- [UNTITLED]
- Contributors
- Introduction: Chinese Cinemas and the Art of Extrapolation
- D. W. Griffith and the Rise of Chinese Cinema in Early 1920s Shanghai
- Ombres Chinoises: Split Screens and Parallel Lives in Love and Duty
- Fei Mu, Mei Lanfang, and the Polemics of Screening China
- A National Cinema for a Puppet State: The Manchurian Motion Picture Association
- A Genealogy of Cinephilia in the Maoist Period
- Cold War Politics and Hong Kong Mandarin Cinema
- Conceiving Cross-Border Communities: Mobile Women in Recent Hong Kong Cinema
- Taiwan New Cinema: Small Nation with Soft Power
- Chinese Cinema With Hollywood Characteristics, or How <i>The Karate Kid</i> Became a Chinese Film
- World as Picture and Ruination: On Jia Zhangke’s Still Life as World Cinema
- The Opera Film in Chinese Cinema: Cultural Nationalism and Cinematic Form
- A Small History of <i>Wenyi</i>
- Art, Politics, and Internationalism: Korean War Films in Chinese Cinema
- Edification Through Affection: The Cultural Revolution Films, 1974–1976
- Reforming Vengeance: kung fu and the racial melancholia of chinese masculinity
- Desire and Distribution: Queer/Chinese/Cinema
- Thirdspace Between Flows and Places: Chinese Independent Documentary and Social Theories of Space and Locality
- From Anticorruption to Officialdom: The Transformation of Chinese Dynasty TV Drama
- New Media: Large Screens in China
- Online Small-Screen Cinema: The Cinema of Attractions and the Emancipated Spectator
- Acting Real: Cinema, Stage, and the Modernity of Performance in Chinese Silent Film
- Edward Yang and Taiwan’s Age of Auteurs
- A Marriage of Convenience: Musical Moments in Chinese Movies
- Policing Film in Early Twentieth-Century China, 1905–1923
- Between Will and Negotiation: Film Policy in the First Three Years of the People’s Republic of China
- Fetish Power Unbound: A Small History of “Woman” in Chinese Cinema
- Ethnographic Representation Across Genres The Culture Trope in Contemporary Mainland Media
- Conjuring the Masses: The Spectral/Spectacular Crowd in Chinese Film
- The Idea of Asia(nism) and Trans-Asian Productions
- Film and Contemporary Chinese Art: Mediums and Remediation
- Crossing the Same River Twice: Documentary Reenactment and the Founding of PRC Documentary Cinema
- Remade in China: Cinema with “Chinese Elements” in the Dapian Age
- Along the Riverrun: Cinematic Encounters in Tsai Ming-Liang’s The River
- Afterword (<span xml:lang="chi">尾聲</span>)
- Filmographies
- Index
Abstract and Keywords
This chapter begins with reflections on the musical “event,” as primary attraction to early film viewers, and potential destabilizer of narrative aims. This is followed by a brief overview of music in 1930s Shanghai, with the rehabilitation of popular music in a time of occupation. The marriage metaphor is used to engage dilemmas that Chinese cinemas faced in using music, sound, and images. When uniting distinct expressive registers—as storytelling waxes musical and music comes to a narrative function—integration becomes key. Integration seeks a mosaic of story, setting, and musical performance, yielding a perfect blend of camera, movement, and song. Yet integration has different meanings and functions. When a film offers songs or musical sequences that disregard “the integrated ideal,” it is seen as lacking. Songs may have their own inclinations, distinct from—but not necessarily in conflict with—the dramatic goals of the film itself. The chapter concludes with some brief examples of musical moments in contemporary Taiwan films.
Keywords: integration, synchronization, popular music, patriotism, musicals, shidai qu (Mandarin pop)
Darrell William Davis is Honorary Associate Professor in Visual Studies at Lingnan University, Hong Kong. He is the author of Picturing Japaneseness: Monumental Style, National Identity, Japanese Film (1996), co-author of Taiwan Film Directors: A Treasure Island (2005) and East Asian Screen Industries (2008), and co-editor of Cinema: Taiwan: Politics, Popularity and State of the Arts (2007).
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- [UNTITLED]
- Contributors
- Introduction: Chinese Cinemas and the Art of Extrapolation
- D. W. Griffith and the Rise of Chinese Cinema in Early 1920s Shanghai
- Ombres Chinoises: Split Screens and Parallel Lives in Love and Duty
- Fei Mu, Mei Lanfang, and the Polemics of Screening China
- A National Cinema for a Puppet State: The Manchurian Motion Picture Association
- A Genealogy of Cinephilia in the Maoist Period
- Cold War Politics and Hong Kong Mandarin Cinema
- Conceiving Cross-Border Communities: Mobile Women in Recent Hong Kong Cinema
- Taiwan New Cinema: Small Nation with Soft Power
- Chinese Cinema With Hollywood Characteristics, or How <i>The Karate Kid</i> Became a Chinese Film
- World as Picture and Ruination: On Jia Zhangke’s Still Life as World Cinema
- The Opera Film in Chinese Cinema: Cultural Nationalism and Cinematic Form
- A Small History of <i>Wenyi</i>
- Art, Politics, and Internationalism: Korean War Films in Chinese Cinema
- Edification Through Affection: The Cultural Revolution Films, 1974–1976
- Reforming Vengeance: kung fu and the racial melancholia of chinese masculinity
- Desire and Distribution: Queer/Chinese/Cinema
- Thirdspace Between Flows and Places: Chinese Independent Documentary and Social Theories of Space and Locality
- From Anticorruption to Officialdom: The Transformation of Chinese Dynasty TV Drama
- New Media: Large Screens in China
- Online Small-Screen Cinema: The Cinema of Attractions and the Emancipated Spectator
- Acting Real: Cinema, Stage, and the Modernity of Performance in Chinese Silent Film
- Edward Yang and Taiwan’s Age of Auteurs
- A Marriage of Convenience: Musical Moments in Chinese Movies
- Policing Film in Early Twentieth-Century China, 1905–1923
- Between Will and Negotiation: Film Policy in the First Three Years of the People’s Republic of China
- Fetish Power Unbound: A Small History of “Woman” in Chinese Cinema
- Ethnographic Representation Across Genres The Culture Trope in Contemporary Mainland Media
- Conjuring the Masses: The Spectral/Spectacular Crowd in Chinese Film
- The Idea of Asia(nism) and Trans-Asian Productions
- Film and Contemporary Chinese Art: Mediums and Remediation
- Crossing the Same River Twice: Documentary Reenactment and the Founding of PRC Documentary Cinema
- Remade in China: Cinema with “Chinese Elements” in the Dapian Age
- Along the Riverrun: Cinematic Encounters in Tsai Ming-Liang’s The River
- Afterword (<span xml:lang="chi">尾聲</span>)
- Filmographies
- Index