Fei Mu’s 1948 film Spring in a Small Town returns in 4K restoration at the Pingyao International Film Festival, decades after becoming a Chinese cinema classic.
“Fei Mu’s life was short, but his art has lasted.”
Spring in a Small Town was made in 1948. Nearly 80 years later, the film returned to the screen at the 10th Pingyao International Film Festival in Shanxi Province. A 4K-restored version had its Asian premiere at the festival’s Spring in a Small Town cinema hall.
Fei Mu’s son, Fei Mingxu, appeared at the screening. He spoke about his father in a few simple but moving words.
When the Pingyao International Film Festival was launched in 2017, its organisers established the Fei Mu Award. The award was set up with the authorisation of Fei Mu’s family. It recognises promising young filmmakers in Chinese-language cinema. Fei Mu has since become an important part of the festival’s identity.
Nearly a decade later, his best-known film returned to a cinema hall named after it. The China Film Archive carried out the 4K restoration. The work restored the original music and remastered the soundtrack in 5.1 surround sound. The screening also marked the 120th anniversary of Fei Mu’s birth.
Born in Shanghai in 1906, Fei Mu later moved with his family to Beijing. He studied at a French-language school and taught himself several foreign languages. He joined Lianhua Film Company in 1932. The following year, he made his directorial debut with Night in the City.
In 1936, his film Song of China was acquired by an American distributor. It was publicly screened in cities including Los Angeles. The film was the first Chinese production to be bought by an American distributor for public screening in the United States. It marked an early example of Chinese cinema reaching an overseas audience.
Fei Mu’s career unfolded during a period of war and upheaval in China. He directed Bloodshed on Wolf Mountain in 1936. The allegorical film was associated with the national defence film movement.
During the Japanese occupation of Shanghai, he made Confucius. After the outbreak of the Pacific War, he refused to cooperate with the Japanese-controlled film industry. He then left cinema for the theatre.
His creative career reached a peak in 1948. That year, he worked with Peking Opera master Mei Lanfang on Remorse at Death. It was China’s first colour feature film.
Fei Mu also completed Spring in a Small Town in just 101 days.
The film had only five actors. It follows Zhou Yuwen, a woman whose former lover returns to the small town where she lives with her husband. Much of the story is told through her voice-over. The characters struggle with emotions constrained by the social conventions of the time.
The film received a muted response when it was first released. Some critics even argued that it had lost touch with the realities of its time. It was largely overlooked for decades.
Then its reputation began to change.
In the 1980s and 1990s, Spring in a Small Town was rediscovered by film critics and scholars. It was later named one of the 10 greatest Chinese films of the previous 90 years by the Shanghai Film Critics Association.
In 2005, it topped a list of the 100 best Chinese-language films selected to mark the centenary of Chinese cinema. The list was compiled by the Hong Kong Film Awards Association and the Hong Kong Film Critics Society.
The film has also appeared on film-history lists published by Britain’s Sight and Sound magazine.
The film’s lasting appeal lies partly in Fei Mu’s distinctive cinematic language. At a time when Chinese cinema was largely shaped by social realism and the national crisis, he explored a more restrained form of filmmaking.
He used long takes, still images, voice-over and silence to convey emotion. His approach drew on elements of traditional Chinese art. These included the restraint of classical poetry, the use of space in traditional painting and the expressive language of Chinese opera.
Zhou Xing, a professor at Beijing Normal University, has described Spring in a Small Town as an important example of the development of a distinctive Chinese cinematic language.
Film scholar Dai Jinhua and other academics have also discussed the film in the context of modernity in Chinese cinema.
Fei Mu’s ideas about filmmaking have continued to attract attention. His essay On “Atmosphere”, written in the 1930s, remains a notable work in the history of Chinese film theory.
Critics have drawn comparisons between Fei Mu and Japanese director Yasujiro Ozu. Ozu’s films also used restrained camera language and everyday family relationships to explore emotion and human nature.
The two filmmakers worked in different cultural traditions. Yet they arrived at some strikingly similar approaches to cinema.
Fei Mu died in Hong Kong in January 1951. He was 45 years old. Hong Kong filmmakers held a memorial service for him. Writer Sima Wensen described him as a patriotic filmmaker.
More than seven decades later, his work continues to be restored, screened and discussed.
Additional reporting by Hu Jian.
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