Diantong Film Company

Diantong Film Company (Chinese: 電通影片公司) was a short-lived but important film studio and production company during the 1930s in Shanghai, China. Though it produced only four films during its existence between 1934-1935, all four films became important examples of the left-leaning Chinese cinema of the 1930s. Of all the film studios of the period, Diantong had the closest connection to the Communist Party of China.^[1]

History

Diantong's origins were originally in a sound-equipment company founded in 1933 by four American-educated engineers to take advantage of the gradual shift from silent films to "talkies." As a developer of sound-recorders, Diantong was pivotal in bringing to Chinese audiences some of the earliest sound-films, including the Lianhua Film Company-produced Song of the Fishermen (dir. Cai Chusheng). With these successes and with the help of one of the founder's cousins, Situ Huimin, a major leftist filmmaker and intellectual, the equipment company was reformed as its own independent film studio in 1934.^[2] From the beginning, Diantong was marked by youth, with its films directed by first-time filmmakers and starring novice actors and actresses (including Yuan Muzhi, Chen Bo'er, Ying Yunwei, and others.^[2] This was in part due to Diantong being forced to recruit from local theater organizations rather than from more-established film-makers and crew, who feared associating with such a progressive organization^[2] - a similar leftist studio, the Yihua Film Company had only recently had its offices and equipment vandalized and destroyed by government agents.^[2] Additionally, Diantong drew from Situ's ties to the Communist Party, bringing in screenwriters and party-members such as Tian Han and Xia Yan.

In a short period of time, the company produced four classics of the period: Plunder of Peach and Plum (dir. Ying Yunwei), Sons and Daughters in a Time of Storm (dir. Xu Xingzhi), Cityscape (dir. Yuan Muzhi), and Spirit of Freedom (dir. Situ Huimin) (also known as The Goddess of Freedom).^[2]

Despite these successes, by 1935, Diantong was suffering not only from Kuomintang pressure due to its political slant (so-called "White terrorism"), but also from financial woes.^[2]As a result, in the winter of 1935, Diantong closed its doors permanently. The remains of the company were soon incorporated into Zhang Shankun's newly formed Xinhua Film Company.^[1] Meanwhile, many of Diantong's top talent, including Ying Yunwei and Yuan Muzhi, were recruited in Mingxing Film Company's newly formed Studio 2, focused on left-wing cinema.^[3] There, they made some of the more important films of the movement, notably Yuan's Street Angel.

Productions

Notes

References

• Pang, Laikwan. Building a New China in Cinema: The Chinese Left-Wing Cinema Movement, 1932-1937. Rowman & Littlefield, 2002. ISBN 0-7425-0946-7.

External links

• Diantong Film Company at the British Film Institute
• Diantong Film Company at the Internet Movie Database