Justice and Law at the (1980) Chinese Movies

Abstract

This essay analyzes two of the most famous examples of Chinese “scar cinema,” movies that depicted the harsh realities of the political and cultural campaigns of the Cultural Revolution and the terrible suffering they caused. Though very different in story and style, Xie Jin's Legend of Tianyun Mountain and Wu Yonggang’s Evening Rain constitute works which, in addition to their individual stylistic achievements, feature ideas of justice and even of law that remain relevant to China today.

Keywords:

• PRC movies
• Chinese film
• scar cinema
• law and film
• Xie Jin
• Wu Yonggang
• Evening Rain
• Legend of Tianyun Mountain

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

An earlier version of this article was originally presented as a paper at the conference on “China’s Legal Construction Program at 40 Years: Towards an Autonomous Legal System?” held at the University of Michigan Law School on October 13-19, 2019. Research for the article was conducted with the assistance of research support from the University of Hawai’i/Mānoa William S. Richardson School of Law, which is gratefully acknowledged; I would also like to thank Jerome Cohen, Linda Johnson and Daniel Barnett for their comments on the paper.

DISCLOSURE STATEMENT

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

GLOSSARY

Bashan Yeyu 巴山夜雨

Cheng Nan Jiushi 城南旧事

douzheng 斗争

Fating Neiwai 法庭内外

Furong Zhen 芙蓉镇

Jintian Wo Xiuxi 今天我休息

Jingju 京剧

Li Zhiyu 李致宇

Lu Yanzhou 鲁彦周

Qiu Jin 秋瑾

Qiu Ju Daguansi 秋菊打官司

Qiu Shi 秋石

Shennü 神女

Shishi qiushi 实事求是

Tianyunshan Chuanqi 天云山传奇

weiquan lüshi 维权律师

Wu Yigong 吴貽弓

Wu Yonggang 吴永刚

Wutai Jiemei 舞台姐妹

wuzui de zuiren 无罪的罪人

Xie Jin 谢晋

Ye Nan 叶楠

Zhang Yimou 张艺谋

Zhong Xinghuo 仲星火

Zhonghua Renmin Gongheguo Xingfa 中华人民共和国刑法

Zhonghua Renmin Gongheguo Xingshi Susong Fa 中华人民共和国刑事诉讼法

Zhonghua Renmin Gongheguo Lüshi Zhanxing Tiaoli 中华人民共和国律师暂行条例

zongdaoyan 总导演

Notes

1 Directed by Zhang Yimou. Sil-Metropole Organization, Youth Film Studio of Beijing Film Academy, 1992. See Jerome A. Cohen and Joan Lebold Cohen, “Did Qiu Ju Get Good Legal Advice,” in Cinema, Law, and the State in Asia, ed. Corey K. Creekmur and Mark Sidel (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007), 161–73.

2 Yomi Braester, Witness against History: Literature, Film, and Public Discourse in Twentieth-Century China (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2003), 133; Paul Clark, Reinventing China: A Generation and Its Films (Hong Kong: Chinese University Press, 2005), 24.

3 When millions of people were persecuted, imprisoned, or died. Paul G. Pickowicz, “Melodramatic Representation and the ‘May Fourth’ Tradition of Chinese Cinema,” in From May Fourth to June Fourth: Fiction and Film in Twentieth-Century China, ed. Ellen Widmer and David Der-wei Wang (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1993), 89.

4 Both movies were produced by Shanghai Film Studios in 1980. For full cast and production credits, see Zhongguo Dianying Yishuzhongxin, ed., Zhongguo dianying dadian 1977–1994 [Dictionary of Chinese Movies 1977–1994] (Beijing: Zhongguo dianying chubanshe, 1995), 73–4, 106–7; Zhongguo Dianying Tushi Bianji Weiyuanhui, ed., Zhongguo dianying tushi 1905–2005 [Pictorial History of Chinese Movies 1905–2005] (Beijing: Chuanmei daxue chubanshe, 2006), 565, 596.

5 Braester, Witness against History, 23. See also the detailed analysis of more than eighty of these films in Chris Berry, Postsocialist Cinema in Post-Mao China: The Cultural Revolution After the Cultural Revolution (New York: Routledge, 2004). Berry focuses on the political-social themes of the films, not their aesthetics—though their aesthetics is what sets the two films discussed in this essay apart from so many others.

