Unfinished Comedy

Unfinished Comedy (1957)

未完成的喜剧

Two famous comedians from pre-Revolution days perform a series of sketches in a theatre for a group of Party cadres. The stage performances blend over into absurdist, self-contained fantasy episodes where the two comics allegorically parody Party propaganda and ideological orthodoxy.

Date of release
1957-09-01
TMDB
8.0 / 10 (1)
Runtime
1h 20m
Genres
Comedy, Drama
Director
Lü Ban

Casting

Interesting facts

The Unfinished Comedy is a 1957 Chinese sound film directed by actor-turned-director Lü Ban. The film portrays the reunion of a beloved Republican-era screen comedic duo, "Skinny Monkey" Hán Lángēn and "Fatty" Yīn Xiùcén, who are finally able to produce comedy shorts again at the invitation of the Changchun Film Studio. The duo's first three films, which satirize present-day China's censorship, are screened and critiqued by Comrade Yi Bangzi, or "Comrade Bludgeon," ", acting as the censor who will decide whether the results of their filmmaking will become "flowers of comedy" or just "a clump of weeds."

Production

Satirical comedies began as early as the late 1920s and early 1930s, However, comedy was marginalized and undeveloped as a genre between 1949 and 1955. Social satires only saw a large surge in production during the Hundred Flowers campaign. The movie was directed by Lü Ban of the Changchun Film Studio during this period of lessened censorship in 1956–57 (known as the Hundred Flowers Campaign).

The comedic style presented in The Unfinished Comedy is deeply influenced by Soviet comedic cinema of the 1950s, reflecting broader patterns of cultural exchange between China and the Soviet Union during the early People's Republic of China (PRC). Due to strict cultural policies and centralized film management, Chinese filmmakers faced significant restrictions.

Read on Wikipedia · Text from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. Data from Wikidata.

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