147 Films & TV Shows Set In China During The 1930s
-
On the Mountain of Tai Hang
🇨🇳 China The 1930s The 1940sOn the Mountain of Tai Hang tells the story of the Sino-Japanese war and the commander-in-chief, Zhu De, leading the main force of the Eighth Route Army to the battlefront against the Japanese invaders. Presented are several important campaigns, from September 1937 to May 1940, including the Pingxingguan victory, the surprise attack on Yangmingbao, Xinkou campaign and Huangtuling campaign, where Abuguixiu, lieutenant general of the Japanese army, was shot down. The film also reflects the close relationship between the Eighth Route Army and the people.
-
Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow
New York Tibet The 1930sWho will save us? — When gigantic robots attack New York City, "Sky Captain" uses his private air force to fight them off. His ex-girlfriend, reporter Polly Perkins, has been investigating the recent disappearance of prominent scientists. Suspecting a link between the global robot attacks and missing men, Sky Captain and Polly decide to work together. They fly to the Himalayas in pursuit of the mysterious Dr. Totenkopf, the mastermind behind the robots.
-
Kung Fu Hustle
Shanghai The 1940s The 1930sSo many gangsters...so little time. — Set in Canton, China in the 1940s, the story revolves in a town ruled by the Axe Gang, Sing who desperately wants to become a member. He stumbles into a slum ruled by eccentric landlords who turns out to be the greatest kung-fu masters in disguise. Sing's actions eventually cause the Axe Gang and the slumlords to engage in an explosive kung-fu battle. Only one side will win and only one hero will emerge as the greatest kung-fu master of all.
-
Jasmine Women
Shanghai The 1970s The 1980s The 1950s The 1930sZhang Ziyi plays the youngest of three generations of women who leads lives in Shanghai. Joan Chen plays the great-grandmother, grandmother, and mother. The film recounts this family, the mistakes they make, and a cycle that the granddaughter breaks out of.
-
Letter from an Unknown Woman
Beijing The 1940s The 1930sPeking, 1948. A winter night. A man returns home to find a letter awaiting him written by a woman before her death. in the letter she tells him the story of her love for him -a life-long passion that has not diminished over time, but one that he has never known. her story spans 18 years from the moment she -then a 13 year-old girl- sets her eyes on her new neighbor. she tells their brief but passionate love in her youthi the hardship she goes through raising their child alone, and their final encounter after the war, during which the man fails tor ecognize her and one which leaves her in despair. Now having lost her son, she no longer has the courage to live on. Only in a letter is she capable of telling him everything, for the first and the last time. shaken by the letter, the man searches his memory for the nameless woman.
-
Purple Butterfly
Shanghai The 1930s The 1940sDing Hui is a member of Purple Butterfly, a powerful resistance group in Japanese occupied Shanghai. An unexpected encounter reunites her with Itami, an ex-lover... and officer with a secret police unit tasked with dismantling Purple Butterfly.
-
Shanghai Ghetto
Shanghai The 1930sIn 1939, the last hope for thousands of Jews lay in the last place on Earth the Nazis would look. — SHANGHAI GHETTO recalls the strange-but-true story of thousands of European Jews who were shut out of country after country while trying to escape Nazi persecution in the late 1930s. Left without options or entrance visas, a beacon of hope materialized for them on the other side of the world, and in the unlikeliest of places, Japanese-controlled Shanghai. Fleeing for their lives, these Jewish refugees journeyed to form a settlement in the exotic city, penniless and unprepared for their new life in the Far East. At the turn of the new millennium, filmmakers Dana Janklowicz-Mann and Amire Mann boldly snuck into China with two survivors and a digital camera to shoot at the site of the original Shanghai Ghetto, unchanged since WWII.
-
Japanese Devils
🇨🇳 China The 1930s The 1940sA documentary recording the testimony of fourteen former Japanese soldiers as they recount atrocities and war crimes committed during the Second World War, including the the infamous Unit 731 medical experimentation group. Having been trained by their country to be nothing but killers, the soldiers claim to have become morally numb and unable to see non-Japanese as even human. Perhaps feeling some remorse for what they have done, they now choose to tell their stories for the world to hear.
