The Goddess

Shanghai in the thirties. A woman looks after her son by day and goes out to the street at night. Her name is never given. Running from the police one night she goes into a house; the man there does not hand her over and in return counts her as his property. He takes everything she earns. She saves money in secret and puts her son into school. Then the neighbourhood learns who the boy's mother is and the school does not want him. Only she knows where the saved money is hidden, and the money is not there. Wu Yonggang wrote and directed; Ruan Lingyu plays the woman. The film was made by the Lianhua company and opened on 7 December 1934. It is a Chinese production. The film is silent; intertitles are used sparingly and most of the narrative is read off a face. Wu Yonggang made his first film on a small budget and with sets of his own design. Ruan Lingyu made only two more films after this one; in 1935, following press coverage of her private life, she took her own life at twenty four. The matter it treats is respectability; the woman is a fallen person in the eyes of society and the film insists on showing her as a mother. The school section is where the narrative breaks; a decision made in the name of morality punishes the child. The film presents the gangster plainly as an exploiter and does not leave the guilt with the woman. The narrative does not slide into melodrama and the acting is measured for its period. The ending closes in a prison and contains a promise. Its limit is access; the prints are old, the silent pacing slow, and the subject dark. Who it is for: viewers curious about silent cinema and the history of Chinese film. Who it is not for: it is slow, dark, and the ending bitter.