10 Films to Watch if You Like: Raise the Red Lantern

Thirty years ago, UK audiences got their first look at the latest film by Chinese auteur, Zhang Yimou. Dramatically compelling and thematically courageous, Raise the Red Lantern is now hailed a masterpiece. Cinema Paradiso explains why.

Expectations were high when Zhang Yimou announced that his third feature as a solo director would be an adaptation of Su Tong's 1987 novella, Wives and Concubines. Set in the 1920s, the story of a young woman who becomes the concubine of a wealthy older man would complete a 'Red trilogy' that had started with Red Sorghum (1987) and Ju Dou (1990). The former had won the Golden Bear at the Berlin Film Festival, while the latter had become the first Chinese film to be nominated for the Academy Award for Best Foreign Film.

Somewhat ridiculously, Ju Dou, Jean-Paul Rappeneau's Cyrano de Bergerac, Gianni Amelio's Open Doors, Michael Verhoven's The Nasty Girl were beaten to the Oscar by Javier Koller's poignant, but conventional migrant saga, Journey of Hope. But Zhang didn't have his eyes on the major movie prizes when he made Raise the Red Lantern (1991). Instead, he and screenwriter Ni Zhen wanted to show that, despite an unprecedented period of change, China was still hidebound by ideological and cultural precepts that dated back to Ancient times.

Let's put this superbly acted film and its audacious ideas into some sort of context.

Film in a Time of Troubles

Politics intrudes upon film-making the world over. But Chinese cinema has been shaped more than most by the sweeping tide of historical events. In the four decades after Beijing photographer Ren Fengtai became the country's first indigenous director in adapting the opera, Conquering the Jun Mountain (which is now considered the first martial arts film), China was rocked by the Xinhai Revolution of 1911, the Japanese invasion of Manchuria in 1931, and the Second Sino-Japanese War (1937-45).

Production was prolific during the 1920s, as Yin Mingzhu became a star in the films of her director husband, Dan Duyu. Their daughter, Judy Dan, was a beauty queen who won a Hollywood contract and appeared in such classic musicals as Walter Lang's The King and I (1956) and George Sidney's Pal Joey (1957). Also prominent at this time was Zhang Schichuan, whose 27-hour series, The Burning of Red Lotus Temple (1928-31), starred legendary actress Hu Die (aka Butterfly Yu) and profoundly influenced the Shaw Brothers, who dominated martial arts cinema in Hong Kong, with such hits as Cheh Chang's The One-Armed Swordsman (1967), King Hu's Come Drink With Me (1968), Chang-hwa Jeong's King Boxer (1972) and Chia-Liang Liu's The 36th Chamber of Shaolin (1978).

These titles are all available to rent from Cinema Paradiso on high-quality DVD and Blu-ray. Also worth seeking out are five features set during the conflict with Japan that brought China to the point of revolution: Ang Lee's Lust, Caution, Bill Guttenberg's Nanking Massacre (both 2007), Lu Chuan's City of Life and Death, Florian Gallenberger's City of War (aka John Rabe, both 2008), and Hu Guan's The Eight Hundred (2020). This traumatic period coincided with the coming of sound and the film industry dividing into Mandarin and Cantonese branches. It also saw rise of Ruan Lingyu, the 'Chinese Garbo', who was played by Maggie Cheung in Stanley Kwan's Center Stage (1991).

There was also a debate about whether cinema should be a form of art or entertainment, while others questioned the increasing level of political content. Such discussions were put on hold during the war, however, as the occupying Japanese took control of the studios. Standing out was the 'Orphan Island' area of Shanghai, where patriotic pictures were produced, including Bu Wancang's Mulan Joins the Army (1939), which centres on the same female freedom fighter seen in Jeff Beak's Mulan (1998) and Jingle Ma's Mulan: Legendary Warrior (2008), as well as the Disney trio of Barry Cook and Tony Bancroft's Mulan (1998), Darrel Mooney and Lynne Southerland's Mulan II (2004), and Niki Caro's Mulan (2020).

