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.By the same token, her moving away is also a negation of her and LaoZhao s new, although larger, private space.The portrayal of Xiao Yang reflects the left-wing filmmakers ideal young woman of the 1930s Shanghai: She is educated and worksas a trainer of fe-male workers.Her loveliness and attraction do not come from being awife or a mother; they come from her independence.In Crossroads Xiao Yang has twiceresisted falling in love and being domesticated (The first time occurred before she cameto Shanghai).Her decision turns out to be a good one.Unemployment soon strikes Lao Zhao.Themoment it happens he packs and readies to leave his apartment.In that stage Xiao Yangand Lao Zhao in Crossroads, like Jianping and Lilian in The Plunder of Peach and Plum,share a commonality: losing a job means losing private space.Since their jobs can neverbe secure or guaranteed, their private space, then, is likewise not secure or guaranteed.Unfortunately, for Jianping and Lilian, working for the betterment of society starts fromworking on getting a job.When they cannot keep their jobs, they also lose their ability tobetter society.Now Lao Zhao realizes how difficult and insignificant it is to try to keep aprivate space when it can no longer be secured by a job.Here unemployment, and thus the inability to serve society, suggests that something iswrong with the existing society.Lao Zhao decides to  go to the world the moment helearns that he is being laid off.Judging by his later actions, what he referred to is the needto go free the nation.This is the step that neither Jianping nor Lilian had taken, althoughthe  Graduation Song they sang suggests that they were aware of their responsibilities.By now, left-wing Chinese filmmakers were clearly spelling out a correct route for youngpeople to follow:Self >Society (=NATION)Lao Zhao s abandonment of his private space immediately leads him to a publicspace/crossroads next to the Huangpu River where he is joined by A Tang, Xiao Yangand Big Sister Yao.Now the four are united by their experiences.If  crossroads meantonly metaphorically to these young people earlier, they do literally now as well.LaoZhao learns that Xiao Xu has finally killed himself, ending the life of a man who onlylived for himself.Their other option is to  learn from Big Brother Liu who is fightingfor national freedom in the Northeast.This is the road they take.So we see these fouryoung people symbolically walk across the chains next to the river, and emerge into thegrand, open-ended space of Shanghai in front of them.The concrete public space is nowtransformed into abstract social space.By withdrawing the characters from thesuffocation of private space and projecting them into the openness of public space andThe origins of left-wing cinema in China, 1932 37 94then social space, Crossroads questions the tendency of young college graduates to workfor their own benefit and celebrates their ultimate decision to work for their nation.Bythrowing these young people into the cause of the nation, Shen Xiling pointed to a socialspace for young college graduates in Shanghai.51 It celebrates the ultimate strength andvictory of unity and collectivity, which was prevalent during the 1930s among the left-wingers.52 Although the filmmakers of The Plunder of Peach and Plum and Crossroadsmay not have intended to relate the films to each other, one can easily formulate an innerconnection between the two films: the tragic conclusion of the first film finally attains itshappy ending in the second movie in a sense, Crossroads functions as a sequel to ThePlunder of Peach and Plum.By presenting the demise of Tao Jianping and Li Lilian as acouple and as individuals, and the final triumph of Lao Zhao, Xiao Yang and their friendsas comrades and as a group, left-wing filmmakers are trying to indicate that collegegraduates have no choice other than to join the fight for the salvation of their nation.LOVE AND SALVATION OF THE NATIONNo one, it seems, felt stronger about the concept of the  nation and what it stood forthan did Director Sun Yu, an American educated filmmaker.Sun Yu spent three years inAmerica on a scholarship, from 1923 to 1926, studying drama and film art [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]