-
Purple Sunset
🇷🇺 Russia 🇨🇳 China The 1940s The 1930sA Soviet Russian lady officer, a Chinese peasant and a Japanese schoolgirl must walk their way out of a forest toward the end of World War II, despite their mutual distrust of one another.
-
Devils on the Doorstep
Hebei Province The 1930s The 1940sDuring the Japanese occupation of China, two prisoners are dumped in a peasant's home in a small town. The owner is bullied into keeping the prisoners until the next New Year, at which time they will be collected. The village leaders convene to interrogate the prisoners. The townspeople then struggle to accommodate the prisoners. One is a bellicose Japanese nationalist, the other a nervous translator. Will the townspeople manage to keep the prisoners until the New Year?
-
Heart of China
🇨🇳 China The 1930s The 1940sA story of an American pilot who crashes in China, gets rescued and falls in love with a local woman. Years later he returns to pay his respects.
-
Human Remains
🇨🇳 China 🇩🇪 Germany 🇪🇸 Spain 🇮🇹 Italy 🇷🇺 Russia The 1930s The 1950s The 1940sHuman Remains is a haunting documentary which illustrates the banality of evil by creating intimate portraits of five of the 20th century's most reviled dictators. The film unveils the personal lives of Adolf Hitler, Benito Mussolini, Joseph Stalin, Francisco Franco and Mao Tse Tung. We learn the private and mundane details of their everyday lives -- their favorite foods, films, habits and sexual preferences. There is no mention of their public lives or of their place in history. The intentional omission of the horrors for which these men were responsible hovers over the film.
-
Kundun
🇮🇳 India Tibet The 1930s The 1940s The 1950sThe destiny of a people lies in the heart of a boy. — The Tibetans refer to the Dalai Lama as 'Kundun', which means 'The Presence'. He was forced to escape from his native home, Tibet, when communist China invaded and enforced an oppressive regime upon the peaceful nation. The Dalai Lama escaped to India in 1959 and has been living in exile in Dharamsala ever since.
-
The Soong Sisters
🇨🇳 China The 1930s The 1940sThe Soong family was a political dynasty in China that reached the highest levels of power. This film follows the lives of the three Soong daughters, who were educated in America and returned to China. Ai-ling (the oldest) married a wealthy and powerful businessman. Ching-ling married Sun Yat-sen, the revolutionary founder of modern China. Mei-ling (the youngest) married Chiang Kai-shek, China's leader during World War II. The sisters captured the world's fascination for their brilliant marriages and their strong influence on their nation.
-
Eighteen Springs
Shanghai The 1930sBased on an Eileen Chang novel, a story of romance and fate set in the Shanghai of the 1930s. Manjing (Wu Chien-lien), a young woman from a once-well-off family, works in a Shanghai factory, where she meets Shujun (Leon Lai), the son of wealthy Nanjing merchants. Despite Shujun's reservations about Manjing's family (her sister, Manlu (Anita Mui) works as a nightclub "hostess"), they manage, in stages, to fall in love. The expected progress through engagement to marriage is interrupted, first by Manjing's ambivalence about taking this step, then by Shujun's rejection of her family, and finally by that family's baroquely conceived abuse and enslavement of Shujun. After a long period of seperation, Shujun and Manjing meet, but realize that their happiness remains only in memory, in a nostalgic re-imagining of opportunities missed, understandings never arrived at.
-
Shanghai 1937
Shanghai The 1930sBased on Vicki Baum's novel.
-
Shanghai Grand
Shanghai The 1930sGangsters abound in this lively, romantic crime drama that is set in Shanghai during WW II. The tale of Taiwanese patriot Hsu Wen-Chiang begins as he is washed up on a beach near Shanghai. He is taken in by Ting Lik, a kindly beggar who is desperately in love with Feng Ching-Ching, the daughter of a prominent gangster. It isn't long before Ting Lik successfully rises through the underworld ranks to become one of the city's most powerful gangsters. Hsu is beside him all the way and uses his own power to get revenge against those who tried to have him killed much earlier. The film's later focus is on the exploits of Feng who long ago had a relationship with Hsu when he was on the lam in northern China. Back in the present, Hsu and Feng meet again by chance and they resume their affair until Hsu learns that Feng's father is one of his enemies and kills him. Poor Feng goes mad with grief. Ting finds out and swears revenge upon Hsu.
