Industry Film Headquarters Shanghai, China Founded 1946 | Defunct 1952 Founder Wu Xingzai | |
Key people Shi Hui, Fei Mu, Huang Zuolin, Eileen Chang | ||
The Wenhua Film Company (simplified Chinese: 文华影业公司; traditional Chinese: 文華影業公司; pinyin: Wénhuà yǐngyè gōngsī; literally: "Culture China Film Company") was a major privately owned film production company of the immediate post-war period in China.
History
The film company was founded in 1946 by Wu Xingzai, a businessman who had previously controlled assets of the Lianhua Film Company during the mid-1930s. With Wenhua, Wu desired to have a film studio devoted to making smaller-budget art films, sophisticated comedies, and high-minded dramas. These films often focused on contemporary social issues such as feminism and adaptations of Western literature. These included Night Inn (1947), an adaptation of Maxim Gorky's The Lower Depths, and starring Zhou Xuan. but also comedies such as the Sang Hu-Eileen Chang collaboration, Long Live the Mistress! (1947). During this early period, however, the company is perhaps best known as the producer of Fei Mu's masterpiece, Spring in a Small Town (1948).
Like other private studios, notably Kunlun Film Company, Wenhua continued in operation after the Communist takeover, putting out several films with the popular actor-director Shi Hui, including This Life of Mine (1950) (based on a novella by Lao She), Corruption (1950) (based on a work by Mao Dun), and the war film Platoon Commander Guan (1951). Yet many of these postwar films，particularly 1950's Peaceful Spring, were also criticized as hewing too close to Wenhua's pre-Communist humanist tradition. By 1952, Shi Hui had fallen out of the Party's favor and Wenhua, like the other remaining private studios in Shanghai, was consolidated under state ownership.