The Goddess Returns: Ruan Lingyu Retrospective at BC MOMA

Stardom, sex, scandals and suicide – Ruan Lingyu’s life has all the ingredients of a Hollywood movie, but this stunning actress’ life was no fiction. Seventy-five years after her taking her own life, Ruan is still revered as one of China’s finest screen talents and the best known figure to emerge from the Shanghai film industry of the 1930s. Many Beijingers will have seen her tragic gaze looking out at them from posters in local souvenir shops, but BC MOMA is now giving us a chance to see some of the work that made Ruan Lingyu an icon.

From December 3-12, BC MOMA will be hosting Rediscovering the Legend – Ruan Lingyu and Her Shanghai, a program of eight Ruan Lingyu films sourced from Beijing’s China Film Archive and the Taipei Film Archive. Titles include Love and Duty, one of a string of hits in the early 1930s that made Ruan a star; Little Toys, featuring Ruan in one of her signature roles as a suffering member of China’s lower classes; New Women, a tale of a young woman clashing with traditional feudal customs and gossip that eerily echoes Ruan’s own life; the posthumously released National Customs; and The Goddess, often acclaimed as the greatest silent film produced in China and Ruan’s most famous role. All films will screen with Chinese and English inter-titles.

Ruan debuted on screen in 1927 aged 16, but it was the 1930 feature Reminiscences of Beijing that made her a star. The next five years saw her produce a string of classics, climaxing with her iconic roles as a doomed Shanghai prostitute selling herself to feed her child in The Goddess and a modern woman facing the prejudices of traditional society in New Women, both made in 1934.

New Women’s scathing portrait of Shanghai’s tabloid press did nothing to endear Ruan to the city’s gossipmongers, and her attempts to sue her husband, the chronic gambler Zhang Damin, became the subject of scathing press coverage. Reporters also staked out the house Ruan was living in with local businessman Tang Jishan.

Under intense pressure from these concerted public attacks and invasions of privacy, Ruan took an overdose of sleeping pills and died on March 8, 1935, six weeks before her twenty-fifth birthday. China’s most famous 20th century writer, the sardonic Lu Xun, penned an essay after Ruan’s suicide denouncing Shanghai’s tabloid press.

In 1992, latter day starlet Maggie Cheung played Ruan in the biopic Centre Stage, directed by the Hong Kong filmmaker Stanley Kwan. Centre Stage will screen on the last day of the retrospective, and Kwan will be on hand following the screening for a Q&A.

While Ruan’s life ended far too early, her much of her work has survived, so drop into BC MOMA over the next week to see Ruan’s beauty and talent live again.

Ruan Lingyu and Her Shanghai – Full Program

All screenings are at BC MOMA, and all films in the program are silent, with English and Chinese inter-titles. Tickets RMB 40 per session/30 (students)/25 (BC MOMA members).

Sunday, December 5
4pm
Love and Obligation (恋爱与义务, 1931, 150 mins)
A young woman elopes with her lover and lives a hard life. Then in old age she has to confront a hard choice.

Monday, December 6

7pm
National Customs, (国风, 1935, 94 mins)
Ruan Lingyu’s last film tells the story of two sisters.
9pm
Little Toys (小玩意, 1933, 110 mins)
A silent epic that starts in the 1920s, about a gifted woman who invents and makes toys.

Tuesday, December 7

7pm
The Peach Girl (桃花泣血记, 1931, 100 mins)
A tragic silent-film romance that tells the story of a poor peasant girl and the rich.

Wednesday, December 8

7pm
The Goddess (神女, 1934, 90 mins)
Ruan’s most famous role, as a devoted mother forced to sell herself by night on the streets of Shanghai in order to support herself and her infant son.
9pm
Little Toys

Thursday, December 9

7pm
A Spray of Plum Blossoms (一剪梅, 1931)
Ruan plays Luo Hua, daughter of the local commander, enduring one devastating blow after another.
9pm
The Peace Girl

Friday, December 10

7pm
New Women (新女性, 1934, 94 mins)
Ming Wei is a writer and single mother determinedly pursuing love and a career, but finds herself mired in a culture of chauvinism, feudal morality and tabloid gossip. The character’s fate mirrors that of Ruan, who killed herself shortly after the film’s Shanghai release.
9pm
Coming Home (归来, 1934, 100 mins)
Wan er’s husband returns to China, where he finds that the wife he thought was dead is still alive...

Saturday, December 11

4pm
Little Toys
6pm
Love and Obligation

Sunday, December 12

7pm
The Goddess
8.45pm
Centre Stage (with special guest director Stanley Kwan)