The Tendency Of The Chinese Movies At The Turn Of The New Century

With the upsurge of globalization at the 21st century, the Chinese movies are confronted with great challenges and opportunities. In the mid-1990s, capitals, personnel and technologies flooded into the mainland China from overseas, Hong Kong and Taiwan along with the introduction of Hollywood movies into the Chinese market, which gradually obscured the originally clear conception and appearance of the Chinese movies. Meanwhile, the top-down movie reforms promoted the blending of such elements as mainstream speech, mass culture and elite sense, and made possible the formation of many-sided development of the Chinese movies. Mainstream ideology/main-tuned movies, entertainment/commercial movies humanity/artistic movies have ultimately constituted three major trends in China.The dissertation consists of four chapters. The introductory part sorts out the major developmental trends of the Chinese movies at the turn of the new century and points out the tendency suggested in them. In the 1980s, the Chinese movies were influenced by commercialism and political factors and experienced a short-lived prosperity. This marked the beginning of series of changes in the following years. In the 1990s, difficulties struck the movie industry in terms of production, market and marketing. Thanks to the backup of the mainstream ideology, the main-tuned movies flourished. In spite of the shortage of proper systems, capitals and experiences, the artistic and commercial movies still made some progress. Three trends began to take shape. Having entered the new century, the Chinese movie industry has come to be polarized and regrouped, and the three types of movies have started affecting and penetrating into each other.Chapter One illustrates the process and causes of Chinese commercial movies being lost in the globalization atmosphere, and discusses the reasons why commercial movies could not be suitable for the Chinese situation. Considering the fact that the fifth-generation directors like Zhang Yimou and Chen Kaige follow the steps of the European artistic movies and the American commercial movies, the author focuses on the exploration of the directors'historical perspectives and points out that the big movies fall short of realities and are shallow-mindedly maladjusted, hence drawing the outline of the rule of their turn from artistic movie making to commercial movie production. Finally, the movie The Banquet is taken as an example to analyze the influential power of the Chinese commercial movies while discussing its tragic pursuit of failures.Chapter Two first discusses the existing state of the artistic movies squeezed on both sides by the mainstream ideology and commerce. The new generation movies are taken as representatives, and then their stylistic features are studied so that their artistic methods can be discovered. Starting with an award-winner movie Mr. Nice Guy in the Three Gorges, the author analyzes its director Jia Zhangke's long-lens scenes and representing method of minute details, and therefore, argues that directors like Jia, who clings to the artistic traditions and inherits realistic method, are the future and hope of the Chinese movies.Chapter Three reflects on the movies based on the Chinese revolutions in order to reveal that these movies are of the same vein with the mainstream movies. Efforts are also made to analyze the implicit crisis behind the prosperity of the mainstream movie production which is overwhelmed by the mainstream ideology at the turn of the new century. By so doing, the author intends to show that the mainstream movies have evolved in their narrations. The movie The Ballad of Cloud and Water is analyzed regarding its suspended handling of the historical background so as to show that the mainstream movies have inherited the moral teaching strategy in their development.Chapter Four argues that the ideal state of both the commercial and artistic movies lies in the perfect convergence of commercial elements and artistic traits. First, evaluation is made upon movies directed by their respective proponents of commercial and artistic movies, Feng Xiaogang and Jiang Wen, with the conclusion that movies of different varieties should coexist in pursuit of different styles and values. Then the commercial movie The World without Thieves is used to illustrate Feng Xiaogang's mass cultural features in terms of his angle of view from the common folks, his grassroots consciousness and his speech binge and at the same time to point out his cynicism of escaping realities. Finally, the artistic movie The Devil's Coming is employed to affirm its courage in pursuing classic movie traditions and envisaging the historical events. From the above analysis, it can be held that the experimentation of the artistic movies should turn to such methods as fluent narration, skillful plotting and applying movie language of various varieties.