Beyond the ideology principle: the two faces of dubbed foreign films in PRC, 1949–1966

Abstract

During the 17-year period China imported over 800 features from the Soviet bloc, Western Europe and beyond; these dubbed foreign films regularly occupied a third to a half of total exhibition time in Chinese theaters. Previous scholarship tended to rely on newspapers and journals of the time and emphasize the propagandist efficacy of these films. Based on government documents, film company records, and memoirs, I argue that foreign films both served and failed to serve the conflicting imperatives of program supply, diplomacy, and propaganda. As a result of these conflicting functions – in addition to their ‘foreignness’ – dubbed foreign films were sheltered from much of the censorship and denunciation inflicted on domestic productions; at times they could even betray their propagandist purpose and constitute a legitimate space of mild dissent against mainstream aesthetics and ideology.

Acknowledgements

I am grateful to Dr. Gary Xu and Dr. Robert Tierney for their advice and help throughout my research process. I would also like to thank Dr. Song Hwee Lim and the two anonymous reviewers for their encouragement and helpful comments.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. Head of the CCP Central Propaganda Department.

2. PRC's film industry reports at the time always included dubbed/subtitled foreign film figures along with those of domestic features, animation, newsreel, and science education films.

3. Even during the Cultural Revolution period, foreign films still made up half of the number of films publicly exhibited (Clark 2012, 53). During the post-Mao era, soon after the re-release of some seventeen-year period domestic productions had run its course, the audience's enthusiasm for domestic films waned. Again it was foreign films that came to the rescue: for decades they were an important source of revenue that nourished China's film industry. In 1987, 108 of the 142 domestic releases suffered financial loss, yet the 48 foreign films (together with 3 Hong Kong films) enabled the distribution sector to make a profit of 760 million RMB (Li 2010, 102–3).

4. Statistic from Yingpian. Here for Eastern bloc I do not include the six Yugoslav films imported around 1956–1957.

5. Domestic films here do not include films by privately owned studios or Hong Kong studios.

6. A popular joke among Soviet cinephiles claimed that ‘films can be good, bad, and Chinese.’ This quip most likely emerged from the seventeen-year period, considering the duration of the Sino-Soviet split (Razlogova 2014, 164).

7. Statistic from Li (2010).

8. The propagandists’ disinclination and inability to critique foreign films is evidenced in a 1968 document titled Four Hundred Poisonous Weeds and Films with Serious Mistakes, a critique of seventeen-year period domestic and foreign films partly based on Jiang Qing's speech. Only the last one hundred of the four hundred are foreign films (while imported films outnumbered domestic production in the seventeen-year period), and on average the critique on each foreign film is significantly shorter and less eloquent than that on a domestic film.

9. The film was adapted from Alexander Ostrovsky's play Guilty without Guilt (Без вины виноватые). The play had seen several Chinese adaptations, including the 1933 film Mother and Son (母与子, dir. Tang Jie) and a 1952 Shanghai opera Guilty without Guilt (无罪的人). Unfortunately the regulation and censorship over local opera is beyond the scope of my project.

10. This was due to both the economic catastrophe and the Sino-Soviet Split.

11. During the seventeen-year period, the China Film Company typically imported foreign films by purchasing their release rights within the PRC for a five-year period.

12. This explains the appearance of films such as Anna Round the Neck on the exhibition schedule shown above. Released in the PRC in 1955, its lease term should have expired in 1960.

13. This was after Mao issued a directive in September 1963 saying that if the Ministry of Culture does not promote socialist art it should be renamed the Ministry of Kings and Generals, Scholars and Beauties, or Dead Foreigners.

14. These films included The Right to be Born, Fathers and Sons, Intrigue and Love, Ordered to Love and White Nights.

15. ‘Waishi wu xiaoshi’ is a saying well known among China's diplomatic circle and usually attributed to Zhou Enlai.

16. For instance, Zhou Enlai, Chen Yi and He Long attended the reception at the Asian Film Week in 1957 (Bian 2011, 210).

