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China's silent screen queen
By Mike Hale (Agencies)
Updated: 2004-07-09 14:41

Courtesy of New York Times

An actress, her country's biggest star, makes a movie based on the life of another actress who, hounded by the press because of her scandalous love life, committed suicide.

Ruan Ling-yu, China's biggest silent-film star, in "The Goddess." [file photo]

A few months later, the star — hounded by the press because of her scandalous love life — commits suicide herself. She does it by copying the character she just played: stirring barbiturates into her bedtime porridge.

The story sounds a little too good to be true. O.K., way too good to be true. But it's the story, as we know it, of Ruan Ling-yu, the queen of China's silent film industry, who is still revered by generations of Chinese who have never seen her movies.

Her death in 1935 at the age of 24, with its melodramatic overtones, ensured her status as a tragic heroine. It's also just about the only tale Westerners have heard about the days of Chinese silent film, a madly competitive and, scholars say, creative business centered in Shanghai in the 1920's and 30's.

The film "Center Stage," (1992) starring Maggie Cheung as Ruan, directed by Stanley Kwan. [file photo]

Many movies were lost in the tumultuous decades that followed, and those that were saved remained locked away in state archives. Up to now, the only images from that period widely seen outside China were the bits of film the Hong Kong director Stanley Kwan was able to include in "Ruan Ling-yu" (1992), his loving and mythicizing biopic starring Maggie Cheung as Ruan, which got a sporadic release here as "Center Stage."

But over the last few years the China Film Archive has begun to let some silent prints leave the country. Several have been worked on by Western preservationists, including Ruan's most famous film, "Shennu" ("The Goddess"), which will be screened next Sunday in the San Francisco Silent Film Festival.

According to Stephen Salmons, artistic director of the nine-year-old festival, it's one of about a dozen films from the era that are in good enough condition to be shown as complete features. The best news for the curious fan: the festival, in cooperation with the China Film Archive, is selling a DVD of "The Goddess" (at http://silentfilm.org/products/dvd1.htm ).

Ruan Ling-yu [file photo]

A proletarian tearjerker about a prostitute who wants the best for her young son, the film is a fascinating artifact in its own right: a cutting from the cultural hothouse of mid-30's Shanghai, where artists could try to fuse Eastern and Western traditions while facing the dual threats of Nationalist government censorship and Japanese invasion (and quietly hoping for a Communist takeover).

Its frankness about its heroine's profession is startling — unlike even pre-code Hollywood hookers, Ruan doesn't taxi dance or loll about in furs; she just stands on the sidewalk until a man comes along and leads her into the shadows.

And while Ruan's acting, in her next-to-last film, won't make anyone forget Lillian Gish, she is an amazing subject for the camera, alive and transparent in the special way of silent stars — as Mr. Salmons says, "when you get that close-up, you feel as if you're seeing into her soul." You can see why Stanley Kwan wanted to make a movie about her, and understand another part of her myth: that after she killed herself, the funeral procession in Shanghai was more than two miles long.

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