Street Angel

Click here for a translation of the script (with images), translated by Andrew F. Jones.

Director: Yuan Muzhi

Screenplay: Yuan Muzhi

Song lyrics: Tian Han

Cast: Zhao Huishen, Zhao Dan, Wei Heling, Zhou Xuan

Studio: Mingxing, 1937

Description: b/w, sound

A note on the title:

The Chinese word "angel" can be an euphemism for streetwalking prostitutes.

Synopsis:

Xiao Yun is a prostitute who lives with her younger "sister" Xiao Hong in the home of Xiao Yun's "pimp." The two sisters befriend the musician Xiao Chen and his band of ragtag friends: a barber, a newspaper hawker, and a stutterer. Xiao Hong falls in love with Xiao Chen. When Xiao Yun's "pimp" decides to sell Xiao Hong to a wealthy patron, the group flees and sets up a collective home. The pimp and his patron find the group, and the pimp ends up stabbing Xiao Yun. Xiao Yun dies because they cannot afford to pay for a doctor.

About the director:

Yuan Muzhi (1909-1978) began his career as an actor, performing roles in such films as Plunder of Peach and Plum (1935) and Sons and Daughters in Stormy Age (1935). His directorial debut was the film Street Angel (1937). He went to Yan'an in the late 1930s, where he headed the Yan'an Film Group. After 1949, he worked to establish the Northeast Film Studio, which later became know as the Changchun Film Studio.

About the stars:

Zhao Dan (1915-1980) is one of the most famous and skilled actors of the Republican era, who would go on to make numerous big budget films in the period after 1949. Zhao starred in such films as Street Angel (1937), Crossroads (1937), Crows and Sparrows (1949), The Life of Wu Xun (1949), and such biopics as Li Shizhen (1956), Lin Zexu (1958), and Nie Er (1959). He was persecuted during the Cultural Revolution, some say because he had not accepted Jiang Qing's sexual advances many years earlier.

Zhou Xuan (1918-1957) was known as much for her singing as her acting. The two songs in Street Angel are signature pieces for which she is still remembered today.

Questions to ponder:

How would you characterize the style of this film? In is often said to be representative of the "leftist" films of the 1930s. In what ways is it or not?

As in The Goddess, a prostitute figures strongly in this film. What is the role of the prostitute? How is the prostitute represented in comparison to the rest of the group of friends?

What political messages do you find in the film?

Relevant readings:

Clark, Paul. 1987a. Chinese Cinema: Culture and Politics Since 1949. Cambridge UP. 4-21.

Ma, Ning. "The Textual and Critical Difference of Being Radical: Recontructing Chinese Leftist Films of the 1930s." Wide Angle 11, 2 (1989).

Palmer, Augusta. "Scaling the Skyscraper: Images of Cosmopolitan Consumption in Street Angel (1937) and Beautiful New World (1998)." In Zhen Zhang, ed., The Urban Generation: Chinese Cinema and Society at the Turn of the 21st Century. Durham: Duke UP, 2007, 181-204.

Web Sources: Ling Lung Women's Magazine (1931-1937); An Illustrated History of the Communist Party of China; Tales of Old Shanghai.