Femmes nouvelles

Gee, health care in 1935 China is similar to health care in 2021 America - pay up, or forget life-saving treatment, even for a place called "Philanthropy Hospital." Men are also the same everywhere, and in all times, trying to take advantage of any possible situation for sex.

This film is a tad melodramatic, with the dying child and teardrops falling in a teacup and whatnot, but it's got some powerful messages about the difficult position women find themselves in the world. It's easier for a man to just up and leave a woman with her child, abandoning them to their fate. It's not enough for a woman to write a good book, it has to be promoted with a pretty picture, and accompanied by harassment from the publisher. And of course when a woman needs money in an emergency, the thing everyone thinks of is that she can get it easily by selling her body, because as an old woman puts it, "what other path is open to us?"

We see Ruan Lingyu look at birds in a cage and dance performances in which one woman is whipped, and another is a prisoner in chains, and the symbolism couldn't be any clearer. To an offer of marriage she says "What can marriage give me? Companion for life?! Might as well call it slave for life!" It's interesting that when she considers prostituting herself, she thinks of it as being a "slave for one night," and in using the same word, slave, it made me think she was linking marriages that aren't out of love to a form of prostitution, pretty subversive stuff.

I don't think Ruan is given quite enough range in the character and thought her performance was good-not-great, until that final scene in the hospital, where she's brilliant. It's an especially poignant scene because she would herself be dead just one month after the film was released, and in a shroud of tabloid rumors as the character was. My other favorite scenes was when her friend (Yin Xu) defends her when a sleazeball just won't take 'no' for an answer. She breaks his cane like a twig, summons up some martial arts defense moves, and then after getting hit with a chair, head butts him not once but twice. God damn.

I loved a lot of what the film was doing, but its length and unevenness made it tough to fully enjoy. The sound technology was behind the curve, so it's got intertitles and then was also dubbed after the fact, sometimes with effects matching what we see on the screen. Director Cai Chusheng makes up for it a little bit with various video effects, including overlays and things like a flashback sequence viewed out a train window. It probably should have been pared down a bit, but it's still well worth seeking out.

I watched this movie because I really enjoyed the lead actress, Lingyu Ruan, in an earlier film called The Goddess. It is a very late silent film, which I guess would be due to the distribution issues involved with releasing a talkie in a country where so many different dialects are spoken. Oddly enough though, the version I watched actually did have an audio track, with not only music and sound effects, but dubbed over intertitles as well. Anyway, Lingyu Ruan's acting was once again really outstanding and I thought that this was overall a better film than The Goddess. It tells the story of Wei Ming, a feminist intellectual trying to make an independent living in a nearly completely male chauvinistic society. She has one enlightened male friend who is trying to help her get her book published, but she is surrounded by misogynistic men who only want to use and degrade her. Once her daughter falls ill with leukemia things go from bad to worse, and though I don't want to completely spoil the ending, it is not a happy one at all. The relevance of that this film had at the time is reflected in how grimly foreboding it was of the lead actress' own fate. Going into acting was one of the few ways women could make an independent living during this time, sadly Ruan and quite a few actresses would end up just like Wei Ming.

For centuries China followed the age-old customs of women's subservience to men. Females were expected to fully obey their arranged-husbands' orders, fulfilling their family needs at home while the men were involved in the business community. Changes were afoot, however, slowly creeping into the country's culture beginning in the early 1900s. One of cinema's most well-known films reflecting the era of women's elevation in status in China was director Cai Chusheng February 1935's "New Women," starring Ruan Lingyu as a writer who is confronted with her past.

"New Women" was inspired by the Chinese actress and writer Ai Xia, whom some speculate Chusheng had been romantically involved. One of only two female scriptwriters during Chinese "Left-Wing" cinematic movement, she committed suicide by eating raw opium in 1934 after, as reflected in Cai's film, she was criticized in the press for raising money for her daughter's illness by hiring herself out for one evening. Her life became a symbol for women's emancipation in China. Chusheng's movie shows actress Ruan as Wei Ming reenacting Ai Xia's final days while she attempts to publish her first novel. The publisher of one of Wei's friend recognizes she wrote a great book, but is reluctant to publish it because of Wei's lack of any previous works. Wei's illegitimate daughter, who is raised by her poor sister, is sick and dying. The sister, for want of money, comes to Wei for help. Wei experiences the rigid and selfish attitudes of the traditional Chinese men who refuse to help her finance a cure for her daughter. She, like Ai Xia, hits drugs hard after her daughter dies. The brutal media coverage of her drug addiction empowers her to seek revenge of the men who doubled crossed her as she realizes the 'new woman' inside her.

The idea of the 'new women' in China was emerging in the early 1900s where in the coastal cities females found employment opportunities outside the house. Many were heavily recruited like Wei for their teaching skills. As each profession eventually found women working alongside men, there were others who were intimidated by the females' new position in society. "New Women" shows the adverse affects of those traditional Chinese women whom accepted their husbands' indiscretions, such as Mrs. Wang, by turning a blind eye to their husbands indiscretions to ensure their own financial security. Chusheng's film has been cited as a significant milestone in modern Chinese feminist cinema, one of the first woman-liberated films to have been made in the country.

There's a cruel irony to the "New Women's" ending with Wei's suicide and that of the actress who played her, Ruan Lingyu. When the movie was released, the tabloids were critical of the film, feeling it unfairly depicted the newspaper business as cruel and dishonest. Cai was forced to make several extensive cuts to the film. As in Ai Xia's personal life, reporters got wind of Raun"s personal love life and abusive relationships, and made a big deal of them. One month after "New Women" was released, Ruan committed suicide on March 8, 1935. The funeral of China's top movie star lasted three days, with thousands attending her miles-long funeral procession. Three women witnessing the procession committed suicide. The New York Times ranked the event "the most spectacular funeral of the century."