SPRING RIVER FLOWS EAST – DVD

The Spring River Flows East (DVD)
A film by Cai Chusheng and Zheng Junli

Often cited as one of the masterpieces of Chinese cinema, The Spring River Flows East is an epic and tragic melodrama set in Shanghai and Chungking around the time of the Second Sino-Japanese War.

Part one, Eight War-Torn Years, tells the heart-rending story of a working-class couple, Sufen (Bai Yang) and Zhang Zhongliang (Tao Jin), who marriage is torn apart when the war forces Zhongliang to flee from Shanghai to Chungking. Part two, The Dawn, sees Zhongliang return to Shanghai. His fortunes transformed, he has married into a wealthy bourgeois family but his world is undone by a chance meeting with the now-destitute Sufen.

Special features

• Newly restored by the China Film Archive
• A Stilted City. Chungking. China (1930, 1 min): a rare glimpse of the ancient city on the banks of the Yangtze River

China | 1947 | black and white | Mandarin, with optional English subtitles | 179 minutes | original aspect ratio 1.33:1 | Dolby Digital 1.0 mono audio (192kbps) | DVD9 | PAL | Region 2 | Cert 12 (contains moderate violence, injury detail, and a hanging scene)