Happy Birthday, Wu Yonggang! Born today in 1907, this Chinese film director was prominent during the 1930s.
He had a long career with the Lianhua Film Company during that time, in Chongqing during the war, and in the mainland after the 1949 communist revolution.
Born in Shanghai, China, Yonggang was considered a native of his ancestral home Wu County, Jiangsu in Chinese convention.
Years later, he was one of the major leftist film directors of pre-Communist China.
For the early part of his career, Yonggang was a set designer with Dazhonghua Baihe Film Company. This was before transferring to the Shaw Brothers' Tianyi Film Company.
He was eventually noticed by Chinese screenwriter and director Shi Dongshan at the newly formed Lianhua Film Company (Liánhuá yǐngyè gōngsī; lit. United China Film Company).
The Lianhua Film Company was one of the three dominant production companies based in Shanghai, China during the 1930s.
The last was the forerunner of the Hong Kong-based Shaw Brothers Studio (Shaw Brothers (HK) Ltd. This would become the largest film production company of Hong Kong.
At the time, Dongshan was one of the most prominent film directors and screenwriters in pre-Communist China.
This was alongside with Chinese playwright, drama and film director, screenwriter, and film theorist Chen Liting, Chinese pre-Communist film director Cai Chusheng, and Chinese actor and director Zheng Junli.
Yonggang's first film from the director's chair was the one of which he is best known for writing and directing. This was the 1934 Chinese silent black and white drama film 'Shénnǚ' ('The Goddess').
It starred Chinese silent film actress Ruan Lingyu (b. Ruan Fenggen, also known by her English name Lily Yuen) in the eponymous, yet devastating role. The role would also be one of Lingyu's last.
Set in early 1930s Shanghai, the film follows an unnamed young woman and mother (Lingyu), of whom can support her baby boy (Lai Hang) only by turning to prostitution.
In avoiding the police, the young woman comes under the inadvertent protection of a criminal boss (Zhizhi Zhang) who assaults her, then coerces her to work for him.
Brutally forced to continue street walking, the woman nevertheless begins saving money secretly in order to send her son to a good school.
When the boy is of age, his mother realizes her dream, until a well-meaning old principal (Li Junpan) begins an investigation into her past.
Hong Kong entrepreneur, filmmaker and pioneer of Chinese cinema Lo Ming Yau produced 'The Goddess', and Hong Weilie was the cinematographer.
The public responded with enthusiasm upon its initial release, largely due to Ruan Lingyu's popularity in Shanghai in the early 1930s.
Under contract with Lianhua, the film earned both Yonggang and the film's star, Lingyu, rave reviews.
Ringyu, during this time, was one of the most prominent Chinese film stars of the 1930s, as she was even hailed as China's Greta Garbo.
Tragically, her exceptional acting ability and suicide at the age of twenty-four led her to become an icon of Chinese cinema.
Faced with her various public issues and intense private problems, Lingyu poisoned herself with an overdose of barbiturates in Shanghai. She committed the act on March 8, 1935.
In 1938, Yonggang remade his own directorial debut with the 1938 Hong Kong black and white drama film 'Yanzhi Lei' ('Rouge Tears'). This was for the Xinhua Film Company (Xīnhuà Yǐngyè Gōngsī, or New China Film Company).
This was one of the film studios to capitalize on the popularity of the leftist film movement in 1930s Shanghai, that had begun with the Mingxing and Lianhua studios.
Yonggang had a long career with the Lianhua Film Company in the 1930s. This also included working in Chongqing during the war, and in the mainland after the 1949 communist revolution as well.
A prolific director, Yonggang continued to make films well into the 1970s until his retirement shortly before his death.
In the early 1990s, Hong Kong film director and producer Stanley Kwan's revived Lingyu's story.
This was through his 1991 Hong Kong drama/romance biographical film 'Ruǎn Língyù' ('Center Stage', also known as 'The Actress' or 'Yuen ling-yuk'), starring Maggie Cheung as Ruan.
After this, widespread public interest in the 'The Goddess' was reinvigorated.
Today, 'The Goddess' is one of the best-known films of China's cinematic golden age, and has been named as one of China's top 100 films by the Hong Kong Film Awards
in 2005. 'The Goddess' has also been named by renowned Chinese film director and a leading figure of the fifth generation of Chinese cinema Chen Kaige ('Farewell My Concubine') as his favorite film of the 1930s.
Yonggang was a leftist writer-director who struggled to make films in China from the 1930s up until the early 1980s, enduring the mass social changes that accompanied the Communist takeover and the Cultural Revolution.
Yonggang had been active from 1934-1981.
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