by Yuqian Yan

Introduction
Defining the Collective
Repeated Gestures
Physical Intimacy
Conclusion

Introduction

As one of the most prominent early Chinese filmmakers, Sun Yu is known for his poetic style, kinetic energy, and optimistic outlook against a backdrop of national crisis. His six extant silent era films, Wild Rose (Ye meigui), The Blood of Passion on the Volcano (Huoshan Qingxue), Daybreak (Tianming), Little Toys (Xiao Wanyi) [also known as Playthings], Queen of Sports (Tiyu Huanghou), and The Big Road (Da lu), all fall into the time period of 1932 to 1934, when national salvation became an increasingly pressing matter after the Japanese occupation of Manchuria and the Battle of Shanghai in 1932.¹ These films demonstrate Sun Yu’s belief that a strong physical body and sanguine spirit are fundamental to the strengthening of the nation.² The robust farm women in Wild Rose (1932) and Daybreak (1932), the professionally trained athletes in Queen of Sports (1934), and the strong and upbeat construction workers in The Big Road (1934) present a fresh image of a young Chinese generation physically and mentally prepared to fight for the nation (see Figures 1 through 3).
Besides the attention dedicated to the portrayal of individuals, these films also reveal Sun’s consistent interest in depicting the dynamics among the collective, especially the family-like working community, which serves as the source of care, support, and inspiration for its members. In Sun Yu’s cinematic world, intimate interactions do not occur exclusively, or even primarily, between the romantic leads but frequently appear among peers of the same or opposite sex, to the extent that it might seem confusing to contemporary audiences who are not familiar with his style. From Wild Rose to The Big Road, romantic plots increasingly dissolve into narratives that stress collective love and solidarity, which find their expression through affectionate interactions and carefully designed cinematography. Such romanticized depictions of the collective paved the way for the imagination of an emotionally charged national community.

Defining the Collective

How exactly does Sun Yu convey a sense of collective intimacy through cinematic language? What are the reoccurring patterns that characterize his directing style in these segments, and how are they related to the rest of the films? What can we learn when we compare Sun’s formal features with other silent era filmmakers in and beyond China? This paper presents a preliminary effort to use time-based annotation tools to analyze the performance and cinematography that contribute to the representation of a loving community. By categorizing annotated scenes of reoccurring gestures and intimate interactions in three of Sun’s representative silent or partial-sound films—Wild Rose (1932), Little Toys (1933), and The Big Road (1934)— I will lay out his unique technique for depicting intimacy among fellow workers. Designed as a foundational step toward the building of a comprehensive database on early cinema forms, time-based annotation will fully realize its potential through search and analysis across a large amount of film data. In this paper, the tool is mainly employed to demonstrate a preexisting observation. But with the accumulation of manually input and machine-generated annotations, the goal is to discover new research questions and methods through navigating the database. 

Studies on Sun Yu’s early works mostly focus on his ambiguous political stance, the entanglement between rural and urban, local aesthetics and Hollywood influence, and the image of modern athletic women, all of which are closely connected with each other.³ The collective adds a new angle that cuts across all these issues. As many scholars agree, it is not easy to pigeonhole Sun’s works in clear categories of left or right. They have never fully satisfied either group since they are too cheerful and follow the nationalist government’s policy too closely for the leftists and are too class-centered for the government. Sun’s representation of the collective manifests his sympathy for the working poor, but class differences for him are not irreconcilable. In Wild Rose and The Big Road, the collective comprises people from different backgrounds, and men with overseas education in Wild Rose and Little Toys are portrayed in a rather positive manner. Moreover, arduous conditions and hard labor do not simply lead to a state of desperation or criticism of exploitation but serve to contrast people’s optimism and the appeal of the heartwarming community. Poor as most of his protagonists are, they never lack the vitality, passion, and national consciousness that satisfy the modern imagination of new Chinese citizens. 

Even more captivating is the combination of childlike innocence and sexual allure embodied by the characters in their interactions within the community. On the surface, childish behaviors, collective solidarity, and common nationalist goals undercut any sexual implications. However, the tension between desire and innocence often lurks under playful touches and affectionate gazes. It is through such ambiguity and a seeming simplification of collective interactions that Sun finds room to address serious issues of national salvation and class struggle with cheerfulness and humanistic complexity. Detailed annotation of the portrayal of collective interaction will reveal how exactly Sun manages to balance these elements. 