Little Red Books and Long Blacklists

A brief window of peace saw Chinese cinema enter something of a golden age. Both the ruling Kuomintang and the rival Communist Party sponsored pictures to win hearts and minds. Among the most popular titles were Fang Peilin's escapist musical, The Singer (1946) and Yang Xiaozhong's melancholic melodrama, Turning Back (1948). But the standout works were undoubtedly Cai Chusheng and Zheng Junli's The Spring River Flows East (1947) and Fei Mu's Spring in a Small Town (1948). Both are available from Cinema Paradiso, with the former following the fortunes on either side of the war of devoted working-class couple, Zhang Zhongliang (Tao Jin) and Sufen (Bai Yang). Often compared to David Lean's Brief Encounter (1945), the latter is a Chekhovian drama that charts how a chance visit disrupts life in a secluded residence. Regarded by some as China's finest feature, it was remade by Tian Zhuangzhuang as Springtime in a Small Town (2002).

As was the case in the USSR in the 1920s (see Cinema Paradiso's A Brief History of Soviet Cinema ), the Communists under Mao Zedong used film to spread propaganda. However, the leader took such exception to Sun Yu's historical biopic, The Life of Wu Xun (1950), that independent production was halted and only officially approved features were available, as the People's Republic of China experienced the Korean War (1950-53) and such attempts to drag the country into the modern era as the Hundred Flowers campaign (1956-57), the Great Leap Forward (1958), and the Cultural Revolution (1966-76).

While the government restricted what could be seen, it opened the Beijing Film Academy to train new directors, actors, and crafts personnel to maintain a reliable supply of approved titles. Tutors arrived from the Soviet Union and 180 films from behind the Iron Curtain were imported and dubbed before it was decided that Socialist Realism was insufficiently progressive and a new brand of Revolutionary Realism became the norm in outings like Zhao Ming's Loving the Factory As One's Home (1958). There were casualties, however, with Lu Ban, who had been known as 'the Chinese Chaplin', being banned for life for satires like Before the New Director Arrives (1956), which poked fun at Party functionaries.

For around a decade, film-makers were permitted to revisit the past and literary classics, while also producing myth-making combat adventures and exotic ethnic dramas that were designed to celebrate unity through diversity. Animations and children's films also appeared, as the introduction of colour, widescreen, and stereo improved the technical and aesthetic quality of Chinese films. Among those to benefit was Xie Jin, who demonstrated rare versatility with the sports drama, Woman Basketball Player No.5 (1957); the 1930s war saga, The Red Detachment of Women (1961); the comedy, Big Li, Young Li and Old Li (1962); and the operatic classic, Two Stage Sisters (1964).

However, even Xie fell silent during the Cultural Revolution, which sought to eradicate traditional and capitalist values from Chinese society. Some have claimed that the vitriolic attack on cinema was inspired by the fact that Mao's wife, Jiang Qing, wanted revenge on those who had curtailed her acting career in the 1930s (when she was known as Lan Ping) through series of scandals. A handful of pictures were denounced as 'evil', while around 60 more were considered 'poisonous weeds'. Several directors died while being 're-educated' in rural camps, but production didn't entire grind to a halt, as 'model revolutionary operas' like Wang Ping's The East Is Red (1965) and Xie Tieli's Taking Tiger Mountain By Stratagem (1970) were lauded as inspirational and instructional.

Cinema For the Generations

It has become common to see Chinese screen history as a passing of generational torches. The First Generation of film-makers operated from the silent era to the Japanese invasion in 1937, while the Second Generation struggled through the war years. Their tenure was ended by the Communist takeover and the Third Generation prevailed until Mao's death in 1976.

Only a handful of features were produced in the aftermath of the Cultural Revolution, including such 'scar dramas' as Wu Yonggang and Wu Yigong's Evening Rain (1980) and Xie Jin's Hibiscus Town (1986). But the Fourth Generation managed to increase annual productivity to 44 features during the Gang of Four era before it was abruptly replaced by the 1978 intake of students at the reopened Beijing Film Acadeny. Although it has since been supplanted by a Sixth Generation that includes Zhang Yuan (East Palace, West Palace, 1997), Lou Ye ( Suzhou River, 2000), Jia Zhang-ke (Platform, 2000), and Wang Xiaoshuai (Beijing Bicycle, 2001), it was the Fifth Generation that benefited from new leader Deng Xiaoping's radical economic reforms and put Chinese cinema on the global map.

