Friday, June 24, 2005
Peach Girl (1931)
Director: Wancang Bu
*Warning the following analysis contains a discussion of the entire film – including the ending.
What struck me most about this 74 year-old silent Chinese film was how well the story has held up across decades and cultures. Often silent films are enjoyable because they have become antiquated and we can delight in how much the world and movie making has changed. Peach Girl, by contrast, is enjoyable because it is good story told well and it was written, acted and directed with cinematic skill that remains obvious in 2005.
Of course there are charming period elements in Peach Girl. The obsolete conveyance in which two servants carry the landlord and her son from the city to their farm, the hand spun loom Miss Lim uses to gather wool. Also there are antiquated cultural norms on display, in particular the humorously oblique language explaining Miss Lim’s out of wedlock pregnancy. But these items do nothing to lessen the impact of the story; rather they fascinate the way they would in a period piece made today.
Perhaps the film has held up so well because the story told is far older the 74 years that has past since the film was made and has been told countless times across decades and cultures since much before 1931.
I know somewhere there is a theory that there are only 7 plot lines (or some number) which are told again and again. I’ve never actually read that theory and do not know the plot lines but I’m confident this is one of them. Two people fall in love across some cultural barrier and must struggle to be together despite the boundaries imposed by societal norms. In this case the boundaries are those separating wealthy urban dwellers and poor rural peasant farmers in early 20th century China. Miss Lim, the beautiful peasant girl, and the wealthy upper class son have known each other since childhood and fall in love. His mother will have none of it and forbids the marriage. Son tucks Miss Lim away in a mistress pad unbeknownst to either set of parents and eventually she becomes pregnant. When Miss Lim, her dad and Son demand marriage given Miss Lim’s predicament Mom continues to forbid the marriage. Since this is the tragic version of this story line Miss Lim and Dad are banished from farming Mom’s land, Dad goes blind and they enter crushing poverty that eventually leads to sickness and death for Miss Lim.
There is slight redemption in the end. Son hears Miss Lim is dieing and escapes the imprisonment of his mother. He gets to Miss Lim just as she breathes her last breathe. Son takes his daughter and now blind grandfather and demands he raises the daughter as his own and Mom accept Granddad as a true member of their family. Mom agrees and there is a bit of uplift tempering the tragic love story.
Should you see it? Yes indeed. A great example of the timelessness of skillful filmmaking.
*Warning the following analysis contains a discussion of the entire film – including the ending.
What struck me most about this 74 year-old silent Chinese film was how well the story has held up across decades and cultures. Often silent films are enjoyable because they have become antiquated and we can delight in how much the world and movie making has changed. Peach Girl, by contrast, is enjoyable because it is good story told well and it was written, acted and directed with cinematic skill that remains obvious in 2005.
Of course there are charming period elements in Peach Girl. The obsolete conveyance in which two servants carry the landlord and her son from the city to their farm, the hand spun loom Miss Lim uses to gather wool. Also there are antiquated cultural norms on display, in particular the humorously oblique language explaining Miss Lim’s out of wedlock pregnancy. But these items do nothing to lessen the impact of the story; rather they fascinate the way they would in a period piece made today.
Perhaps the film has held up so well because the story told is far older the 74 years that has past since the film was made and has been told countless times across decades and cultures since much before 1931.
I know somewhere there is a theory that there are only 7 plot lines (or some number) which are told again and again. I’ve never actually read that theory and do not know the plot lines but I’m confident this is one of them. Two people fall in love across some cultural barrier and must struggle to be together despite the boundaries imposed by societal norms. In this case the boundaries are those separating wealthy urban dwellers and poor rural peasant farmers in early 20th century China. Miss Lim, the beautiful peasant girl, and the wealthy upper class son have known each other since childhood and fall in love. His mother will have none of it and forbids the marriage. Son tucks Miss Lim away in a mistress pad unbeknownst to either set of parents and eventually she becomes pregnant. When Miss Lim, her dad and Son demand marriage given Miss Lim’s predicament Mom continues to forbid the marriage. Since this is the tragic version of this story line Miss Lim and Dad are banished from farming Mom’s land, Dad goes blind and they enter crushing poverty that eventually leads to sickness and death for Miss Lim.
There is slight redemption in the end. Son hears Miss Lim is dieing and escapes the imprisonment of his mother. He gets to Miss Lim just as she breathes her last breathe. Son takes his daughter and now blind grandfather and demands he raises the daughter as his own and Mom accept Granddad as a true member of their family. Mom agrees and there is a bit of uplift tempering the tragic love story.
Should you see it? Yes indeed. A great example of the timelessness of skillful filmmaking.
