New Film Movement: The Pursuit Of Modernity In 1930s' Chinese Film

Taking"New Film Movement"as its pointcut, the development mainstream of Chinese films in the 1930s, this paper tries to pursue the historical identity of this movement, to investigate its inner difference so as to give a profile on the general feature and historic position of this film movement.The framework of this paper sets up at Social History of the Movies. This paper puts the development of Chinese films into China's modernization drive and regards the introduction of film and the creation and development of Chinese film as a phenomenon and a part of China's modernization drive. This article takes an overall view of history, pay attention to the overall development of Chinese film history. This paper regards the development and evolution of Chinese film as a continuing process of heckling modernity.As a component of China's modernization drive, Chinese film provides the most vivid cultural imagination carrier for Chinese people's nationality identification and modernity identification. Chinese film, together with other modern media and arts, plays an important role in reconstructing Chinese people's mental structure. As a phenomenon of China's modernization, the contradiction between"Enlightenment"and"Salvation"(modernity and nationalism) directly formed the historic background that pursued by film modernity. This background was expressed in the connotation of film's modernity. On one hand, modern national consciousness served as a vital impetus to inspire the creation of Chinese film and to impel Chinese film industry and national film aesthetics. The concept of"Nation State"established in the 1930s and the following national crisis prompted times sensitivity and realistic concern, and launched film modernization movement. On the other hand, the concern on state issues and national concept in the movement, to some extent, restrained the pursuing of non-profit and pure art nature and the development of artists'individual consciousness. Its exploration on film's nature was mainly based on narration, where there is only the commonness of national film's aesthetic rather than individuality.According to this paper, the modernity Construction of Chinese film includes 2 levels: one is that the consciousness the film conveyed experienced the combination of traditional Chinese Consciousness and modern western consciousness; the other one is that the acquaintance to the film in nature went through the combination of foreign thought and Chinese feeling and aesthetics. With the"New Film Movement"as its theme and rebellion against the films in the 1920s, Chinese films in the 1930s proposed a modernity scheme focus on nationalism. That scheme presented a radical culture attitude in principle, which made those films in the 1930s emit stronger critical consciousness than those ones in the 1920s. In the"Left Wing Theory", this critical consciousness was implemented by disclosing the nature of film capitalism. It also attached closer experience and attention to modernity. We could witness it from the consistent times consciousness and realistic aspect in the"New film"movement, and from its perception of modernity conflict ---- there are many differences and contradiction in the modernity identification. However, the historical identity of"New Film Movement"resulted from the attitude of pursuing modernization development and nationalism expression."New Film Movement"was the mainstream presentation of Chinese film modernization development in the 1930s. It also presented the continuation of 1920s tradition in 2 ways: firstly, paying attention to narration of film functionality, taking narration as the core of a film; secondly, following commercialization operation, which is the survival mode for a film. However, the difference of modernity recognition in"New Film"group laid the foundation for the multiregional development of Chinese film in the 1940s at GMT controlled area and liberated area as well as the subsequent development pattern among the Mainland, Taiwan and Hong Kong.