神女 | Shen nu | The Goddess (1934) China
Directed by Wu Yonggang
Wu Yonggang
Hailed as one of the greatest films of Early Chinese Silent Cinema era, The Goddess was the debut feature for writer-director Wu Yonggang who started his career as a set and costume designer with one of three major film production companies in the 1920s, Dazhonghua Baihe, which later was co-opted into Lianhua Film Company, the production house for The Goddess.
During his early years at Dazhonghua Baihe, Wu observed the increasing proliferation of prostitutes in the city (at the time, around 13% of the Shanghai’s women turned to prostitution as a means of making a living) and this experience left an indelible impression on the young man who wanted to capture their troubled lives through painting. It is perhaps just as well that the painting never eventuated; because from this latent image in his mind’s eye, the script and eventually, the film, The Goddess emerged. Wu took special care in recreating the world such a woman inhabited, from the symbolic and spartan set design, to the Deleuzian affection-image close-ups of the goddess. This film launched both Wu and its titular actress, the inimitable Ruan Lingyu, into renown and stardom respectively.
Born in 1907, Wu, a Shanghai native was considered to be one of the most prolific directors of the second generation (film directors). To frame this perspective, the seventh generation of filmmakers from China has yet to emerge and the sixth generation consisted of key works like Platform (2000) and Still Life (2006) by director Jia Zhangke and Golden Bear winner Black Coal Thin Ice (2014) by Diao Yinan.
Wu had a strong leftist-leaning and was involved with the China Film Cultural Society, which in 1933 sought to convey Marxist ideals to the masses through films. This society was disbanded in 1934 by the Kuomintang (KMT). The idea of using cinema as a means to critically appraise or to convey social issues in order to stimulate public conscience and debate was clearly evident in The Goddess, as well as Wu’s later films. However, in Wu’s debut no clear solution was in fact offered. Perhaps that is why he took to remaking this film only four years later in 1938 as Rouge Tears, a ‘talkie’ made in Hong Kong under British Colonial rule. As a translocal production, the film was made into two versions, a Mandarin version that was directed by Wu and a Cantonese version that was directed by Chen Pi, both films sharing the same star, actress Hu Die (cashing in her ability to speak both Mandarin and Cantonese) and Li Keng who played her son (he was also the son in The Goddess). Images of this Hu and the film below.
In this remake, the film gravitated to a more explicitly corporeal mother-prostitute, and it’s ending culminated in how the son, now an adult remembers his mother, the image of her sorrowful face overlaid by the thug’s bloodied one: in this single frame, the eruption of the real shatters the mythical image of Ruan Lingu’s definitive mother-prostitute.
It is evident that The Goddess foregrounded Wu’s own ambivalent experience of Chinese modernity. Although his leftist credentials were an asset in the lead up to the Communist Revolution in 1949, his challenge of the Party’s restrictions on filmmakers in 1957 saw that he was banned from film making until 1962. Wu directed 24 films throughout his career. His last film, Night Rain at Bashan (1980) which won him Best Picture in the inaugural Golden Rooster Awards was a meditation on the struggle of the Chinese people during the Gang of Four years; its title takes a line from the well-known and poignantly reflective Tang Dynasty poem Written on a Rainy Night – A Letter to the North by Li Shangyin. Wu died in 1980 at the age of 75.
The Film
The Goddess’ allegorical take on a geopolitical Chinese modernity is teased out in the film’s play on duality: a double life and a double meaning; at once contradictory and ambivalent. The notion that things are not what they seem, that meanings elude their confines. Wu’s elliptical direction takes us into the invisible night of the flesh, and uncharted, these actions are reborn again within the body of the mythical mother, and we see both – her soul and its incarnation in earthly form.