Attracted to filmmaking during his study in the United States, Sun is undeniably in debt to Hollywood cinema. His earliest extant film, Wild Rose, inherits the Cinderella narrative of his former work Wild Flowers by the Road (Ye Cao Xian Hua, 1930), which is inspired by The Lady of Camellias and Frank Borzage’s Seventh Heaven (1927). The film centers around the love story between a country girl, Xiaofeng (played by Wang Renmei) and a rich city boy, Jiang Bo (Jin Yan). But throughout their romantic encounter, cohabitation, and reunion, the couple is always surrounded by the collective. They meet in the countryside where Xiaofeng trains her “scouts” to protect the nation. After Xiaofeng is rejected by Jiang’s family, they move in with Jiang’s poor friends, billboard painter Xiao Li and newspaper vendor Laoqiang. Poverty and patriarchal authority separate them, but the couple eventually get back together when the army calls for volunteers, bringing the narrative of romantic and national love full circle. The popular formula of “love and revolution,” as scrutinized in Haiyan Lee’s Revolution of the Heart, is evident here, and Sun Yu skillfully uses the image of the collective to bridge the two.⁴

The traditional role of family in determining marital partners is replaced by love formed through the common passion for the nation and strengthened by the presence of the community. In Little Toys, the family further liquidates and reemerges in the form of a working community, which provides an ideal space for burgeoning love. A gifted and innovative toymaker, Sister Ye (Ruan Linyu), leads a community of rural artisans. Her beauty and talent attract a university student, Yuan Pu (Yuan Congmei), who intends to take her to Europe but instead leaves with Ye’s dream to advance China’s toy industry to compete with the imports. After her husband dies and her young son goes missing in the midst of political turmoil, Ye relocates to a suburb of Shanghai with her daughter, Zhu’er (Li Lili), and a group of artisans. Their relatively happy and peaceful life is curtailed by the eruption of war, which takes the life of Zhu’er and other community members who volunteered to assist the soldiers. The film ends with the crazed Sister Ye warning people that the enemy is coming on New Year’s Eve. She meets her lost son in the street. Although the two fail to recognize each other, they are connected by the same devotion to protect the nation. Her final reunion with Yuan Pu could imply a shift in her life’s trajectory, but the insinuation of romance is completely overshadowed by her forceful awakening of the crowd’s national consciousness.

Romantic love further gives way to the collective in The Big Road, which presents a group of road builders and their lively interactions with two restaurant girls, Jasmine (Li Lili) and Lilac (Chen Yanyan). If the making of toy cannons and planes in Little Toys can be seen as a cinematic metaphor for actual war, the theme of infrastructure building directly refers to national defense efforts. The majority of the film is devoted to the friendship between six workers: Jin (Jin Yan), Luo (Luo Peng), Old Zhang (Zhang Yi), Zheng (Zheng Junli), Big Zhang (Zhang Zhizhi), and Little Six (Han Langen), diverse in personality and family background. Dramatic change occurs toward the end as the leading figures are imprisoned by the corrupt comprador Hu for their refusal to collaborate with the enemy. Despite a successful rescue by fellow workers, all the protagonists except Lilac are killed at the work site during bombing. But the film doesn’t end on a tragic note. Instead, it stresses that the road, an army supply line, was finished just in time, and magically, all the dead souls were resurrected by Lilac, who symbolizes the continuation of the revolutionary spirit. 

What differentiates Sun Yu’s collective from images of the crowd, especially those that feature the works of the Soviet montage school in the 1920s, is a strong affection among distinct individuals. For Sun Yu, the collective is not the antithesis of individualized characters but a force powerful enough to bond them together. The rest of this article focuses on the two techniques of visualizing such an affection: repeated gestures and physical intimacy. 

Repeated Gestures

In Sun Yu’s films, special gestures are lovingly shared and reoccur as a reminder of the group’s collectivity. In Wild Rose, the gesture of salute–finger-touching–handshaking migrates from Xiaofeng’s “code” with her country scouts to an expression of friendship among her new community in the city.

Table 4. Repeated Gestures in Wild Rose

In Little Toys, the action of Zhu’er wiping off her mother’s tear on her deathbed and flipping it from her fingers is a copy of what her mother did to her when she was a little kid.⁶ Although such repetition mainly strengthens the emotional bond between mother and daughter, their relation has also been redefined in the context of the artisan community. It is significant that the father figure present in the earlier scene is now replaced by a community member, Mentis (Han Langen).
Sun Yu invents a more complicated set of gestures for the male workers in The Big Road. Combining a hint of masculinity and naïveté, the repeated actions of patting the head, sliding a hand down the face, and hitting the chin manifest the dynamic among the friends. These gestures signify “You are one of us” or “I am one of you.”

Table 5. Repeated Gestures in The Big Road

Physical Intimacy

Besides the repetition of physical gestures that strengthens the solidarity of the collective over time, intimate physical contact is also extensively used to present the closeness of community members. In an early scene in Little Toys, Sister Ye mends Zhang’s clothes in the street, and the interaction between them could mislead the audience to regard them as lovers.

Table 6. The Scene of Sister Ye and Zhang's Interactions in Little Toys [Playthings]

In the plot, there is no indication of romantic entanglement between Sister Ye and Zhang, and the intimacy they openly display on the street is supposed to be accepted as pure friendship in the diegesis. But the vendor’s desire to take advantage of Ye seems to imply a sexual undertone in Ye and Zhang’s interaction. Sun Yu’s normalization of physical intimacy is realized through the exaggerated, childish performance of the characters—as evident in Ruan Linyu’s facial expressions here, which are startlingly different from her performance in other films. Children and childlike protagonists are trademarks of Sun Yu’s works. Even in the more seductive roles that Li Lili is famous for, her “athletic sexiness” and “youthful energy,” as Zhang Zhen puts it, undermine negative associations of sensuality.⁷ When contextualized in the community, such as Li Lili’s role of Jasmine in The Big Road, her open acceptance of the male gaze and physical contacts “glue” the members together and help to save the group from comprador Hu. It is precisely this combination of excessive innocence and a palpable but disguised sexual attraction that makes Sun’s collectives so appealing.

