The film:
Meiguo zhi chuang 美國之窗
Directed by Huang Zuolin 黃佐臨, Shi Hui 石揮, and Ye Ming 葉明
Studio: Wen Hwa (Wenhua) Film Company 文華影片公司
From an original work by Soviet writer Dykhovichny
Adapted by Huang Zuolin 黃佐臨
Starring: Yu Fei 于飛, Shi Hui 石揮, Lin Zhen 林榛, Chen Shu 陳述, Hong Xia 宏霞, Tian Zhendong 田振東, Shi Ling 石靈, Yu Zhongying 俞仲英, Song Jiaqi 宋家琪
64 minutes, sound
Year of release: 1952
English subtitles translated by Yuqian Chen and Christopher Rea
ABOUT THE FILM:
Are current conditions in the United States of America making you want to jump out the window? Not so fast—there’s money to be made…on your death! Window-washer Charlie Kent has just finished cleaning the last window of a Wall Street skyscraper, and, now facing indefinite unemployment, plans to jump to his death from that very window on the 42nd floor. Mr. Butler, the capitalist from whose office he plans to jump, persuades Kent to stop—stop long enough to let Butler & Co. turn his suicide into a live radio spectacle and sell advertisements, ostensibly so that Kent can leave his family a legacy. Advertisers come calling, including H-Bomb Cigarettes, Maclini’s Suits, Harriman Unbreakable Glasses (“When a man jumps from the 42nd floor wearing Harriman glasses, his body may break, but the glasses won’t!”), Green Horse Whisky, Atomic Hair-growth Ointment…even the Spiritualist Society, which signs an exclusive contract for post-mortem ownership over Charlie’s soul. All the deal-making builds suspense about the do-or-die moment at which we will find out: Will he jump? And, more importantly, will we get rich?
Window to America (Meiguo zhi chuang, 1952) is also a window to Chinese filmmaking during the early years of the People’s Republic. The film features a bravura performance by the most famous Chinese screen comedian of the era, Shi Hui (as Mr. Butler), leading a whiteface and blackface cast in an adaptation of a Soviet stage play. The zingy script by veteran filmmaker and dramatist Huang Zuolin snowballs the farce while ticking off Cold War talking points about the ongoing Korean War, deplorable conditions in the United States, the callousness of the capitalist system, and the need for the working class to unite and fight back. The film concludes with a conventional “bright tail” (guangming de weiba 光明的尾巴) alluding to a faraway land shining with “the last glimmer of hope for us, the American people, and the last glimmer of hope for the entire world.” With new film regulations coming into effect in China in 1952, Window to America was itself also something of a “bright tail” for soon-to-be-phased-out private film studios like Wen Hwa, and for the 1940s generation of film comedians.
The Chinese Film Classics Project thanks Liu Yuqing for creating the subtitles and Weihong Bao and Katherine Bowers for sharing their research.
This translation uses the open-access copy of the film available via the Columbia University Library website:
https://clio.columbia.edu/catalog/14926372?counter=1
https://dlc.library.columbia.edu/time_based_media/10.7916/d8-kd79-r377
Learn more
See Shi Hui’s comic turn in Long Live the Missus! (1947)
Watch the early Mao-era film The White-Haired Girl (1950)
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