Customer Reviews

Ruan Ling-Yu: The Goddess of Shanghai [With DVD]

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Since this film is relatively little known, I'll focus on "The Goddess," finally available in this archival DVD with an excellent monograph by Richard J. Meyer on its star. This actress, Ruan Ling-yu, has been the subject of a reverential docudrama, directed by Stanley Kwan and starring Maggie Cheung (1992). While excerpts from Ruan's films are included in that movie, the impression may linger than this is one more cinema legend inflated by tragedy. Pilloried by tabloids in Shanghai, Ruan Ling-yu committed suicide in 1935, when she was only 24. Until recently, her surviving films were inaccessible in the West, and none has received more than elementary restoration. Though they date from our own "talkie" era, these movies are silent, and Ruan's inapt sobriquet, "The Chinese Garbo," may conjure an Asian edition of archaic romance. These impressions vanish, however, in the face of "The Goddess" (1934). In this film alone, Ruan confirms her position as one of the immortals of the screen. "The Goddess" portrays a young streetwalker in Shanghai, devoting her earnings and her love to her son, who in the opening scenes is still an infant. With speaking gestures, Ruan unfolds a psyche that circumstance has cloven, that yearns for integration yet also fears it, as if foreknowing the self-destruction that ensues when this reunion of divided selves is forced upon her. When she absorbs herself in her son, the nameless heroine approaches the rapture of some elusive past: a time of wonder and of dreams. When she recedes from her son - and in flashes of confusion, even when the boy is present, Ruan conveys the anguish of that retreat - she faces a present and a future embodied in her "consort," a hulking parasite addicted to gambling and to a need for this woman more profound than he would dream of conceding. The vivid performance of the actor playing this gigolo reminds us how well Ruan has been supported by her fellow players, especially by the boy cast as her son. Her director is a master of his craft, and the cinematography, reminiscent at times of films by Pabst, Lang, and Chaplin, complements the acting very well. But this is the story of a woman, and that woman has been revealed by Ruan Ling-yu with an immediacy that remains startling. In visible terms, only months before her own suicide, Ruan embraced the credo of the Chinese poet Tu Fu: "If my words aren't startling, death itself is without rest."

This is a teriffic set. "Ruan Ling-Yu" is a lovingly produced two-piece, both monograph of the actress and DVD of "The Goddess" in a single slip-case. The DVD picture quality is above average - the film quality is not a distraction from the compelling story. To my eyes there was some restoration during the film transfer to DVD (by Haghefilm Conservation, in Amsterdam) but it doesn't appear to be the detailed frame-by-frame conservation of some Western films. The DVD is coupled with a piano score - a great comforting score, reflecting the emotions of the film.

The package was produced at Ball State University (Indiana) and distributed by Hong Kong University Press; the DVD is Allregion, and both PAL and NTSC (two sided). The film appears on the disc with either Chinese or English intertitles. (If you fast-forward the Chinese film, the intertitles magically transform).

The disc includes an interesting featurette by the author/producer Richard J. Meyer on the historical context of Shanghai filmmaking. He also includes comment by the composer of the piano roll, Kevin Purrone, and the recording engineer Stan Sollars. Oddly, there's no mention of the video restoration.

The book is brisk but scholarly on Ruan's difficult and dramatic life in China of the 1920s and 1930s. It includes 49 photos and is also informed by Meyer's relationship with screenwriter Shen Ji, who shared his years of research and personal on-set conversations with contemporaries of Ruan Ling-Yu.

All together, a nice package.

Extremely interest silent movie of the 1930's. Shanghai was the fifth largest city, the Japanese was invading the city and women were expressing independence from filial piety during the filming of this movie. Greatly interested me as I studied Asian Women and their sufferage reformation. Ruan Ling-yu impress me as her acting ability was way beyond her time.