeed impressive, as is the general use of tracking shots and lighting. One scene in particular caught my attention toward the end of the film. As she struggles with extreme adversity, Wang Renwei’s character musters her courage while tears stream down her face. The close-up shot displays lighting and photographic effects, as well as a great performance, that rivals anything produced by Hollywood during the silent-era.

Monday’s screening was my first and only viewing of this beautiful and unobtainable (believe me, I tried) film. Accompanist Donald Sosin produced an inspiring score, including an amusing improvisation of several minutes (highlighted by Rocky Raccoon as arranged by Chopin) when the projector malfunctioned mid-film. Professor Richie Meyer’s introduction was interesting and informative, as always, and live a spoken translation of the original Mandarin inter-titles was performed by his son Mahlon. This film, with Donald Sosin’s accompaniment, will also be featured at the San Francisco Silent Film Festival this July.

Richie Meyer’s newly published book, Jin Yan: The Rudolph Valentino of Shanghai, which includes the Ruan Ling-yu film The Peach Girl (1931) on dvd, is currently on sale at Cinema Books on Roosevelt Way.