Cinema
Crossroads
十字街頭
Shen Xiling · 1937
Synopsis
In Shanghai in the time of the crisis, four young graduates share a room and look for work without finding any; on a quay, Zhao stops one of them, Xu, from taking his own life. Zhao ends up getting a job at a newspaper. A young graduate, Yang, rents the neighbouring room: between them, the thin partition becomes a battlefield, with wet laundry, nails driven through the wall, warning notes. Without knowing who the other is, they pass each other on the tram.
Context
The film was released on 15 April 1937, produced by Mingxing, which was seeking to gain a foothold in the market for left-wing cinema, dominated by Lianhua; the music is by He Luting. The two leading roles are played by Zhao Dan and Bai Yang. It is placed among the mid-thirties films that evoked, openly or not, the war with Japan. The Festival des 3 Continents showed it in Nantes in 2013 under the title Au carrefour, and a DVD with English subtitles was released in the United States in 2007. A sequel was shot in 2001.
Who it is for
A bittersweet comedy of a little under two hours, carried by two lively, mischievous actors.
Prizes and reception
The book Electric Shadows sees in it a funny and inventive comedy of the Depression, and China Daily a success of its time that has remained timeless.
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