University of California San Diego Two Stage Sisters by Xie Jin Film Discussion write a film commentary about two stage sisters. It is double space and 350

University of California San Diego Two Stage Sisters by Xie Jin Film Discussion write a film commentary about two stage sisters. It is double space and 350 words, please do not exceed the amount limit. You should watch the movie and combine with the reading I gave you. remember use MLA format and give sufficient detail and analysis.https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=two+stage+sisters Please check the youtube, there are four parts of movie, watch all of them, since it was the Chinese movie, you could use the translation on youtube, and also check the wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Two_Stage_Sisters and the reading I gave you.Finally, make sure check carefully about the grading rules. University of Hawai’i Press
Chapter Title: Two Stage Sisters: The Blossoming of a Revolutionary Aesthetic
Chapter Author(s): Gina Marchetti
Book Title: Transnational Chinese Cinemas
Book Subtitle: Identity, Nationhood, Gender
Book Editor(s): Sheldon Hsiao-peng Lu
Published by: University of Hawai’i Press. (1997)
Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt6wqxw6.7
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Chapter 2
·
Two Stage Sisters
The Blossoming of a Revolutionary Aesthetic
·
Gina Marchetti
On the eve of the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution in 1964, Xie Jin
brought to the screen a story about the changing lives of women in twentieth-century China set against the backdrop of the Shaoxing opera world.
Although rooted in the intimate story of two actresses and the vicissitudes
of their relationship, Xie gave the film, Two Stage Sisters (Wutai jiemei), an
epic scope by showing these women’s lives buffeted by tremendous social
and political upheavals.1 The film covers the years from 1935 to 1950, the
expanses of the Zhejiang countryside as well as Shanghai under Japanese,
Guomindang, and Communist rule.
Chunhua (Xie Fang), a young widow about to be sold by her in-laws,
escapes and becomes an apprentice in a traveling Shaoxing folk opera
troupe. Yuehong (Cao Yindi), who plays the male roles in the all-female
opera company, befriends Chunhua. After the death of Yuehong’s father,
Chunhua and Yuehong find themselves sold to a Shanghai opera theater to
replace the fading star, Shang Shuihua (Shangguan Yunzhu). Eventually,
Yuehong falls in love with their manipulative stage manager, Tang (Li
Wei), and the sisters quarrel and separate.
Inspired by the radical woman journalist, Jiang Bo (Gao Yuansheng),
Chunhua continues her career, giving a political flavor to her performances.
After an attempt to blind and ruin Chunhua by using Yuehong’s testimony
to trick her in court, Tang goes off to Taiwan to escape the revolution.
Although unable to harm her stage sister in court, Yuehong has been
publicly humiliated. Abandoned by Tang, she disappears into the countryside. After Shanghai’s liberation by the Communists, however, Chunhua
manages to track down Yuehong, and the two reconcile.
Two Stage Sisters uses the theatrical world of Shaoxing as a metaphor
for political and social change. The film also represents a search for a
Chinese cinema aesthetic based on these traditions as well as on Hollywood and socialist realist forms. This analysis will explore the intermingling of these aesthetic currents and the ways in which art and politics intertwine in Two Stage Sisters. By placing the film within the context of the
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political and cultural movements that spawned it, the drama of the development of Chinese cinema aesthetics since 1949 can be understood more
clearly.
· The Place of Two Stage Sisters in Xie Jin’s Career
Xie Jin’s own background made him particularly well-qualified to direct this
tale of Shaoxing opera and Shanghai’s theatrical world. Xie was born in
Shaoxing (Zhejiang province) in 1923. At the age of eight, he and his
family moved to Shanghai. From an early age, Xie was fascinated by the
theater and cinema. While growing up in the 1930s, he had the opportunity
to see the work of directors like Cai Chusheng, Sun Yu, and Yuan Muzhi,
the cream of Shanghai film’s “golden era.” Also, he began a life-long enthusiasm for the Shaoxing opera of the region.
During the Japanese occupation, Xie moved to Sichuan province in the
interior and studied theater at the Jiangen Drama Academy. There, he
worked with noted theatrical personalities like Huang Zuolin and Zhang
Junxiang. In Shanghai and Sichuan, Xie encountered both Chinese folk
traditions and Western dramatic and cinematographic forms. This blending
of these two traditions came to characterize his mature work.
