Chinese film: A Spring River Flows East一江春水向东流

This three-hour-plus, two-part epic written and directed by Cai Chusheng and Zheng Junli is a milestone of Chinese cinema. It tells the heart-wrenching story of a family’s suffering in wartime Shanghai during the Sino-Japanese war in the 1930s and 40s and depicts a protagonist’s jaw-dropping transformation from an aspiring young man to a venal, crooked official.

The film became an instant hit upon its release in 1947 in Shanghai. It was shown in theaters for over three months and was said to have been seen by over 700,000 people, accounting for about 15 percent of the local population. Thus it is widely considered to be the most successful film before the People’s Republic of China was founded in 1949.