Sanmao Joins the Army

In 1937, after the Marco Polo Bridge Incident, the Second Sino-Japanese War begins. San Mao, an orphan known by the three hairs on his head, enlists and ends up at the Battle of Shanghai. Directed and co-written by Zhang Jianya, the film comes from the comic strip Zhang Leping created in 1935 and continued, with interruptions, until his death; Leping died in 1992, days after this film was finished. The adaptation works hard to keep the surreal humour of the drawings intact. Leping had used humour and satire to pull the war out of the pompous register of wartime propaganda, and the film looks at it from the same place. Shanghai Film Studio produced it.