That Paul Pickowicz is a treasure of experience and expertise on Chinese film is amply showcased in his new book, China on Film: A Century of Exploration, Confrontation, and Controversy. Largely a collection of previously published essays and conference papers, the book continues Pickowicz's goading of the Chinese state and its cultural authorities, discovering and revealing swaths of China's modern cultural heritage that were initially off limits. It should certainly be an embarrassment every time a scholar working outside China blindsides scholars in China with a revelation about China's history and heritage of which they are ignorant due to the state's interference. Pickowicz has done that regularly. And, of course, he reveals much to the rest of us, scholars and casual readers alike. His lucid prose and succinct analysis make him an exceptionally readable expert.

This new collection is comprised of twelve chapters. Chapter 1 challenges the notion that Shanghai cinema in the 1920s was a cultural wasteland. Chapter 2 takes on the hardline leaders of the Chinese Communist Party for their attempt in the early 1980s to scapegoat the West for China's “spiritual pollution.” Pickowicz reminds us that spiritual pollution was a prominent theme in Chinese films of the 1930s, suggesting that there was nothing new or revolutionary in the Party's renewed campaign against the negative impact of Western culture. Chapter 3 criticizes the assertion that film production of the early post-Mao era lacked a cultural lineage. Pickowicz cites melodrama as an example of a popular genre in Chinese cinema that shows clear parallels in the work of exemplary filmmakers of the 1930s, 1940s, and 1980s. Chapter 4 deals with Chinese filmmaking in areas occupied by Japan, a taboo topic in PRC film history until the last decade or so. In particular, Pickowicz discusses the production and reception of a Sino-Japanese co-production made in occupied Shanghai, Remorse in Shanghai (Chun jiang yi hen, 1944), a film long dismissed as pro-Japanese propaganda. Pickowicz's first presentation on this topic—at a symposium I organized for “100 Years of Chinese Cinema” at Lincoln Center in 2005—received due recognition back in China a year later, when film scholars in China began to reexamine film production in occupied Shanghai. Chapter 5 argues that critical filmmaking during the civil war era (1945–49), which is considered one of the golden eras of Chinese cinema, was pursued not only by leftist filmmakers influenced by the Communist Party, but also by pro-Nationalist and commercial filmmakers. Chapter 6 captures the tragicomic transformation of the popular Chinese actor Shi Hui from a private-sector movie star of the late 1940s into a revolutionary film worker of the early 1950s. Shi ultimately failed to work his way into the Party system and committed suicide during the Anti-Rightist Campaign. As a counterexample to Shi's failure, chapter 7 discusses the successful transition to socialism by Zheng Junli, a contemporary of Shi. Chapter 8, “The Limits of Cultural Thaw,” looks at filmmaking between 1960 and 1966, a relatively liberal period between the end of the Great Leap Forward and the onset of the Cultural Revolution. Chapter 9 focuses on three films released during the 1980s that reflect upon the immediate aftermath of the Cultural Revolution: The Legend of Tianyun Mountain (Tianyun shan chuanqi, 1980), A Corner Forgotten by Love (Bei aiqing yiwang de jiaoluo, 1981), and At Middle Age (Ren dao zhongnian, 1982). Pickowicz argues that all three films, though made within the state system, managed to erode state legitimacy. Chapter 10 examines the notion of post-socialist filmmaking by analyzing several of Huang Jianxin's films, and asserts that these films anticipated the Tiananmen crisis of 1989. Chapter 11, “Velvet Prisons and the Political Economy of Chinese Filmmaking,” invokes Miklos Haraszti's notion of velvet prisons to examine the thorny issue of self-censorship in Chinese cinema. Pickowicz saves his final chapter for the independent filmmaking that has emerged in the last decade and a half. Here, he retools some of the critical comments he made in From Underground to Independent (co-edited with Zhang Yingjin, Lanham, Md.: Rowman & Littlefield, 2006) concerning the self-indulgent nature of some early independent films. Yet Pickowicz admits that he was perhaps too harsh in his early appraisal of Chinese independent filmmaking.

Pickowicz is, as he himself states in his introduction, an optimist. He tends to evade issues that might cloud his optimistic view, notably the role of practical and industrial motives in relation to creative and ideological motives in film production. Probably unintentionally—as a result of a selective interest in pockets of films and filmmakers, which is an occupational hazard in film criticism—Pickowicz downplays profit motives in the pre- and post-revolutionary eras, as well as the survival instinct of filmmakers throughout the film era. Although he argues convincingly that Chinese filmmakers have always followed international trends, standards, and imperatives, and that Chinese cinema has, on average, been as obedient to popular tastes as any other national cinema, he downplays practical incentives in periods when filmmakers have been allowed to cater to audiences. Instead, he favors the creative, artistic, and didactic impulses of Chinese filmmakers, and views Chinese film as a positive force for change in China. True to his spirit, the book is as much about the journey of Chinese cinema as it is about his personal journey as a provocateur. An enjoyable journey overall, the book is recommended reading for students and scholars of Chinese cinema and culture.