Spring in a Small Town
I don’t know why I’m avoiding blogging this film, perhaps it’s because there is this „but it’s such a classic!“ feeling. Unlike most other films, where I watch something most often because somebody recommended it to me, I was approaching this film as this uber-respected classic of Chinese cinema. It had to be good, and actually it was.
The problem with this film entirely lied in the crappiness of the copy. Oh God, sometimes the sound completely disappeared (in the most dramatic scenes at that!), sometimes its quality was incredibly bad and the restoration of the image isn’t exactly the best either. I feel so sorry for this movie and hope that someone will restore it in a better way. There is no reason for a 1948 movie to be in such incredible bad state.
But apart from that, I’m quite impressed by the film. Its story is indeed exactly the same as „Springtime in a Small Town“ except for parts of the way they depicted the end, but at this point, for me „Springtime in a Small Town“ is indeed but a weak remake. In my opinion, the original has a much nicer cinematography in black and white. I find the characters much more likeable and understandable (the off narration and the beauty of the female main character helps a lot), and finally the sexual innuendo is even more obvious and creates an immense tension with the constant subtle eroticism – amazing enough at that time.
In the end, I liked the film very much and would totally watch it again one day when they release a better copy.
Cry Me a River
Jia Zhangke makes me weirdest movies in the world, and at least „Platform“ felt amazingly long to me. Certain scenes just never wanted to end… Ugh. „Cry Me a River“ cannot possibly suffer from is with its 19 minutes runtime, and makes me wonder why he doesn’t just make much more short films. At first, though, I found it rather difficult to make out what this short film was supposed to be about. (I was even annoyed at the insertion of the Peking opera, first of all because the singing was bad and secondly because I generally hate the Peking opera.) It was only halfway through that you could feel that these are supposed to be meetings of old lovers. But at the end, when the characters spoke out the lines referencing „Spring in a Small Town“, I loved the film. Everything just fit – including Jia Zhangke’s usual stunning cinematography – and there aren’t many more dialogue lines that I can possibly find more beautiful than that.
I think the MoMA did a wonderful of showing these two movies together, and I feel sorry for the people who left the theater before „Cry Me a River“ started. They missed quite a little, short gem of a film.
i really want to see this original!
(and i still believe that you should see Xiao Wu before you write him off completely, same with The World. if you disliked Platform, perhaps you should wait a while before you see Still Life, which it very much resembles in pacing)
Oh my God, you should totally watch “Spring in a Small Town” and then “Cry me a River”! You would love it, especially since the visuals are so nice.
I guess the movie just spoke to me, and I see ourselves in it a little bit – and we’re not even out of college! (In fact, the film is on Youtube and I just re-watched the second part… ahhh, I really loved the dialogue.) The translation is not perfect, as always. There is this scene where one character says “I wonder why I’m sleeping next to him” and they translate it as “I wonder how I can sleep with him”.
So yeah, I haven’t given up Jia Zhangke at all, it’s more like I can’t decide whether I like him a lot of not at all. Heh.