Street Angel

Video Find of the Day

Two clips from an old Chinese classic movie. The movie is 馬路天使, Malu tianshi, (in English) Street Angel (1937), A User Comment on IMDB by Howard Schumann has this to say about it:

"Two sisters having fled from the war in northeast China come to Shanghai looking for a better life. Xiao Yun (Zhao Huishen) is forced into prostitution while her younger sister Xiao Hong (Zhou Xuan) becomes a singer and dancer at a local brothel. Though enslaved to the musician Wang, they are aided by the friendship of a young street musician Xiao Chen (Zhao Dan) and his friend Xiao Wang (Wei Heling) who help the sisters fend off the brothel owner and local thugs. Considered an early Chinese classic, Yuan Muzhi's lyrical Street Angel depicts the daily struggles of those who made up Shanghai's underclasses in 1935 at the time of the Japanese occupation: the street walkers, news vendors, fruit sellers, musicians, barbers, and the like. The film blends comedy with social realism and shows Chinese women as victims of a ruthlessly commercial society."

I recognize the song in the first excerpt.

周璇 - 天涯歌女 Zhou Xuan - The Wandering Songstress 1937



The bird in this second excerpt looks and acts like my Zino (1990-1999) who lived in the front office at Real Change for his last three years, making himself a constantly frustrating out-of-reach morsel for the Real Change office cat, Sid Vicious.

周璇 - 天涯歌女