While some detectable systematic similarities and differences exist between taiyu pian and Japanese cinema, especially in regard to their selection of themes and content, the aesthetic qualities of each are hardly analogous. As was noted at the beginning of this article, film production in Taiwan was launched during the colonial period as part of the cultural policy of the colonial regime. While Japanese films matured in the 1950s, at that point in time, the development of taiyu pian was only at an inception stage.
The knowledge learned from watching international films did not always successfully translate into knowing how to obtain the right look due to the general impoverishment of the infrastructure of the equipment and the low level of technical sophistication in Taiwan at that time (Liao 112). Taiyu pian was apparently still struggling with how to use cinematically-specific techniques, such as different shot lengths, camera movement, and editing, to tell a story effectively. Liao Jin-feng argues that, in general, taiyu pian cinema bears the stamp of “transitional cinema,” as it hovers somewhere between narrative-oriented classic cinema and exhibitionistic primitive cinema (134).
For example, even in a narrative feature, it is common for the characters to break through the cinematic “wall” and directly address the viewer (134). In discussing the visual style of The Unusual Love, Zhang Chang-yan also attributes the film’s lack of three-dimensionality and its tableau style to the director’s aptitude for work for the stage as opposed to film (59-60).
One must bear in mind, however, that taiyu pian does not merely aspire to adhere to the directives of classical Hollywood cinema. Liao’s argument is problematic in overstressing the role that the Hollywood paradigm plays in the aesthetic development of taiyu pian. Given the affinity of taiyu pian for Japanese cinema, it could be argued that its “retarded” progress reflects a shift away from the paradigm of classical Hollywood cinema to that of Japanese cinema. It is not unusual to find characters facing the camera, disjunctive shot changes, or visual flatness in Japanese cinema. Without sufficient historical
evidence, it is difficult to pin down the origin of a particular aesthetic choice in taiyu pian, be it from Japan, Hollywood, the Amoy-dialect, Shanghai, or the influence of European films. A contingent resemblance is not impossible.
More often than not, one can detect a wide range of stylistic variety within one single film. For example, in The Husband’s Secret directed by Lin Tuan-qiu (1958), one of the few prominent film directors professionally trained in Japan, one can find tangible examples of similarities to Japanese, Hollywood, and European films. Several scenes are filmed using extremely long shots of a considerable duration, in which the actors are already part of the mise-en-scène. These shots encourage the viewer to look at the surroundings in detail instead of immediately focusing on the main characters present in the crowd. This emphasis on the social setting that relates the action to its material context is tinged with a neo-realist look that can also be recognized in cinema across Europe. However, the camera placement in The Husband’s Secret is relatively low, sometimes close to the ground, especially in scenes with a Japanese-styled room setting, and the viewer is immediately reminded of the films directed by Yasujirō Ozu and Mikio Naruse. Plausible traces of Hollywood influences can also be found in The Husband’s Secret, such as the expressionist lighting of film noir and the gangster iconography, as well as a replicated composition in deep focus as seen in Orson Welles’s Citizen Kane (1941), wherein the female protagonist lays on the bed in the foreground as the male protagonist opens the door in the background.
Sometimes, it is difficult to ascertain the exact source of a particular trait of taiyu pian. For example, scholars hold different views on what influenced the widespread use of popular songs along with an image track that functions either as the character’s monologue or a third person commentary. The same practice can be found in Shanghai film (Hong 61), Japanese film, and the folk tradition of Ge-zai opera (Wang 10-11). At the end of Hong Guo-juin’s chapter on taiyu pian, which he terms Taiwanese-dialect cinema, he concludes that, due to its “unclean severance” from various transnational sources of external influence, it is, as Andrew Higson notes, “more likely to be either local or transnational than national” (62).
The use of “either-or” suggests an unavoidable choice between two alternatives, but Hong does not seem concerned about determining whether taiyu pian is local or transnational when he invokes Higson to oppose the qualification of taiyu pian as national cinema. To revise Hong’s conclusion,
this paper concludes that it is the transnational quality of taiyu pian that makes it locally specific. What this paper tries to point out, by narrowing the subject down to a comparative study between taiyu pian melodrama and Japanese gendai-geki melodrama, is that the attachment to various international cinemas is affected by political, economic, and social circumstances. Taiyu pian is not a counter cinema, as is Brazilian Cinema Novo, in which cannibalism suggests a form of cultural nationalism that resists imperialism (King 113). The idea of cultural cannibalism, however, does imply a process of identity formation, and even if the personnel in the taiyu pian industry were not aware of their act of excessive absorption, a sense of a distinctive identity did arise. Taiyu pian takes a bit of everything, mixes it, and creates something unique, it reveals itself to be a partial mimicry, when compared to all its plagiarized sources. Whether this way of constructing the sense of self is benign or detrimental is a separate issue;
however, a comparative study between taiyu pian and related international cinemas, in this case Japanese cinema, can shed some light on the factors and conditions that affect the decisions on what cinematic themes to adopt and what to modify.
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Filmography
Aizen Katsura [The Love-Troth Tree ]. Dir. Hiromasa Nomura. Schockiku, 1938.
Zhangfu de mimi [The Husband’s Secret]. Dir. Lin Tuan-qiu. Yu-feng, 1958.
Zoku Aizen Katsura [The Love-Troth Tree]. Dir. Noboru Hakamura. Schochiku, 1962.
Jiuqing mianmian [Unremitted Love]. Dir. Shao Lo-hui. Yong-da, 1962.
Gaoxiong fa de weibanche [Last Train from Kaohsiung]. Dir. Liang Zhe-fu.
Tai-lian, 1963.
Bupingfan deai [The Unusual Love]. Dir. Zheng Dong-shan. Yuan-da, 1964.
Beiqing yuanyangmeng [The Dream of Sorrowful Couples]. Dir. Wu Fei-jian.
Tai-lian, 1965
Nanwang de chezhan [The Unforgettable Station]. Dir. Xin Qi. Yong-da, 1965.
Ainidaosi [Love Till Death] Dir. Xu Shou-ren. Xin-ya, 1967.
Damou xiaoyi [A Wife and a Concubine] Dir. Wu Fei-jiang. Yong-da, n.d.
Sansheng wunai [Great Lamentation] Dir. Xin Qi. Yong-da, 1967.