Spring in a Small Town

Dir: Fei Mu
Scr: Li Tianji
Prod Co: Wenhua
Co-starring: Shi Yu, Li Wei, Zhang Hongmei, Cui Chaoming
1948 / B&W / DCP / Mandarin / Eng subtitles / 98min

It's 1937. In an alley deep inside Beijing lives a bourgeois family – a widow, her four sons andthreedaughters. The city falls after the Lugouqiao Incident into enemy hands and the children are forced to flee, scattered in all directions. Finally, war is over and the family is reunited but only to be driven apart again by the Civil War… This is a work about little people living in epic times, expressed in gentle vignettes of life unfolding amid the sweeping grandeur of history. It features an ensemble cast of exceptional performers, from Shi Yu as the repressed first-born, to Lan Ma as the carefree second brother, to Sun Daolin as the pretentious intellectual who goes on to become an English-flaunting official. Then there is Wei Wei as the second sister, at once genial, impulsive and progressive, very much the Wei Wei we have come to know and love.

Screening courtesy of China Film Archive