The Views and Characteristics of Chinese Film Esthetics in the First Half of the 20th Century

Abstract

Abstract Chinese cinema made remarkable achievements in the early twentieth century from which the basic esthetic characteristics of Chinese film were as formed. It is impossible to accurately cover the artistic practice of Chinese film, because Chinese filmmaking is based on “meaning” (yiyi), that is, the ideological content to be expressed in the film. In the first half of the twentieth century, Chinese film esthetics engaged a complex array of ideas: the traditional Chinese pragmatic view of art; the continuity of American narrative cinema; the Soviet principle of opposition and conflict; as well as the poetics of classical Chinese esthetics. Among these orientations, the pragmatic view of art emerged as the core of Chinese film esthetics, determining not only film content but film form.