Lust, Caution: The Story, the Screenplay, and the Making of the Film [Hardcover]

Eileen Chang (Author), Wang Hui Ling (Author), James Schamus (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0375425241 | ISBN-13: 978-0375425240 | Publication Date: September 4, 2007 | Edition: 1

To me, no writer has ever used the Chinese language as cruelly as Zhang Ailing (Eileen Chang), and no story of hers is as beautiful or as cruel as "Lust, Caution."

Eileen Chang's thrilling short story "Lust, Caution"--a devastating tale of love, betrayal, and manipulation set in Shanghai during World War II--marks with a forceful clarity her mastery of the form. Newly adapted into a major motion picture by Academy Award-winning director Ang Lee, Lust, Caution has become an equally remarkable addition to the work of one of the most internationally renowned directors.

Included in this unique volume are the original story by Eileen Chang, as well as the screenplay by Wang Hui Ling and James Schamus. Key members of the production have written notes about Chang and about the process of adapting "Lust, Caution." With a biographical essay on Chang by translator Julia Lovell and eight pages of color stills from the film, this volume will become the definitive edition for film students and aficionados alike.

Editorial Reviews

Review

“A dazzling and distinctive fiction writer.”
—New York Times Book Review

“Chang’s sensual writing has elements of both China and the United States; the smoky, formal world of respect for tradition and the irresistible, harshly lighted future.”
—Los Angeles Times

“A master of the short story.... Chang’s world is a stark and mysterious place where people strive to find their way in love but often fail under the pressures of family, tradition, and reputation.”
—The New Yorker

“Chang has strong and sensuous power of description.... Her stories could hardly be more eloquent.”
—New York Review of Books


From the Trade Paperback edition.

About the Author

Eileen Chang (1920-1995) was born in Shanghai. She studied literature at the University of Hong Kong but returned to Shanghai in 1941 during the Japanese occupation, where she published two works, Romances (1944) and Written on Water (1945), that established her reputation as a literary star. She moved to Hong Hong in 1952 and to the United States in 1955, where she continued to write. She died in Los Angeles in 1995.

Wang Hui Ling was born in Taipei, Taiwan, where she still lives. She majored in piano in the music department at Taipei College of Education before beginning a career as a writer of films and television programs. She has cowritten several movies for Ang Lee, including Eat Drink Man Woman and Crouching Tigger, Hidden Dragon, for which she was nominated for an Academy Award, among other honors.

James Schamus is CEO of Focus Features, the studio behind such films as Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind and The Constant Gardener. He is also an award-winning screenwriter and producer (The Ice Storm; Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon) and an associate professor at Columbia University's School of the Arts. He received his Ph.D. in English from the University of California at Berkeley in 2003.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 336 pages
• Publisher: Pantheon; 1 edition (September 4, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0375425241
• ISBN-13: 978-0375425240
• Product Dimensions: 8.4 x 5.8 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,274,405 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A fluid translation of a captivating tale, December 17, 2007

By 

Furball (New York, NY) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Lust, Caution: The Story, the Screenplay, and the Making of the Film (Hardcover)

I read this book first in Chinese and then in English because I wanted to know how it was translated. Even for the Chinese reader Eileen Chang's original text could be hard to follow and necessitated rereading to fully grasp the details. Chang's writing is famously dense, lush, sensuous, and chock full of puns, symbolism and suggestion. She wrote with a vocabulary distinctive to her era and to her world. Her description of colors, for example, can be foreign to many contemporary Chinese readers. To translate her work will therefore inevitably strip the writing of that period flavor. Julia Lowell did an admirable job in presenting Chang's story in a very fluid and stylish manner in English, even if she could not adequately convey the mood that Chang evoked. In fact, it was easier to follow the plot by reading the English translation.

Unlike her other fiction pieces, Chang's Lust|Caution was extremely spare. Though Chang had always been precise and terse with her language she never spared details. In Lust|Caution, however, she seemed to have deliberately skipped some descriptions. Chang provided the motive for the two central characters to become drawn to each other: Chia-chih and Mr. Yee chose their diametrically opposite paths during Japan's invasion of China but in the process both ended up emotionally repressed, insecure, and isolated. This void drew them together, but Chang only informed the readers that they had become intimate twice without further details. This was unlike her other novels/novellas that at least briefly described the seduction (Red Rose, White Rose) or what the character was thinking as she got intimate with her lover (Love in a Fallen City). Such deliberate omissions added to the mystique of Chia-chih's impulsive and fateful decision at the end, leaving readers lingering with imagination and postulation long after they finished the story. For Chang's fans, in particular, we wonder if the conciseness stemmed from Chang's reluctance to delve into a personal wound that inspired the story.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Lust, Caution The Story, The Screenplay, and The Making of the Film, November 9, 2007

By 

Scott P. Barnes (New Hope, PA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Lust, Caution: The Story, the Screenplay, and the Making of the Film (Hardcover)

I can recommend this expanded version of Lust, Caution to those who are interested in the adaptation of a novel to screenplay. It gives the reader insight into the mind of the seasoned screenwriter and how he goes about his work. I also found much information in the preface by director Ang Lee and the introduction by screenwriter James Schamus.

4.0 out of 5 stars Performance & Reality, March 4, 2008

By 

Michael Brindley (Melbourne, Australia) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Lust, Caution: The Story, the Screenplay, and the Making of the Film (Hardcover)

This book brings together the original story by Eileen Chang and its screenplay adaptation by Wang Hui Ling and James Shamus, as well as succinct pieces of thinking by director Ang Lee and screenwriter Shamus. For students of screenwriting, the comparison between source material and adaptation is fascinating - for one thing, the story is short but the film is long (but not 'too long'). More fascinating still is the examination in story and movie of how people can escape into a role that then becomes both stronger and more real than their 'real' selves. As a 'Resistance' story (here Chinese resistance to Japanese occupation in WWII Shanghai), it is perhaps implausible, but the setting is not the subject.