From "One River Spring Water To The East" To "South China Sea Tide": Cai Chusheng's Film Aesthetic Research

Cai Chusheng is a famous Chinese film director from two different time periods, before and after the founding of the People's Republic of China (PRC). His well-known film, the Spring River Flows East, received high praise from the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and created a sensation in Chinese society, before the founding of PRC. It is now considered to be a classic of Chinese film.However, his last film, South China Sea Tide, though passionately made in the early PRC period and closely follows the principles of socialist literature and art, was buried in heap of musty old books or papers. Few people have heard of this movie, and even less are interested in it.This paper attempts to analyze the situation before and after the founding of new China, the break and continuation of the director's two working periods, tries to describe the changes in his creative ideas, art forms and themes, and also tries to explain the changes and continuation from external and internal.By analyzing themes, image-building, and the application of narration and music, we find a profound break between these two works. This shows Cai Chusheng's frame of mind has changed in regards to how he created his films. The New Chinese Government of the PRC promoted literature and art to serve workers, peasants and soldiers only. Therefore we can see the compromises and concessions made in his last film almost in every aspect. The majority of researchers believe that his thoughts were highly influenced by social and political pressure.Grounded in the research of archives, newspapers and magazines, memoirs and other historical records, my paper attempts to show the specific process of how he modified the way he made movies and how he made great efforts to merge into mainstream culture of the new PRC.At the same time, by expounding the inner part of his last film, South China Sea tide, from describing love plots to treasuring detailed descriptions, we can see the Shanghainese film traditions were still alive in his thoughts and work. Therefore we can understand how the film policy, film theory, film production and even ideology could be easily changed to some extent. Compared with these, the inherited institutions and culture of Shanghainese traditions are not that easily changed.Cai Chusheng upholds and cherishes some of these institutions and tradition all his life. That is the continuative part between the two films also it is the continuative part of his film making history.According to the above analysis, we have witnessed that a film artist went through an era of change, both political and ideological transformation process, both the new and the old film paradigm exists in his works and thoughts, in an intertwining way.By Cai Chusheng, a personal representation, we can further understand film directors'mental processes and their artistic evolution, of those who were active in the 1930s and 1940s in Shanghai, and how they have been absorbed into the new China. In doing so we can better understand contemporary Chinese cinema's history and culture objectively and comprehensively.