In the opening title sequence of the film, a bas-relief sculpture depicting a mother, stripped bare with hands bound behind her back, is crouched over her naked infant; as though her body is his shelter against the entire world. The title of the film The Goddess is projected onto this relief, rendering this very earthly image into a seance with the divine. Taken further, the materiality of the stone sculpture contradicts its fragile subject, and serves as a counterpoint that describes the filmic mother-prostitute as a societally hewed mantle of the selfless mother figure. Their faces in this relief are featureless, signifying the ubiquitous nature of the world we are about to enter, where the mother is unnamed, and her son, who is fatherless, also does not bear a name in the societal realm; they drift in a world where other characters are only known by their generic descriptives, of a class, or a type: ‘The Boss’, ‘The Principal’ and these roles epitomising either end of the social spectrum.
The film’s title: The Goddess, or simply Goddess (my preference) or Shennu in Pinyin (神女) signifies a duality. In Chinese the word ‘shennu’ describes a female deity or divinity with supernatural powers and often associated with the higher realms of spirituality, as a spirit which ascends to the heavens upon the death of the earthly body. The word, ‘shennu’, is also slang for a streetwalker.
The narrative follows the life of a young mother, the goddess, who raises her infant alone in the city, turning to streetwalking as her only means of survival. One night, having landed in a thug’s quarters whilst fleeing from the police, she becomes his possession. Despite her misfortunes, this loving mother finds a way to send her son to a prestigious school, in the belief that it is only by having a good education would he be able to have a better, or at least, a different future to hers. Her son thrives at school and all seems to be well until gossip about her profession surfaces. Even with the school’s principal standing up for her virtues, citing that she is of good moral standing as she was only forced into a disreputable profession as a result of a much broader social issue; his earnest speech fell to deaf ears and with his resignation, the boy was cast out of the school system. The mother confronts the thug and kills him in the heat of the moment. She was further condemned by the system and sentenced to twelve years imprisonment. The retired principal visits her one last time, where he pledges to raise her son with care and interest.
Whilst the story reads like a typical melodrama, Wu’s direction evoked a tonal splitting of the goddess as mother, goddess as streetwalker and goddess as deity. There is little sensuality in Ruan’s goddess, in fact, the eye of the camera draws her space as that of domesticity, where the crib is placed in the centre of the room. We are introduced into this space through vignettes around the room, her dressing table full of powders and creams, a table with an assortment tins, hot water containers and a doll; the camera then tilts up from the crib to her dress and continued to travel upwards to reveal a mother rocking her infant to sleep. As the young mother gets ready for her night of work, she was practical; her mannerisms of donning lipstick and fixing her hair were well rehearsed; it was only when she returns the next morning to sooth her crying child that we are treated with the first close-up of her. In this close-up, the goddess’ eyes were distant, but her face was open as the night. Whilst her gaze eluded ours, as spectators, we were drawn to her as a ‘complex entity’, as a Deleuzian affect-image: in that each look is singular and resists being blended into the indifference of the world.
And yet, these same close-ups in The Goddess contributed to the commodification of Ruan. Her gaze beyond the frame projects the audience beyond the spatio-temporal frame confined with the film – imagined or hyper-extended by the audience. This close-up of Ruan is mesmerising because of our collective cinematic memory at work, recalling the glamour shots of Hollywood stars of the time, think Marlene Dietrich, Lillian Gish or Greta Garbo; the lighting, framing and angle, the slight tilt of the head, the finely-drawn eyebrows, all culminated in the objectification of her image – in a single close-up, a star was born.
But of course, the film is more than that. As a launch vehicle to stardom, it is a tragic one, for Ruan’s star status was short lived and ruinous. Instead, the repetition of close-ups throughout the film can be read in juxtaposition against that of the recurring shots of disembodied feet that walks across the frame. Commensurate with the erasure of identity for the goddess herself: the first time we see her pick up a client, she deliberately looked down at her feet; and another time, Wu’s camera focused on two pairs of feet, first facing each other, and then walking off together. These shots articulate the pervasive anonymity of modern urban spaces, which are only synonymous with the transitory nature of the feet that walk through its landscape. These empty spaces cannot be defined by faces, especially not that of the close-up – which especially for the goddess and Ruan, is the revelation of identity, individualism and dreams.
