Rosenbaum on remakes and the “Chinese Citizen Kane“

His post is a week old, but Jonathan Rosenbaum wrote a relatively brief appreciation of Spring in a Small Town (Fei Mu, 1948) and Tian Zhuangzhuang’s 2002 remake.  I haven’t seen the remake — my knowledge of Chinese cinema is still severely limited — but I have seen the original, and it is a great example of what I can only call a perfect film. It’s often called “the Chinese Citizen Kane” in lieu of outlining its impact, influence, and near-unanimous critical approbation.  I think a closer U.S. corollary would be Casablanca.  There may be even more appropriate analogues from classic Hollywood, but the primary reason is that I don’t think that Spring in a Small Town is nearly as ambitious as Welles’s epic roman a clef-cum-character assassination.  Instead, it’s a very modest but utterly incisive tale of love, desire, and power dynamics, as well as a bit of an elegy (with bite) for the gentry that would soon be uprooted.  Its political aim might be entirely different from Casablanca, and it’s not nearly as glamorous, but both films are fabulous exhibits of conventional filmmaking being harnessed to tell love stories with a great deal of conviction.

Rosenbaum’s article is more focused on the eminent relevance of the original tale, and how it can be comfortably re-interpreted by gifted filmmakers with talent and vision enough to be faithful to the source material without making the remake superfluous.  But he draws attention to a film that should by all rights be mandatory viewing for cinephiles with an interest in mainstream cinema done well.  Casablanca’s ultimate effect upon me is to instill a sense of poignant joy; Spring in a Small Town effected a sense of gratitude and awe.  As I said, the films are very different, but since I frequently cite Casablanca as my favorite film and perhaps the greatest ever made, I couldn’t think of a better way to convey my appreciation for Spring in a Small Town.