A Controversial Heritage:The Shanghai Film History (1941-1945)

Film industry in Shanghai during Japanese-occupation period was known as a“the black time” in the history of the Chinese film. The period of three years(8th Dec,1941- 15 th Aug, 1945), film industry had gradually become “Japanese state-policy film”(guoce dianying)institute of the Japanese puppet regime. The topics related to it were in multiple-discourse confrontation in terms of nation, morality and economics,so it become one of the most complicated history of Chinese film.This paper regards Shanghai film industry during the Japanese-occupation period as a historical heritage which is still controversial nowadays. The attention for the heritage in the academic circles has been in the state of marginalization for a long period of time. What is more, due to the constraints of ideology, nationalism and lack of research data, the value judgment often falls into the shadows of the so called “vast and simple words”. Therefore, the research for Shanghai film industry during the Japanese-occupation period is required to be involved in the new historical attitude and value judgments.The author will try to poke the “fog” in history with the help of documents and files, newspapers and magazines, video and other data so as to explore the development venation and internal texture of Shanghai film industry during the Japanese-occupation period. The purpose of the research is committed to clarify the historical doubts, at the same time, the long-standing stereotypes existing in research ideas and methods of Chinese film history are reflected in the paper.This paper will complete the above assumptions by analyzing them in five chapters. The first chapter will present the process of the gradual “totalitarianism” of Shanghai film by elaborating the overview of the main subject for film production:ZhongHua United Film Producing Company Ltd.(“Zhonglian”) and ZhongHua United Movie Company Ltd.(“Huaying”). On such basis, the second chapter will clarify the status of the production and circulation of the films in Japanese-occupationperiod and analyze the gaming relationship between politics and business. The third chapter will carry out case analysis. It mainly makes the text analysis and interpretation for three films of that period so as to their unique trend of creation. The fourth chapter will include groups of filmmaker in Japanese-occupation period.Among them, there are filmmakers of Japanese nationality and Chinese nationality and the managers and creators in the period. Understanding what is inside their mind will be the best entry port for interpreting this complex history. With the end of the war, the “Huaying” collapses and the film industry in Japanese-occupation period also comes to an end. The fifth chapter is about the heritage reception and filmmakers discretion after the war, at the same time, the topic of cross-region creation of Chinese film is involved in the topic.