Legacies of leftism in anti-Japanese war films – The working masses in the Union’s Road and Sea

AbstractIn Hong Kong film historiography, the films from the Union Film Enterprise Ltd (1952–1967) are totally separated from socialist arts and politics. In this paper, I argue that the working masses in Union’s films are derived from the legacies of leftism, which manifest in films about the anti-Japanese War of Resistance (kang ri). The Chinese leftism legacies, since the 1930s, are concerned with how human beings are formed socially rather than morally, that aesthetics are not separated from politics, and that learning and labor are not separated. Both Road (Lu Citation1959) and Sea (Hai, Citation1963) are directed by the same director Ng Wui. They share similar thematic concerns and aesthetic motifs of glorifying the heroic masses in the anti-Japanese war of resistance. These films can see how the ideas and practices of the New Democratic Revolution about the working masses in art and literature, born around the Second Sino-Japanese war, informed the left-wing films in Hong Kong. Also, given the censorship of films in colonial Hong Kong, these films shift the focus from showing the political parties (Chinese Communist Party and the Kuomintang) and army to the solidarity of the working masses.Keywords: Hong Kong Cantonese filmsAnti-Japanese filmsUnionZhonglianPeople massesNg Wui AcknowledgementsI would like to express my gratitude to Tom Cunliffe for his collaboration and insightful comments. Special thanks are also due to Bao Wei-hong for her valuable feedbacks on my draft for this article. Moreover, I am particularly thankful for Siwei’s mother, Zhang Xiao-jin. When I wrote this article, I was mourning her loss in Xingtai, Hebei. Before she passed away, she had taken me to visit the Counter-Japanese Military and Political University, where I discovered fascinating stories about anti-Japanese history in the northern part of China. It saddens me deeply that she did not live to see this article completed and published.Disclosure statementNo potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).Notes1 In his monograph on Hong Kong cinema, Stephen Teo states, ‘Fortunately, the leftist line in Cantonese film-making was not a hard ideological one. While they were not neutral, many of its actors and directors could hardly be considered true communist believers’ (Teo Citation1997, 45). The term ‘true communist believers’ is problematic. On what grounds can one be a ‘true communist believer’? Most leftist actors and directors did not or could not join the Communist party in Hong Kong. A leftist artist Lo Dun explains, ‘We were considered leftists. In our daily lives, we were followed by special agents. During the Korean War, the Hong Kong Government arrested ten persons from our group and deported them. They also arrested Fu Qi and Shi Hui and put them in jail. In fact, I don’t belong to any party. I was influenced by revolutionary ideology in my youth in Guangzhou and believe that art should be put at the service of politics. Artists can’t be divorced from politics’ (Kwok Citation2000, 139). In his statement, Lo Dun shows he is a true believer, as he believes and acts out one of the legacies of leftism: art and politics are inseparable.2 This paper tries not to generalize all the leftist traditions in the world. In the case of Cuban cinema after the Revolution in 1959, although cinema served the interests of the working classes, the representation of masses in Tomás Gutiérrez Alea’s works is different. For example, Memories of Underdevelopment (1968) focuses on a petty-bourgeois’ hesitation after the Revolution, while A Cuban Fight Against Demons (1971) addresses the madness of the ­masses in front of religion.3 The film focuses on the solidarity of intellectuals rather than the masses. The imagery depicting the home country is replete with ‘wolves,’ ‘drought,’ and ‘destroyed fields’, referring to the war-torn country. Such descriptions are not typically found in leftist films. The representation of female intellectuals like Pan Ling Xian and Li Man is conservative, showing them ­either forced into prostitution or abandoned by a tycoon. Leftist films would not sympathize with figures like Sui Sou Cai (the impractical old scholar) in the film.4 My choice of the term “masses” is indebted to Prof. Bao Wei-hong who suggests me her book Fiery Cinema (2015) and Xiao Tie’s Revolutionary Waves (2017), which distinguish the difference between “masses” and “crowd.”5 In ‘The Chinese Revolution and the Chinese Communist Party’, Mao put classes into finer categorizations so that the party acknowledges whom to be united and whom to be struggled with. He distinguishes what class element is a target or a motive force of the revolution. The classes of the landlord class, the bourgeois, the petty bourgeois, the peasantry, the proletariat and the vagrants are further divided according to their varying degree of resisting imperialists and feudalists (Mao Citation1991, 621–56).6 In Mao’s ‘Talk at the Yan’an Forum’, the term dazhonghua (a mass style) is raised. It is not the ‘mass’ in mass culture of consumer society. Dazhonghua means artists and writers familiarize themselves and attaching with the masses in order to let their thoughts and feelings be ‘fused’ together (dachengyipian) (Mao Citation1991, 851).7 These plays were translated and taught by Ouyang Yuqian, a leftist dramatist and director who founded the Drama Research and Study Center of Guangdong (Guangdong xiju yanjiu suo) in 1929. His students include Lee Sun-fung, Ng Wui and Lo Dun, who later became influential Cantonese filmmakers in 1950s and 1960s Hong Kong.8 The national flag of the PRC manifests the value of the New Democratic Revolution. The big star signifies the leadership of the Communist party while the four stars symbolize the four social classes of China’s New Democracy: the working class, the peasantry, the urban petite bourgeoisie, and the national bourgeoisie.9 My thanks to Siwei’s father Wang Lipu, who is an avid reader of anti-Japanese war films and TV shows, for this point.10 In the end of Eight Hundred Heroes, while the soldiers are rushing to cross the bridge, the chanting crowd is reduced to background noise, mixed with gunshots. Interestingly, when Xie Jin-yuan mounts his horse, a faint chant emerged from the background noise: dadao riben diguo zhuyi (down with Japanese imperialism), a common slogan used in Communist China, now blending into the confusing background noise.11 It is a superstition in Guangdong that a pregnant woman with four eyes including those from the baby brings bad luck.12 For more, see Hygienic Modernity (Rogaski Citation2014).