Cinema
New Year's Sacrifice
祝福
Sang Hu · 1956
Synopsis
Around 1911, a young widow known only as Xianglin's wife runs away when her mother-in-law wants to remarry her in order to get the betrothal money, and takes a position as a servant with the Lu family, in Luzhen. Found again, she is forcibly married to a woodcutter from the mountain, He Laoliu, who is good to her. But their son is killed by a wolf, then her husband dies of illness. Back with the Lus, she is taken for a bearer of ill luck, and the master forbids her to prepare the New Year's sacrifice.
Context
The film adapts a short story by Lu Xun, from a screenplay by Xia Yan. Entrusted at first to the Shanghai studio, the shoot passed to the Beijing studio, according to Maigoo. It is regarded as the first colour feature fiction film of New China. Xia Yan removed the narrator of the short story, whom Lu Xun embodied, and added a scene of revolt at the temple; it was debated, and the screenwriter answered that an opera film of 1948 already showed a similar one. The film was selected in 2005 among the hundred best Chinese films of the century, according to China Writer.
Who it is for
A colour film of one hundred to one hundred and ten minutes depending on the sources, carried by Bai Yang; no French release is established.
Prizes and reception
It received a special prize at the Karlovy Vary festival in 1957, then a distinction at the Mexico festival in 1958.
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