Open AccessShanghai gangster films and the politics of change
Author(s) -
Tatu-Ilari Laukkanen
Publication year - 2020
Publication title -
novos olhares
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
eISSN - 2238-7714
pISSN - 1516-5981
DOI - 10.11606/issn.2238-7714.no.2020.172000
Subject(s) - movie theater , depiction , nationalism , china , epic , ideology , politics , narrative , history , sociology , media studies , literature , political science , art , art history , law
In this paper through a very close textual reading I will show the ideological differences between two films based on the life of Shanghai gangster Du Yuesheng (1888, Pudong – 1951, Hong Kong) through close formal and narrative analysis. Du was already a celebrity in his day in the Republican era and is still a con-troversial figure in Greater China. However, there are only two films based on the life of the French Con-cession opium kingpin, the recent Hong Kong/PRC co-production The Last Tycoon (Da Shang Hai, Wong Jing, 2012) and the epic two part Lord of the East China Sea I & II (Shang Hai huang di zhi: Sui yue feng yun & Shang Hai huang di zhi: Xiong ba tia xia, Hong Kong, Poon Man-kit 1993). I show how these films reflect HK's and China's politico-economic changes focusing on the representation of social class and the subject, depiction of internal migration and immigration, and nationalism. The films will be discussed in their relation to changes in the Hong Kong film industry, Chinese and world cinema and the transnational gangster genre, showing how local and global cinemas have affected these films.