Sun Yu (director)

Sun Yu

Sun Yu ( Chinese  孫 瑜 , Pinyin Sūn Yú ) (born March 21, 1900 in Chongqing , † July 11, 1990 in Shanghai ) was a Chinese film director . His works from the 1930s, filmed for the Lianhua film company , are among the classics of Chinese silent film .

Life

After attending Qinghua University in Beijing , he went to the United States and studied literature and drama at the University of Wisconsin , then screenwriting and directing at Columbia University and camera and film editing at New York University . Sun Yu returned to China in 1926 and found work in the center of the Chinese film industry, Shanghai. In 1928 he directed for the first time. After working for the Changcheng and Minxin film companies , his third film Gudaochunmeng (Spring Dream in the Old Capital) with the Lianhua film company was also a box office success in 1930, as was Ye cao xian hua (Wild Flower), which was shot shortly thereafter . Sun Yu stayed with this film company throughout the 1930s.

In 1932 he turned his cinematic visions into Ye meigui (Wild Rose) , which set new artistic standards in Chinese film and made Sun Yu one of the most important Chinese directors. The film is about the love affair between a rich city painter - played by Jin Yan - and a girl from the country. Sun Yus Huoshan qingxue (Loving Blood of the Volcano) from the same year was the first Chinese film to use a camera crane . The drama set on a Malay island is the first of several collaborations between the director and actress Li Lili . In Tianming (Daybreak) that follows that same year , Li is the heroine who comes from the country to the city, finds herself under the pressure of prostitution and is ultimately executed by a firing squad for helping her revolutionary cousin.

1933 designed Sun Yu Xiao Wanyi (Little Toys) as an agitation against the aggressive Japanese expansion policy. Ruan Lingyu plays the main role of a woman who makes toys in a village, but whose sales opportunities have been destroyed by military actions and foreign economic imperialism. In the course of the film, she loses her husband and two children. In the end, maddened by grief, she appeals directly to the audience not to overlook the danger of Japanese aggression and to defend the country. Li Lili, who plays here alongside Ruan as daughter, put Sun Yu at the center of his next film, Ti yu huang hou (The Queen of Sport) (1934). As a track and field athlete known for her sprint performances, she experiences the superficiality of fame. For the first time, Sun Yu created a positive and strong image of the modern Chinese woman, which stood in contrast to the usual heroines in Chinese films.

The highlight and end point of his silent films is Dalu (The Big Road) , published in early 1935 . At the center of the action is the construction of a road that is needed for national defense. The film depicts six road workers and two girls who are friends with them and evokes the Chinese national spirit against the backdrop of an impending Japanese invasion.

From 1935 to 1941, Sun Yu directed five sound films. Because of the Japanese occupation of Shanghai in 1937, Sun went first to Wuhan , then to Chongqing , where he shot the two war films The Sky Rider and A Bloody Lesson during the Sino-Japanese War in 1940/41 . After World War II, he spent two years in the United States to recover from a serious illness. In 1947, Sun returned to China and resumed his work as a director.

From 1948 to 1950 he shot Wu Xun zhuan (The Life of Wu Xun) about the need for education for the poor too. The two-part film with Zhao Dan in the title role was released in 1951, but received negative reviews from Mao Zedong and the new communist rulers. From then on, Sun Yu's career was hindered by the state; in the next ten years he was only able to realize three film projects, most recently an opera adaptation with Lady Qin (1961). Like many other cultural workers, he was denounced during the Cultural Revolution . It was not until the mid-1970s that he worked briefly as a director again.

Sun Yu spent the last years of his life writing his autobiography, published in 1987, and translating poems by his favorite poet Li Bai into English and publishing them.

Two of the three silent films on the list of the 100 best Chinese films compiled by film experts and published at the 2005 Hong Kong Film Awards are works by Sun Yu: Dalu and Xiao Wanyi .

literature

• Li Cheuk-To: A Gentle Discourse on a Genius: Sun Yu . In: Cinemaya: The Asian Film Magazine , Vol. II, 1991, pp. 53-63, ISSN  0970-8782 .
• Paul G. Pickowicz: The Theme of Spiritual Pollution in Chinese Films of the 1930s . In: Modern China 17 (1), January 1991, pp. 38-75, ISSN  0097-7004 .
• Derek Elley: Peach Blossom Dreams: Silent Chinese Cinema Remembered . In: Griffithiana , October 1997, pp. 127-180, ISSN  0393-3857 .
• Sun Yu: Yinhuifanzhou: hui yi wo di yi sheng . Shanghai: Shanghai wen yi chu ban she: Xin hua shu dian jing xiao, 1987.
• Jay Leyda: Dianying: An Account of Films and the Film Audience in China . Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press, 1972, ISBN 0-262-12046-1 .
• Li Suyuan: Chinese Silent Film History . Tr. Wang Rui et al. Beijing: China Film Press, 1997, ISBN 7-106-01259-9 .
• Yingjin Zhang, Zhiwei Xiao (Eds.): Encyclopedia of Chinese Film . London: Routledge, 1998, ISBN 0-415-15168-6 .

Web links

• Biography (English)
• Sun Yu in the Internet Movie Database (English)