6 See the discussion in Pickowicz, “Melodramatic Representation,” 313 ff.

7 In three of his films, Xie Jin does depict a trial, none of which he portrays in a positive light: Qiu Jin (Shanghai Film Studios 1983), set at the end of the Qing; Two Stage Sisters (Wutai Jiemei Shanghai Film Studios, 1964), set in late 1940s Republican China; and Hibiscus Town (Furong Zhen. Shanghai Film Studios, 1986), set during the Cultural Revolution. See Alison W. Conner, “Images of Justice and Injustice: Trials in the Movies of Xie Jin,” Hawaii Law Review 35  (2013): 805. Wu Yonggang’s film Goddess (Shennü, Shanghai Lianhua Film, 1934) also includes a trial, but the story makes clear that formal legal procedure had nothing to offer its tragic defendant.

8 Chinese directors of the twentieth and early twenty-first century are usually classified into different generations according to their shared backgrounds and the period in which they were active. Thus Zhang Yimou and Chen Kaige, who captured the international imagination from the later 1980s, belong to the Fifth Generation.

9 For a discussion of the Museum’s dioramas, see Linda Johnson, “Screening Times: Dioramas at the Shanghai Film Museum,” in The Future of Museum and Gallery Design, Purpose, Process, Perception, ed. S. MacLeod, T. Austin, J.O. Hale, Hing-Kay (London: Routledge, 2018), 277–87.

10 George Stephen Semsel, Chinese Film: The State of the Art in the People’s Republic (New York: Praeger, 1987), 110.

11 Braester, Witness against History, 140–1.

12 Clark, Reinventing China, 51.

13 It was at the full meeting of its Central Committee, held on December 18–22, 1978, that the Chinese Communist Party (the CCP or the Party) formally turned its back on years of chaos and embraced the policies of “reform and opening up” of China’s economy—and even reform of its legal system.

14 The Anti-Rightist Campaign, launched in 1957, consisted of campaigns to purge alleged rightists from the Party. The term "rightists" was largely used to refer to intellectuals and artists accused of favoring capitalist ideas, or anyone who opposed Party policy, including legal professionals who had advocated respect for legal procedure and the rule of law. The campaign remains a sensitive topic, even though most of the rightist verdicts were overturned in 1979. The Great Leap Forward was a disastrous campaign (1958–1961) launched by the Party to collectivize agriculture and force rapid industrialization through household industry.

15 Xie Jin treated the women characters in his movies as individuals in their own right, so Feng Qinglan’s death is not simply a device to show the audience how much Luo Qun has suffered and what he has lost: it is a tragedy, and the audience feels it all the more.

16 Contemporary viewers would recognize Luo Qun as an environmentalist as well as a scientist. Xie Jin shows us the disastrous consequences of the project Luo opposed, so we know that Luo was right, and his research is truly important.

17 For example, Zhu Dake, “The Drawback of Xie Jin’s Model,” in Semsel, Chinese Film: The State of the Art in the People’s Republic, 144–6. Yingjin Zhang, “Directors, Aesthetics, Genres: Chinese Postsocialist Cinema, 1979–2010,” in A Companion to Chinese Cinema, ed. Yingjin Zhang (Wiley-Blackwell, 2012), 67.

18 See Braester, Witness against History, 140, for this argument.

19 The Gang of Four, most notably including Mao Zedong’s wife Jiang Qing, are still officially blamed as the chief architects of the chaos as well as for the persecution of millions of people during the Cultural Revolution.

20 See Paul G. Pickowicz, “Popular Cinema and Political Thought in Post-Mao China,” in Perspectives on Chinese Cinema, ed. Chris Berry (London: BFI Publishing 1991), 40–2, 46. According to Pickowicz, the film also turned upside down many of the Party’s moral categories (e.g., the saintly hero is a “rightist”).

21 I believe that Xie Jin has given Song Wei a happy ending: she still has her son and her position, but she is now free of a dreadful husband.

22 Wu Yonggang is credited as “general director” (zongdaoyan), but he actually blocked out all the shots. See Ye Nan, Bashan Yeyu: cong juben dao yingpian (Evening Rain: from script to screen), (Beijing: Zhonghua dianying chubanshe, 1982). His co-director Wu Yigong, though less experienced at the time, went on to make the highly praised My Memories of Old Beijing (Cheng Nan Jiushi), Shanghai Film Studios, 1983.