The finely modulated directorial style of Wu provided visual cues that signal a more complex layer of social critique at work. Take the first time the thug entered the goddess’ domestic space, he was caught as a reflection in her mirror; and the next time he found her again, she saw his hat first before she saw him, indicating a symbolic order at work. In the opening sequence before we enter into the goddess’ space, we are introduced to her through a lit window; here, the frame of the window preempts the bars of her jail cell. Vertical partitioning as metaphor for class divide: like the large gates outside the school where the goddess was often seen approaching, but never entering; or the top-down point of view of her neighbour to the group of children below, intersected by three electrical wires, condemning the son as a ‘bastard’ and of the underclass. So too, the citizen-surveillance carried out by the goddess’ first neighbour (through a key-hole) and more overtly by her second neighbour as discussed above, provides commentary on the ideological crack-down of the KMT.
The famous shot of The Boss’ legs forming a dominating A-frame between which the crouched figures of mother and son can be seen, is often interpreted as Wu making the viewer complicit to the male gaze. But does it? Unlike the trial scene where high-angle shots were used to show the three male judges who pronounced her sentence; in this frame, the goddess’ eyeline is upwards and out of frame. And we, as spectators, find ourselves on the ground, on the same aspect level as she is; it would be fair to say that Wu in fact wanted his audience to empathise with the predicament of the goddess, rather than judge her. Where there was a social point to be made, in other parts of the film, Wu used direct address, such as the goddess’ impassioned plea to the principal. Her plea was direct to camera, in doing so, not only was she breaking the fourth wall but also the shot-reverse-shot conditional in that scene. This was one of the most moving scenes in the film; Ruan’s ability to convey her self-sacrifice was all in her eyes and facial expression. And later, as the film builds to its climax, the goddess’ incensed blow was one directed at her spectators. As the bottle shatters against the camera lens, the real erupts into our consciousness.
Wu’s camera and elliptical editing worked together to complicate the goddess’ private world and public life. From a scene of domesticity, we saw in her, two goddesses, the loving mother who cradles and rocks her infant to sleep was also a woman clad head to toe in a cheongsam; and the very act of buttoning up the high collar of her dress (which can be likened to a priest’s collar) further conceals her femininity – she becomes divine – she had donned her virtuous armour before heading into the night. The ‘night’ in question was also not the night locatable within the city streets of Shanghai, but was, in fact, the moral character of the city. Her nocturnal intrusions were framed by neon lights, gambling dens, fortune tellers; when finally we see her standing outside a pawn shop: the goddess’ commodification is complete – and a further doubling in the commercialisation of Ruan’s image. Her goddess, our inverse Madonna.
Ruan Lingyu
It is beyond a doubt that Ruan Lingyu’s performance in The Goddess propelled the success of this film, and cemented its place in the filmic canon. Ruan was only twenty-four years old when she starred in the titular role, and with already twenty-seven films behind her. Most of her films, barring six, have all been lost.
Born Ruan Fenggen to a working-class family in 1910, she spent her early life navigating the tumultuous consequences of the 1911 Revolution led by Sun Yat-sen. After losing her father when she was six years old, her mother worked as a housekeeper for the wealthy Zhang family, whose fourth son, Zhang Damin, would later shape Ruan’s destiny.
At fifteen, Ruan applied to an ad at the Mingxing Film Company to become an actress. Within a year she landed a starring role in A Married Couple in Name Only (1927), and adopted Ruan Lingyu as her stage name; the director Bu Wancang paid special attention to the sense of maturity and elegance in Ruan. Three years later, Ruan signed with the Lianhua Film Company (United Photoplay Service) and quickly made a name for herself, working with many of the best directors of the time, including Fei Mu, and Cai Chusheng.
Ruan’s versatility and range, particularly her ability to convey very finely nuanced emotions in close-ups gave her freedom to lose herself in an artform within the silent cinema era. Her contemporary and sometimes co-star Li Lili said of friend’s talent, “I think the distinguishing feature of her performances was their believability, their extreme meticulousness. She…realised that film acting wasn’t about ingratiating yourself with audiences or mechanically going through the range of emotions – but rather, penetrating the heart of a role and expressing that role’s emotional content.” Ruan was often hailed as the Garbo of the orient.
