''The Stormy Night'' is a 1925 Chinese drama film directed and written by novelist

Zhu Shouju Zhu Shouju (1892 – 31 December 1966), born Zhu Junbo, also known by his pen name Haishang Shuomengren, was a Chinese author and filmmaker based in Shanghai. He began his career as a writer of serialized novels. In 1924 he became the chief edito ...

. Like most Chinese films from this period, it is a black-and-white silent film with both Chinese and English intertitles. The film was long believed lost, until a print resurfaced in Tokyo, Japan in 2006, which was finally identified in 2011.

Rediscovery

In 2006, descendants of Japanese director Teinosuke Kinugasa donated his collection to the National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo. In it museum workers discovered a Chinese film (since it had Chinese intertitles), but as the title is missing they were unable to identify it right away. Many years later, Akinari Sato (佐藤秋成) convincingly confirmed it as ''The Stormy Night'' by matching it with reports from old Shanghai newspapers ''

Shen Bao ''Shen Bao'', formerly transliterated as ''Shun Pao'' or ''Shen-pao'' (), known in English as ''Shanghai News'', was a newspaper published from 30 April 1872 to 27 May 1949 in Shanghai, China. The name is short for ''Shenjiang Xinbao'', Shenjian ...

'' and ''Xinwen Bao'' (新聞報). Because reports mentioned the film as having 9 reels, and 8 reels are found, Sato believed that no more than 10 minutes could be missing. The film underwent a digital restoration in 2017 and began screening in China the same year.

Cast

*Han Yunzhen as Mrs. Zhuang *Zhou Wenzhu *Wang Shiyan *Wang Yingzhi *Yang Jingwo as Yujie *Bao Mengjiao as Bian Ziming *Wang Cilong as Doctor *Li Minghui as Cover girl *Gong Jianong as Club patron *Yan Bingheng as Qian Dawei *Ye Zhongfang as Sleepwalker *Wang Guoqi as Jiaona

Reception

In 2017, Japanese scholar Fumitoshi Karima (刈間文俊) called this film one of the three Chinese films that amazed him, along with silent-era masterpieces '' The Goddess'' and '' Love and Duty''. In 2018, Shelly Kraicer called it an "astonishing revelation" on Twitter.

References

1925 films Films shot in China Films set in China Chinese silent films Chinese drama films 1925 drama films 1920s rediscovered films Rediscovered Chinese films Chinese black-and-white films Silent drama films {{China-film-stub