Occupying the site of the Agricultural Labour University in Zhuxin Village, the Beijing Film School advocated craft mastery, collaboration, and an individuated approach to visual style and narrative content. It also afforded students access to previously proscribed artists like Akira Kurosawa and Michelangelo Antonioni. However, the Chinese Communist Party continued to back propagandist pictures, while domestic audiences preferred the feel-good comedies of Feng Xiaogang, who made his name with Big Shot's Funeral (2001) before reinventing himself as the 'Chinese Spielberg' with the war epic Assembly (2007), the harrowing earthquake drama, Aftershock (2010), and the dark revenge satire, I Am Not Madame Bovary (2016).

Eager to please the people rather than the Party, the members of the Fifth Generation found themselves being more admired abroad than at home, where their apolitical, non-linear films proved more confusing than iconoclastic, while their use of natural lighting and barren landscapes to convey atmosphere and ambiguity merely generated apathy. Zhang Yimou served as cinematographer on the first two features, Zhang Junzhao's One and Eight (1983) and Chen Kaige's Yellow Earth (1984), which were lauded on the international festival circuit. Huang Jianxin's The Black Cannon Incident (1985), Tian Zhuangzhuang's The Horse Thief (1986) and Chen's The Big Parade (1986) and King of the Children (1987), even made it on to the weekly release schedule in the UK. But, frustratingly, none of these highly significant pictures is currently available on disc.

It took Zhang Yimou's partnership with actress Gong Li to turn heads. Festooned with foreign awards, Red Sorghum became the first Fifth Generation feature to score at the Chinese box office. Zhang then earned China a place at the Oscars with Ju Dou. During the post-Tiananmen backlash, however, the government asked the Academy to withdraw the nomination and disciplined the officials who had submitted the now- banned film. Naturally, Zhang was not granted permission to attend the ceremony, but he escaped punishment and was cleared to embark upon a new project. But Raise the Red Lantern would demonstrate that not even the golden couple of Chinese cinema were immune from censorship and censure.

The Story

During the Warlord Era of the 1920s, 19 year-old Songlian (Gong Li) is forced to abandon her education when her family is declared bankrupt upon her father's death. At her stepmother's insistence, she is dispatched to the household of Chen Zuoqian (Ma Jingwu) to become his fourth concubine. She is welcomed with red lanterns and treated to a sensuous foot massage before meeting Master Chen.

As the days pass, however, Songlian discovers that she is not in a privileged position, as Chen selects the concubine with whom he will spend the night on a daily basis. Each woman is expected to appear at the door of her quarters and accept the menu ordered by the chosen one, who will also have a red lantern lit in her honour and receive a foot massage.

Recognising that she is in competition with her cohabitants in a compound that is surrounded by high walls, Songlian starts weighing up her opposition. As First Mistress Yuru (Jin Shuyuan) is the same age as Chen and is the mother of his adult son, Feipu (Chu Xiao), Songlian discounts her as a rival. She also considers Second Mistress Zhuoyun (Cao Cuifen) to be a friend, as she compliments her on her beauty and gives her a luxurious silk gift. But she takes against Third Mistress Meishan (He Saifei) on her first night in the household, after the former opera singer feigns illness in order to lure Chen away from Songlian's bed.

While she views the jealously scheming Meishan with polite disdain, Songlian quickly learns to be watchful of her own maid, Yan'er (Kong Lin), who had ambitions of becoming Fourth Mistress and continues to flirt with Chen, while also seeking to undermine Songlian. When she questions Chen about trifling with Yan'er, he reminds her that his affairs are none of her business.

Learning that Chen is eager for more issue, Songlian claims to be with child and delights in the additional time she gets to spend with the master. She is also aware that each night she sleeps with him increases her chances of actually getting pregnant. However, Yan'er finds some bloodied underwear and confides her secret to Zhuoyun. She summons Doctor Gao (Cui Zhihgang), who exposes Songlian's deception and Chen orders her lanterns to be draped with black canvas.