From very early on, Ruan was attracted to men who were ultimately too manipulative for her fragile heart. Her first love was Zhang Damin, a gambler and liar, who dwindled away his inheritance later and then claimed possession of Ruan as his wife in order to blackmail her. Ruan’s subsequent love affair with Tang Jishan, a rich tea merchant who bought her a three-story western-style building on Xinzha Road in Shanghai, promised to bring more stability for her mother and her adopted daughter Xiaoyu when all of them moved in together; but Tang was a notorious womaniser and their relationship ended in her eventual suicide. It was often observed that Ruan’s personal life imitated some of her more difficult on-screen roles.
Ruan’s Suicide
On March 7th 1935, Ruan attended a banquet organised by Li Minwei (nicknamed the Father of Hong Kong Cinema) with Tang where she was seen to be in good spirits, she had dressed brightly and mingled with everyone present. That night after a fierce argument with Tang, which ended with him beating her, she asked her mother to make her some congee. She ate this in the early hours of March 8th, along with the contents of two bottles of sleeping pills. She wrote two suicide notes before waking Tang. His hesitancy in taking action ultimately caused her life. He took her to a Japanese and then a German hospital, knowing at that hour there were no doctors on duty, before arranging a home visit from two private doctors. Finally, they took her to a well-equipped Chinese-run hospital under the strong advisement from the doctors. Ruan never regained consciousness and passed away that evening at 6:28pm.
Her two suicide notes were accusatory of the two men in her life. And the contents of which did not contain the phrase “gossip is a fearful thing”. That note was in fact forged and circulated by Tang in an effort to save his own reputation.
It is not ironic that one of Ruan’s last film was called New Women 新女性 (1935), a critique of a male dominated society, and interrogated consequences of patriarchal system of thoughts and ideology, all dressed up as a melodrama. It problematised how women should be engendered in the determination of ‘new women’. The film was based upon the life of Chinese actress and writer, Ai Xia, who was the first Chinese actress to commit suicide in the same manner just a year prior to Ruan.
On March 14th, 300,000 people attended Ruan Lingyu‘s funeral procession that spanned over 3 miles (4.8 km). The New York Times reported it as “the most spectacular funeral of the century”. What a pity they were paying tribute to her death.
Perhaps it is apt that we can now readily remember Ruan, her fragility and strength as well as her struggles, with her death anniversary falling on International Women’s Day (coined in the 70s) March 8th.
After Ruan’s Death, Centre Stage and Beyond
In 1933, a Shanghai newspaper the Star Daily ran a first-ever public poll on movie stars from which Hu Die, Ruan’s friend, was crowned the first Movie Queen in China; she went on to make more than 90 films. Ruan came third in this poll.
Ruan’s place in the public consciousness and in cinema history was somewhat different to Hu’s. At the heart of it, her film personas mirrored the many challenges and societal struggles women in China faced in the 1920s and 30s. Her naturalistic performances surfaced emotions in her audiences in almost unnoticeable ways; her art was in the subtlety of conveying pain, suffering, strength and fragility; all with a suppressed sadness. In Mark Cousins passion project The Story of Film (2011) he remarked that whilst critics often said naturalistic acting began with Marlon Brando, but really, Ruan was already doing this in The Goddess decades before that.
Stanley Kwan’s complex meta-fictional biopic of Ruan, Centre Stage (1991) further amplified Ruan’s legend, embodied in the graceful poise of Maggie Cheung. The close-up sequences from The Goddess were reenacted by Maggie; the juxtaposition of original black and white footage and Maggie’s portrayal of those fictionalised moments in Ruan’s life were further mixed in with interviews with Ruan’s biographer and those who were present at the Shanghai studio’s golden era. The film won a host of awards in Hong Kong Film Awards and the Golden Horse Awards in Taipei, and Maggie won the Silver Bear for Best Actress at the Berlin International Film Festival.
