"Anche il bassorilievo è arte": Zhang Ailing e il cinema

In her last years in Shanghai and during her life in the United States, the famous Chinese woman writer Zhang Ailing wrote about 13 screenplays for the Shanghai and Hong Kong cinema. This production have been almost ignored or undervalued by critics, who generally consider her screenplays lowbrow commercial products, written out of economic necessity. Actually, cinema has always been a fundamental component of Zhang’s artistic world, it deeply influences her writing technique and it is the object of her sharp considerations about its power in the socio-cultural world. In Shanghai, screenwriting allows Zhang to keep on writing about the main topics of her narrative production in the politicized atmosphere of post-war Shanghai which is getting increasingly hostile towards her. In Hong Kong, it is her contribution to the modernization of Asian cinema, where she mediates between highbrow and popular genres, between commercial and cultural values, and between different cultures. Her highly sophisticated comedies blend the Hollywood screwball comedy style and conventions with her own artistic view, revealing an impressive comic talent that allows her to influence the popular taste and imagination, while avoiding the melodramatic and excessive sentimentalism of most of the contemporary film production.