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The Spring River Flows East
Posted: Thu Jan 12, 2017 3:38 pm
by MichaelB
Full specs announced:
The Spring River Flows East
A film by Cai Chusheng and Zheng Junli
“How much sorrow can one man have to bear? As much as a river of spring water flowing east”
Often cited as one of the masterpieces of Chinese cinema, The Spring River Flows East, made in 1947, is an epic and tragic melodrama set in Shanghai and Chungking around the time of the Second Sino-Japanese War.
Newly restored by the China Film Archive, it will be released on DVD by the BFI on 20 February 2017 – the first time the film has ever been released in the UK.
A film in two parts, part one, Eight War-Torn Years, tells the heart-rending story of a working-class couple, Sufen (Bai Yang), and Zhang Zhongliang (Tao Jin), whose marriage is torn apart when the war forces Zhongliang to flee from Shanghai to Chungking. Part two, The Dawn, sees Zhongliang return to Shanghai. His fortunes transformed, he has married into a wealthy bourgeois family, but his world is undone by a chance meeting with the now-destitute Sufen.
Special features
• Newly restored by the China Film Archive
• A Stilted City. Chungking. China (1930, 1 min): a rare glimpse of the ancient city which sits on the banks of the Yangtze river
Product details
RRP: £19.99/ Cat. no. BFIV2104 / Cert 12
China / 1947 / black and white / Mandarin, with optional English subtitles / 179 mins / DVD9 / Original aspect ratio 1.33:1 / Dolby Digital 1.0 mono audio (192kbps)
Re: The Spring River Flows East
Posted: Thu Jan 12, 2017 4:04 pm
by L.A.
Only DVD?
Re: The Spring River Flows East
Posted: Thu Jan 12, 2017 4:05 pm
by Drucker
Spring In A Small Town (which I own but haven't watched yet), had elements issues (especially with audio) making the BD apparently not really worth it. I assume same here?
Re: The Spring River Flows East
Posted: Thu Jan 12, 2017 4:24 pm
by MichaelB
That's what I assume, given the source and vintage. I understand that there'd have been absolutely no advantage putting out Spring in a Small Town on Blu-ray given what they were supplied with.
Re: The Spring River Flows East
Posted: Thu Jan 12, 2017 6:20 pm
by colinr0380
One thing to note is that the additional short piece A Stilted City, Chungking, China also features on the BFI's Around China With A Movie Camera DVD.
Re: The Spring River Flows East
Posted: Mon Feb 06, 2017 4:56 am
by manicsounds
Another Chinese film from the BFI without a booklet. A new trend?
Re: The Spring River Flows East
Posted: Mon Feb 06, 2017 6:18 pm
by MichaelB
Re: The Spring River Flows East
Posted: Fri May 01, 2020 2:45 am
by zedz
“Epic melodrama,” the pullquote raves, but those two words are bare descriptors, not any kind of recommendation.
This creaky Chinese classic from the late forties feels more like something from the early thirties. It’s an overdetermined tragedy of hardship under the Japanese occupation, with a loooong-suffering wife and a feckless husband, ultimately resolved after three hours with a shitload of heavy-handed ironies and outrageous coincidences.
The most interesting thing about the film formally (other than the men being more heavily made up than the women) is that it mixes interpolated documentary footage, location shooting and very, very obvious stage sets (including painted sky backdrops where you can see the joins). As a pre-revolutionary national epic, it’s clearly primed for what is soon to come with its evil bourgeois walking over the bodies of the noble peasants in high heels.
The restoration of the film featured on the BBC DVD often has that awful digitally scrubbed, echoey sound familiar from many pre-war Asian talkies.