Furious with Yan'er, Songlian reveals that her room is filled with red lanterns and she is forced to kneel in the snow, as they are burnt. However, Yan'er is too proud to apologise and remains in the cold, dying en route to hospital with Songlian's name on her lips. Concluding that competing for Chen's favour is beneath her, Songlian keeps to herself. On her 20th birthday, however, she gets drunk and blurts out to Zhuoyun that Meishan and Doctor Gao are having an affair. Zhuoyun reports the matter to Chen and Meishan is hanged in the rooftop 'house of death'.

Distraught at having betraying Meishan, Songlian enters her room and plays one of her opera recordings at full volume on the phonograph. She feels suicidal, but lives with her pain until the following summer, when Chen takes a new concubine and Songlian loses her mind and wanders the compound in the school uniform in which she had arrived.

Behind the Scenes

With his script approved by the state censors, Zhang took the bold step of seeking financing from outside Mainland China. Taiwanese auteur Hou Hsiao-Hsien will be known to Cinema Paradiso users for such films as Daughter of the Nile (1987), Flowers of Shanghai (1998), Café Lumière (2003), Three Times (2005), and The Assassin (2015), all of which can be rented with a single click. He had expressed an admiration for Zhang's first two features and arranged for backing from both Taiwan and Hong Kong to ensure that the director had the budgetary freedom to realise his vision and guarantee foreign distribution should the film be banned at home.

Zhang had reason to thank the location spotter for finding Jingyi House in the Qiao Family Compound outside the ancient city of Pingyao in Shanxi Province. Regarded as one of the finest private residences in China, this 18th-century estate not only provides an atmospheric backdrop to the action, it is also a character in its own right. The imposing walls and sinister rooftop chamber reinforce the sense of entrapment that Songlian feels on becoming part of Master Chen's household, while the individual living spaces emphasise both the master's divide and rule policy and the isolation and vulnerability of the concubines.

Each woman's dwelling reflects her personality, while also commenting on the disconnect between luxury and happiness. For all the grandeur of the compound, it feels like a prison and any release that Songlian might feel at seeing the surrounding locale from the rooftop is diminished by the sinister stone chamber that reminds her that the only escape from her ordeal is death.

In order to foreground the restrictions, Zhang and cinematographers Lun Yang and Zhao Fei made use of doorways, walls, windows, and beams to detach the characters from each other and the audience from their milieu. The formality of the compositions was heightened by the opulence of the décor, costumes, and props and the stillness of the camera, which served to suggest the theatricality of the mise-en-scène and the stifling aura of incarceration and inertia.

Even the lighting had a subtext, as the scenes in which Master Chen features - even though he is rarely shown in full figure and his face is hidden throughout - were warmly lit to imply his munificence towards the chosen mistress. In his absence, however, the lighting was harsher to convey the drab chill of existence outside his favour.

Production designer Cao Juiping and costumier Tong Huamiao also did their bit to reinforce the ambiance, with their use of the colour red having a dual decorative and symbolic purpose. As Zhang explained, 'the colour red has simply represented hot passion, the approach the sun, burning fire, warm blood. I think that for all humankind, it has a kind of intense feeling.'

Red is often associated in China with good fortune, although it is also frequently used to denote danger. Moreover, it's the colour of Communism and Zhang employs it to alert viewers to the fact that, for all the Party's fervour, it has been unable to eradicate the Confucian or Maoist traditions that have prevented the people from being equal and free. Indeed, since the Tiananmen Square incident, it has become more reactionary than revolutionary.

Intriguingly, Gong Li would also wear a red coat in The Story of Qiu Ju (1992) and a red dress in Shanghai Triad (1995), which were both directed by Zhang, who was clearly frustrated by Raise the Red Lantern being withdrawn from exhibition. Adding to his woes was the fact that its Oscar nomination was used to prove that he had consciously sought to pander to Western tastes. However, the authorities had another way of keeping audiences away from what they considered to be ideologically unsound pictures, as they gave free tickets to films that glorified the Party and reinforced propagandist messages.

Between the Lines

Preparations for making Raise the Red Lantern were hampered by the government crackdown that followed the protests in Tiananmen Square. Any latitude that Zhang Yimou might have had with his earlier features was curtailed and he had to be more subtle about his observations on patriarchal control, the restraint of freedom, women's rights, and the abuse of power.

