A City of Sadness

A City of Sadness

Japanese DVD cover
Directed by Hou Hsiao-hsien
Produced by Chiu Fu-sheng
Written by Chu Tien-wen
Wu Nien-jen
Starring Tony Leung Chiu Wai
Sung Young Chen
Jack Kao
Li Tian-lu
Music by S.E.N.S.
Cinematography Chen Huai-en
Edited by Liao Ching-song
Production
company
3-H Films
Distributed by Era Communications (Int'l rights)
Release dates
Running time
 157 minutes
Country Taiwan
Language Taiwanese
Mandarin
Japanese
Cantonese
Shanghainese

A City of Sadness (Chinese: 悲情城市; pinyin: bēiqíng chéngshì) is a 1989 Taiwanese historical drama film directed by Hou Hsiao-hsien. It tells the story of a family embroiled in the tragic "White Terror" that was wrought on the Taiwanese people by the Kuomintang government (KMT) after their arrival from mainland China in the late 1940s, during which thousands of Taiwanese were rounded up, shot, and/or sent to prison.

The film was the first to deal openly with the KMT's authoritarian misdeeds after its 1945 turnover of Taiwan from Japan, and the first to depict the 228 Incident of 1947, in which thousands of people were massacred.

A City of Sadness was the first Taiwanese film to win the Golden Lion award at the Venice Film Festival.

Synopsis

The film depicts the Lin family's experiences during the White Terror. The eldest brother Wen-heung (Sung Young Chen) is murdered by a Shanghai mafia boss, the middle brother Wen-leung (Jack Kao) suffers a traumatic brain injury in a KMT jailhouse, and the youngest brother Wen-ching (Tony Leung Chiu Wai), who is both deaf and mute, hopes to flee to the mountains with his friend to fight in the anti-KMT resistance movement. By the end of the film even the photographer Wen-ching has been arrested by the authorities, leaving only his wife to tell the story of the family's destruction.

Wen-ching's deafness began as an expedient way to disguise Tony Leung's inability to speak Taiwanese (or Japanese—the language taught in Taiwan's schools during the 51-year Japanese rule), but wound up being an effective means to demonstrate the brutal insensitivity of Chen Yi's ROC administration.

Cast

The Lin Family

Other Roles

Production

A City of Sadness was filmed on location in Jiufen, an old and declined gold mining town in northeast of Taiwan. The film revived Jiufen, and it became a popular tourist attraction.

This film is regarded as the first installment in a trilogy of films that deal with Taiwanese history, which also includes The Puppetmaster (1993) and Good Men, Good Women (1995).

Awards and nominations

References

  1. ↑ "The awards of the Venice Film Festival". Retrieved 2011-03-06.

Further reading

External links