When Zhang Junxiang accepted work at the Datong film studio in Shanghai in 1948, Xie went along as his assistant director. After 1949, Xie continued on in Shanghai, codirecting A Wave of Unrest (Yichang fengbo; also
translated as An Incident) with Lin Nong in 1954. His first solo effort was
Spring Days in Water Village (Shuixiang de chuntian; also translated as Spring
Over the Irrigated Land) in 1955. From the mid-1950s to the mid-1960s, Xie’s
style matured in an aesthetic crucible that ground together Hollywood
classicism, Soviet socialist realism, Shanghai dramatic traditions, and indigenous Chinese folk opera forms.
Many of Xie’s films focus on the lives of women, workers, artists, or
students. Woman Basketball Player No. 5 (Nülan wuhao, 1957) explores the
problems that a young female athlete faces in coming to grips with her
ambitions in the field of sports. The Red Detachment of Women (Hongse niangzijun, 1961) deals with the heroism of women who go from peasant life to
guerrilla warfare in the 1930s. Two Stage Sisters explores the lives of women
working on the Chinese stage. In all these films, women’s lives represent
both hardship and oppression as well as the potential for revolutionary
change. In fact, throughout most of his career, Xie Jin has been at the forefront of the exploration of different representations of women within
socialist cinema.
With the condemnation of Xie’s comedy, Big Li, Little Li, and Old Li (Da
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Gina Marchetti
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Li, Xiao Li, he Lao Li, 1962), and Two Stage Sisters (1964) soon after,
followed by the complete shutdown of the Shanghai studios, Xie’s output
dwindled to next to nothing during the Cultural Revolution. During that
period, however, Xie did work on two films based on model operas—The
Port (Haigang, 1972; also translated as On the Docks) and Panshiwan (1975).2
Since 1976, Xie has made several films, including Youth (Qingchun, 1977),
Ah, Cradle (A! Yaolan, 1979), The Legend of Tianyun Mountain (Tianyunshan
chuanqi, 1980), The Herdsman (Muma ren, 1982), Qiu Jin (1983), Garlands at
the Foot of the Mountain (Gaoshan xia de huahuan, 1984), Hibiscus Town
(Furong zhen, 1986), and The Last Aristocrats (Zuihou de guizu, 1989).
These films made after the Cultural Revolution show a marked change
in Xie’s oeuvre. Diverging from his earlier films that deal with and ostensibly support socialist revolution, the later works seem to be more nationalistic than revolutionary in character. Several explicitly criticize past party
policies.3
· The Theatrical World of Two Stage Sisters
Two Stage Sisters is one of the few films made at that time in the People’s
Republic of China (prc) to be based on an original screenplay rather than
a script adapted from a well-known and accepted literary or dramatic work.
However, the film still remains deeply indebted to the literary and theatrical world of modern China. In fact, the entire film revolves around the
theater and uses the stage to underscore the changes in its protagonists’ lives
as well as the dramatic political changes that occurred between 1935 and
1950.
The first third of Two Stage Sisters deals with the itinerant opera theater of
Zhejiang province. Shaoxing opera differs considerably from the Beijingstyle opera better known outside of China. Although Beijing opera has set a
certain standard of performance that has influenced regional styles considerably, other non-Mandarin-language opera styles have existed and continue
to flourish in most regions of China. According to Colin Mackerras’ account
of Chinese opera, Shaoxing opera originated in the later days of the Qing
dynasty and is, therefore, a rather recent addition to the history of Chinese
regional theater.4 Arising out of folk music traditions in the countryside,
Shaoxing eventually became popular in urban areas, where it began to be
performed in permanent theaters as well as tea houses and open-air market
pavilions.
The prevalence of all-female troupes makes Shaoxing stand out among
other Chinese regional opera forms. Records show that in 1923 an all-female
company performed in Shanghai. Eventually, schools were started in the
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61
countryside for actresses, and many troupes either added women to their
companies or performed with exclusively female casts.
Because of its elegant costumes, complex gestures, and often intricate
plot lines, many may be under the mistaken impression that Chinese opera
is an art form exclusively for aristocrats, intellectuals, and the wealthy.