Another outstanding scene that manifests this tension is the astonishingly sensual interactions between Jasmine and Lilac in The Big Road. The six-minute sequence in scene 17 is packed with overt physical intimacy that can be easily interpreted as a daring depiction of homosexuality in early Chinese cinema.⁸ However, close analysis will show that it is more appropriate to understand the scene as the two women playing the role of lover for each other. Their intimacy embodies the physical and emotional closeness of the community.

Table 7. The Scene of Lilac and Jasmine's Intimate Interactions in The Big Road

While the women’s interactions mimic those of real lovers, their conversations are exclusively about the men in their community. Lilac’s shyness and affectionate reactions to Jasmine respond not only to the latter’s initiatives but, more importantly, to her mention of Luo, Lilac’s love interest. This is most evident after Jasmine declares her love for all and explains the amiable qualities of Luo. Unlike her smiling response to Jasmine’s depiction of other boys, Lilac gets excited, rubs her nose against Jasmine’s cheek, and kisses her. She gazes into the distance as if Luo were standing right in front of her. To some extent, Jasmine functions as Luo’s physical substitute that allows Lilac to externalize her desire, but their interactions also manifest their sisterly love, a coherent part of the group dynamic.
Jasmine’s understanding of love demonstrates a transcendence of heterosexual romance in the context of collective life. As she passionately praises the lovable qualities of each man, their images appear on-screen in order, presenting them as both distinct individuals and—more important—members of the community. This point is driven home by concluding Jasmine’s account with Little Six’s performance of the set of pat-slide-hit gestures that signifies their collectivity as referenced in the previous section. Sun Yu gives the scene a further twist by having the women playfully mimic the gestures (end of Clip 4) that have been used exclusively among the men up to that point. The women's playful enactment not only confirms their sisterhood vis-à-vis male solidarity but can also be read as an act of identification with the workers’ community. Female intimacy sets the tone for the entire scene, reframing the community in a sweet, boudoir environment, but underneath the surface is a surging desire, subtly balanced by childlike play and an uplifting sense of collectivism.

The entanglement between desire and innocence is further played out in the following scene (18), where Jasmine and Lilac see the men bathing in the river naked. After a playful discussion between the women and the men, properly separated by a steep hill, the men finally give in and comply with their requests. The sexual tension that gradually builds through Jasmine’s voyeuristic female gaze is immediately dissolved by Lilac’s innocent answer “My dad will treat you all for dinner tonight.” The following sequence shows the men rushing to the shore, getting dressed, and running up the hill for watermelons. Christoper Rae interprets the splitting of a watermelon as “a metaphor for taking a woman’s virginity” based on a Chinese idiom.⁹ This reading brings the subdued sexuality to the forefront, but given the context of this and Sun Yu’s other films discussed here, a sexual association for watermelon is unlikely to be the emphasis. This becomes evident when compared with the sensual close-ups on cutting, digging into, and eating watermelon as well as the intimate shot-reverse-shot between the protagonists, in Wayne Wang’s Joy Luck Club (1993), which explicitly utilizes this symbolic meaning (Clip 5). In contrast, Sun Yu’s watermelon scene employs long and medium-long shots to foreground bodily strength, energy, and the act of sharing among members of the community (Clip 6). Even though the ambiguity of sexual desire remains an undertone, it is always absorbed into an overarching feeling of collective intimacy energized by upbeat naiveté.

Conclusion

This paper is an example of one of the possibilities for which time-based annotation can be used in film analysis. As we are still at an early stage of exploring the potential of the tool, the logs listed here remain raw data, yet to be processed in a more sophisticated and interactive way across the database. Nevertheless, the simple breakdown of scenes and actions already reveals nuanced and consistent techniques employed by a single director. More data will eventually facilitate a comparison between Sun Yu’s collectives and those in Hollywood and Soviet cinema or help study how the same action is performed differently across films. With the advent of searchable moving visual segments, a new research horizon will be cracked open.

A list of external links featured in this essay can be found here.¹⁰

Yuqian Yan is an associate researcher in the College of Media and International Culture at Zhejiang University in China. She received her PhD from the joint program of Cinema and Media Studies and East Asian Languages and Civilizations at University of Chicago. She specializes in early Chinese cinema, film and material culture, spatiality in cinema, and healing culture in popular media. She is currently working on her book manuscript, titled The Past Reenchanted: Ancient Costume Films in Republican China.  

Title Image: The Big Road (1934)

Between Naïveté and Desire: Analyzing Collective Intimacy in Sun Yu’s Films with a Time-Based Annotation Tool © 2024 by Yuqian Yan is licensed under CC BY 4.0.

The Journal of e-Media Studies is published by the Dartmouth Library.