MovieChat Forums > Dragon Seed Discussion > Little did they know...

Little did they know...

posted 17 years ago by douglas-cook
9 replies | jump to latest

That just a scant few years later, the oppressors would be the Chinese themselves...the "students" becoming radical followers of Marxism, who would deny the citizenry their customs ,food and land in a pogrom worse than any the Japanese could conceive..

In real life,the radical bloodthirsty son would have become a convert,if he wasn't there already, and Jade would have turned The old man and his wife in for their adherance to traditional thoughts and ways.

One would doubt that anything held sacred by the producers of this film (private land ownership,a merchant class and multiple children families)were returned to the peasantry after the defeat of the Japanese.

I am afraid that the ancestral land would have been claimed by the party and turned into a co-operative, where the previous owners would be treated much as the Japanese had treated them..as slaves...

[–] zdthn 17 years ago

Actually most people in early 49 would have been in favor of the early reforms. it wasn't until the great leap forward and the Hundred flowers campaign when things started to go off track.

[–] Fromarienbad 17 years ago

This shows that you probably don't know anything about modern Chinese political history. The Japanese invasion and what happened after the Communist Revolution are completely different things.

What you are talking about is the Cultural Revolution and possibly the Great Leap Forward (juding from what you are describing). Those are not just "few" years later. The timelines are completely different.

[–] kennethpitchford 16 years ago

Thanks to you for and the previous poster for showing some historical perspective. The other posts about Hepburn as a laugh riot are also odious, showing no historical understanding of how Hollywood developed from Caucasian actors in all the leading roles to the exact reverse today. Also, there is no conception of how World War II affected Hollywood and its audiences. Our sympathies with the Russians and the Chinese lead directly to the McCarthy hearings. I first saw this movie as a 13-year-old and naively found it intensely moving. Those chanting as they pull machines into the mountains are cryptic Maoists and we all thought they were wonderful. I also thought Hepburn wonderful. When I see the current comments of those without any perspective on those times, I am sad. Honestly, I can still set aside the corniness inherent in the limitations under which they were working and enjoy the movie today. I see the intentions behind the movie then, and admire them, not the easy mockery it provokes today.
~ KP

[–] fcalderp 16 years ago

As Hugh Griffith said to the Romans in Ben-Hur, "Bravely spoken". I agree with you 100%. The key owrd in your comment is "historical perspective". In 50 years most of the movies currently produced (even those by Spike Lee) will undoubtely look "politically incorrect", full of stereotypes. Times change.

[–] deng-anzhu 16 years ago

Sorry to burst your bubble, but you're plainly wrong in this case. Terrible abuses began soon after the end of World War II, and here I quote from Edwin W. Moise (and this is not a minority opinion):

"By late 1947 and early 1948, in substantial areas of North and Northeast China, the CCP was carrying out a very radical land reform--extreme in the numbers of executions, extreme in the taking of land not just from real landlords but also from people only moderately (if at all) wealthier than their neighbors, and extreme in the paranoia with which those running the campaign purged village-level Communist Party branches of suspected landlord agents. By mid 1948 the program was moderating in all of these respects, and it was under these more moderate policies that most of China underwent land reform in the following years. But these policies were "more moderate" only by comparison with what had gone before; hundreds of thousands of landlords were still executed."

Land reform in China was basically a giant bloodbath. So nice of them to start off with a bang!

[–] retcarahc 16 years ago

These harsh and brutal facts are true enough, but they do not bespeak the spirit of this film or of its characters. If we extrapolate the fictional reality of this film into the future, it may well be that some of its most admirable characters would be taken in by the false promises of communism, just as many millions were in countries around the world. This is not a condemnation of them, nor of this film, which contributed to the solidarity of the allies, but of the deceivers.

[–] deng-anzhu 16 years ago

In that case, I agree with you. I was following the previous posters off-topic... As far as the film goes, I think that it's pretty innocuous. I just don't like people to whitewash the history of the Chinese Communist Party.

[–] bradford-1 15 years ago

I assume there's a few generation of Americans that don't realize China and the Soviet Union were U.S. allies in World War Two. See MISSION TO MOSCOW or DAYS OF GLORY for pro-Russian war flicks. It was the Cold War that hardened American attitudes against the former allies. Of course, Communism turned out to be horrific, but if the Russians hadn't shed so much blood fighting the Germans on the Eastern Front, I daresay WWII might've turned out much differently.

[–] HarveyManfriedjinnStJohn 15 years ago

Action in the North Atlantic was another pro-Russian WWII flick about the merchant marines and their role in the war.

Honeys try all kinds of tomfoolery to steal a feel of my family jewellery...