Although performed at court and patronized by powerful landlords and
businessmen, Chinese opera has always remained a folk form enjoyed by a
broad range of people in Chinese society. In fact, the opening sequence of
Two Stage Sisters delineates the differences between the glittering fantasy of
the stage performance and the poverty of both the players and their audience. Performed in marketplaces and financed by the passing of a hat, opera
could be listened to and enjoyed by everyone regardless of social station or
gender. The volume and exaggerated articulation of the singing, the use of
stylized gestures in pantomimes, and the elaborate costumes attracted the
attention of passersby, who may have had no intention of watching the
opera but who were drawn in by the commotion.
If nothing else, Chinese opera is loud, and its extensive use of percussion
instruments like the ban (clapper) not only emphasizes important actions for
dramatic effect but also reminds an audience preoccupied with gambling,
bartering, snoozing, or chitchat that something important is happening on
stage. Thus, as Chunhua’s escape from her in-laws causes a tremendous
ruckus in an already cacophonous marketplace, Yuehong, playing the young
gentleman, and Xiao Xing, another actress playing a comic servant, as indicated by the white band of makeup across her nose, barely bat an eye and
continue singing.
Although many urban intellectuals were attracted to and wrote for the
opera stage and although a select few opera performers such as the noted
female impersonator of Beijing opera, Mei Lanfang, achieved super-stardom, most opera singers and musicians were of peasant stock and as poor as
their audiences. Most of these itinerant performers, much like the theater
artists of the Elizabethan stage, were treated like thieves and prostitutes and
considered the lowest rung of society. Despite this stigma, however, desperate women, trying to escape the harshness of the feudal peasant family in
an overpopulated countryside bled dry by greedy landlords, continuously
fueled the Shaoxing opera ranks.
In many ways, the life story of the Shaoxing actress Fan Ruijuan
parallels that of the fictitious Chunhua in Two Stage Sisters. Fan’s account of
her life on the Shaoxing stage reflects the same sense of desperation and
determination evident in the film. As Fan Ruijuan states in her memoir,
hers was not an uncommon life:
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I was only 11 when I joined a Shaoxing opera theater in 1935. At that
time, more than 20,000 of the 400,000 people living in Chengxian
County, my native place in Zhejiang Province and the birthplace of
Shaoxing Opera, had left their homes to become opera singers. Life was
hard. My family was living on bran cakes, sweet potatoes and clover,
which were all we could afford on father’s meager income as an odd job
man. To me, opera singing seemed to be the only alternative to the
miserable life of a childbride.5
Ironically, for Fan as well as for Chunhua in Two Stage Sisters, joining the
Shaoxing opera meant jumping from the frying pan into the fire. Early
opera training for these young girls consisted of beatings, starvation, humiliation, and long hours of hard labor. Virtually enslaved to the troupe’s manager, opera performers often worked for room and board alone in order to
pay for their training. Underfed and often lice-ridden or tubercular, they
were forced to travel miles on foot through winter storms and still perform
flawlessly the moment the troupe arrived at its destination.
Aside from being indentured to a theatrical manager, opera performers
were also looked upon as sexually available to customers. Throughout the
history of Chinese opera, stories abound about young boys taken into opera
companies to play female roles and act as homosexual prostitutes. Traveling female performers also were known to serve as prostitutes. When the
opera troupe in Two Stage Sisters performs an all-night engagement, expectations extend beyond the singing of opera tunes. Lord Ni, a wealthy land
owner, hopes to enjoy more than an evening of opera from Yuehong and
Chunhua as an unspoken part of his agreement.
This incident not only underscores opera performers’ lack of power over
their lives, but it also brings out the ironic contrast between the fantasies
performed on stage and the actual lives of the Shaoxing actresses. Yuehong
as the young gentleman scholar and Chunhua as the innocent ingénue sing
operas about romantic love. Yet, this type of romance was completely
beyond the expectations of young women born into a brutally patriarchal
society of arranged marriages, child brides, concubines, prostitution, and
child slavery.
Many operas feature dynamic female generals, swordswomen, and female
fairy spirits with martial talents supported by a will to exercise them. In
contrast, the lives of the actresses in Shaoxing opera only testify to the
powerlessness of women in the Chinese countryside. In one scene, for
example, the local policeman sent by Lord Ni, after Yuehong refused the
lord’s advances, drags off and pillories a defiant Chunhua, still wearing the
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63
opera costume associated with a female warrior role. Chunhua resists, but
to no avail. Romance and martial victory for women on stage contrast
sharply with oppression, humiliation, and total impotence off stage.
