Chinese Theater Collaborative

The Romance of the Western Chamber
西厢記 (1927)

Live Action Feature Film
Director: Hou Yao 后曜


LINKS TO THE FILM

INFORMATION

INTRODUCTION

The 1927 silent film version of The Romance of the Western Chamber presented Chinese audiences with a “classical-subject adaptation” that nevertheless felt decidedly contemporary to the social and cultural context of the 1920s. The film, per film scholar Kristine Harris, was intended to appeal to domestic audiences with its familiar content, while also capitalizing on the spectacular possibilities of cinema. While it is ostensibly a generic “scholar and beauty” caizijiaren 才子佳人 romance that sees a talented young man coupled with a beautiful young woman, Romance also features extensive action sequences that align it with the popular martial arts films of the period. Its elaborate stagings of battle scenes might also have spoken to a general anxiety about warlordism that was then rampant in China’s provinces. The film’s picturesque scenery and on location shoots in Suzhou and Hangzhou, in turn, served as a “sort of travelogue which allowed viewers to transcend geographic and internal distance (an ideal the film also shared with classical Chinese painting)” (Harris 60). For Shanghai audiences, it was both an opportunity to take in idyllic views familiar from Chinese cultural history and a vicarious (and thus safe) experience of martial excitement in the provinces. In addition to the spectacular landscape and fighting sequences, the film boasts richly decorated sets and costumes, further heightening its appeal as a period piece. Perhaps because Romance showcased landscapes and characters that read as “exotic” and “Chinese” to foreign audiences, the film also proved successful internationally. It was screened in Paris, Geneva, London, and Berlin (Harris 60). The copy linked above includes original title cards written in French that attest to Romance’s cosmopolitan status.

As Kristine Harris points out, the “classical” content of the story was at odds with the typically explicitly feminist themes of Hou Yao 后曜 (1903-1942) and Pu Shunqing’s earlier creative work 濮舜卿 (1902-unknown). This adaptation of Western Chamber certainly appeals to then newly popular ideals of love-based marriages (as opposed to arranged matches), but in in terms of women, the film’s reformist agenda appears rather mild. Yingying 鶯鶯 and Hongniang 紅娘 have some agency, but are ultimately less active as characters than in later cinematic adaptations considered in other CTC modules. Scholar Zhang 张生, however, is afforded an extra, entirely original episode in which he can prove himself to be a physically powerful masculine hero. In the sequence, which follows on General White Horse’s 白馬将軍 rescue of Yingying from the bandit Sun Feihu 孫飛虎, Zhang dreams that the brigand has come back to life and captured his love interest. No longer aided by his handsome and heroic friend, Scholar Zhang himself races off after the bandit and vanquishes Sun with a fantastically enlarged ink brush. It is no surprise that the effete scholar is redeemed as a warrior in a 1920s film. China’s domestic and international situation in the early twentieth century was dire and the nation faced a string of emergencies. Scholar Zhang’s intellectual and physical defeat of Sun Feihu is a metaphor that answers to such threats and indicates that the film is deeply concerned with gender politics. Romance thus foregrounds the crisis of masculinity against the backdrop of a romantic drama.

This module will consider how the film directs viewers’ attention to cinematic pleasures and the social anxieties of the 1920s. Romance’s frequent use of the iris shot and circular framing highlights what characters are either enjoying or fretting about. The actual iris, its playful on-screen appearance as a moon gate, as well as a curious shot-reverse-shot mediated by a third character (for more details on cinematography terminology, see the Yale Film Analysis website linked here) sequences mediated by a third character all mark the presence of the camera in the story. These cinematic techniques, staples of the new technology and a conventions of silent film grammar, guide viewers through the cinematic text. No longer is a character or poetic performance necessary to stitch the narrative together. Now the camera focuses the viewers’ attention on the most spectacular visuals and amplifies their emotional investment in the progression of the plot.
 

