The Stormy Night (1925 film)

The Stormy Night is a 1925 Chinese drama film directed and written by novelist Zhu Shouju. Like most Chinese films from this period, it is a black-and-white silent film with both Chinese and English intertitles.

The Stormy Night
original poster
Traditional Chinese風雨之夜
Simplified Chinese风雨之夜
Hanyu PinyinFēngyǔ Zhī Yè
Directed byZhu Shouju
Written byZhu Shouju
Starring
  • Han Yunzhen
  • Zhou Wenzhu
CinematographyS.M. Chow
Production
company
Great China Lilium Pictures
Release date
December 1925
Running time
~101 minutes
CountryRepublic of China
LanguagesSilent film, with Chinese and English intertitles

The film was long believed lost, until a print resurfaced in Tokyo, Japan in 2006, which was finally identified in 2011.

Rediscovery

In 2006, descendants of Japanese director Teinosuke Kinugasa donated his collection to the National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo. In it museum workers discovered a Chinese film (since it had Chinese intertitles), but as the title is missing they were unable to identify it right away. Many years later, Akinari Sato (佐藤秋成) convincingly confirmed it as The Stormy Night by matching it with reports from old Shanghai newspapers Shen Bao and Xinwen Bao (新聞報). Because reports mentioned the film as having 9 reels, and 8 reels are found, Sato believed that no more than 10 minutes could be missing.[1]

The film underwent a digital restoration in 2017 and began screening in China the same year.[2]

Cast
  • Han Yunzhen as Mrs. Zhuang
  • Zhou Wenzhu
  • Wang Shiyan
  • Wang Yingzhi
  • Yang Jingwo as Yujie
  • Bao Mengjiao as Bian Ziming
  • Wang Cilong as Doctor
  • Li Minghui as Cover girl
  • Gong Jianong as Club patron
  • Yan Bingheng as Qian Dawei
  • Ye Zhongfang as Sleepwalker
  • Wang Guoqi as Jiaona

Reception

In 2017, Japanese scholar Fumitoshi Karima (刈間文俊) called this film one of the three Chinese films that amazed him, along with silent-era masterpieces The Goddess and Love and Duty.[2] In 2018, Shelly Kraicer called it an "astonishing revelation" on Twitter.[3]

References
  1. Sato, Akinari (1 June 2011). -中國無聲電/ "朱瘦菊與他的電影作品《風雨之夜》 中國無聲電影東京鑑定手記". Ming Pao Monthly (in Chinese).
  2. "《风雨之夜》九十年重归故里南艺首映". Gio Planet (Nanjing University of the Arts) (in Chinese). 20 December 2017.
  3. @skraicer (18 March 2018). "Newly rediscovered Chinese 1925 silent masterpiece THE STORMY NIGHT 風雲之夜 by Zhu Shouju is an astonishing revelation" (Tweet) – via Twitter.


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