On September 29, 2021, the Smithsonian had its first National Silent Movie Day and for this special occasion, there was a one-time virtual screening of The Goddess, accompanied with a new musical score composed by Donald Sosin, who has been working with silent films for more than 50 years.
The Era in Context
The Qing Dynasty was the last Imperial dynasty of China which declined after the Opium Wars after the mid nineteenth century, and ended with the death of the last emperor of China, Puyi, on February 12, 1912 after two thousand years. The tumultuous times set the scene for Ruan’s formative years.
Shortly after, the Golden Age of Cinema arrived in China in the 1930s, with an output of more than 500 films, mostly made within the Shanghai studio system with no soundtracks. This suited Ruan, because whilst she was in her element throughout the 20s and early 30s, she was constantly worried that she would not be able to make it into the ‘talkies’ due to her heavily Cantonese accented Mandarin.
There were extensive obstacles for film makers in 1934-35, with more than eighty submissions rejected by China’s KMT Nationalist Party in a period of 6 months in their efforts to monitor films, either imported or domestic, that may harm public order or incite social unrest. Wu commented in 1986 that he was unable to show more of the real lives of the streetwalkers, citing “circumstances would not permit me to do so”, this would imply that Wu had most likely self-censored to navigate around the regulatory restrictions. In fact, some of the film’s sequences, such as the disconcerting bird’s-eye view of a man and a woman (the goddess soliciting) visually locates the idea of surveillance, as it was without a point-of-view source and distantly echos the fact that high-ranking government officials paid several visits to the film set. Perhaps, they have been duped into thinking that the film was pro-New Life Movement, which indoctrinated the idea of the virtuous woman, one with prescribed roles, of domesticity and endurance. They may have interpreted the child’s demonstration of callisthenics as an act of support for the New Life movement. It was unlikely they picked up on the more complex duality of mother-prostitute, and the film was made without any official directives or alterations.
The Restoration
The digital restoration of The Goddess was made possible courtesy of the China Film Archive in 2014 and funded by SAPPRFT, in association with the K T Wong Foundation and the BFI. DVD release available through BFI 2017. The restoration was part of the BFI’s Electric Shadows project, with the aim to strengthen cultural collaborations between China and Britain. The premiere screening also showcased Zou Ye’s new score commissioned by the K T Wong Foundation. It drew on aesthetical elements from both Eastern and Western culture – a reimagining of the ambience of a Shanghai/Paris of the 1930s. It was performed live by the English Chamber Orchestra, conducted by Nicholas Chalme for the London Film Festival, 14 October 2014 at Queen Elizabeth Hall.
References:
- Remaking Chinese Cinema, Through the Prism of Shanghai, Hong Kong, and Hollywood, by Yiman Wang.
- Chinese Films in Focus, edited by Chris Berry.
- Ruan Lingyu: The Greta Garbo of China, by Vivienne Chow, BBC Culture.
Notes by Janice Tong
Director: Wu Yonggang 吳永剛; Production Company: Lianhua Film Company (United Photoplay); Producers: Tian Minwei; Screenplay: Wu Yonggang; Production Supervision: Lo Ming-Yau羅明佑; Director of Photography: Hong Weilie 洪偉烈; Editor: unnamed but thought to be Wu Yonggang; Art & Set Design: Wu Yonggang; Music: Zou Ye 邹野 (from the 2014 restoration) // Cast: Ruan Lingyu or Lily Yeun, 阮玲玉 (The Goddess), Zhang Zhi-Zhi 章志直 (The Boss), Li Keng 黎鏗 (The Son), Li Junpan 李君磐 (The Principal)
Note: Surnames have been listed first.
China | 1934 | 85 mins | B&W | Aspect Ratio: 1.37 : 1 |Silent film with written Chinese inter titles, English subtitles | PG
Note: This piece was originally written for the Cinema Reborn 2022 Season. A condensed version is published in the program and also reviewed by the folks over at Criterion! A special thank you to Geoffrey Gardner of Cinema Reborn to have provided me with this opportunity.
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