-
The King of Masks
Sichuan Province The 1930sWang Bianlian is an aging street performer known as the King of Mask for his mastery of Sichuan Change Art in a true story. His wife left him with and infant son over 30 years ago. The son died from illness at age 10. This left Wang a melancholy loner aching for a male descendent to learn his rare and dying art.
-
Shanghai Triad
Shanghai The 1930sIn 1930, Shanghai violence was not the problem. It was the solution. — Shanghai, China, 1930. When young Shuisheng arrives from the countryside, his uncle Liushu puts him at the service of Bijou, the mistress of Laoda, supreme boss of the Tang Triad, constantly threatened by his enemies, both those he knows and those lurking in the shadows.
-
Black Sun: The Nanking Massacre
🇨🇳 China The 1930s The 1940sBlack Sun: The Nanking Massacre, also called Men Behind the Sun 4, is a 1994 Hong Kong film directed by Mou Tun Fei and is in many ways considered to be a follow up to the 1987 shockumentary film, Men Behind the Sun. The movie depicts the events behind the Nanking Massacre committed by the Imperial Japanese army against Chinese citizens and refugees during the Second Sino-Japanese War. Like Men Behind the Sun, the film was both criticized and praised for its brutal portrayal of the Japanese atrocities, such as the notorious contest to kill 100 people using a sword, during the early and late stages of World War II, but at the same time was questioned over historical accuracy and violence which gave the film a more exploitation feel to it.
-
Don't Cry, Nanking
🇨🇳 China The 1930s The 1940sIn December 1937, during the Second Japanese-Sino War, a Chinese doctor, his Japanese pregnant wife, their teenage daughter and their young son travel from Shanghai to Nanjing seeking shelter in the Capital during the Japanese invasion. The family faces the Rape of Nanking by the Imperial Japanese Army, with rapes, mass murder of prisoners of war and civilians including women, children and elders, and disrespect of international conventions.
-
Fist of Legend
Shanghai Kyoto Prefecture The 1930s The 1940sTo avenge his masters death, He'll fight like never before! — Chen Zhen, a Chinese engineering student in Kyoto, who braves the insults and abuse of his Japanse fellow students for his local love Mitsuko Yamada, daughter of the director, returns in 1937 to his native Shangai, under Japanse protectorate -in fact military occupation- after reading about the death of his kung-fu master Hou Ting-An in a fight against the Japanese champion Ryuichi Akutagawa.
-
Farewell My Concubine
Beijing The 1930s The 1940sAbandoned by his prostitute mother in 1920, Douzi was raised by a theater troupe. There he meets Shitou and over the following years the two develop an act entitled "Farewell My Concubine" that brings them fame and fortune. When Shitou marries Juxian, Douzi becomes jealous, the beginnings of the acting duo's explosive breakup and tragic fall take root.
-
Sanmao Joins the Army
Shanghai The 1930sIn 1937, after the Marco Polo Bridge Incident, the Second Sino-Japanese War breaks out. San Mao, a wandering orphan, joins the army to participate in the Battle of Shanghai.
-
God of Gamblers III: Back to Shanghai
Shanghai 🇭🇰 Hong Kong The 1930s The 1990sAfter the events in God of Gamblers II, Tai-Kun who lost his ESP powers has regained the abilities again and seeks revenge against Sing, the Saint of Gamblers. When Tai-Kun, aided by his fellow disciples, exerts ESP powers under full force against Sing who is doing likewise to them, the spacetime becomes distorted and sends Tai-Kun and Sing to Shanghai in 1937. Meeting his own grandfather Chow Tai Fook and the benign millionaire Ding Lik, Sing must deal with Ding Lik's foes and the Japanese military forces, with his "mistaken" crush on one of a pair of twin sisters, find out who defeated the French "God of Gamblers", Pierre Cashon, in that era (the mysterious "Comment allez-vous"), and finally find out how to travel back to Hong Kong in 1991.
- load more