Forty Years’ Career In Film Business

Yang Xiaozhong was a famous famed commercial screenwriter/director in early period of China; however the research for him is far from enough. As the very important position he had, studies for his career life became absolutely necessary. From 1920s to 1960s, he had witnessed, joined and even helped to bring about many significant events in Chinese film history during his life. He created hundreds of films which embraced the trend of commercial development. They include all the different commercial genres involving costume film/folk story, romance/family ethics drama, detective film/crime/spy film, swordsmen film, fantasy movie and episode collections. He had made numerous films and unforgettable contributions to the early China film industry. Therefore, in teens of content or form, Yang Xiaozhong’s career can be said to be a commercial film history. In the Chinese film history, Yang Xiaozhong, as film screenwriter/director, has been devalued and forgotten for a long time. He was not well known for the reasons of the lack of historical material and relative researches.In the first three chapters of the essay, the lineal development of history is taken as an axle; Yang Xiaozhong’s process of creation is divided into three stages, which are described in chapters through combing with relevant historical background and market environment. Specific existing films or important works in each stage are analyzed case by case through narrative analysis, audio and visual analysis, and other methods. In the fourth chapter, data analysis is conducted on the features of Yang Xiaozhong’s works, so as to obtain overall and comprehensive observation on his creations. As Yang Xiaozhong is a director with good box office assurance, the study about him can provide certain reference for the creation of present commercial films.Yang Xiaozhong dedicated his life to film industry, from 20th century 20s to 60s. He plays a very important role in Chinese film history because he not only to represent the film directors of the first half of 20th century but also shows constantly creativity for the new genre and expression forms of film with his business intuitions and extraordinary artistic style. As such a great director, summarize and analyze his representative film will be very important.