Love and Duty (1931 film)

Love and Duty is a 1931 Chinese silent film, directed by Bu Wancang and starring Ruan Lingyu and Jin Yan. Long considered lost, it was accidentally rediscovered in Uruguay in the 1990s, and almost immediately hailed as one of the greatest Chinese silent films. Like many Chinese silent films, it features both Chinese and English intertitles.

Love and Duty
Traditional戀愛與義務
Simplified恋爱与义务
MandarinLiàn'ài yǔ yìwù
Directed byBu Wancang
Produced byLi Minwei
Written byZhu Shilin
Based onLa symphonie des ombres
by S. Rosen Hoa
StarringRuan Lingyu
Jin Yan
CinematographyHuang Shaofen
Production
company
Lianhua Film Company
Release date
  • 1931 (1931)
Running time
152 minutes
CountryChina
LanguageSilent film
Written Chinese intertitles

Ruan Lingyu portrays two different characters, and the split screen technology is used for scenes where both characters appear.[1]

Production history

Based on a novel by a Polish expatriate, S. Rosen-hoa ("Ho Ro-se"), who had married a Chinese engineer, Love and Duty became one of the first films produced by the leftist Lianhua Film Company.

The film was very popular for its day, in no small part due to the pairing of Ruan, who was already a darling of the Shanghai film industry, and Jin Yan, a Korean-born actor who was one of the major leading men in early Chinese cinema.

Plot

The film tells the story of Yang Naifan (Ruan Lingyu) who runs from her arranged marriage to be with her true love, Li Zuyi (Jin Yan). The film details the poverty she must endure for breaking with tradition.

Rediscovery

For many years the film was believed lost, until a complete print was discovered in Uruguay in the 1990s.[2] The rediscovered print was shipped over to Taiwan in 1993 and is now housed at the Taipei Film Archive. Since its rediscovery, the film has made its rounds in film festivals and Chinese cinema retrospectives around the world. In 2014, Love and Duty underwent a 2K digital restoration under Italy's L'Immagine Ritrovata, after which it was screened at the Shanghai Film Festival that same year.

Remakes

Love and Duty has been remade twice, in 1938 and 1955. The first was from the wartime Shanghai "Orphan Island" studio Xinhua Film Company, again directed by Bu Wancang, with Jin Yan reprising his earlier role and Yuan Meiyun in the role originally created by Ruan Lingyu. The second remake was by the Hong Kong Shaw Brothers Studio. Both remakes were Mandarin dialect sound films.

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See also

References
  1. Harris, Kristine (2013). "Ombres Chinoises: Split Screens and Parallel Lives in Love and Duty". In Rojas, Carlos; Chow, Eileen (eds.). The Oxford Handbook of Chinese Cinemas. Oxford University Press. pp. 39–61. ISBN 978-0-19-976560-7.
  2. Thomas Kampen (2004-06-30). "Film "Love and Duty"". Institute of Chinese Studies, University of Heidelberg. Archived from the original on 2007-09-04. Retrieved 2007-04-09.


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