Butterfly Wu

Melodramatic film about a child prodigy.

In 1920s Beijing, a young student named Fan Jiashu falls in love with Shen Fengxi, a talented but poor street singer. Their romance is tested by class differences and the unwanted attention of a powerful warlord. Torn between three women from vastly different backgrounds, Fan becomes trapped in a tragic web of love, fate, and social pressure.

Twin girls separated at birth are reunited when the one raised in poverty becomes a servant in the household of her sister, now the pampered wife of a warlord general.

A middle-aged couple adopt a young girl.

A primary school teacher rallies the citizens of a small town to resist the corruption of the local government and unite to build reinforcements against an oncoming flood.

A young woman finds employment in a department store, only to attract the unwanted advances of the manager and his son.

After being defeated in a fight by a local gang, local official Lu Fengyang sends his weak and sickly son Lu Xiaoqing to study with a master of the Kunlun school of martial arts. Recovered and strong, he comes upon the Red Lotus Temple, and puts up there for the night. Unable to sleep, he begins looking around the palatial temple, and discovers a room decorated with many images of Buddhist demons, and an altar to worship them... Purposely destroyed serial film whose 19 full length chapters (averaging 86 minutes each) originally ran 27 hours in length.

A drama film by the Shaw Brothers studio.

The first Chinese sound film. It tells the story of Hong Pion (Red Peony), a singer-songwriter who, after her marriage to the depraved Faxiang Chen, not only tormented and suffered, but also endured the decline of her artistic career.

Deceit and infidelity dooms a relationship even before it begins. The prolonging of them only causes pain and destruction. This is what happens to our heroine as she enters a relationship tainted with lies.

This sound film remake of The Goddess (1934) was headlined by Hu Die, who found stardom at the same time as Ruan Lingyu. Henry Lai Hang and Zhang Zhizhi reprised their roles from the earlier film. The first half of the story follows The Goddness but the second half references Bu Wanchang’s Love and Duty (1931) and King Vidor’s American film Stella Dallas (1937) with additional plots of the heroine’s post-prison story. After years of separation, she hesitates whether to reunite with her son. This new version poses a bigger challenge to a mother’s love and pushes towards the completion of her fate. The characters use dialogue to express their pain and connection, which strengthens the dramatic dilemma and makes the film more straightforward than its predecessor. Hu Die possesses a sort of allure that shows the sadness, shame, and will of a common woman from middle age to old age.

Kun Yi died in the war, and raised her son He Zhiyuan with great difficulty. Yuan married a rich girl named Li Ting, who regarded Yi as a thorn in her side and wanted to drive her away with an excuse. Yi did not want to embarrass her son, so she left a letter and ran away, and she has been suffering ever since.

A hostess in Shanghai invites her secondary schoolmates to a reunion. They each reminisce about their lives, with some having difficulties in marriage or career. Some led destructive lives, while others contributed to the country.