Ruan Lingyu was one of the first Chinese movie stars, appearing in films such as The Peach Girl (1931), Small Toys (1933) and New Women (1935) in which she played an actress and screenwriter who kills herself after being hounded by the press. Life imitated art - the film was attacked and she really did kill herself. Her funeral procession was three miles long. I only know all this because of Mark Cousin's fine series (and book) The Story of Film. Her life was dramatised in the 1991 Center Stage in which she is played by Maggie Cheung.
Here she plays a prostitute mother who becomes the plaything of a local small time hood, rather well played by Zhang Zhizhi, She manages to get her son into a good school, but when they found out what his mother does, she's expelled despite the protestations of teacher Li Junpan.
A glimpse of Shanghai in 1934 is fascinating in itself, and the film is not uninteresting in technique, with actors direct to camera, high up camera, overlapping footage etc. It's a silent film, photographed by Hong Weile. After the Japanese invasion in 1937, Hong Kong started to be the emergent film nation there.
It was also the height of cheongsam fashion, complete with side splits. You can see them in the advertising on her wall, and it's interesting the posters feature English words of product names, like 'Ovaltine'.
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