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馬路天使 (Street Angel)

Director: Yuan Muzhi
Year: 1937
Run-time: 1 hr 31 min

- A couple sources claim this film was inspired by Frank Borzage.  I've always thought that the left wing Chinese melodramas that have appeared so far bear close kinship to Borzage, even though they weren't explicitly romantic in the same way, so it didn't surprise me to see a film that may have been more directly inspired.  Thus it surprised me that Street Angel is quite often very funny in a physical way, although it does veer towards tragedy at the end (in a way that felt a little forced to me). It even has musical scenes with our list's appearance of a bouncing ball (that goes right-to-left to match the Chinese subtitles).  It's a strange film to be sure, and very different from its Chinese forerunners.  But I do really like the characters, and the odd frenetic pacing makes for something exciting and different.
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