Films were central to China's new leaders in 1949 in their mission to transform the population into proper citizens. This study of aspects of film production until the start of the Cultural Revolution takes a topical rather than historical view of these processes of transformation, but this approach seems to work against the exercise. Instead, we have a series of studies that are not well connected to the title's theme of moulding socialist subjects.
The book consists of six separate chapters. Two, on mobile film projection teams and sports films, are new. The other four are expansions of previously published journal articles and a book chapter. A broad introduction that briefly touches on moulding and a three-page conclusion bookend the chapters.
Chapter one, on counterespionage films, takes an early example of the genre, The Might of the People (Renmin de juzhang). Made in 1950, it is a somewhat exceptional example of the spy film, as Xiaoning Lu's discussion implies without addressing the issue of how typical the work is. The emphasis on surveillance technology seems to be projecting 21st-century concerns back to 1950.
The chapter on sports films takes a more encompassing view, including films on women basketball players and ice-skaters, and two films intended to promote mass fitness. The latter includes the comedy Big Li, Young Li and Old Li (Da Li, xiao Li he lao Li, 1962). That and Girl Basketball Player No. 5 (Nülan wuhao, 1957) were directed by Xie Jin, socialist China's most renowned director. The suggestion that the Old Li represented a disguised criticism of Confucianism draws a long bow.
Ethnic minority films are represented in chapter three by the unexpected choice of two films: Lin Nong's Flames of War in a Border Village (Bianzhai fenghuo, 1957) and a literary adaptation with a minority setting, Daji and Her Fathers (Daji he tade fuqin, 1961). Lu glosses over minority language issues in film and popular racism among film audiences, with adaptation issues taking over her discussion of the second film.
The two actors at the centre of chapters four and five are Zhang Ruifang and villain-playing Chen Qiang. Discussion of Zhang's most famous role, as the commune activist in Li Shuangshuang (1962), leads to outlining the supposed influence in China of the theories of Stanislavski. I would suggest CCP insistence on “deeply entering life” (shenru shenghuo) was much more important in Chinese actors’ lives than Soviet acting theory.
Chen Qiang made his biggest mark in villain roles, playing the landlord Nan Batian in Xie Jin's influential The Red Detachment of Women (Hongse niangzijun, 1961). Consideration of the place of evil characters on screen leads to discussion of the production of affect and villain performance as negative pedagogy. Audience delight in the antics of villains in a resolutely triumphant world of model peasants and soldiers is barely touched upon. The persistence throughout this period of the glamour associated with movie stars, I would argue, was a major element in these actors’ popular appeal.
Mobile projection teams (called “itinerant film projectionists” here) have attracted considerable scholarly attention in recent years, though only one such study (from the Chinese journal Dangdai dianying [Contemporary Cinema] in 2016) is cited in chapter six. The coverage of the topic here ignores the broader roles as propagandists and educators taken on by mobile teams. The heroic stories of hardship and dedication in reaching very remote areas to show films, outlined vividly here, were probably not typical of most projection teams. Particularly in the period covered by this book, the rural areas reached by the projectionists were most often suburban and relatively accessible places.
Each of these six topics offers insights into the uses of films to shape audience attitudes and behaviour. But the changes, the stops and starts, and the experimentation and failures of film production in these 17 years seem glossed over or ignored because of the approach through six rather unconnected topics. Major periods of disruption in cultural production – Hundred Flowers and its aftermath, the Great Leap Forward, the Socialist Education Movement, debates on middling characters (zhongjian renwu) and more – become barely noted signposts with little sense of connection with each other. The six topics have a timelessness that leaves them floating and separate. Connections around the “moulding socialist subjects” theme are weak or even absent. The contrast with an earlier study of a slightly longer period, Zhuoyi Wang's Revolutionary Cycles in Chinese Cinema, 1951–1979 (Palgrave, 2014) is striking. Wang's discussion roots film developments in the broader context much more productively.
