Four Moods (Bai, Hu, Li, Li, 1970): Mini-Film Review

Four Moods 《喜怒哀樂》is a portmanteau film, uneven in quality, yet still a must see film for any student or aficionado of Taiwan cinema of the 1960s and 70s because it showcases the four of the five major Taiwan directors (I would include Song Cunshou 宋存壽) of the era.

It is organized into four parts, each one focusing on a particular depiction of emotion taken from folklore: Bai Jingrui's 白景瑞 psychedelic experiment "Joy", King Hu's 胡金銓 tea house drama "Anger", Li Xing's 李行 melancholy representation of loss expressed via flashbacks in "Sadness", and Li Hanxiang's 李翰祥 intersection of the physical and spiritual worlds in "Happiness."

Surprisingly, Li Xing perhaps directs his best cinematic work in this film, a segment staring the absolutely superb Ou Wei 歐威 (pictured below). If you only check out one segment of this film to get an insight into the Taiwan mise-en-scène and aesthetics of the time, Li Xing's section is the one.

For my list of Taiwan Cinema Toolkit film reviews, click this link here.

Storm Over the Yangtse River (Li Han-Hsiang, 1969): Mini-Film Review

I remember the first time I saw Li Han-Hsiang's 李翰祥 1969 film Storm Over the Yangtse River 《揚子江風雲》--I was in a film viewing room in the Taiwan Film Institute on Qingdao East Road 青島東路 road in Taipei, I was concluding a research trip funded by Taiwan Ministry of Education in 2011 for an article on my favorite Taiwan film of the 1960s and 1970s (Li Hanxiang's The Winter 《冬暖》 (1969),  produced in the same year as Storm Over the Yangtse River), and I had only two hours before I needed to head to the Taoyuan International Airport and head back to the U.S.

It was a film I had to see, in addition to all of Li Hanxiang's major works, in order to discuss his film style and technique. Today, it's great to revisit this classic film--a standout of it's genre in Taiwan film history--restored with clear subtitles, although I do question why these genre film's translate "Japanese" as "Japs."

The film begins with startling black and white film reels of scenic locations in China, such as Beijing's Temple of Heaven, in order to demonstrate the importance of the motherland to Taiwan's film viewers in the late 1960s, and--via a "voice of god" narrator--to remind viewers of the atrocities committed by Japanese military aggression on the mainland during the Second Sino-Japanese War.

Storm Over the Yangtse River is perhaps a b-quality melodramatic film about a Chinese spy involved in a complex double-crossing scheme during World War II, but it is "A" quality when it comes to providing a window on pop culture during the Cold War. And true to Li Hanxiang's approach to narrative, it pulls out all the conventional stops of the time: sensuality, torture, action, war, love, patriotism, intrigue, murder, and last-minute rescues.

As the image (below) from the film demonstrates, Li Han-Hsiang was a big-time director who took a "go-big-or-go-home" mentality to his idea of what the silver screen could accomplish. His depictions of war contain numerous extras and his sets are the best of the era.

For my list of Taiwan Cinema Toolkit film reviews, click this link here.

Shorebreak: The Clark Little Story (King, 2016): Mini-Film Review

Peter King's one hour documentary on Clark Little's shorebreak photography on the North Shore of Oahu is inspiring. Little allows everyone who sees his images to experience the beauty and power of the ocean's energy by witnessing the moment between a wave breaking and crashing on the shore--and he's in the middle/underneath/within it all, in the impact zone getting absolutely smashed, with a handheld camera in a watertight housing. It would be a sheer risk for most, for Little it's a joy.

Multiple interviewees in the film, from Jack Johnson to Kelly Slater to the late Brock Little, confirm that Clark Little captures a time and space that is extremely uncomfortable for most of us to be in. This is true. But it's the way that this time and place is presented in Little's photography, with a keen eye for balance and a deep appreciation of nature, that makes the film experience effective.

While brief, the documentary may still feel repetitive if being in the ocean is not in your wheelhouse. But it's clear that Little's artwork is driven by passion, and I love that. My favorite segment is when Little is away from the shore swimming peacefully and in his element with sharks.

The film is currently (July, 2018) streaming on Amazon. Clark Little's website is at this link: https://clarklittlephotography.com/, and his Instagram here: https://www.instagram.com/clarklittle/

Shorebreak: The Clark Little Story trailer on YouTube

Love and Duty (Bu Wancang, 1931): Mini-Film Review

As cinema historians and I have described in detail elsewhere, Republic of China (Taiwan, R.O.C.) cinema traces it's pre-1945 heritage to the mainland Chinese film tradition. After all, when the Nationalists fled the mainland in 1949, their number included film directors and personnel who relocated to Taiwan. Director Bu Wancang's 卜萬蒼1931 Shanghai film, Love and Duty 戀愛與義務, produced by Lianhua Film Company, is part of this lineage.

