1. Some important wartime films produced in the interior include The Light of East Asia (Dong ya zhi guang, d. He Feiguang, 1940), Young China (Qingnian Zhongguo, d. Su Yi, 1940), Storm on the Border (Saishang fengyun, d. Ying Yunwei, 1940), and Japanese Spy (Riben jiandie, d. Yuan Congmei, 1943), all completed at the China Film Studio (Zhongguo dianying zhipianchang) in Chongqing.

2. "Strand Theater Incident," China Weekly Review 102, no. 3 (June 15, 1946): 51–52.

3. Dianying 1, no. 6 (October 20, 1946): 19.

4. Ibid.

5. Ibid.

6. V. L. Wong, "Motion Pictures Today Important Agency in Education—of Old and Young," China Weekly Review 101, no. 11 (May 11, 1946): 230.

7. Ibid., 231.

8. For an account of the Lianhua Studio in the early postwar period, see You Ming, "Lianhua dianying zhipianchang xunli" (A tour of the Lianhua Film Studio), Dianyi huabao (December 1, 1946): 8.

9. Zhongguo dianyingjia xiehui, Dianying shi yanjiu bu, ed., Zhongguo dianyingjia liezhuan (Biographies of Chinese filmmakers), vol. 2 (Beijing: Zhongguo dianying chuban she, 1982), 237–44.

10. Changtai Hung, War and Popular Culture: Resistance in Modern China, 1937–1945 (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1994), 55–64.

11. Zhongguo da baike quanshu: dianying (The great encyclopedia of China: Cinema) (Beijing, Shanghai: Zhongguo da baike quanshu chuban she, 1991), 51.

12. Ibid., 357–58.

13. Zhongguo dianyingjia xiehui, Dianying shi yanjiu bu, eds., Zhongguo dianyingjia liezhuan, 1:15–23.

14. Ibid., 1:338–49.

15. Zhongguo da baike quanshu: dianying, 44.

16. Zhongguo dianyingjia xiehui, Dianying shi yanjiu bu, eds., Zhongguo dianyingjia liezhuan, 2:286–97; Zhongguo da baike quanshu: dianying, 482.

17. Robert Darnton, "Workers Revolt: The Great Cat Massacre of the Rue Saint-Severin," in Rethinking Popular Culture: Contemporary Perspectives in Cultural Studies, ed. Chandra Mukerji and Michael Schudson (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1991), 100.

18. A published text of Eight Thousand Miles of Clouds and Moon can be found in Zhongguo dianying gongzuozhe xiehui, ed., Wusi yilai dianying juben xuanji (An anthology of screenplays of the post–May Fourth era), vol. 2 (Hong Kong: Wenhua ziliao gongying she, 1979), 1–81. The dialogue in the film itself does not always follow the text of the screenplay. The title of the film is taken from a line in the famous poem entitled "Man jiang hong," by Yue Fei (1103–41).

19. For a contemporary review of the film, see Man Jianghong, "Ba qian li lu yun he yue" (Eight thousand miles of clouds and moon), Dianyi huabao (December 1, 1946): 2–3.

20. For a sketch of the young actor Gao Zheng, see Xi Zi, "Lianhua wu xin ren" (Five new faces at Lianhua), Dianyi huabao (December 1, 1946): 14–15.

21. For a sensitive and sympathetic portrait of people who lived under the Japanese occupation of Shanghai, see Poshek Fu, Passivity, Resistance, and Collaboration: Intellectual Choice in Occupied Shanghai, 1937–1945 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1993).

22. A published text of A Spring River Flows East can be found in Zhongguo dianying gongzuozhe xiehui, ed., Wusi yilai dianying juben xuanji, 2:85–230. The dialogue in the film does not always follow the text of the screenplay, especially in the concluding scenes. The title of the film is taken from a line of a poem by the famous Tang poet Li Bai.

23. Zheng Junli's own lengthy discussion of A Spring River Flows East is contained in his book Hua wai yin (Sound beyond the image) (Beijing: Zhongguo dianying chuban she, 1979), 1–18.

24. See Jay Leyda, Dianying: An Account of Films and the Film Audience in China (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1972), 166.

25. One of the best studies of the immediate postwar mood of Shanghai is Suzanne Pepper, Civil War in China: The Political Struggle, 1945–1949 (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1978).

26. See Du Yunzhi, Zhongguo dianying shi (A history of Chinese cinema), vol. 2 (Taibei: Taiwan shangwuyin shuguan, 1978), 96–101.

27. See Cheng Jihua, Li Shaobai, and Xing Zuwen, eds., Zhongguo dianying fazhan shi (A history of the development of Chinese cinema), vol. 2 (Beijing: Zhongguo dianying chuban she, 1963), 210–14, 217–23.

28. For a new study that sheds light on the complexities of the censorship institution, see Xiao Zhiwei, "Film Censorship in China, 1927–1937" (Ph.D. diss., Department of History, University of California, San Diego, 1994).

29. Shen bao, February 15, 1948. See the Sunday supplement entitled Mei zhou huakan (Weekly pictorial).

30. All of these advertising texts can be found in the film advertising sections of Shen bao in 1947, especially in the January, February, and October issues.

31. Dianying 1, no. 8 (April 1, 1947): 16–18.

32. Ibid.

33. For a fascinating discussion of the antimerchant, antibourgeois sentiments of both Chiang Kai-shek (Jiang Jieshi) and Chiang Ching-kuo (Jiang Jingguo) in the postwar period, see Lloyd Eastman, Seeds of Destruction: Nationalist China in War and Revolution, 1937–1949 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1984), 172–215.

34. For a discussion of similarities between leftist, centrist, and rightist films of the prewar 1930s, see Paul G. Pickowicz, "The Theme of Spiritual Pollution in Chinese Films of the 1930s," Modern China 17, no. 1 (January 1991): 38–75.

35. Quoted in Eastman, Seeds of Destruction, 182.

36. Leftists in the Chinese countryside in the 1940s also espoused traditionalistic cultural criticism of postwar society. See Edward Friedman, Paul G. Pickowicz, and Mark Selden, Chinese Village, Socialist State (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1991).

37. Dianying 1, no. 9 (June 1, 1947): 3.

38. Hung, War and Popular Culture, 270–85.

39. Chandra Mukerji and Michael Schudson, eds., Rethinking Popular Culture: Contemporary Perspectives in Cultural Studies (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1991), 38.

40. I would like to thank Professor Tu Weiming for suggesting the use of the term "psychological reality."

41. This statement by Shi Dongshan is contained in a handout distributed to all ticket holders when they entered the theater to see Eight Thousand Miles of Clouds and Moon in 1947. An original copy of the handout survives in the Film Archive of China (Zhongguo dianying ziliao guan) in Beijing.