23 Some of the discussion of Evening Rain is based on my article “Law and Justice in Evening Rain,” Hong Kong Law Journal 47 (2017): 615.

24 Qiu Shi’s name means “Autumn Stone,” but it may also suggest to “seek truth from facts” (shishi qiushi), the slogan emphasized during the reform and opening policy when the film was made. The actor Li Zhiyu, who turned in some unimpressive performances in other films of the day, plays Qiu with dignity as well as real feeling, making it easy to see why the other passengers are drawn to him.

25 Another 1980 movie, In and Out of Court (Fating Neiwai), directed by Chong Lianwen and Lu Xiaoya and produced by Emei Film Studio, illustrates the importance of procedure and features an honest judge (with perhaps a few echoes of the Judge Bao stories), but it is simply not in the same league as either Evening Rain or Tianyun Mountain, nor is it an example of scar cinema. The film scenario is discussed in some detail in Jeffrey C. Kinkley, Chinese Justice, the Fiction: Law and Literature in Modern China (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2000), 70 ff.

26 It’s My Day Off. Directed by Lu Ren. Shanghai Haiyan Film Studios, 1959. Zhong Xinghuo, who appeared in other films during the 1980s and 1990s, was a good actor. Indeed, in Legend of Tianyun Mountain, he convincingly plays the villain Wu Yao, and in that role he somehow looks leaner as well as meaner, even though Tianyun Mountain was filmed the same year as Evening Rain.

27 In contrast to Goddess, in which trial and procedure can do nothing for the defendant, procedural protections have everything to offer Qiu Shi—and he is saved by the officials’ belief in its importance.

28 Criminal Law of the PRC (Zhonghua Renmin Gongheguo Xingfa) and Criminal Procedure Law of the PRC (Zhonghua Renmin Gongheguo Xingshi Susong Fa), both enacted by the National People’s Congress on July 1, 1979 and effective as of January 1, 1980. Lao Wang makes no mention of a lawyer or a legal defense, but the PRC’s Provisional Regulations on Lawyers (Zhonghua Renmin Gongheguo Lüshi Zhanxing Tiaoli), were only adopted in August 1980 and did not go into effect until January 1, 1982. Lao Wang (and the filmmakers) could hardly have imagined such a possibility, much less dared to hope for it.

29 See J. Chen, “The Uncertain Future of Legal Reforms in China’s New Era,” in Real Legal Certainty and Its Relevance, ed. Adriaan Bedner and Barbara Oomen (Leiden: Leiden University Press, 2018), 97–106, 97–8.

30 Xi Jinping became general secretary of the CCP in November 2012, president of the PRC in March 2013—and is president for life as of March 2018.

31 Jerome A. Cohen, “Xi Jinping Sees Some Pushback against His Iron-fisted Rule,” Washington Post, August 2, 2018.

32 See Jerome A. Cohen, “Law’s Relation to Political Power in China: A Backward Transition,” Social Research: An International Quarterly 86 (2019): 231–51. Safeguard Defenders, From Central Control to National Supervision, 2018. The Procuracy, at least in theory, exercises supervisory as well as prosecution powers.

33 Amnesty International, Third Anniversary of the Lawyers Crackdown in China: Where Are the Human Rights Lawyers?, July 9, 2018. Human Rights in China, Mass Crackdown on Chinese Lawyers and Defenders, June 6, 2017.

34 Jerome A. Cohen, “If Beijing Wants an Extradition Law with Hong Kong—and Elsewhere—It Should Reform Its Judicial Process,” South China Morning Post, May 23, 2019.

35 Liu Xiaobo (1955–2017), one of China’s most famous dissidents and a Nobel Peace Prize laureate, was sentenced to eleven years of imprisonment in 2009 for “inciting subversion” and died in prison in 2017.

36 Patrick Brzeski, “China’s Tightening Censorship Is Making a Bad Box Office Year Even Worse,” Hollywood Reporter, July 16, 2019.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Alison W. Conner

Alison W. Conner is Professor of Law and Carlsmith Ball Faculty Scholar, William S. Richardson School of Law, University of Hawai’i at Mānoa. She earned her MA and PhD in Chinese history at Cornell University and her JD degree at Harvard Law School. Her research interests include Chinese legal history, legal education, and the depiction of law in Chinese film.