Rent Ju Dou (1990)

This DVD is so technically poor it's unwatchable - Ju Dou review by BS

The original film was a visual masterpiece using a theme of swathes of silk fabric with beautiful colours. This DVD version is terrible, it looks as though someone copied it on a mobile phone from a cinema screen the colours are so yellow and washed out its unwatchable.

Mad Love - Ju Dou review by Steve

The opening text informs us the year is 1920, and yet this reflects the sort of rural feudalism which stretches back into the middle ages. Which is presumably a political position taken by Zhang Yimou, and a criticism of China before Maoism which might have appealed to the Communist Party...

Instead, it was banned because they felt the unsympathetic patriarch might be assumed to represent the present day government! Which is crazy! Anyway, the malign elder (Wei Li) runs a successful fabric dying business and purchases a beautiful young wife, Ju Dou (Gong Li) to provide an heir.

Only he is cruel, and drives her into the arms of his nephew (Baotian Li). So who actually is the father of her little boy? This is romantic melodrama- with supernatural implications- and reminiscent of the postwar cinema of Kenji Mizoguchi... Except for the utterly gorgeous colour process.

Zhang Yimou was a graduate in cinematography and has an artistic feel for composition, plus the spectacular use of light and filters. While this will appeal to those with an interest in Chinese social history, it's mainly the exquisite Technicolor photography* which makes it worth seeing.

*please note the current dvd release looks like a transfer from a video cassette cropped for tv use. Plus the sound is poor. All Zhang's early films are overdue restoration and bluray release.