17. This is a much toned-down version of Tina Mai Chen's claim that 1950s Soviet films situated the Chinese audience within a framework of ‘modernization and worldwide socialist revolution (2004, 106).’

18. He was persecuted in 1957 and committed suicide.

19. Famous film actors.

20. According to Xu, furniture coupons (jiaju dengjizheng) were given to youths who were not married by a certain age to help them get married.

21. For example, Article 6 in ‘Measures for Control over Imported Films’ promulgated by the State Council in 1981 (lost effect in 1991) states that feature films gifted to Chinese individuals by foreigners would normally be sent back by the customs.

22. When the Chinese film industry fell into another crisis around 1994, an important part of the new ‘way-out’ still lay in import policy reform, i.e., bringing in Hollywood blockbusters on a revenue-sharing basis.

23. Another place analogous to the foreign is the ancient – the temporal marginal, where directors such as Wu Yonggang escaped to during the seventeen-year period.

24. The above two instances are also quoted by Thomas Chen.

25. Thomas Chen vaguely hints at the idea with the phrase ‘as if taking this reader's advice (1995).’

26. Foreign films are highlighted in these figures.

27. The titles of these foreign films available to Shanghai audiences in January 1963 were as follows (titles with an * were subtitled instead of dubbed):

小島奇聞 (Denmark) [Guld og grønne skove; The Girls Are Willing] 1958*

媽媽你不要哭 (France) [La verte moisson; Green Harvest] 1959

馬門教授 (East Germany) [Professor Mamlock; Professor Mamlock] 1961

帶閣樓的房子 (Soviet Union) [Дом с мезонином; The House with an Attic] 1961

烽火的里程 (Soviet Union) [Огненные версты; Miles of Fire] 1957

生的權利 (Mexico) [El derecho de nacer; The Right to be Born] 1952

鬼魂西行 (UK) [The Ghost Goes West] 1935

五天五夜 (Soviet Union + East Germany) [Пять дней, пять ночей; Fünf Tage - Fünf Nächte; Five Days, Five Nights] 1961

美麗的盧萊特 (East Germany) [Die schöne Lurette] 1960*

大牆後面 (Argentina) [Detrás de un largo muro; Behind the Big Wall] 1958

前面是急轉彎 (Soviet Union) [Впереди - крутой поворот; Ahead – a sharp turn] 1960

海軍上將烏沙科夫 (Soviet Union) [Адмирал Ушаков; Admiral Ushakov] 1953

一僕二主 (Soviet Union) [Слуга двух господ; Servant of Two Masters] 1953

柏林情話 (East Germany) [Eine Berliner Romanze; A Berlin Romance] 1956

鹽的奇跡 (Colombia) [El milagro de sal; The Miracle of Salt] 1958

根據法律 (Finland) [Lain mukaan; According to the Law] 1956

縮影 (Japan) [縮図; Epitome] 1953

瀑布 (Bolivia) [La vertiente; The Source] 1958

上尉的女兒 (Soviet Union) [Капитанская дочка; The Captain's Daughter] 1958

阿爾及利亞的姑娘 (Egypt) [جميلة بوحريد; Jamila, the Algerian] 1958

神童 (West Germany) [Wir Wunderkinder; Aren't We Wonderful?] 1958

偷渡的苦工 (Mexico) [Espaldas mojadas; Wetback] 1955

法吉瑪 (Soviet Union) [Фатима; Fatima] 1958–1959

脖子上的安娜 (Soviet) [Анна на шее ; Anna Round the Neck] 1954

第十二夜 (Soviet) [Двенадцатая ночь; Twelfth Night] 1955

祝你成功 (Soviet Union) [В добрый час!; Good luck!] 1957

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Weijia Du

Weijia Du is a doctoral candidate at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Her major field is modern Chinese literature and film. Her doctoral dissertation is titled ‘Exchanging Faces: Dubbing Foreign Films in China, 1949–1994’.