This week's SSCE is a full-on dose of Cultural Revolution Realness, right down to the dancing Red Stars that open the number. I've long been fascinated by the oddness of 60s Chinese pop-agit-culture, something that's trying so hard to be totally new and totally Chinese, but which succeeds only in being an awkward fusion of traditional Chinese performance, Soviet Russian ballet, and what would seem to be the fading memories of Hollywood spectacles as preserved in the less-than-reliable mind of the formidable Madame Mao, a lady whose career as second-tier Shanghai leading lady Lan Ping paradoxically colored the entire arc of Chinese culture in the second half of the last century.
In any case, if you've ever wondered what Agnes de Mille might have made of a factory workers' picnic (other than the one in Carousel, of course), here's your chance.
Did they not yet have three strip technicolor? Was this Mao-o-vision?
ReplyDeleteWhile I wouldn't put it past the redoubtable Chiang Ching to have tried to develop a home-grown version of AgfaColor, I think they probably just used whatever was at hand. It is a striking look, though - if possible, even cheaper-looking than a Republic or Monogram musical, and that's saying something...
DeleteRice Capades!
ReplyDeleteAnd that's Part 3! Imagine sitting through the whole thing...
ReplyDeleteI tried to sing along, but unfortunately I can't the high notes these days. Jx
"Soviet Glamor"? The mere fact you have such a label is why I love reading your blog...
ReplyDeleteWhy, thank you, darlin'. And readers like you are why it's all such fun.
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