Film
Movie theaters, reviews and showtimes in Chicago, plus articles, trailers and more
- Home
- Box Office
- Listings
- Trailers
- Features
Bookmark this page- Edition:
Along the Sungari River (1947)
Director: Jin Shan
Movie review
From Time Out Film Guide
Made in very tough conditions in a Changchun studio just liberated from the Japanese, this was the pioneering attempt to dramatise Japan's invasion and annexation of Manchuria in the 1930s. Zhang Ruifang (later an iconic battleaxe in communist propaganda movies) plays a young village girl who takes to the road with her fiancé (Wang) after the Japanese have killed both her parents. The boy takes a job in a Japanese-run mine and leads the protests when it collapses in a flood. Both of them end up fighting as guerillas with the resistance. No dramatic or political surprises, but the performances are down to earth and the visuals are remarkable - much of it has the startling, pantheistic poetry once unique to Dovzhenko. A knockout debut for actor Jin Shan, who ran foul of the post-1949 government and was allowed to direct only three more features in the 1950s.Author: TR
Cast & crew
Director: Jin Shan
Producer: Sheng Jialun, Guan Zhibin
Cast: Wang Renlu, Zhang Ruifang, Zhou Diao, Pu Ke, Yi Ping, Zhu Wenshun, Chen Zhenzhong full cast
Genre(s): War
Duration: 112 mins
Features
Gray's anatomy
James Gray wants to push buttons—again.
The next big thing?
Gigantic Releasing tries to rethink indie distribution…without movie theaters.
Red Diva: Lyubov Orlova, First Lady of Soviet Cinema
So you think you can dance, comrade?
Puppet master
Coraline director Henry Selick takes stop-motion animation into 3-D.
Socratic method
Laurent Cantet's approach on the set matches the message of his film.
Wander woman
Kelly Reichardt's Wendy and Lucy puts a Bush-era spin on the road movie.
Oscars
Read our interviews with the nominees, our reviews of the nominated films and more.
What do you think?
Post your review now