Classic Film of the Month

Two Stage Sisters (Wutai Jiemei)

Dir: Xie Jin | China | 1964 | 114 mins

Distributor | BFI

To coincide with the Olympics and the attendant focus on all things Chinese this summer, here's a high point for Chinese Cinema during the Maoist years and one of the very few earlier Chinese films to have been distributed in the UK.

Two Stage Sisters is a classic melodrama and then some, an emotionally charged story of two women who set out together as performers in a touring troupe then as fame beckons, go their radically different ways. One becomes highly politicised in an increasingly ideological China, the other slips into the ever more decadent enjoyment of her success. Shot in rapturous colour and punctuated by fluid camera movements, the film looks and feels like a Hollywood tearjerker of the same period, but easily transcends the genre with its sheer emotional weight combined with a political punch.