SHANGHAI TRIAD 1995 B5 CHIRASHI 2-SIDED JAPANESE MINI MOVIE POSTER FLYER CINEMA FILM ADVERT 

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Wonderful condition. Bought at Auction. Pictures are scans of the actual item. See photos.

Size : 10" x 7" 

Dispatched 2nd class large letter in cardboard backed envelope. 

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This Japanese B5 chirashi mini poster flyer is a must-have for fans of the Chinese film 'Shanghai Triad', released in the 1990's. The artwork depicts a beautiful image of the film's characters and scenes, making it a great addition to any collection of foreign language film memorabilia. This original piece was produced in Japan, the country/region of manufacture, and is a rare find for collectors of originals worldwide. The poster's genre is foreign language, and it falls under the category of 1990's, originals - worldwide, posters, film memorabilia, and films & TV. It is a 2-sided poster featuring the film's title and promotional images, making it a perfect piece for display or framing. It is in excellent condition and would make a fantastic addition to any collection.

Shanghai Triad

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Shanghai Triad
Traditional Chinese搖啊搖，搖到外婆橋
Simplified Chinese摇啊摇，摇到外婆桥
Literal meaningRow, Row, Row to Grandma's Bridge
Hanyu PinyinYáo a Yáo, Yáo Dào Wàipó Qiáo
Directed byZhang Yimou
Written byBi Feiyu
Based onRules of a Clan
by Li Xiao
Produced byYves Marmion
Jean-Louis Piel
Wu Yigong
Starring
CinematographyLü Yue
Edited byDu Yuan
Music byZhang Guangtian
Distributed byUnited States:
Sony Pictures Classics
Release dates
Cannes:
May 1995
United States:
22 December 1995
Running time
103 minutes
CountryChina
LanguageMandarin
Box office$2,086,101 (USA)

Shanghai Triad is a 1995 Chinese crime-drama film, directed by Zhang Yimou and starring Gong Li. The script is written by Bi Feiyu based on Li Xiao's 1994 novel Rules of a Clan (门规). The film is set in the criminal underworld of 1930s Shanghai, Republic of China and spans seven days. Shanghai Triad's Chinese title reads "Row, row, row to Grandma Bridge", refers to a well known traditional Chinese lullaby.[1]

The film was the last collaboration between Zhang Yimou and actress Gong Li in the 1990s, thus ending a successful partnership that had begun with Zhang's debut, Red Sorghum, and had evolved into a romantic relationship as well. With the wrapping of filming for Shanghai Triad the two agreed to end their relationship both professionally and personally.[2] Gong Li and Zhang Yimou would not work together again until 2006's Curse of the Golden Flower.

Plot[edit]

Tang Shuisheng has arrived in Shanghai to work for a Triad Boss, also named Tang. He is taken to a warehouse where two rival groups of Triads carry out an opium deal that goes wrong, leaving one of the rival members dead. Shuisheng is then taken by his uncle to Tang's palatial home, where he is assigned to serve Xiao Jinbao, a cabaret singer and mistress of the Boss. It is soon learned that Jinbao is also carrying on an affair with the Boss's number two man, Song.

On the third night, Shuisheng witnesses a bloody gang fight between the Boss and a rival, Fat Yu, in which his uncle is killed. The Boss and a small entourage retreat to an island. There, Jinbao befriends Cuihua, a peasant woman with a young daughter, Ajiao. When Jinbao unwittingly meddles in Cuihua's business, it results in the Boss's men killing Cuihua's lover. Furious, Jinbao confronts the Boss and tells Shuisheng to leave Shanghai.

By the seventh day, Song arrives to the island along with Zheng, the Boss's number three man. Shuisheng has multiple cases of explosive, sudden diarrhea, and while evacuating his bowels in the reeds, overhears hiding men plotting to kill Jinbao. He rushes back and tells Boss what he heard. During a mahjong game, the Boss calmly confronts Song with evidence of his treachery. The gang kills Song's men and buries Song alive. The Boss then informs Jinbao that she will have to die as well for her role in Song's betrayal, along with Cuihua. As Shuisheng attempts to save her from her fate, he is thrown back and beaten. The film ends with Shuisheng tied to the sails of the ship as it sails back to Shanghai. The Boss takes Cuihua's young daughter with him, telling her that in a few years, she will become just like Jinbao.

Cast[edit]

  • Wang Xiaoxiao as Tang Shuisheng, the young teenage boy who serves as the film's protagonist and he falls under the spell of the boss's mistress, Jinbao.
  • Gong Li as Xiao Jinbao, a Shanghai nightclub singer, Jinbao is the mistress of the Triad Boss.
  • Li Xuejian as Uncle Liu, a servant to a Triad organization and Tang Shuisheng's uncle.
  • Li Baotian as Tang the Triad Boss who hides a ruthless side.
  • Sun Chun as Song, the Boss's number two man, Song's affair with Jinbao sets up the film's main conflict.
  • Fu Biao as Zheng, the Boss's number three man.
  • Yang Qianguan as Ajiao, a young girl living on the secluded island with her mother.
  • Jiang Baoying as Cuihao, Ajiao's mother, a peasant woman who prepares meals for the Boss while he is hiding on his island estate.

