Why a forgotten 21-year-old film flop has taken Chinese cinema by storm and made millions

China’s consumer class is always looking for the latest, most cutting-edge smartphone app or the most talked-about viral video. Who would have predicted, then, that a 21-year-old movie would take Chinese cinema by storm over the past few weeks?

What’s incredible is that The Legend of 1900 was hardly a classic in the first place. Revolving around a piano prodigy (played by Tim Roth) who has spent his entire life on board an ocean liner, the movie received mixed reviews on its release in 1998, with disapproving critics lambasting it as “fragile” (Variety), “overwrought” (San Francisco Chronicle), schmaltz that “drowns in its own treacle” (Salon.com). The first English-language feature by Italian director Giuseppe Tornatore faded fast into obscur­ity, never reaching the heights of his revered Cinema Paradiso (1988).

And then Chinese audiences came to its rescue. Having never been released in China, Legend finally unspooled in main­land cinemas on November 15, along­side local romantic drama Somewhere Winter and Hollywood’s latest reboot, Charlie’s Angels. Rather than becoming a sideshow to these two headlining block­busters, the film broke out of the art house scene and crossed over to the mainstream: its opening weekend gross of 63.1 million yuan (HK$70.2 million) topped that of Angels, and its average of 13 viewers for each screening was higher than both Winter (11 viewers per screening) and Angels, which crashed with a mere eight.

A fortnight into its run, Legend had generated more than 130 million yuan, eclipsing its total takings of the past two decades. To put this into context, the film took in US$167,435 during its month-long release in the United States, in 1999. Adjusted for inflation, this figure would be about US$258,635 today, or 1.8 million yuan – that’s just 1.3 per cent of its gross during the first two weeks of its China run.