Wutai jiemei (Two Stage Sisters)
Xie Jin, CN 1964; Screenplay: Xie Jin, Xu Jin, Lin Gu; Cinematography: Zhou Daming, Chen Zhenxiang; Editing: Zhang Liqun; Music: Huang Zhun; Cast: Xie Fang, Cao Yindi, Shangguan Yunzhu, Feng Qi. DCP (from 35mm), color, 112 min. Mandarin with English subtitlesLeading Third Generation director Xie Jin brilliantly combines Western women's melodrama, Chinese socialist cinema, and traditional Chinese opera in his 1964 film Stage Sisters. The film opens in 1931 as Chunhua (Xie Fang from Early Spring) is adopted into an itinerant Shaoxing opera troupe. She and her performing partner Yuefeng (Cao Yindi) become stage sisters (recent scholarship has explored the film's portrayal of intimate female relationships). While Chunhua becomes dedicated to progressive art, Yuefang succumbs to fame and fortune. From stardom in Shanghai under repressive KMT rule, they separate in scandal but meet in a new post-Liberation world in 1950. Working in the relatively permissive gap between the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution, Xie employs a subtle, decidedly unorthodox narrative schema and cinema poetics. But his expressive, politically aware innovations – bold staging, mobile camera, canted "heroic" angles, vivid color – became the template for much that followed, including revolutionary opera spectacles and socialist-realist tales. (S.K.)
Free admission for members on September 11, 2026