Labor Creates New Man

The foundation of People’s Republic of China in the year1949remarks the birth of a brand new regime. People usually regard the period between1949to1966as "Seventeen Years". This period of time was crucial for the development of Chinese movie. At that time, the film makers answered the call of the country and combined the film-making practice with the social construction practice. The communist dream and facts of new social life have become the main contents of the film. During this process, lots of movies which presented the "new men" have emerged and "labor" has become the cut-in point in describing those new men. Through depicting their brand new working status, those movies try to illustrate the liberation of labors in China. My dissertation tries to examine the Shanghai cinema practice during the "Seventeen Years" and analyze the trails in molding "new men" on the big screen.Foreword emphasizes again the important in studying the movie of seventeen years. After summing up the researches that had been done about "Seventeen Years" movie, I pointed out the shortage of those studies and put forward my method of research.The main part of the paper analyses different types of "new man" on the big screen, their features as well as the way in which they were presented. The first chapter analyzed films like "Tuanjie Qilai Dao Mingtian","Aichang Rujia", and examined how factory workers gained their subjectivity through rebellions and struggles and became the master of their factories as well as the main forces of the social construction after liberation. This chapter also pointed out that in the end of50s and the beginning of60s, workers have not only become the important labor force of social production, but also shouldered the responsibility to educate the next generation to continue the revolution. They tried to accomplish this task through "education of labor".Chapter Two discussed the relationship between the foundation of People’s Republic of China and the liberation of women. By analyzing classic films such as "Wanzi Qianhong Zongshi Chun" and "Nianqing De Yidai", I discussed the fortune of housewives and intellectual women in new China respectively, and how they finally attained the dignity and turned out to be "new women" through engaging in collective work. Chapter Three focused on the workers of commercial industry. In the films such as "Guitai","Jintian Wo Xiuxi" and "Nu Lifashi", a formation of the new concept of "labor" as well as a new ethics of service were presented. In this process, the spirit of self-sacrifice was emphasized to solve the crisis faced by the country in the beginning of60s.The various kinds of "new man" are the reflection and the symbol of a new era. But the demonstration of this group of people wasn’t one hundred percent successful as the artistic discourse was not always synchronized with the political discourse. In the last part of the paper, those problems are examined, which also infers that the discussion about "new man" on the big screen of the "Seventeen Years" will be continued and the experience should be concluded carefully. Only by this way, the practice of cinema of this period can be historical resources to our times.