PLOT SUMMARY

Romance begins by introducing its main female characters, Yingying and Hongniang, as the former embroiders in an interior space and the latter waits on her. After this visual indulgence in female beauty, the film shifts locations to introduce Student Zhang, who is en route to take the imperial exams in the capital. He stops at a village and asks where one might find the most beautiful sights, and is in turn directed to the Temple of Universal Salvation 普救寺. There, as he tours the grounds, he sees the beautiful Yingying in the garden. Though he is quickly ushered away, the two manage to exchange amorous glances and Student Zhang contrives to see her again at a ceremony for her deceased father. Later, the two exchange poetry over a garden wall, growing ever more infatuated. Suddenly, however, their idyll is disturbed by the bandit Sun Feihu who arrives at the temple and demands Yingying’s hand in marriage. Student Zhang devises a plan to save Yingying by writing to his friend General White Horse, who comes to her rescue and kills Sun. The night after Sun is vanquished, however, Student Zhang dreams that the bandit has returned to abduct Yingying. In the dream, Zhang saves his beloved. Upon awaking, Student Zhang is invited to a banquet at which Madam Cui 崔夫人, Yingying’s mother, announces that as promised, he may have her hand in marriage as a reward for saving her, but he must first pass the imperial exams. He sets off after a tearful goodbye and eventually returns triumphant. The film ends with a shot from outside his chambers that suggests the two lovers are finally about to consummate their relationship.
 

THEME: Focusing the Gaze

The film’s opening iris shot opens onto a piece of embroidery, a traditionally female handicraft that emphasizes the heroine Yingying’s genteel femininity (fig. 2). In the next shot (fig. 2), a closeup, we see the young woman bent over the piece of fabric. She is dressed in a headdress and her robes have a brocade collar. A title card informs us that this young lady is Yingying, the daughter of a deceased minister. She is accomplished, beautiful, and worthy of our attention. A second title card and closeup introduces Hongniang, her lovely maid. Though they have been foregrounded and explicitly introduced as key characters, neither woman acknowledges the cinematic gaze. They look to each other and talk, unaware of this voyeuristic intrusion into their inner chambers.



A subsequent long shot reframes the scene (fig. 4). Madam Cui and her son have entered the room and the entire family appears framed by a moon gate.

The shot’s circular framing visually recalls the iris used to focus in on Yingying’s handicraft. Furthermore, since the shot of the family looks into the home from outside, as in the case of the iris shot that opens onto a private, female space, peering through the moon gate here likewise suggests a voyeuristic gaze. Although diegetically this is the interior of the Temple of Universal Salvation, it looks like a lavish home, filled with ornate furniture and decorations. Though the décor is ostensibly period appropriate, it is also evocative of a tastefully decorated home in 1920s China. As viewers, we are invited to take pleasure in the both the women and the space, but at the same time, the framing devices suggest a distance between the ordinary theatergoer and these desirable visions.

The film’s introduction to its main male protagonist, Student Zhang, is also punctuated with an iris shot. We see the young man initially in a long shot as he arrives in a village. He converses with a local and inquires about “the most picturesque site in the area.” The question appears in a French-language intertitle (fig. 5).


The man points ahead of them, directing us to an offscreen location (fig. 6). In the next shot, a large pagoda framed by an iris appears (fig. 7). This is the place to see, the film insists. By framing the scenic site in a black circle, the cinematic quality of this visual experience is heightened. We know that the iris shot matches the two men’s eyeline, but is represents a kind of technological vision, amplified by the cinematic device whose “eye” it looks through. While the iris shot that opened the film suggested voyeurism of a forbidden interior, this sequence instead speaks to the visual consumption of exterior scenery. Here we may remember Harris’ notion of the film as travelogue. The pagoda, framed as it is, is not only marked as something worth looking at, but as an image that is produced when we look through a photographic device. Here then, the film gestures as much at traditional literati who consumed China’s scenic spots in years past as it does at the burgeoning leisure and travel photographic culture of the early 20th century.