Production[edit]

Shanghai Triad was director Zhang Yimou's seventh feature film. Zhang's previous film, To Live had landed the director in trouble with Chinese authorities, and he was temporarily banned from making any films funded from overseas sources.[1] Shanghai Triad was therefore only allowed to continue production after it was officially categorized as local production. The director has since noted that his selection of Shanghai Triad to follow up the politically controversial To Live was no accident, as he hoped that a "gangster movie" would be a conventional film.[3]

The film was originally intended to be a straight adaptation of the novel Gang Law by author Li Xiao. This plan eventually changed with Gong Li's character becoming more important and the story's viewpoint shifting to that of the young boy, Tang Shuisheng. As a result, the film's title was changed to reflect its new "younger" perspective.[1]

Reception[edit]

Though perhaps less well known than some of Zhang Yimou's more celebrated films (notably Ju Dou, To Live and Raise the Red Lantern), Shanghai Triad has an approval rating of 90% on review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, based on 31 reviews, and an average rating of 7/10. The website's critical consensus states: "Well-acted and beautifully filmed, Shanghai Triad deftly depicts a young man's coming of age against the backdrop of mob violence and its punishing legacy".[4] Metacritic assigned the film a weighted average score of 77 out of 100, based on 25 critics, indicating "generaly favourable reviews".[5]

With its headline position in the New York Film Festival, The New York Times' critic Janet Maslin opened her review that despite the clichéd genre of the "gangster film," Shanghai Triad nevertheless "movingly affirms the magnitude of [Zhang Yimou's] storytelling power."[3] Derek Elley of the entertainment magazine Variety similarly found the film to be an achievement, particularly in how it played with genre conventions, calling the film a "stylized but gripping portrait of mob power play and lifestyles in 1930 Shanghai."[1] Roger Ebert, however, provided a counterpoint to the film's praise, arguing that the choice of the boy as the film's main protagonist ultimately hurt the film, and that Shanghai Triad was probably "the last, and ... certainly the least, of the collaborations between the Chinese director Zhang Yimou and the gifted actress Gong Li" (though Gong would again work with Zhang in 2006's Curse of the Golden Flower).[2] Even Ebert however, conceded that the film's technical credits were well done, calling Zhang one of the "best visual stylists of current cinema."[2]

Awards and nominations[edit]

Retail release[edit]

Shanghai Triad was released on December 12, 2000 in the United States on region 1 DVD by Sony Pictures' Columbia TriStar label.[7] The DVD edition includes English and Spanish subtitles. The DVD is in the widescreen letterbox format with an aspect ratio of 1.85:1. Blu-ray with 108 minute runtime was released on Aug 4, 2020.[8]


Shanghai Triad

Roger Ebert 

"Shanghai Triad" may be the last, and is certainly the least, of the collaborations between the Chinese director Zhang Yimou and the gifted actress Gong Li. The story of a gang boss in 1930s Shanghai and his willful, troublesome mistress, it's seen through the eyes of a small boy from the country who loses his innocence in eight bloody days.

Yimou and Li's great works together, starting in 1987, were "Red Sorghum," "Ju Dou," "Raise the Red Lantern," "The Story of Qui Ju" and "To Live." These five films represent one of the great actor-director collaborations, but the couple ended their romantic involvement in February, 1995, and now plan to work apart.

This last film, which is never involving and often pointless and repetitive, is about the powerful boss (Li Baotian) of a Shanghai crime triad and his mistress, Xiao Jingbao (Gong Li), a nightclub singer who mocks and taunts him, and whose nickname is Bijou. The true nature of their relationship emerges only gradually, because the point of view is supplied by a 14-year old named Shuisheng (Wang Xiao Xiao), who comes from the country under the sponsorship of his uncle, a gangster.

Shuisheng's assignment is to work as a personal servant for the glamorous Bijou, but almost before he has his feet on the ground, he witnesses a gangland execution. And he overhears troubling conversations between the woman and the godfather (as the film's subtitles call him, perhaps in a bow to Brando). The godfather's word is law in his little world, but he cannot bend Bijou to his will.

Shuisheng is naive and inexperienced (asked by a gangster if he's ever slept with a woman, he replies helpfully, "Yes, with my mother, when I was little"). He views the world of the godfather and the mistress incompletely, through doors left ajar, through overheard conversations, through the implications of statements he does not fully understand.

Yimou is one of the best visual stylists of current cinema, and "Shanghai Triad" is a good-looking film. The scenes set in Bijou's nightclub have a nice smoky, decadent, sensuous look, and Bijou is in the great tradition of gangster movies where the boss' girlfriend is the lead singer: She does not sing nearly as well as the boss thinks she does. But the nightclub production numbers go on so long they break the rhythm and seem to occupy a movie of their own.

 Trouble strikes. A rival gang attacks the godfather's house, killing many people, including the boy's uncle ("his open eyes call out for vengeance," the boy is told). The boss gathers his gang members, his mistress and the little boy, and removes them all to a small island. Shuisheng now begins to suspect that Bijou is in special danger, but any tension is dissipated in the island's foggy atmosphere. An annoying childhood song is sung again and again (and again), as characters wander through the mist, and we discover that the plot is not at all what we thought.

"Shanghai Triad" plays like a movie in which some scenes are missing, and others have been stretched out to make up the difference. It was made by Yimou under difficult conditions; his "To Live" was entered in the Cannes Film Festival against the wishes of the Chinese government, who then slapped restrictions on this production. But even if the film had been more fully realized, I wonder if it would have been much better.

There are two basic weaknesses. One is that the boy supplies the point of view, and yet the story is not about him, so instead of identifying with him, we are simply frustrated in our wish to see more than he can see. The other problem is that Gong Li's character is thoroughly unlikable. She can be the warmest and most charismatic of actresses, but here she always seems mad about something. Maybe about her director?


Roger Ebert
Roger Ebert

Roger Ebert was the film critic of the Chicago Sun-Times from 1967 until his death in 2013. In 1975, he won the Pulitzer Prize for distinguished criticism.