Yuan Muzhi (袁牧之)Street Angel (馬路天使) (1937)

Shanghai, 1935. The beautiful young girl Xiao Xiong is a singer at a teahouse. She falls in love with her neighbor, a handsome young musician called Xiao Chen. Their windows face each other, and Xiao Chen often entertains Xiao Xiong with magic tricks through the window. When Xiao Xiong discovers that her boss indends to sell her to a rich teahouse customer who has taken a liking to her, Xiao Chen and his eccentric bunch of friends do all they can to stop it.

This item is part of the collection: Feature Films

Director: Yuan Muzhi (袁牧之)
Production Company: Mingxing Film Company (明星影片公司)
Audio/Visual: sound, color
Language: Mandarin Chinese
Keywords: China; Shanghai; drama; comedy

Creative Commons license: Public Domain

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Reviewer: Riverbend - - April 10, 2008
Subject: part of history

This is indeed a wonderful look into the past. It has aspects of communist China's propaganda prior to the cultural revolution, yet is charming none the less. It is famous in China even today. The songs are known to most everyone in China. Both main actors in the film were victims to the cultural revolution but the boy managed to survive. If you don't like the ending of the film, you might want to know... this piece here is only the first half of the film. there is a second part. In the second part... well I don't want to spoil it for anyone who wants to see it... I don't have it, but if anyone does, please upload it!

Reviewer: le big mac - - February 26, 2008
Subject: great film

great classic movie, and a really good way to practice chinese because the dialogue are not difficult to understand.I really thanks people for uploading these classic chinese movie.

Reviewer: rq52 - - February 19, 2008
Subject: Street Angel

I have a friend who is living in China who asked me for any films of life in China. He teaches English (through an interpter)in Shanghai. This
film would be perfect even better if you could the subtitles as well. Please look into that. My friend wants to use films like Street Angel to help his students learn English (by subtitles)
Four for the film and five if you can put the subtitles in. Thank you IA.

Reviewer: Jeff Rutsch - - November 21, 2007
Subject: Good and what's more

I liked this movie but I also found myself wanting a little bit more - many of the characters seemed flat or unbelievable, and the story was a little too melodramatic. Xiao Yun's performance was weird, unique, and compelling, but really her character didn't have much to do. However the movie did do a really interesting job of showing street life in old Shanghai.

Also for what it's worth, I recently subtitled and uploaded an earlier film by Yuan Muzhi, Scenes of City Life. There's definite similarities - it's also a social critique in the form of a melodrama, and touches many of the same concerns. Certain aspects of City Angel are superior, but overall I think Scenes of City Life is the better movie.

The movie & subtitles are on this site at:
http://www.archive.org/details/ScenesOfCityLife-dushifengguang
and
http://www.archive.org/details/SubtitlesForScenesOfCityLife-

Reviewer: wilbrifar - - April 20, 2007
Subject: subtitles

Subtitles can be downloaded from:

http://www.opensubtitles.org/en/subtitles/182022/malu-tianshi-en

If you have the right software on your computer, such as VobSub, you should be able to watch these subs along with the movie on your computer, or add them to a dvd.

Reviewer: manavkaushik - - April 20, 2007
Subject: Looks good.

I did watch it with great patience. Please note - it has no ENGLISH SUBTITLES. But looks good.

If you are a film buff - do download it and watch it. A great mix of comedy and certainly a lot of sobs.

If you really wanna read the translated script of this specific film, you may visit

http://mclc.osu.edu/rc/pubs/angel/default.htm

Praised for its portrayal of the downtrodden in Shanghai at the time of its release, today, Street Angel is often considered one of the classics of the "leftist" filmmaking period that reached its peak in the 1930s.

This is to be informed further that Street Angel was selected as one of the Best 100 Chinese Motion Picture Ever Made by the committee of Hong Kong Film Awards, ranked 11th.

http://www.myspace.com/62663692

Reviewer: foolip - - April 18, 2007
Subject: Wonderful mix of drama and comedy

Disclaimer: I am the uploader of this video

I had never expected this movie to be so much fun. There are so many unique and lovable characters and a great mix of comedy and drama.

It is quite clearly a part of the left wing of Chinese 1930's cinema, where Xiao Hong is treated badly by her rich landlord/boss and a bunch of common people step up to help. Don't misunderstand me though, this is not a leftist propaganda film.

Unfortunately there are no English subtitles (at least not yet).