Spring in a Small Town

1948
7.3| 1h34m| NA| en| More Info
Released: 01 February 1948 Released
Producted By: Wenhua Film Company
Country: China
Budget: 0
Revenue: 0
Official Website:
Info

A married couple living in a desolate small town in post-WWII China are paid a surprise visit by an old friend of the husband's.

Genre

Drama, Romance

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Director

Mu Fei

Production Companies

Wenhua Film Company

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Spring in a Small Town Audience Reviews

Console best movie i've ever seen.
MoPoshy Absolutely brilliant
ThrillMessage There are better movies of two hours length. I loved the actress'performance.
Janis One of the most extraordinary films you will see this year. Take that as you want.
rdinislobo If you are looking for a slice of life movie, look no further. A word of caution, however: this movie is a story, and a child of its time. There is no spectacular camera work, no epic soundtrack (or sound at all, for the most part), and certainly no special effects. Even the acting and dialogues are passable, at best. If you need any of these things to be immersed or even enjoy a movie, Spring in a Small Town is not for you.There are four characters in the movie (and I mean four, there are no other supporting cast members or extras). The first two we are introduced are a couple, and they are "content". This is he best word to describe their situation, for they are not happy nor sad. You quickly realize that they have been frozen in time for years.The conflict is created when an old friend (of both) comes back to town. This establishes the classic love triangle: the old friend has feelings for the wife, and she is torn between her own feelings towards him (or what she believes them to be) and those towards her husband. There is little more to say about this movie without spoiling, except reiterate that this is a Chinese movie from the 40's. This is very much removed from the "factory assembled" plot lines that have plagued movies/books/video games/series for a long time.If you were keeping track, the fourth character is the couple's caretaker, and he is a supporting character. In the end, i still walk away with a lesson: no matter how much we think our life will stay the same, things will always happen. Whether they create change or not, is up to us.
Boba_Fett1138 This is a nice little movie with a nice story, that plays the most important role in the entire movie.It's a quite intriguing dramatic story, with also romance present in it. The story is being told slowly but this works out all too well for its build up. The characters are nice and portrayed nicely by its actors. Normally I'm not a too big fan of the Asian acting style but the acting in this movie was simply good.Of course the movie is quite different in its approach and style from other genre movies, produced in the west. In a way this movie is more advanced already with its approach than the western movies made during the same era.I only wished the movie its visual style would had been a bit better. For a movie that is considered a kind of an art-house movie this movie is certainly lacking in some well looking sequences. This was obviously a quite cheap movie to make and it got made quite generically. Not that this is a bad thing, it just prevent this movie from truly distinct itself and raising itself above the genre.But oh well, this movie is all about its well constructed story and characters that are in it. In that regard this movie most certainly does not disappoint.8/10http://bobafett1138.blogspot.com/
zetes Frequently voted China's greatest film ever by Chinese critics, as well as Chinese film enthusiasts from the outside, and, frankly, I don't get it at all. What I saw was one of the most generic melodramas imaginable, blandly directed and acted, with a complete shrew for a protagonist. Wei Wei (don't laugh) is that shrew, a young married woman who has suffered alongside her tubercular husband (Yu Shi) for the past several years. It is post WWII, and they live with the husband's teenage sister (Hongmei Zhang) in a dilapidated home with not much money (the man had been wealthy when they married). Along comes the husband's old best friend (Wei Li), who also used to be the wife's boyfriend when they were teens. She considers running away from her husband with this man, while the husband pretty much remains oblivious, thinking he may engage his little sister to his friend. That's the set-up, and it doesn't go anywhere you wouldn't expect it to. I've actually seen the remake, directed by Blue Kite director Zhuangzhuang Tian. It runs a half hour longer, and is actually kind of dull, too, but at least it was pretty. This supposed classic is pretty intolerable.
Howard Schumann Produced in 1948 prior to the Communist takeover in China, Spring in a Small Town is a lyrical depiction of the intense psychological rivalry between two friends for the love of one woman. Directed by Fei Mu and based on a short story by Li Tianji, the film dramatizes the emotional entanglement of four people, conveying an intense eroticism that is powerful and haunting. Dai Liyan (Shi Yu), and his wife Zhou Yuwen, magnificently portrayed by the alluring Wei Wei, live in his old family house with Liyan's teenage sister, Dai Xiu (Zhang Hongmei) and the family servant Lao Huang (Cui Chaoming). Because of Liyan's tuberculosis, they are forced to sleep in separate rooms. Yuwen is a loyal and devoted wife but is bored and prefers to spend her time embroidering or going for solitary walks along the top of the crumbling city wall. When Zhang Zhichen (Li Wei), a boyhood friend of Liyan who is now a doctor arrives from Shanghai, it is revealed that Yuwen was his childhood sweetheart when she was only sixteen. The tension becomes palpable as each character is forced to hide their true self and feelings are expressed only with glances, body language, mannerisms, and silence. Zhichen's arrival brings a spark of life to the moribund household and soon all are taking walks together, singing songs, and playing games. The relationship between Yuwen and Zhichen slowly becomes rekindled and is crystallized at Xiu's 16th birthday party when both have too much to drink. When Yuwen cuts her hand on broken glass after a struggle with Zhichen, however, a distressing event occurs that transforms everyone's life.Spring in a Small Town has an elegance and intimacy that I found lacking in the remake last year by Tian Zhuanghuang. By depicting events from Yuwen's point of view and adding a poetic voiceover, Mu's film brings us much closer to the characters. Spring in a Small Town did not receive immediate critical acclaim when it was released and Fei Mu was labeled a "rightist" and left for Hong Kong, never to make another film. The film only began to find its audience when the China Film Archive made a new print in the early 80s. Now many Chinese critics consider it the greatest Chinese film ever made. I certainly would not argue with that.