Lao Jing
China,
1987, 130 min
Shown in 1988
CREDITS
- dir
-
Wu Tianming
- prod
-
Du Changming, Wang Enqing
- scr
-
Zheng Yi
- cam
-
Chen Wancai, Zhang Yimou
- cast
-
Zhang Yimou, Lian Yujin, Lu Liping
- source
-
China Film Import/Export Corp.
-
COMMENTS
Wu Tianming in person.
OTHER
Wu Tianming, maverick head of Xi’an Film Studio, took a two-year break from directing while he produced such ground-breaking films as Horse Thief and The Black Cannon Incident. Now he’s back with another film of his home province Shaanxi. "Old Well” is the ironic name of a village in the Taihang Mountains—ironic, because two centuries of digging for water have found nothing but dry rock. The film centers on the first scientific attempt to dig a well, supervised by the village’s first university graduate, a young man (admirably played by Zhang Yimou, the cinematographer of Yellow Earth) who comes home and finds his life pulled every which way by the conflicting pressures of tradition and modernization. Nobody could miss the element of parable here, but larger meanings never eclipse the film’s moving and carefully modulated realism. The use of direct sound (still a rarity in Chinese movies) gives it an added punch.
—Tony Raynes, London Film Festival
FACTOID #257
Funny Girl was selected by the San Francisco Film International to receive the Samuel Goldwyn Award as the best picture made in the U.S. in 1968. Star Barbara Streisand and producer Ray Stark attended the Festival to pick up the award.
