Sea Movie Map (with CD-ROM)

Author: Xiaolu / Country: Mainland China
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2006-01-01
Features: "Arise, ye who refuse to be slaves!" The resounding rhythm still echoes the vicissitudes of nearly a century. The song takes us beyond the boundaries of time. Freeze at 1935. The premiere advertisement for the film Children of Fortune at the Jincheng Theatre lies quietly in the Shanghai News on May 24 of that year. The film was a sensation at the time, and people were proud to have seen it, as it reflected the anxieties and uncertainties of ordinary people under social transformation. The film's theme song was March of the Volunteers, which later became the national anthem of China. It is said that whenever the film screened to the point where March of the Volunteers played, the entire audience would sing along. Meanwhile, in Shanghai, the song was in high demand, with people rushing to buy sheet music for the film's tunes, which sometimes cost as much as a movie ticket.
On August 16 of the same year, the memorial service for the composer of the national anthem, Nie Er, was also held here. People came from all directions to commemorate this national musician who had written countless moving melodies, such as The Road Song, The Graduation Song, and March of the Volunteers. Each song had inspired those who had once been lost. The host of the memorial service was Cai Chusheng, a film director who had once clashed with Nie Er. Cai Chusheng was the founder of Chinese realistic cinema. Of the four feature films that set the highest box office records in China before liberation, three were directed or co-directed by him—Morning in the Big City (1933), The Song of the Fishermen (1934), and A River Flows East (1947, co-directed with Zheng Junli). After Nie Er criticized his film A Pink Dream as a "tool for numbing class consciousness," Cai Chusheng went to Nie Er's home. After a heated argument, they discovered that their artistic ideals were so similar, leading them to collaborate on the film The Song of the Fishermen, which had the people of Shanghai in a frenzy.