Ruan Lingyu

SHEN NU

GODDESS, THE
Wu YONGGANG
VR, China 1934
76 min
V'05

In The Goddess, Ruan Lingyu plays a single mother who works as a prostitute because it is the only way for her to provide for her sons education. One night, she encounters a gangster who forces her to work for him and to surrender her earnings to him. Yet she is able to hide some of her money in order to continue payments to her sons school. The school board discovers her occupation, and the boy is expelled despite the pleadings of the sympathetic headmaster. When the gangster steals her money, the young mother kills him and is sent to prison. «The strikingly restrained visual language dramatises not only the sacrifices of the nameless protagonist, but also, implicitly, the film-makers own sense of limits demanding self-regulation.» (Kristine Harris)

Credits
  • Ruan Lingyu - die Göttliche
  • Zhang Zhizhi - Zuhälter
  • Li Keng - Kind
  • Wu YONGGANG
  • Hong Weilie
Lianhua Studio
35 mm
bw
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