Chinese Fictions in France and Shadows in China

Abstract

Unlike written production, which was plentiful, only a few French ctional lms about the Cultural Revolution were produced between 1966 and 1976. Nevertheless, it was the object of contradictory discourse in two lms which reveal the cultural cleavages in 1960s and 1970s French society. Jean-Luc Godard’s La Chinoise (1967) and René Viénet’s Can Dialectics Break Bricks? (La Dialectique peut-elle casser les briques?, 1973) confront Maoist and anti- Maoist perspectives, as seen from France. Simon Leys’s seminal book Chinese Shadows and its problematization of the achievements of the Cultural Revolution serve here as a point of departure for an analysis of the various debates of this period. This article will also take into consideration a few contemporary Chinese lms that form a sort of counterpoint to the French ction lms of the 1960s and 1970s. Wang Bing’s The Ditch (Jiabiangou, 2010), for instance, unveils the consequences of the Hundred Flowers Campaign and the Great Leap Forward (1958-1960).