The Unfinished Comedy

The Unfinished Comedy (Chinese: 没有完成的喜剧, Méiyǒu wánchéng de xǐjù) is a 1957 Chinese film directed by Lü Ban. This notorious[1] satirical comedy has been described as "perhaps the most accomplished [Chinese] film made in the 17 years between 1949 and the Cultural Revolution".[2] Due to its controversial subject matter, the movie was received very poorly by the censor critics and not shown to a wider public, and led to Lü Ban's ban from future film making until his death two decades later.[1]

The Unfinished Comedy
Directed byLü Ban
Written byLü Ban
Tai Luo
CinematographyWei Xu
Production
company
CountryChina
LanguageMandarin

Plot

Two comedians perform a series of sketches in a theatre for a group of Communist Party officials, including a critic censor.

Cast

Cast members include:[3]

  • Han Langen, as comedian 1
  • Yin Xiucen, as comedian 2
  • Fang Hua as Comrade Yi Bangzi, the censor/critic
  • Su Manyi (苏曼意)
  • Chen Zhong
  • Ning Jiapin
  • Wen Hua

Production

The movie was directed by Lü Ban of the Changchun Film Studio during the period of lessened censorship in 1956–57 (known as the Hundred Flowers Campaign).[2]

Reception

During the Anti-Rightist Movement, a backlash against the liberal Hundred Flowers Campaigns, the movie was subject to harsh criticism.[1] The movie has been widely criticized for Chinese censors for excessive slapstick and "taking the satirical license too far".[1][2] The movie subject matter was too controversial for its time, as it touched upon a sensitive topic of film censorship[4] and its portrayal of the "humorless party official", a film censor nicknamed "The Bludgeon", and the main object of ridicule in the film, has been described as unflattering.[1][2][4][5] The censor is alleged to be blind, uninterested in either watching or discussing the movie, yet drunk on his power related to deciding whether the movie will be allowed to be screened or not.[4] Its criticism of the censor official was interpreted as too close to the criticism of the Communist Party itself, as after all it was the Party that argued for the necessity of censorship.[4] It headed the list of problematic movies, the so-called "poisonous weeds" list, and was banned before its release.[1][5] Chen Huangmei, an important Party official described as "film czar", lambasted the movie in an editorial in People's Daily, as "thoroughly anti-Party, antisocialist, and tasteless".[1] The movie and Lü Ban became subject to a number of highly critical articles in Chinese press.[1]

The Unfinished Comedy ended Lü Ban's career as shortly afterward, Lü Ban himself was banned from directing for life and sentenced to internal exile; he had to abandon work on film-making, leaving behind several unfinished projects, and died in 1976 without being allowed to work on another film.[1][6][7]

The disastrous reception of the movie by the film censors was one of the reasons for other Chinese film makers putting more effort into self-censorship and abandoning the genre of satirical comedy (the next one would not appear in Chinese theaters until mid-80s);[1][7] for years to come, the dominant model of comedy in China became one that avoided conflict, and presented safe stories involving model socialist citizens learning how to better live in the harmonious socialist society.[8]

The reception of the movie abroad has been significantly better. Paul Clark in his book on Chinese Cinema described it as "perhaps the most accomplished [Chinese] film made in the 17 years between 1949 and the Cultural Revolution".[2]

References
  1. Bao, Ying (2008). "The Problematics of Comedy: New China Cinema and the Case of Lü Ban". Modern Chinese Literature and Culture. 20 (2): 185–228. JSTOR 41482537.
  2. Paul Clark (1987). Chinese Cinema: Culture and Politics Since 1949. CUP Archive. p. 77. ISBN 978-0-521-32638-4.
  3. "Film: Unfinished Comedy (1957)". Chinese Movie Database. Retrieved 9 December 2018.
  4. Erik Gunderson (2015). Laughing Awry: Plautus and Tragicomedy. Oxford University Press. pp. 253–254. ISBN 978-0-19-872930-3.
  5. Julian Ward (16 September 2017). "The Remodelling of a National Cinema: Chinese Films of the Seventeen Years (1949–66)". In Song Hwee Lim; Julian Ward (eds.). The Chinese Cinema Book. Bloomsbury Publishing. pp. 92–93. ISBN 978-1-84457-580-0.
  6. Esther Yau (1997). "China After the Revolution". In Geoffrey Nowell-Smith (ed.). The Oxford History of World Cinema. Oxford University Press. pp. 695. ISBN 978-0-19-874242-5.
  7. Yingjin Zhang (23 April 2012). A Companion to Chinese Cinema. John Wiley & Sons. p. 46. ISBN 978-1-4443-3029-8.
  8. Xiaoning Lu (28 August 2017). "Chinese Film Satire and Its Foreign Connections in the People's Republic of China (1950–1957): Laughter Without Borders?". In King-fai Tam; Sharon R. Wesoky (eds.). Not Just a Laughing Matter: Interdisciplinary Approaches to Political Humor in China. Springer. pp. 72[1]73. ISBN 978-981-10-4960-6.
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