Directory of Early Chinese Films

Laborer’s Love (Laogong zhi aiqing, 1922) is the earliest known extant complete film made by Chinese filmmakers.

What’s truly precious? This silent film features a conservative morality tale about women’s vanity, with two outstanding scenes of animation.

Li Minghui stars as a peasant woman who escapes an arranged marriage to join her true love on the borderlands

The Journey to the West is imperiled when the monk Tripitaka is held captive by a cave of spider women and forced to marry their queen.

Warriors wielding “light sabers” and vanishing magic right wrongs and settle scores in this partially-extant silent wuxia film.

A married woman falls for a playboy college student. Will she live happily ever after? And what about her husband? Who will set things right?

A poor young woman trains in magic martial arts and revenges her father and her village in this silent wuxia film.

Poor Daddy (1929) is a slapstick silent comedy starring Liu Jiqun

In this partially-extant silent action film, a female athlete becomes a swashbuckling hero and saves the family herding ground from a gang who plans to sell it to foreigners

A woman warrior saves a child carried away by a bird and battles bandits in this wuxia adventure film

A romantic melodrama with paternalistic overtones, Love and Duty was the first Lianhua film to showcase the chemistry between Ruan Lingyu and Jin Yan.

A former film star returns to her old studio to discover how much has changed, in this highly self-referential film about love and/of cinema.

The Peach Girl co-stars Ruan Lingyu and Jin Yan as lovers in rural China tragically separated by social class.

A vivacious country lass and a rich Shanghai boy fall in love. What will happen to young love when an uninhibited girl meets urban high society?

Zheng Junli and Li Lili star in this silent film, featuring a pulpy story of revenge and romance, with hula dancing an erupting volcano.

A young couple in Shanghai divorce, to be reunited by the abandoned wife’s devotion and literary talent.

A young woman from the countryside, forced into prostitution, does espionage to aid the Northern Expedition.

Silkworm farmers in southern China find themselves in desperate economic straits, despite a bumper harvest.

Artisan toymakers struggling to survive amidst war and competition from big business.

A country girl joins a women’s sports academy in Shanghai and becomes a national track star. Will she learn the true athletic spirit?

Sister and brother struggle to survive as fishermen in northern China, in this musical melodrama. A box office smash.

Ruan Lingyu stars as a single mother in Shanghai struggling to give her young son an education, in the face of exploitation and social prejudice.

In this genre-bending romp, a band of road workers, aided by two women, build a great road to help China fight off invaders.

Yuan Muzhi’s experimental directorial debut shows a country family’s farcical attempts to make it big in Shanghai.

A contemporary social drama about “the woman question.” What are women’s lives like in China today? And what should they be?

Fei Mu’s traditionalist parable dramatizes the triumph of filial piety. Set to a lavish orchestral score and produced for a bilingual market.

Director Wu Yonggang’s encore to “Goddess” (1934) focuses on the trials of a poor but loving family and their angelic boy.

Phantom of the Opera and Nosferatu meet underground revolutionary history in China’s first horror-musical.

Zhou Xuan sings two hit songs in this social drama by experimental filmmaker Yuan Muzhi, costarring heartthrob Zhao Dan.

A young woman takes her father’s place in the army and protects the Tang empire from invaders in this wartime adaptation of the Mulan legend.

Monkey and companions try to outwit a demon’s wife in this animated feature film, which adapts an episode from Journey to the West.

A young professional woman is hired to care of the young daughter of a married man, only to find herself in an impossible position.

An epic melodrama in two parts. A dutiful wife struggles to keep her family together through eight years of war, only to suffer betrayal.

A fibbing housewife runs into problems with her unreliable husband and his con woman mistress in this wartime screwball comedy.

Director Fei Mu’s lyrical masterpiece shows people coping with loss and longing in the aftermath of the Anti-Japanese War.

Follows the misadventures of Sanmao as he tries to fill his belly on the streets of Shanghai. Adapted from the comic strip by Zhang Leping.

An epochal film, produced and set at the end of civil war, centering on a fight over housing. Who will stay and who will go?

A seminal film of New China cinema about a country girl who endures inhuman suffering before being liberated by the communist army.