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Richard James Havis


A City of Sadness
Starring: Tony Leung Chiu-wai, Sung Young-chen, Jack Kao
Director: Hou Hsiao-hsien
A City of Sadness is one of the masterworks of the Taiwanese New Cinema Movement which crept out of the island during the 1980s.
The film, which won the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival in 1989, is important for a number of reasons. For a start, it launched the international career of Hou Hsiao-hsien and brought Taiwanese films to the attention of the world.
Starring Hong Kong actor Tony Leung Chiu-wai, the film was important in the realm of real-world politics, too. It focuses on the notorious "2-28 Incident" - the massacre of indigenous Taiwanese by the Nationalists who fled to Taiwan under the leadership of Chiang Kai-shek after being defeated by the Communists. The massacre occurred on February 28, 1947 - hence the 2-28.

The episode was a taboo subject for Taiwan under Kuomintang rule, and there was little documentation of it. Hou and scriptwriters Wu Nien-jen and Chu Tien-wen researched the subject themselves and intended for the film to act as some kind latter-day document of the event, as none existed. Its release brought the massacre into the open in Taiwan.
It is a complex, multilayered work. Hou tells the story of the fictional Lin family, a prestigious group under the Japanese occupation which preceded the Kuomintang invasion of the island.
The family live in a small town, and their fortunes decline with the arrival of Chiang's people. The four sons all suffer badly: one is arrested, one goes missing while fighting for the Japanese, one is murdered and one becomes mentally unstable.
The massacre proves a watershed event for the indigenous inhabitants. By the end of the film, the family's once-crowded dinner table is almost empty.
Hou had made a number of films before A City of Sadness. These include 1985's A Time to Live and a Time to Die, his first masterpiece. But this is perhaps the culmination of the style that he had been seeking to achieve.

Many elements reject the standard tropes of Western filmmaking. There is no dramatic tension and release - events all unfold at the same slow pace. Taiwanese critics called this a "more Chinese" way of filmmaking.
Hou also rarely moves the camera. He prefers long, wide shots which capture entire scenes. Some of this is down to the influence of Japanese master Yasujiro Ozu, a favourite director of Hou's. But it was also because he often used amateur actors who hadn't been taught how to act in front of camera.
The film is part of a trilogy conceived to span the development of Taiwan since the Japanese occupation in 1895. Hou hoped that by exploring the past he would discover the island's true identity.
The Puppetmaster (1993) stepped back in time to document the Japanese occupation through the eyes of a master puppeteer. Good Men, Good Women (1996) focuses on the "white terror", the persecution of supposed communists by the Kuomintang.
 


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Asian cinema: Chinese films

A City of Sadness, 1989 Hou Hsiao-hsien movie that brought Taiwanese cinema to world's attention

Tony Leung Chiu-wai in a scene from the Hou Hsiao-hsien’s movie “A City of Sadness”. Photo: Handout

A still from A City of Sadness. Photo: Handout

Lifestyle

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Film & TV

Multi-layered film starring Tony Leung Chiu-wai uses one family's story to recount the '2-28' incident, the Chiang Kai-shek-orchestrated massacre of indigenous Taiwanese


Cinema

Chinese language cinema