The film:
Fei Mu (Fey Mou) directed Song of China for Lianhua (UPS) Studio at age 29. The film extols Confucian values promoted during the Nationalist government’s New Life Movement, begun in 1934, especially filial piety, through the story of a wise father, his wayward son, and his virtuous grandson. Like Fei’s celebrated film Spring in a Small Town (1948), Song of China combines lyrical imagery and ethical drama. Lianhua regulars (appearing in films such as The Great Road) include Shang Guanwu, Zhang Yi, and Chen Yanyan. This sound-on-disk film, which features original bilingual intertitles, had a limited release in the United States. English subtitles represent the various types of text onscreen, including Chinese text on the intertitles when it differs substantially from the English.
Tian lun
Alternative English titles: The Way of Heaven, Filial Piety
Director: Fei Mu
Producer: Luo Mingyou
Studio: United Photoplay Services (Lianhua)
Year of release: 1935
45 minutes
Cast: Lin Chuchu, Shang Guanwu, Li Shaoshao, Zhang Yi, Chen Yanyan, Mei Lin, Li Keng
English subtitles translated by Christopher Rea
Subtitles created by Liu Yuqing
Learn More
See boy actor Henry Lai (Li Keng) and his real-life mother Lim Cho Cho (Lin Chuchu), who in this film plays his grandmother:
Lim Cho Cho stars as Silvia in Yihjanmae (1931), a silent film adaptation of Shakespeare’s The Two Gentlemen of Verona:
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