Symphony of Lianhua

Symphony of Lianhua (1937)

聯華交響曲

"Lianhua Symphony" - a small collection, consisting of eight short films shot in 1937 by young filmmakers Shanghai Lianhua Film Company. Part 1: Two Yuans (兩毛錢) directed by Situ Huimin / Part 2: Nightmares in Spring Chamber (春閨斷夢) directed by Fei Mu / Part 3: The Stranger (陌生人) directed by Tan Youliu / Part 4: Three Friends (三人行) directed by Shen Fu / Part 5: Landscape Under the Moonlight (月下小景) directed by He Mengfu / Part 6: The Ghost (鬼) directed by Zhu Shilin / Part 7: Rhapsody of a Madman (瘋人狂想曲) directed by Sun Yu / Part 8: Five Little Brothers (小五義) directed by Cai Chusheng

Date of release
1937-12-17
TMDB
9.0 / 10 (1)
Runtime
1h 46m
Genres
Comedy, Drama
Director
Youliu Tan, Chusheng Cai, Fei Mu, Sun Yu, Mengfu He, Shen Fu, Zhu Shilin, Situ Huimin

Casting

Interesting facts

Lianhua Symphony is a 1937 Chinese anthology comedy drama film. Produced by the United Photoplay Service, it served as a showcase of the studio's possibilities. It consists of eight segments of various duration and genre, directed by eight prominent directors of the era: Cai Chusheng, Fei Mu, He Mengfu, Situ Huimin, Shen Fu, Sun Yu, Tan Youliu, and Zhu Shilin.

Production overview

Lianhua Film Company was the biggest film company of China in the 1930s. Eight young directors chosen to participate in the project were already praised for their previous works. Most of them became even more important several years later and today their films are considered classics.

Lianhua Symphony episodes differ in content and style. The main themes are poverty, social patriotism, friendship. Many segments refer, either directly or indirectly, to Japanese threat of the time. Some may be classified as melodramas and some as comedies, including elements of slapstick. Fei Mu's segment about women having bad dreams, Nightmares in Spring Chamber, is clearly and heavily influenced by German Expressionist cinema.

The film begins with a short introduction sequence, in which Lianhua Film Company personnel sings "Song of Big Road", a hit from one of the studio's previous films, The Big Road (1934). The camera zooms out to reveal a microphone, film equipment and a conductor. The film finishes with a similar scene, presenting a different song, "The Pioneers". This reminds us, that Lianhua was not only a prolific manufacturer of movies, but also - music.

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

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