A city of sadness
| Movie | |
|---|---|
| German title | A city of sadness |
| Original title |
悲情 城市 At qing cheng shi |
| Country of production | Republic of China (Taiwan) |
| original language |
Japanese , Taiwanese , Shanghai , Cantonese , Mandarin |
| Publishing year | 1989 |
| length | 158 minutes |
| Age rating | FSK - |
| Rod | |
| Director | Hou Hsiao-Hsien |
| script |
Chu T'ien-wen , Wu Nien-jen |
| production | Chiu Fu-sheng |
| music |
SENS , Tachikawa Naoki , Zhang Hongzyi u. a. |
| camera | Chen Huai-en |
| cut | Liao Qingsong |
| occupation | |
| |
A City of Sadness (also The City of Sadness ; Chinese 悲情 城市 , Pinyin Bēiqíng Chéngshì ) is a 1989 Taiwanese feature film by Hou Hsiao-Hsien .
The family chronicle shows a section in the life of a (fictional) simple family in rural Taiwan from 1945, whose members were also contemporary witnesses of a turbulent epoch. The February 28, 1947 incident that killed between 10,000 and 30,000 civilians has long been a taboo subject in Taiwan. The two-and-a-half hour long film is more likely to be set indoors; the actual incidents cannot be seen.
At the 1989 Venice Film Festival, A City of Sadness was awarded the Golden Lion.
action
The film begins with the radio address " Gyokuon-hōsō " by Emperor Hirohito on the surrender of Japan on August 15, 1945 and the birth of Wen-heung Lin's son during a power failure (shot in Jiufen ). It will be named Kang-ming ('light'). The island of Taiwan was under Japanese rule for the past 50 years until the Chinese Kuomintang took over the island after World War II .
Wen-heung Lin, the eldest of the four brothers in the Lin family, baptizes his former Japanese-style restaurant “Little Shanghai ” in order to benefit from the upswing after the war. Loud in character and the budding patriarch, but he is also the only one who regularly visits his mother's grave. Over a drink, they ponder the outdated flags , which are now only suitable as underwear, and they sing at the open window. The second brother has been missing in the Philippines since the war . The third brother, who has returned from Shanghai and recovered from a nervous breakdown, gets involved with Shanghai cigarette smugglers . When the eldest gets wind of it, he takes most of the goods and forbids him to do dirty business. The criminals play their military connections against the third brother, who is accused as a Japanese collaborator and imprisoned. When Wen-heung settles the dispute with the Shanghai people, the third brother can be released, but returns as a physical and psychological wreck. The youngest brother, Wen-ching, is deaf and dumb and takes occasional photographs, hoping for a photo studio. Unlike his brothers, he is not illiterate .
Wen-ching and his young comrades are convinced that socialism could be an ideal tool for the Taiwanese to push back colonialists. Resentment against the mainland Chinese is rising, the Japanese are being driven out. A radio address from Chen Yi can be heard in the hospital . The bloodshed of the incident on February 28 , the change in the general social situation and the rise in prices shape the life of the family. Wen-ching, who is deaf and mute, is arrested with friends. He does not hear the shots of a cellmate being executed. He later delivers his last will to the widow. His best friend Hinoe had to flee to the mountains due to his oppositional connections and join the guerrillas . Wen-ching follows him and wants to participate, but is persuaded to stay home and look after Hinoe's sister, the nurse Hinomi.
Later the eldest brother dies in a fight with a criminal. Shortly after his funeral , Wen-ching and Hinomi are ceremonially married by bowing to each other and ancestors at the family shrine, and they soon have a son. You receive a very sad letter: probably that Hinoes Commune has been blown and everyone has been arrested, or worse (" White Terror "). The technical progress and the emerging infrastructure in the new country are evident in the railway . The film closes 1949 with a pessimistic look at the pathetic remains of the Lin family, whose struggle for the simplest of livelihoods will continue. The grandfather dines with Wen-leung and the youngest.
The Chinese national government goes to Taipei because of Mao . The martial law remains in force until 15 July 1987th
Reviews
"A multi-faceted, multi-faceted ' Heimatfilm ' that is just as carefully and confidently developed and is less interested in reconstructing the historical context than in depicting their effects on people and their feelings up to the present day in a sensitive way."
“Not easy to understand when you first look at it. […] Only partly because it deals so specifically with Taiwanese affairs […] You just have to cool down your metabolism, surrender to the speed and the images, and what information is on the screen. [... Hou] allows the moment to blossom "
"There are no highlights [...] The camera just records [...] Everything is relevant"
"[A] film that seems to exist independently of the viewer, closed in its evocation of time and place."
