Xie Jin, one of the most achieved Chinese directors, passed away last Saturday morning in his hometown of Shangyu, near Shanghai. From the 1950s to the 1990s, his name was regularly mentioned by people who were talking about Chinese movies. Some called him “the most well-known Chinese in today’s world cinema” and some other even praised him as “the godfather of Chinese cinema.” Of cause, those words were before the rise of the Fifth Generation Directors, like Zhang Yimou and Chen Kaige. The movies he made, especially those shot before the 1980s, are more or less politically influenced, however, Xie Jin had always managed to make something different out of them, something more about the real life of ordinary people and less about the political messages.

Xie Jin was born in 1923 in Shangyu of Zhejiang Province. In the 1940s, Xie worked at a theater troupe in Chongqing, the wartime capital of China. In 1947 he turned his career to filmmaking and involved in the production of satire comedy Ya Qi (The Deaf Wife), as an assistance director.

After the founding of the People’s Republic, he directed four movies, which drew very little attention. His breakthrough was Nü Lan Wu Hao (Women Basketball Player No. 5), China’s first sports movie shot in color. It came out in 1957, when China was shattered by a political thunderstorm, the Anti-Rightist Movement, and this movie offered very rare entertainment to the public. In 1961, he shot Hong Se Niang Zi Jun (The Women Red Army), telling the true story of a group of peasant women rebelling against the local landlord. Next year, in the 1st Hundred Flowers Awards, which were decided by a public ballot, the film was named the Best Picture and Xie was granted title of the Best Director.

In 1962, Xie made his first and only comedy Da Li Xiao Li He Lao Li. When the whole nation was in famine largely caused by the disastrous political movement, the Big Leap Forward, this movie allowed millions of people temporarily forgetting the hunger. In 1965, he directed Wu Tai Jie Mei (Two Stage Sisters), an epic film about the struggling life of two stage actresses before the Communist revolution. The film won the Sutherland Trophy of the British Film Institute Awards in 1980, 15 years after its original release. During and right after another and much bigger political disaster, the Cultural Revolution (1966 – 1976), Xie managed to direct four movies, Hai Gang (The Sea Port), Chun Miao (Seedlings of Springtime), Pan Shi Wan (Rocky Bay) and Qing Chun (Youth), all were made to satisfy the political need.

In 1979, Xie made A! Yao Lan (Ah! Cradles), about a touching story of dozens of toddlers being put in horse-carried cradles to escape the advancing Nationalist troops. Tian Yun Shan Chuan Qi (Tale of Mt. Heavenly Cloud), came out a year later, tells how two lovers were torn apart by decades of political movements. It is one of the best films, which criticizing the political mismanagement of Communist leaders. The film later won the Best Picture and the Best Director titles in the 1st Golden Rooster Awards, which were presented by a jury of film professionals.

In 1982, when China began the ambitious economic reform, Xie made Mu Ma Ren (Herdsman), a romantic drama telling people to love their scared country and look forward to the future. It won the Best Picture title of the 6th Hundred Flowers Awards. Qiu Jin, released in 1983, was a faithful biopic of Qiu Jin, a woman revolutionist (not a Communist), who were executed for leading a failed uprising against the imperial Qing government. Gao Shan Xia De Hua Huan (Wreaths at the Foot of the Mountain), came out a year later, was a moving drama with a story set in the short-lasting China-Vietnam war in 1979. The war movie was picked as the Best Picture of the 8th Golden Rooster Awards. Fu Rong Zhen (Hibiscus Town), released in 1986, was another bomb shell dropped on the notorious Culture Revolution. The film chronicled the whole movement through the up and down of several ordinary people in a remote little town. It later received the Best Picture title from both the Hundred Flowers and the Golden Rooster.

In 1989, Xie released Zui Hou De Gui Zu (The Last Aristocrats), a well crafted drama about several young women, from families associated with the Nationalist, being in exile in America after the Communist took control of China. Qing Liang Si De Zhong Sheng (Bell of Purity Temple), released in 1992, tells the life story of a Japanese man, abandoned in China toward the end of WWII.

Xie’s next three films, Qi Ming Xing (Qi Ming Star), Lao Ren Yu Gou (An Old Man and His Dog) and Nü Er Gu (Behind the Wall of Shame), failed to match the attention received by his previous works. In 1997, he presented The Opium War, a historical epic telling the history of how the imperial Chinese government cracked down the worsening opium trafficking, which directly triggered the British invasion, and how the corrupted empire finally lost the war and forced to surrender Hong Kong to the British. Released in the year Hong Kong was returning back to China, this historical drama did very well in Chinese box-office. In the same year’s Montreal World Film Festival, the film was awarded with Grand Prix des Amériques. With his last movie, Nü Zu Jiu Hao (Women Soccer Player No. 9), released in 2001, Xie tried to bring back the glory of his Women Basketball Player No. 5 and failed.