Life During Wartime: Chinese Patriotic Films of WWII

Donnie Yen’s newest kung fu movie, IP MAN, was a huge popular success in China earlier this year, despite a rather grim tone to the story. The film is somewhat unusual for the genre in that it is set in a very specific period. The late 1930s saw the first brutal stages of the international conflagration known as World War II. Although Master Ip may be one of the most skilled martial artists in China, he can’t defeat the entire Japanese army. But as a symbol of resistance to oppression, Ip Man follows in the footsteps of many earlier Chinese patriotic heroes and heroines.

Chinese-American actress Anna May Wong.

After years of smaller-scale conflicts, the Japanese invasion of China began in earnest in 1937. By the end of 1938, much of northeastern and coastal China was in Japanese hands, and the Chinese Nationalist government was operating from the provisional capital of Chongqing (Chungkung). Over the next few years, guerrilla warfare by local troops was an important part of the Nationalist strategy of resistance. In 1941, the American Volunteer Group, also known as the Flying Tigers, a US-financed air force, was also operating in Japanese-occupied China. The tide slowly but surely turned against the forces of the Imperial Japanese Army, but not without appalling losses and reports of atrocities against the civilian population. The Sino-Japanese war officially ended on September 9, 1945, with the surrender of the Japanese army.

An Asian flyer for Wong’s US film LADY FROM CHUNGKING (1942), probably released after the war in Asia. The residual hatred towards Japanese soldiers can be seen in the flyer’s emphasis on revenge.

Shanghai was one of the first Chinese cities to fall under Japanese control in 1937. It was also the center of Chinese film production. A handful of film studios continued to operate during the “Orphan Island Period,” from 1937 to 1941. They were subject to Japanese censorship, however, and after the war, some of the Orphan Island filmmakers were accused of collaboration. One 1939 Shanghai production, MULAN JOINS THE ARMY, directed by Bu Wencang, was nevertheless accepted by Chinese audiences as a veiled call for resistance. Many of the Shanghai filmmakers had fled to Hong Kong, where they also made films supporting the resistance effort, until Japanese control of Hong Kong in 1941 shut down film production there. During the hiatus in filmmaking, a number of actors, including future kung fu stars Kwan Tak-hing and Shek Kin, joined patriotic theater troupes and labored under dangerous conditions to lift the morale of their countrymen.

Anna May Wong as the guerrilla leader in LADY FROM CHUNGKING.

Chinese film production may have come to a standstill, but the propaganda and morale-boosting effects of patriotic movies were not overlooked by Chinese-American movie people. Hollywood star Anna May Wong (1905-1961) made LADY FROM CHUNGKING in 1942 and BOMBS OVER BURMA in 1943 to rally public support for anti-Japanese resistance forces in China. In LADY FROM CHUNGKING, directed by William Nigh for the Producers Releasing Corporation, Wong plays the leader of a guerrilla band masquerading as coolies in the countryside. She rescues two American Flying Tiger pilots when their plane is shot down by the Japanese over occupied territory, and becomes the mistress of a Japanese general to learn the details of troop movements. The general is played by Harold Huber, an actor who specialized in “ethnic” types. A peculiarity of LADY FROM CHUNGKING is that all the Japanese roles are played by actors of European descent, while the Chinese characters are played by actual Asians. Evidently the film was successful in building support for the war effort in China and for the Flying Tigers.

Wu Lizhu fights the Japanese in ALL THE PEOPLE OF ONE MIND.

It’s interesting to contrast Anna May Wong’s role in LADY FROM CHUNGKING with that of Wu Lizhu (Wu Lai-chu) in the post-war patriotic film ALL THE PEOPLE OF ONE MIND (aka BLOODSHED IN A BESIEGED CITADEL, UNITED AS ONE), directed by Ren Pengnian in 1948, and discussed in my “Origins of Kung Fu Cinema” series. Wu also played the female leader of a band of resistance fighters. In my earlier post, I wondered if Yuen Siu-tin, father of kung fu choreographer Yuen Woo-ping and early collaborator with Wu Lizhu and Ren Pengnian, had worked on this film. The agile choreography with comic touches was reminiscent of Yuen Woo-ping’s early work. I posted a clip from ALL THE PEOPLE OF ONE MIND, showing Wu fighting two Japanese soldiers, on Youtube. Two viewers think that one of the soldiers is actually Yuen Siu-tin. He would have been 36 years old in 1948. Take a look and see what you think!

In the years following World War II, many Chinese filmmakers, like those in Hollywood, would revisit the events of the war in order to show both the heroism and culpability of those times. Although memories are now fading, the events that occurred between 1937 and 1945 continue to evoke powerful emotional responses in audiences. The makers of IP MAN are to be congratulated for not shying away from showing the harshness of life during wartime.

Tags: Anna May Wong, Ren Pengnian, Wu Lizhu, Yuen Siu-tin