“An almost hypnotic precision [...] the exact opposite of filmed history. History flows into his pictures as the sum of private moments and moods. "
“Hou is not a propagandist of the general, but a detailed chronicler of the particular. [...] Images that act as an atmospheric reverberation, like a surprise that everything flows, many things are repeated [...] The poetic aura of simplicity in Hous films arises from his dramaturgical principle of not forcing the individual recordings into a continuous sequence, just let it stand for you. "
" You don't always recognize history when you see it."
“The narration of these films is very heavily de- dramatized […] a highly peculiar mixture of the epic and the intimate […] Hous focus is always on the people before and above politics […] these people are at the heart of the story and in that of the film "
backgrounds
The production and above all the success of the film revived the at times almost forgotten gold city of Jiufen as a tourist attraction.
Average shot length (ASL): 43 seconds. There isn't a single real close-up in the film. Because of the variety of languages, the Chinese also watch the film with subtitles.
In his own estimation, Hou never had an eye on the international market at all.
World premiere was on September 4, 1989 at the Venice Film Festival. First performance in the Federal Republic of Germany was on March 26, 1992, the first broadcast on television took place on October 17, 1995 on 3sat.
The filmmaker told Taz : “You encounter a melancholy mood everywhere, whether in families or on the streets. Without noticing it, you just have this sad tone in your bones when you grew up in Taiwan. "
Awards and nominations
- Golden lion for Hou Hsiao-Hsien
- Nomination for the Independent Spirit Award in the Best Foreign Film category for Hou Hsiao-Hsien
- Kinema Junpo Awards 1991
- Kinema Junpo Award in the Best Foreign Language Film category for Hou Hsiao-Hsien
- Prize in the Best Foreign Language Film category for Hou Hsiao-Hsien
5th Best Chinese Film of All Time at the 24th Hong Kong Film Awards 2005.
literature
- Berenice Reynaud: A City of Sadness . BFI Publishing, ISBN 978-0-85170-930-7 .
Web links
- A City of Sadness in the Internet Movie Database (English)
- A City of Sadness atRotten Tomatoes(English)
- Abe Mark Nornes and Yeh Yueh-yu: A City of Sadness - a Hypertextual Multimedia article (English)
- Hou Hsiao-Hsien: In Search of New Genres and Directions for Asian Cinema in Rouge (English)
- Acquarello: A City of Sadness at Senses of Cinema (English)
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b c Kevin B. Lee: A Cinema Beyond Us. In: Reverse Shot. Retrieved on October 1, 2008 (English): "a film that seems to exist independently of a viewership, self-contained in its own evocation of a specific time and place"
- ↑ cf. Robin Wood: City of Sadness. In: Film Reference. Retrieved on October 18, 2008 : "The ending carries the withholding of information to its logical extreme"
- ↑ a b A City of Sadness in the Lexicon of International Films
- ↑ Phillip Lopate: FILM; A Master Everywhere Else Is Ready to Try America. (No longer available online.) In: The New York Times . October 10, 1999, formerly in the original ; accessed on September 26, 2008 (English): “not easy to grasp in one viewing. [...] only partly because he dwells so specifically on Taiwanese matters. [...] you need only slow down your metabolism and submit to the pace, the images, the information on screen. [...] Mr. Hou [...] allow the moment to flower "
- ^ Howard Schumann: A City of Sadness. In: Talking Pictures. Talking Pictures, accessed on September 27, 2008 (English): "There are no peak moments [...] The camera simply records [...] Everything is relevant"
- ↑ a b Anke Leweke: Master of the totalitarian totals. In: Taz . August 10, 2007, accessed September 26, 2008 .
- ↑ Norbert Grob : Stories of a distant present. In: The time . July 10, 1992, accessed on October 1, 2008 (ZEIT ONLINE 29/1992 p. 42; 46).
- ^ Ara Osterweil: Remapping Hou Hsiao-Hsien. In: The Brooklyn Rail. February 14, 2009, accessed on February 14, 2009 (English): " history ain't like pornography : you don't always know it when you see it"
- ^ Adam Bingham: Cinema of Sadness: Hou Hsiao-hsien and 'New Taiwanese Film'. In: Cinetext. November 1, 2003, accessed on September 26, 2008 : "The narratives of these films are very much de-dramatized [...] a highly idiosyncratic blend of the epic and the intimate [...] Hou's focus [...] is always on the people over and above the politics. [...] these people are at the heart of history as well as the film "
- ↑ a b c IMDb , see web links.
- ↑ for comparison: http://www.cinemetrics.lv/database.php?sort=asl
- ↑ Nornes / Yueh-yu, chap. "Style: Long-shot / Close-up", see web links.
- ↑ Hou Hsiao-hsien, Lin Wenchi: In Search of New Genres and Directions for Asian Cinema. In: Rouge. 2003, accessed on October 18, 2008 (English): “There was no way it could sell outside Taiwan, due to its complicated historical background […] Did I consider the international market then? Frankly speaking, no "