A City of Sadness

A City of Sadness
Japanese DVD cover
Directed by	Hou Hsiao-hsien
Produced by	Chiu Fu-sheng
Written by	Chu Tien-wen Wu Nien-jen
Starring	Tony Leung Chiu Wai Sung Young Chen Jack Kao Li Tian-lu
Music by	S.E.N.S.
Cinematography	Chen Huai-en
Editing by	Liao Ching-song
Studio	3-H Films
Distributed by	Era Communications (Int'l rights)
Release date(s)	September 4, 1989 (1989-09-04) (Venice Film Festival) October 1989 (1989-10) (Taiwan)
Running time	157 minutes
Country	‹See Tfd› Taiwan
Language	Taiwanese Mandarin Japanese Cantonese Shanghainese

A City of Sadness (Chinese: 悲情城市; pinyin: bēiqíng chéngshì) is a 1989 Taiwanese historical drama film directed by Hou Hsiao-hsien. It tells the story of a family embroiled in the tragic "White Terror" that was wrought on the Taiwanese people by the Kuomintang government (KMT) after their arrival from mainland China in the late 1940s, during which thousands of Taiwanese were rounded up, shot, and/or sent to prison.

The film was the first to deal openly with the KMT's authoritarian misdeeds after its 1945 turnover of Taiwan from Japan, and the first to depict the 228 Incident of 1947, in which thousands of people were massacred.

A City of Sadness was the first Chinese-language film to win the Golden Lion award at the Venice Film Festival.

Synopsis

The film depicts the Lin family's experiences during the White Terror. The eldest brother Wen-heung (Sung Young Chen) is murdered by a Shanghai mafia boss, the middle brother Wen-leung (Jack Kao) suffers a traumatic brain injury in a KMT jailhouse, and the youngest brother Wen-ching (Tony Leung Chiu Wai), who is both deaf and mute, hopes to flee to the mountains with his friend to fight in the anti-KMT resistance movement. By the end of the film even the photographer Wen-ching has been arrested by the authorities, leaving only his wife to tell the story of the family's destruction.

Wen-ching's deafness began as an expedient to disguise Tony Leung's inability to speak Taiwanese (or Japanese—the language taught in Taiwan's schools during the 51-year occupation), but wound up being an effective means to demonstrate the brutal insensitivity of Chen Yi's ROC administration.

Cast

The Lin Family

• Tony Leung Chiu-Wai as Wen-ching
• Sung Young Chen as Wen-heung
• Jack Kao as Wen-leung
• Li Tian-lu as Ah-lu (Grandfather)

Other Roles

• Xin Shufen as Hinomi
• Wu Yi-Fang as Hinoiei
• Nakamura Ikuyo as Shizuko
• Jan Hung-Tze as Mr. Lin
• Wu Nien-jen as Mr. Wu
• Zhang Dachun as Reporter Ho
• Tsai Chen-nan as singer (cameo appearance)

Production

A City of Sadness was filmed on location in Jiufen, an old and declined gold mining town in northeast of Taiwan. The film revived Jiufen, and it became a popular tourist attraction.^{[citation needed]}

This film is regarded as the first installment in a trilogy of films that deal with Taiwanese history, which also includes The Puppetmaster (1993) and Good Men, Good Women (1995).

Awards and nominations

• 46th Venice Film Festival
  • Won: Golden Lion ^[1]
  • Won: UNESCO Prize

• 1989 Golden Horse Film Festival
  • Won: Best Director – Hou Hsiao-hsien
  • Won: Best Leading Actor – Sung Young Chen
  • Nominated: Best Film
  • Nominated: Best Screenplay – Chu Tien-wen, Wu Nien-jen
  • Nominated: Best Editing – Liao Ching-song

• 1989 Kinema Junpo Awards
  • Won: Best Foreign Language Film – Hou Hsiao-hsien

• 1991 Mainichi Film Concours
  • Won: Best Foreign Language Film – Hou Hsiao-hsien

• 1991 Independent Spirit Awards
  • Nominated: Best Foreign Film – Hou Hsiao-hsien

• 1991 Political Film Society
  • Won: Special Award

References

Further reading

• Berenice Reynaud, A City of Sadness, British Film Institute, 2002.

External links

• A City of Sadness at the Internet Movie Database
• A City of Sadness at AllRovi