The theatrical world Yuehong and Chunhua enter in the Shanghai of
1941 is, in many ways, as harsh and demanding as the one left behind in
the countryside. However, they also enter an urban environment very
different from rural life. Shanghai was a thriving port filled with Western
concessions not allowed in other parts of China during the late Qing and
early Republican periods. It had a reputation as a wide-open port and city of
intrigue, which continued through the Japanese occupation and civil war
periods depicted in Two Stage Sisters. Shanghai was a center of progressive
ideas and innovative theatrical forms, as well as a haven for those drawn to
its seamier side of money, power, and corruption. Notorious for harboring
revolutionists, the Shanghai theater district was home to many actorsturned-activists from the turn of the century.
When a demonstration in Beijing on May 4, 1919, led to China’s refusal
to sign the Treaty of Versailles because it favored Japanese interests in Asia,
the Shanghai intellectual community also helped to usher in a new movement begun with the demonstration and called the May 4th or New Culture Movement. Trying to bring China into the modern world, artists,
politicians, literary and theatrical figures, young scholars, and students in all
disciplines looked to both Western culture and a new sense of Chinese
nationalism for inspiration.
Although many artists involved with the May 4th Movement tried to
survive in Shanghai under the Japanese occupation, most involved in radical
politics fled either to the Communist Party strongholds around Yan’an or
the Guomindang-controlled areas in the south. Traditional opera and the
world of light entertainment, however, managed business as usual under
the Japanese.
After World War II, Shanghai once again fell under the control of the
Guomindang. In Two Stage Sisters, the bitter political struggles that ensued
between the Communists and the Nationalists are metaphorically represented by the turmoil within the theatrical world. Jiang Bo, who represents
the spirit of May 4th and its hope for the emancipation of women, and
Chunhua go to battle with the Guomindang-backed theatrical producer
Tang over their right to produce socially conscious operas and compete
with Tang’s more commercial productions.
In 1946, Jiang Bo takes Chunhua to an exhibition commemorating the
tenth anniversary of the death of Lu Xun. A principal motive force behind
the May 4th Movement, Lu Xun stands as a symbol of the interconnection
between revolutionary politics and the arts. Born in Shaoxing, Lu Xun was
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associated throughout his life with the literary and theatrical world of
Shanghai and Zhejiang province. Always a champion of the rights of
women, Lu Xun wrote essays on Ibsen’s A Doll’s House and against enforced
chastity for women and the sexual double standard, as well as several essays
commemorating the deaths of young female student activists.
Lu Xun also dealt with poverty and women’s issues in his fiction. His
terse prose and use of keenly observed detail became the model for a type of
critical realism still favored by many writers today. His novella, The New
Year’s Sacrifice (Zhufu), for example, deals with the plight of a poor widow
in China known simply as “Xiang Lin’s Wife.” When Chunhua sees an
etching of this character, a superimposition of her face with the print shows
Chunhua’s identification with Lu Xun’s creation.
On stage, in an opera based on the novella, Chunhua appears as the
doomed peasant widow, singing an aria in torn rags with whitened hair.
This brief excerpt from the opera acts as a shorthand reference to the quantum changes going on within the Chinese theater at that time and, by
extension, Chinese society. Western influences have been absorbed and
come full circle, so that the plight of a downtrodden peasant widow can
become fit subject matter for an art form that had entertained the imperial
courts and the landed gentry. The opera world had changed significantly.
At this point, the onstage world of Two Stage Sisters parallels rather than
contrasts with the backstage drama of the film. Instead of a world of light
comedy and romance, The New Year’s Sacrifice points to the possibility of a
socially and politically committed theater. This theater takes the plight of
the average woman in China as a metaphor for the oppressive aspect of the
society generally.
After the revolution, Chunhua resumes her life as an itinerant opera
performer—with a difference. Now, she performs revolutionary opera and
travels from village to village as a theatrical cadre to educate the peasantry
about revolution. She performs a type of opera stylistically closer to traditional…
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