Under this special historical condition, both commercial films that shunned away from political topics and progressive films contributed to the industry's unprecedented prosperity, makingShanghaian oriental Hollywood. But the war interrupted this movie boom, and led to the birth of the Sole Island Movies, referring to the movies made by an isolated Shanghai following Japan's invasion. After the victory of the War of Resistance against Japanese Aggression (1937-1945), Shanghai's movie industry began to revive. The "Social Criticism Movies" represented by the works of the Kunlun Company became a trend.
The task of advocating Chinese nationalism and modernism through films was initially undertaken by the second generation of Chinese filmmakers around the 1930s. They also cultivated a tradition of looking into social problems in filmmaking. Seeking change and progress by analyzing social problems, these social-realist films explore the issues in relation to national and class contradictions within the framework of struggle and emancipation.
Cai Chusheng
Born in Shanghai, Cai Chusheng (January 12, 1906 to July 15, 1968) was a native of Chaoyang City in South China'sGuangdong Province. He became an apprentice in a grocery at the age of twelve. When he was nineteen years old, he participated in the Workers' Union in Shantou (also in Guangdong), where he became the playwright, director and actor.
Cai went to Shanghai again in 1927, and played some roles in a couple of movies and wrote the playwright for a movie in the first two years. Cai became an assistant director in 1929, and in 1931 he wrote the scripts and directed a few influential movies includingDawn over the Metropolis, Song of the Fishermen,andNew Women, among whichSong of the Fishermenwon a medal of honor at the 1935 Moscow International Film Exhibition, becoming the first Chinese movie to fetch an international award and win international fame.
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