''Eternity'' () is a controversial 1943

Chinese Chinese can refer to: * Something related to China * Chinese people, people of Chinese nationality, citizenship, and/or ethnicity **''Zhonghua minzu'', the supra-ethnic concept of the Chinese nation ** List of ethnic groups in China, people of ...

film made in Japanese-occupied

Shanghai Shanghai (; , , Standard Mandarin pronunciation: ) is one of the four direct-administered municipalities of the People's Republic of China (PRC). The city is located on the southern estuary of the Yangtze River, with the Huangpu River flowin ...

during the

Second World War World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposi ...

. The film was a collaborative effort between the Japanese-controlled

Manchukuo Film Association or (Chinese: 株式會社滿洲映畫協會) was a Japanese film studio in Manchukuo during the 1930s and 1940s. Background Man'ei was established by the Kwantung Army in the occupied northeast part of China in 1937. Man'ei controlled the en ...

and Chinese filmmakers that remained in Shanghai under the Japanese-controlled Zhonglian Productions ("United China") brand. Telling the story of

Lin Zexu Lin Zexu (30 August 1785 – 22 November 1850), courtesy name Yuanfu, was a Chinese political philosopher and politician. He was the head of states (Viceroy), Governor General, scholar-official, and under the Daoguang Emperor of the Qing dynas ...

and the First Opium War, the film was designed by producers Kawakita Nagamasa and Zhang Shankun to offer "an interpretive fluidity to accommodate every spectator's ideological position." For Japanese audiences, the film could be read as anti-Western, as promoting the ostensibly "anti-colonialist" agenda of the

Greater East Asian Co-Prosperity Sphere The , also known as the GEACPS, was a concept that was developed in the Empire of Japan and propagated to Asian populations which were occupied by it from 1931 to 1945, and which officially aimed at creating a self-sufficient bloc of Asian peo ...

. To Chinese audiences, on the other hand, the film promoted a spirit of resistance to a foreign enemy – namely, Japan – and upon its release garnered the largest audience in Chinese cinematic history. Ultimately the film (and the Shanghai filmmakers) was seen as tools of the enemy once the war was over, with many involved in the production (notably directors

Bu Wancang Bu Wancang (July 1, 1900 – December 30, 1973), also known by his English name Richard Poh, was a prolific Chinese film director and screenwriter active between the 1920s and the 1960s. He was born in Anhui. Career Originally a member of the S ...

Ma-Xu Weibang Ma-Xu Weibang (; 1905–1961) was a Chinese film director active in mainland China from the 1920s to 1940s, and later in Hong Kong, perhaps best known for his work in the horror genre, the most important unarguably being ''The Phantom of the Oper ...

, and

Zhu Shilin Zhu Shilin () (27 July 1899 – 5 January 1967), also romanised as Chu Shek Lin, was a Chinese film director, born in Taicang, Jiangsu, China. Zhu began his career in the thriving film industry of Shanghai, directing actresses like Ruan Lingy ...

) eventually moving to

Hong Kong Hong Kong ( (US) or (UK); , ), officially the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region of the People's Republic of China (abbr. Hong Kong SAR or HKSAR), is a city and special administrative region of China on the eastern Pearl River Delta i ...

due to the hostile environment.

Cast

Chen Yunshang Chen Yunshang (; August 10, 1919 – June 29, 2016) was a Chinese film actress and singer of the 1930s and 1940s. Biography Chen was born in Guangzhou but her family came from Taishan. She began her career in Hong Kong in 1935 but in 1939 moved ...

as Zhang Jingxian * Li Xianglan (Japanese name Yamaguchi Yoshiko) * Gao Zhanfei as

* Yuan Meiyun * Wang Yin

Production history

In 1939, the Japanese had formed the China Movie Company ("Zhongdian") to make Japanese propaganda shorts. By 1941, Zhongdian signed a deal with the head of the

Xinhua Film Company The Xinhua or New China Film Company (), was one of the film studios to capitalize on the popularity of the leftist film movement in 1930s Shanghai, that had begun with the Mingxing and Lianhua studios. It is not related to the modern-day Xinhua N ...

Zhang Shankun Zhang may refer to: Chinese culture, etc. * Zhang (surname) (張/张), common Chinese surname ** Zhang (surname 章), a rarer Chinese surname * Zhang County (漳县), of Dingxi, Gansu * Zhang River (漳河), a river flowing mainly in Henan * ''Z ...

, followed quickly by two other deals with the Yihua Film Company and the Guohua Film Company.Fu, p. 182

Casting

The film was cast primarily with Chinese actors out of (what remained) of the Shanghai studio system (now under the control of Zhonglian). One major star cast, however, was the

Manchuria Manchuria is an exonym (derived from the endo demonym " Manchu") for a historical and geographic region in Northeast Asia encompassing the entirety of present-day Northeast China (Inner Manchuria) and parts of the Russian Far East (Outer M ...

-born Japanese actress

Yoshiko Yamaguchi was a Japanese singer, actress, journalist, and politician. Born in China, she made an international career in film in China, Hong Kong, Japan and the United States. Early in her career, the Manchukuo Film Association concealed her Japanese ori ...

. Though she had already starred in several Chinese features under her Chinese name of Li Xianglan, Yamaguchi was a seeming outlier in the cast of ''Eternity''. She was, therefore, an indication of the control the Japanese exercised over the Chinese film industry in Shanghai. (ref "Her Traces are Found Everywhere" 227, Shelly Stevenson, in Cinema and Urban Culture in Shanghai 1922-1943) Helped by the massive pop hits, "Candy-Peddling Song" (賣糖歌) and "Quitting (opium) Song" (戒煙歌), the film would catapult Li into stardom, as her earlier works had been in films so blatantly pro-Japanese, as to turn off most of the Chinese audience (Shelly, 227).

Notes

References

* Fu, Poshek "Resistance in Collaboration: Chinese Cinema in Occupied Shanghai" in
Chinese Collaboration with Japan, 1932-1945: The Limits of Accommodation
'. David, Barrett P. ed. (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2001) *Yoshiko Yamaguchi. "Fragrant Orchid: The Story of My Early Life." Trans. Chia-ning Chang (Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Pres, 2015)

External links

*
''Eternity''
from the Chinese Movie Database {{Bu Wancang 1943 films Films set in 19th-century Qing dynasty 1940s Mandarin-language films Films directed by Bu Wancang Films directed by Ma-Xu Weibang Chinese black-and-white films