Yellow Earth (film)
황토지 (영화)
A 1984 Chinese film, the directorial debut of Chen Kaige, shot by Zhang Yimou. In 1939 an Eighth Route Army soldier comes to northern Shaanxi to collect folk songs and meets Cuiqiao, a village girl facing a forced marriage. It is regarded as the starting point of China's "Fifth Generation" cinema.
In depth
What is the story?
In early spring 1939 the Eighth Route Army propaganda soldier Gu Qing walks alone from Yan'an across the loess plateau. His task is to gather peasant folk songs and fit them with Communist lyrics to raise soldiers' morale. He lodges with a poor widowed farmer whose fourteen-year-old daughter Cuiqiao is hard-working and sings well. Because of money spent on her mother's funeral and her brother's engagement, she must marry a much older man in a few months. When Gu says that in the south women learn to read and choose their husbands, the father dislikes it and Cuiqiao listens.
The day Gu leaves, Cuiqiao waits by the road and begs to go with him. Not knowing of the marriage, he says she needs permission and promises to return. The wedding day comes and she is carried off in a sedan. She gives her brother some insoles for Gu and at night tries to cross the raging Yellow River, singing the song he taught her. The film does not say whether she made it.
When Gu returns that summer the house is empty. The villagers, led by her father, are dancing for rain to the Dragon King. Her brother Hanhan tries to reach him but is blocked by the crowd. The film ends with her song: "The Communist Party shall save us all!"
Why was it such a shock?
It told its story through images rather than dialogue; Richard James Havis called it the first Chinese film since 1949 to do so. Then there is its attitude to the party. The revolutionary soldier is decent yet cannot save the girl. Havis wrote that the film was equivocal about the party's ability to help the peasants, which is why it stirred controversy in China.
What history does it touch?
Gu's assignment was a real practice of the Yan'an years. Transforming folk culture into a new national culture was systematised in the 1942 Yan'an Talks, and The White-Haired Girl is its great example. The film looks back at that tradition. Zhao Jiping wrote the music, and the source is a book of essays by Ke Lan.
Chen and Zhang entered the Beijing Film Academy together in 1978, graduated in 1982 and were both assigned to the Guangxi Film Studio. The film is said to have changed the face of Chinese filmmaking, and in 2005 the Hong Kong Film Awards list of the 100 best Chinese films placed it fourth.