The 11 Classic Chinese Films You Have to See Inline
Photo: Courtesy of Everett1/11Blind Shaft (2003)
If you’re a fan of film noir, you won’t want to miss **Li Yang’**s gripping tale set in and around the coal mines of China’s austere northwest. The story centers on two scam artists who murder miners, collects their insurance, and then blow the money. Relentlessly building to a startling climax, this gritty thriller—which raked in all manner of international awards—captures the amorality of a newly capitalist China where money is suddenly worth killing for.
Photo: Courtesy of Everett2/11Come Drink with Me (1966)
**King Hu’**s hugely enjoyable martial arts picture launched the whole cycle of kung fu films that led to Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. Centering on an inn during the Ming dynasty, it’s about the alliance between two brilliant martial artists—a warrior pretending to be a drunkard (Yueh Hua) and a young female knight, Golden Swallow, played by Cheng Pei-pei (who decades later would play Jade Fox in Crouching Tiger). The two band together to rescue a general’s kidnapped son. Filled with chivalry, good humor, balletic fighting sequences, and chivalrous motives, it feels as fresh today as it did half a century ago.
Photo: Courtesy of Everett3/11Farewell My Concubine (1993)
Sumptuous and operatic, **Chen Kaige’**s melodrama spans half a century of Chinese history from the mid-twenties to the mid-seventies. It’s the epic story of two young men who meet while studying at the Peking Opera, become fast friends, rise to stardom, then face one huge problem: Dieyi (Leslie Cheung) has fallen in love with Xiaolu (Zhang Fengyi) who himself marries a prostitute (Gong Li). Winner of the Palme d’Or at Cannes, this is a movie bursting with passion, betrayal, and the cruel handwriting of history, and it boasts an unforgettably good performance by the charismatic Cheung.
Photo: Courtesy of Everett4/11Flowers of Shanghai (1998)
Arguably the greatest filmmaker anywhere over the past 30 years, the Taiwanese director Hou Hsiao-Hsien reaches a pinnacle of delicacy in this ravishing, heartbreaking story about the high-class brothels, or “flower houses,” of late-nineteenth-century Shanghai, where wealthy men came for pleasures more complicated than sex. The beautiful women who draw them there can rise high—or plunge—depending on the men’s whims and the machinations of the other “flowers.” In capturing this gesture world where few things are ever spoken—nearly all the decisive action happens off-screen—Hou works with a refinement that you find only in the greatest artists. Imagine a novel by Henry James crossed with a painting by Vermeer.
Photo: Courtesy of Everett5/11In the Mood for Love (2000)
The most beloved film by Hong Kong director Wong Kar Wai, the artistic director of the “China: Through the Looking Glass” show, this tale of romantic longing is a masterpiece of style, from its dazzling costumes to its gorgeous choreography. Tony Leung and Maggie Cheung give richly moving performances as neighbors in an apartment building who, when their respective spouses spend time out of town, inexorably start falling in love. Driven by the most haunting musical theme in recent movies, Wong’s film has been voted by international critics one of the 25 greatest films of all time.
Photo: Courtesy of Everett6/11The Killer (1989)
Back in the late eighties and nineties, Hong Kong’s John Woo made action pictures that shifted the terrain internationally—he influenced everything from Pulp Fiction to The Matrix. This hugely entertaining story stars HK screen-god Chow Yun-Fat as a world-weary assassin who, on his final job, accidentally blinds a singer (Sally Yeh). Naturally, he takes on one more mission to help her get an operation to save her eyes. Just as naturally, that mission winds up in a shootout so long and extravagant (cue the flying doves) that it approaches acid-trip delirium. You’ll rarely see a movie so corny, heartfelt, and exciting.
Photo: Courtesy of Everett7/11Police Story (1985)
Classically trained in acrobatics and martial arts, Jackie Chan has directed and starred in action comedies that have never been surpassed for sheer inventiveness and brio. In this one, he plays a cop framed for murder, but the plot doesn’t really matter. It’s all about Chan’s good humor and the death-defying set pieces—hanging by an umbrella from a racing double-decker bus, sliding down hundred-foot chandeliers in a mall—that he actually did, often injuring himself in the process. Nobody in Hollywood could do what Chan routinely did.
Photo: Courtesy of Everett8/11Raise the Red Lantern (1991)
Set in twenties China run by warlords, this is the story of Songlian (Gong Li), a nineteen-year-old who becomes the fourth wife of a rich man, only to discover that her palatial new home is actually a snakepit: Her husband makes his wives compete for his favor (and their creature comforts), lighting the red lantern outside the room of the one currently in power. Shooting in a style as colorful and bold as the red lanterns themselves, director Zhang Yimou (who directed the opening ceremony at the Beijing Olympics) offers a portrait of crushing patriarchy, and wins a deeply felt performance from Gong, whose extraordinary beauty and talent made her the face of Chinese cinema in the eighties and nineties.
Photo: Courtesy of Everett9/11Spring in a Small Town (1948)
I’ve often heard it said that the greatest of all Chinese films is this quiet drama by Fei Mu. It takes place in the rundown compound of a once rich family now overseen by an ailing, dispirited patriarch so busy dreaming of his past that he’s lost the love of his wife. The situation seems ripe for a love triangle when they are visited by a doctor from Shanghai, who’s not merely the man’s childhood friend but also an old beau of the wife. While this may sound like the premise of a soap opera, Fei turns the action into a marvel of tenderness and restraint. If you can’t get your hands on the original film, it was remade in 2002 as Springtime in a Small Town by Tian Zhuangzhuang—this version’s easy to find—and amazingly enough, it’s tremendous, too.
Photo: Courtesy of Everett10/11The World (2004)
When it comes to capturing the largest historical development of the past 30 years—the staggeringly fast modernization of China—no filmmaker has done better than Jia Zhangke, whose work shows us the human meaning of all that change. Start with this movie about a young actress (played by Jia’s muse, Zhao Tao) and her security guard boyfriend who both work at the Beijing World Park, a theme park for Chinese tourists that comes complete with an Eiffel Tower, Big Ben, Taj Mahal, Empire State Building and of course, the Great Pyramids. As you watch the two with all their hopes and anxieties, disappointments and dreams, you see the birth pangs of a recently poor culture now eager to take a shining place in the world.
Photo: Courtesy of Everett11/11Yi Yi (2000)
In this family saga that begins with a wedding and ends with a funeral, the late director Edward Yang takes a magisterial look at middle-class life in his home country, showing us life through the eyes of a dissatisfied middle-aged man, his teenage daughter, and his young son. All are having troubles in their different ways, from money-mad bosses to straying boyfriends, and Yang movingly captures their life with a compassion and grace that makes you feel you know their lives—and that their lives aren’t so far from our own.
