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Motion pictures were introduced to China in 1896. The first attempt at filmmaking was Conquering Jun Mountain (1905). The Chinese film industry didn't begin until 1913 when Zheng Zhengqiu and Zhang Shichuan shot the first Chinese movie The Difficult Couple (1913). During the 1920s film technicians from the United States trained Chinese technicians in Shanghai, an early filmmaking center, and American influence continued to be felt there for the next two decades. China's first "talkie" was The Songstress, Red Peony (1931) played by the then "film queen" Butterfly Hu (Hu Die in Chinese) and produced by the Star Studio, Shanghai's largest film production studio.
Before the 1930s, owing to a lack of creativity, films made in China didn't exert a big influence in its history. Since then, the story of the film industry in China is like a summary of the nation's modern history, dealing with people's tortured and revolutionary life before 1949, the war of resistance against Japanese aggression, the civil war, the establishment and frustrating era of the P.R.China, its economic development and challenges to the status quo after WTO entry.
During 1933 and 1935, the left-wing movement (resistance against imperialism and feudalism) in filmmaking was introduced to Shanghai and flourished. Torrents (1933) (Kuangliu in Chinese), directed by Xia Yan and Cheng Bugao and produced by the Star Studio, was the first film of this genre. Many famed directors came to the fore and made outstanding contributions in art and literature, such as Yuan Muzhi's Street Angel (1937) and Shen Xiling's Crossroad (1937). They brought the darker, seamier side of society to light and gave expression to the wishes of the people to pursue their dreams as well as rebel against imperialism and feudalism. A great variety of artistic images were born and a number of acclaimed actors and actresses emerged. Butterfly Hu, Zhao Dan, Zhou Xuan and Shu Xiuwen were amongst them.
In the 1940s, on the eve of China's liberation, filmmaking was in a chaotic state and some profiteers seized the chance to shoot blue films and scary movies. However there were still some wonderful films being made thanks to the concerted efforts of conscientious filmmakers, who made classics such as Spring River Flows Eastward (1947) by Cai Chusheng and Zheng Junli, Crow and Sparrow (1949) by Chen Baichen and Zheng Junli and Light of Million Hopes (1948) by Shen Fu. These films had high artistic value in screenplay writing, directing, performance, cinematography, music, art design and other aspects. Filmmaking developed more quickly in the 1940s than it had in the 1930s.
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