The impressive pagoda, as viewers will have guessed, is located on the grounds of the Temple of Universal Salvation, the very place where our lovely heroines are currently staying. Student Zhang gets directions and heads off. The film in turn, cuts to a sequence of the two women in the temple gardens. In a parallel sequence, Student Zhang is getting a tour of the temple grounds from the monk Facong 法从. Just as the two groups are about to converge, the women appear on a bridge in front a smaller pagoda (fig. 8). As they descend from the bridge, they bump into the young man and his escort.



Though this is not the same pagoda, the visual match between the two towers as “picturesque sites” is clear. Here, the architectural wonder is further embellished by the presence of two beautiful women. The lovers’ famous meeting in the temple garden follows immediately upon this scene. Student Zhang ogles Yingying openly (fig. 9), while she hides behind a fan (fig. 12). The monk Facong looks between the two, noticing that something is afoot (fig. 10 & 11).





If we remove Facong from the sequences, the two shots of Student Zhang and Yingying follow the shot-reverse-shot convention. It’s visually obvious that the two are facing and looking at each other. The two shots of Facong that intervene, however, are curious. This too is a type of “shot-reverse-shot” if we consider what that the monk’s gaze is a perfect match to the framing of the camera. His shifting head in fact marks the angles from which both shots of the lovers were taken.

The camera’s strange infiltration of this scene continues later in the sequence. Hongniang ushers Yingying past the two men and through an open moon gate behind them. Facong grabs onto Student Zhang’s shoulder and gestures towards the area in front of them. Student Zhang, however, is not looking to where the monk is pointing, but behind them, where the two women are passing through the gate (fig. 13).


Startlingly, however, Yingying does not scamper away before looking back at the young man. The film frames her face and bold look in a close up shot (fig. 14). Even in the long shot that follows (fig. 15), her turned head is obviously visible, holding Student Zhang’s gaze. The moment only ends when the door of the moon gate closes behind the two women and Student Zhang looks down despondently (fig. 16). Whatever Facong is pointing at doesn’t seem to interest him. The sequence is of course remarkable because it affords Yingying sexual agency by allowing her to gaze openly at Student Zhang. But if we consider the explicitly marked gaze of the camera (the iris) that has focused our introduction to the romance, the shot is even more significant. As before, the moon gate clearly echoes the circular shape of the iris and presents the two women as objects to be looked upon through a framing technology (in this case, architectural, not optical). When the door of the moon gate closes, however, the structural detail of the garden door seems to resemble the iris of a camera, a device that gradually decreases the amount of light (and thus image) visible in the shot as it closes.




An iris shot appears again in the film at a decidedly less romantic moment, the bandits’ attack on the temple in pursuit of Yingying. A long shot of the pagoda familiar to us from the initial “picturesque site” scene appears on screen (fig. 17). Below the structure, armored men rush up a small road towards the temple. 



The next shots show the monk Facong sweeping inside the building next to several open “aperatures,” that is, windows (fig. 18).


An iris shot that follows marks the monk’s realization that armed forces are heading towards the temple (fig. 19). His startled face is visible in the next shot (fig. 19).



The circular iris shot here clashes with the geometry of vision. Unlike a moon gate, which does share the round shape of a camera eye, the pagoda windows are rectangular. Again, there is a sense that technology has intervened in the ancient diegetic world. The image in the iris shot appears almost as if magnified under a microscope. The defensive lookout function of the scenic building is amplified here by the technology of the camera. It’s not just that Facong’s high vantage point lets him see impending danger, but also that his vision can focus on the precise motions of the attackers. Once again, his vision is conflated with that of the camera. And such technologically amplified vision may tease with beauty or frighten with peril.

WORKS CONSULTED: CLICK TO EXPAND/COLLAPSE

Harris, Kristine. “‘The Romance of the Western Chamber’ and the Classical Subject Film in 1920s Shanghai.” In Cinema and Urban Culture in Shanghai, 1922-1943, edited by Yingjin Zhang, 51-73. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1999.

AUTHOR

Julia Keblinska

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