Zhang's main aim, however, was to challenge the leadership's claim to have radically altered society for the better. For centuries, China had been governed by The Analects, a book containing the thoughts and theories of Confucius. Mao Zedong, however, had claimed to have swept these outdated ideas aside during the Cultural Revolution. But, by depicting an enclosed community organised on ancient hierachical principles, Zhang accused the Communists of hypocrisy because they had imposed a stratified system of their own. Furthermore, he states that the free market reforms that Deng had implemented had not changed the fundamental feudal nature of China that demands the unquestioned obedience of the subservient masses.

Zhang also denounces the superficiality of the steps that had been taken to improve the lot of women. Foot binding might have been outlawed and the right to divorce on the grounds of infidelity might have been implemented. Polygamy might also have been prohibited. But there was nothing to prevent men from entering into contractual arrangements with women to become concubines, as is the case with Master Chen. Moreover, while the One Child policy had been implemented to stabilise population growth, it also sought to control women's lives and bodies.

In addition to condemning the way Chen's household is ordered, Zhang also implies criticism through the building itself. The courtyard house is a 'sanheyuan' that is designed to offer sanctuary from outside threat in return for acquiescence in the master's rules. In essence, the Forbidden City seen in Bernardo Bertolucci's The Last Emperor (1987) is China's biggest sanheyuan. But, by making Songlian's existence so constrictive, Zhang questions the nature of the bargain and reveals how protective power can be misappropriated and moulded into patriarchal oppression.

Moreover, Chen's rules pit the women against each other. They not only compete for male attention, but they also actively seek to sabotage their rivals. Thus, Zhuoyun informs on Meishan after Songlian lets slip that she saw her playing footsie with Dr Gao. She also conspires with Yan'er to expose Songlian's feigned pregnancy (which alludes to the One Child policy, as Chen already has a son). Similarly, Songlian reports Yan'er for her misdemeanour and brings about her death. All of this in a place that is supposed to offer its inhabitants safeguards and privilege.

As the situation suits him, Chen refuses to change his habits. Indeed, when Songlian goes mad, he brings in another concubine. There is a semblance of hope for the future, however, as Feipu seems a more sensitive soul than his father. He plays the flute, as Songlian's own father had done and her decline dates from the removal of the last link with her past when Chen confiscates the instrument from Songlian's room (she actually thinks Yan'er has stolen her most cherished possession) and burns it.

Another way in which Chen crushes Songlian's spirit is by forcing her to dress in a prescribed manner. On arriving at the compound, she has pigtails and wears a studentine black skirt and white blouse to stress her youth and innocence. In fact, this uniform sets Songlian apart from the cheongsam-wearing women by suggesting that she has a certain breeding and refinement, having been educated (possibly in Japan). Moreover, by declining to wear a traditional bridal outfit, Songlian is stating her resistance to her fate.

Once part of the household, she adopts the silk cheongsam as part of her battle dress against Zhuoyun and Meishan. By choosing to wear red, she seeks to look stronger and more vibrant than those in paler colours. However, such ostentation also demonstrates how greedy and conniving Songlian has become and the extent to which she has been corrupted by sanheyuan life.

Her switch to a blue wardrobe signals her resignation to a fate she realises she is powerless to change. The colour literally confirms that she has the blues. But, when she slips into insanity, Songlian is freed from the constraints of her situation and resumes wearing the student garb from happier times. By implication, she is retreating to a past that might not have been perfect, but which was preferable to the debased present.

Such an allusional reference to the state of Deng's China did not pass unnoticed and Raise the Red Lantern was banned. Zhang's status was not harmed, however, and he was chosen to direct the opening ceremony of the 2008 Beijing Olympics. Furthermore, he continued to make films and Cinema Paradiso users can order several of his later works, including Not One Less, The Road Home (both 1999), Happy Times (2000), Hero (2002), House of Flying Daggers (2004), Riding Alone For Thousands of Miles (2005), Curse of the Golden Flower (2006), Blood Simple (2009), The Flowers of War (2011), The Great Wall (2016) and Shadow (2018).