Shennü

The Goddess of the title lives in Shanghai where she is both a prostitute and a single mother. During a police raid, she seeks shelter with Zhang, a brutal gambler, who then appoints himself her pimp. She withholds part of her earnings from him to pay for her son’s school. But the mothers of some of his classmates demand that the principal expel the immoral woman’s child from the school. And then Zhang discovers the money she has hidden…! This drama, rife with social criticism, is among the masterpieces of Chinese cinema and one of the best performances by Ruan Lingyu (1910–1935), who played the title character. As the shrewd streetwalker and devoted mother in The Goddess, the actor known as the “Garbo of the East” unfurled the full range of her acting talent with its orientation to the realism of Western cinema. Maggie Cheung won the Silver Bear in 1992 for her depiction of Lingyu in Stanley Kwan’s biopic Center Stage.
The restoration in honour of Ruan Lingyu was based on the nitrate negative. The music was composed by the renowned Zou Ye, recorded by the China Philharmonic Orchestra and re-mastered in 5.1 Surround Sound.