Arts in the Chinese revolution: the intermedial relations between cinema and ballet in the "Red detachment of women"

Cinema became the fundamental artistic form aimed at educating the people and consolidating socialist ideas in China from 1949 onwards, after the victory of the communists in the civil war waged for many years against the Nationalist Party and the declaration of the People’s Republic by Mao Zedong. With the nationalization of film studios in 1953 and the beginning of production of filming equipment in China in the same decade, the national film industry recovers its production, which was quite prolific in the 1930s and shortly after World War II between 1945 and 1949, and incorporates a decidedly propaganda bias, committed to building a new country.

The various film forms developed since the founding of the People’s Republic served the same purpose: to educate the people of New China. In fiction cinema, there was a need to emphasize who the heroes were, and especially who were the villains who were enemies of the people. For the Communist Party, it was essential that the Chinese population identify its oppressors – foreign imperialists, landlords, bourgeois, nationalists and counterrevolutionaries, so that these could always be fought during the process of building a nation without oppression and exploitation. It was also essential to recognize the characters who fought in favor of the people and the liberation of China: the entire working class – from the fields and cities, united with the Red Army, commanded by the Communist Party.

Starting from these basic principles of depicting national heroes and villains, Chinese cinema of the Maoist era adopted the aesthetics of Soviet socialist realism, not only in cinema but also in other artistic forms. The cinematographic narrative based on socialist realism consisted of clearly defining the beginning, middle and end of the stories told by the films, as well as demonstrating an idealism that awakened in the spectators the hope for positive social changes. In these productions, which took place in the newly nationalized film studios of Shanghai and Beijing, the villains were always portrayed in a darker way through the dark colors of the costumes, contrasting makeup, long shot framing to make them «smaller» and lighting that partially covered them with shadows. These aesthetic choices attributed negative visual aspects to the villains, causing estrangement, fear and rejection in the spectators.

To represent positive characters, the aesthetics of socialist realism used resources that were completely opposite to those mentioned above: the heroes of the people – soldiers of the Red Army and members of the Communist Party, were portrayed with lightcolored costumes, makeup that highlighted their faces in a way positive, counter-plongée framings – thus revealing their grandeur and dignity, and lighting devices that made them almost holy figures, associating communism with light, liberation and a bright future. This representation of the people’s heroes made the spectators create affection and inspiration for these characters, thus awakening a desire to become a people’s hero in real life.

With the aesthetic choice of socialist realism established – used little by little by directors in the early 1950s, the cinema of the People’s Republic began to narrate the historical episodes of struggle that the country had recently gone through. It was also an intention of the narratives of the period to emphasize that the revolution was in the process of being built and should go forward, not only in China, but also worldwide.

The Red Detachment of Women ( hongse niangzi jun 红色娘子军 ), released in 1961 and directed by Xie Jin, was the director’s second feature film produced during the 17 Years Period (1949–1966). Xie Jin is one of the main directors in the history of Chinese cinema, described by Costa (1987) as «an author whose universe is truly cinema and who, on the side of exception, clearly testifies to the very diverse potentialities of the intersection between this world (this culture, this civilization) and cinema» [1, p. 64]. The Red Detachment was one of the films commissioned by the Communist Party to commemorate its 40th anniversary. The feature portrays, through the trajectory of the protagonist Wu Qionghua, an episode of the liberation process of Hainan island between 1930 and 1932.

The protagonist is Wu Qionghua, a young peasant woman who lived under exploitative conditions in the lands of the rich and cruel Nan Batian. Her family had been murdered by the landlord, who took them as property, forcing the young woman to do all kinds of hard work, and torturing her as punishment for her attempts to escape. Everything changes when two Communist Party members – Hong Changqing and Xiao Pang, arrive on the island disguised as wealthy merchants. They infiltrate Nan’s property, observe how men and women were subjected to all kinds of humiliation there, and witness the physical punishment that Qionghua suffered in the cellars of the house.

Feigning interest in trading with Nan Batian, Hong Changqing buys Wu Qionghua, takes her out of the property and after freeing her directs her to look for the Red Army camp on the island and join the female detachment. This act marks the beginning of the character’s liberation trajectory, which can be directly associated with the liberation of the island and of China itself. On the way to the camp Qionghua meets another girl named Hong Lian, oppressed and imprisoned by family traditions. The two young women decide to flee in order to meet the Red Army, developing a sisterly relationship. After accepted by the female detachment, the characters go through a process of political education and military strategies, also learning to direct their personal desires for revenge to the collective struggle for the liberation of the Chinese people.

Wu Qionghua, through her striking facial expression and the determination of her youth, represents female strength, the achievement of liberation and the revolution that was also still young and should go ahead. Xie Jin’s film had several awards1

and marked generations of Chinese people, from the 1960s to the present day [2]. The film is part of a long list of works in different media about Hainan’s liberation history under the title The Red Detachment of Women . According to researcher Kristine Harris [3], the first known production with this title is a report published between the years 1957/1958, in which characters would already be represented a few years later in Xie’s feature film [3]. In this same period, The Red Detachment of Women had its first adaptation for the stage, in the form of a local Hainan opera, called Qiongju, sung in the island’s dialect. This first opera version was performed only in Hainan as the dialect was only understood by the local people.

Xie Jin’s feature film released in 1961, The Red Detachment of Women would again be adapted for the stage in the same decade. Between 1963 and 1964, the Beijing Dance Academy and the Beijing Opera Academy adapted the film’s script into a repertoire classical ballet version, and a Peking Opera ver-sion². In 1966, a comic book version was released, attributed to Liang Xin, screenwriter of Xie’s feature film. Between 1971 and 1972, at the height of the Cultural Revolution, a period in which artistic productions were under the meticulous command of Jiang Qing, Mao Zedong’s fourth wife, The Red Detachment of Women was again adapted for ballet and opera, this time once in studio-filmed versions. The ballet was widely screened in movie theaters in cities, and in traveling cinemas³ across the country, and, like Xie Jin’s feature film, it was a great success with the public, and ended up enshrining the title The Red Detachment of Women .

The filmed version of the opera, however, did not obtain the same prestige as the ballet, and at the time was considered only a complement to it. In her article Re-makes / Re-models: The Red Detachment of Women between stage and Screen Harris points out some factors that justify the failure of the filmed opera among the public. Opera version is twenty minutes longer than the ballet, making it tiring to watch, and lacks the appeal of the action and incredible bodily technique of the dancers in their acrobatics and ensemble entrances. Furthermore, the filming and cutting techniques employed in the opera did not suit the filmic language as well as the ballet did, with great success.

Relations between Chinese cinema and other arts have been very close since the first film shot in the country in 1905. In Conquering the Jun Mountain (ding junshan定军山, Ren Jingfeng), famous opera actor Tan Xinpei – the favorite of Empress Cixi4, plays the role of an opera, a typically Chinese theatrical style distinct from Western theater. With the development of the Chinese film industry during the 1920s and 30s, relations with other artistic forms evidenced through the aesthetics, language and genres of films: theater, martial arts, opera, and comedies, among others. After the founding of the People’s Republic in 1949, and the years that comprise the period of the Cultural Revolution (1966-1976), relations between Chinese cinema and other media became even more intense, and with the purpose of meeting the demands arts established by the Chinese Communist Party5.

In the films in question, we are especially interested in the intermedial relations between cinema and dance – specifically the classical ballet developed in China during the Maoist period. Taking the theories of intermediality developed by Agnes Pethó and Irina Rajewski about intermediality in cinema, we will approach the films from a historical perspective, which could make the political dimension of this intermedi-ality emerge.