Cinema
Early Spring in February
早春二月
Xie Tieli · 1963
Synopsis
In the China of the East in the twenties, Xiao Jianqiu, a disillusioned young intellectual, accepts a teaching post in the small town of a former fellow student. He wants to help a poor widow whose husband he had known, and finds himself drawn to Tao Lan, his friend's sister, a free spirit who believes only in the individual. Soon, his visits to the widow set the town talking.
Context
The film, in colour, is drawn from a story by Rou Shi published in 1929. A great popular success according to Ca' Foscari University, it was attacked from 1964: Zhou Yang saw in it a eulogy of bourgeois humanism, Kang Sheng declared it a “great poisonous weed”, and the campaign lasted eight months, according to The Paper. Withdrawn from cinemas, it was re-released in 1978, rehabilitated in the last years of the decade, and shown at Cannes, in the Un certain regard section, in 1979. It received the jury prize at the Figueira da Foz festival in 1983.
Who it is for
A colour film of two hours, slow and nuanced, with Sun Daolin, Xie Fang and Shangguan Yunzhu; no French release has been established.
Prizes and reception
The Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive counts it among the first films re-released after the fall of the Gang of Four.
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