Starring the brilliant Ruan Lingyu 阮玲玉 (on whom I've written an encyclopedia entry) and Jin Yan 金焰, the 153 minute silent film portrays a love affair, between a married woman and her childhood sweetheart, and the suffering this relationship ultimately causes.

The portrayal of emotion is over the top, each scene incredibly slow paced. The camera lingers on close-ups of each actor's face until all of the expressions that signify a particular emotion are exhausted, in keeping with late 1920s and early 1930s norms. What is fascinating to observe is the way that this particular style of acting and character portrayal came to be representative of film-making more generally across China, Taiwan, and Hong Kong--even today, when the camera stays focused on an individual a little longer than necessary to convey a particular idea, we find the archaeology of these depictions from this earlier time.

For my list of Taiwan Cinema Toolkit film reviews, click this link here.

It Takes Two to Tango (Wan Jen, 2013): Mini-Film Review

Wan Jen's 2013 film It Takes Two to Tango 跨海跳探戈 uses humor to illustrate both cultural differences and similarities between mainland Chinese and Taiwanese as it tells the story of a young woman from Taiwan (王心如) who draws ire from her family upon getting engaged to her fiancé from China. One of the standout performances is by the protagonist's father, played by Bor Jeng Chen 陳博正, who had the starring role in Hou Hsaio-Hsien's vignette The Sandwich Man 兒子的大玩偶 in 1983.

It Takes Two to Tango attempts to be a fun movie and has a few gags, and it demonstrates the extent to which free speech is the norm in Taiwan as the film does not hesitate to touch a number of hot-button issues, but over all it is less successful in what it sets out to achieve than the similarly themed The Wonderful Wedding 大囍臨門 (Huang Chao-liang 黃朝亮, 2015), which I would recommend of the two.

For my list of Taiwan Cinema Toolkit film reviews, click this link here.

Connection by Fate (Wan Jen,1998): Mini-Film Review

Connection by Fate 超級公民 (Wan Jen 萬仁 , 1998), the third film in Taiwan director Wan Jen's “super citizen” trilogy, reminds me of French films of the 1990s in that it--as the director has also concurred--is not driven by a cause-and-effect plot, but rather emotion. In it, a taxi driver named A-te encounters, and discovers a way to assist, the spirit of an indigenous man trapped between the world of the living and the departed in late-1990s Taipei.

Wan Jen's films are somehow perfect despite their imperfections: asynchronous sound, low budget effects, and non-professional acting. In the 1960s and 1970s cinema of Taiwan, poor production values are comical. Here, it is impossible to be distracted because the screenplay is superb. Wan Jen is a transcendent director, a master of depicting memory and a master of seamlessly juxtaposing time periods and locations, most often via the use of a soundscape that is both beautiful and haunting.

Corollary notes: I also found fragments of Hou Hsiao-Hsien's Café Lumière (produced five years later) in Wan Jen's film: shots on the MRT and a scene in a small train station built during the Japanese colonial era come to mind. Additionally, a few rural tracking shots from HHH's Goodbye South, Goodbye (1996) overlap with Wan Jen's depictions in Connection by Fate.

For my list of Taiwan Cinema Toolkit film reviews, click this link here.

Super Citizen Ko (Wan Jen,1995): Mini-Film Review

Super Citizen Ko 超級大國民 (Wan Jen 萬仁 , 1995), which won multiple Golden Horse awards in 1995, is must-see for anyone interested in depictions of political oppression generally, and Taiwan history in the late 20th century specifically. Presented in a series of flashbacks linked by a simple yet moving melancholic score, the film uncovers the life of an aging man who lost nearly everything during Taiwan's White Terror.

Wan Jen's film follows an elderly protagonist named Ko as he recollects being imprisoned for participating in a left-wing reading group during Chiang Kai-Shek's leadership, while in the present it captures Taiwan's mid-1990s, and at times rocky, transformation into a truly democratic state. Along the way the camera does not waiver from depicting Taiwan's most precarious situations both historically and concurrently. It is as sophisticated and complex as any film ever made.

I always wonder, when considering Taiwan's films, the extent to which global audiences might appreciate them because political oppression is experienced and understood universally, while at the same time, Taiwan's situation is singular, considering it's colonial past, the repression of the KMT/GMD/Nationalist government post-1949, and the pluralistic society in Taiwan which has emerged post-1987. Regardless, my hope is that Taiwan films such as this one will enjoy continuous, widespread acclaim.

For my list of Taiwan Cinema Toolkit film reviews, click this link here.