Lü Ban’s Comedies, Transnational Film Auteurism, and Comedic Modernism in Early Socialist China

What did film auteurship look like in China in the 1950s, and what was its relationship with its counterpart in Europe? This essay examines the understudied Chinese filmmaker Lü Ban and his triad of film comedies by locating them within the local and transnational contexts of film auteurism in the 1950s. Questioning the Eurocentric definitions and discourses of film auteurship, I propose a more inclusive, transnational approach by analyzing the historical emergence of film auteurism in China. Conducting a comparative study between 1950s Western Europe and China, I investigate the relationship between the film auteur and the overall film system with a focus on their disparities as a result of different historical circumstances and media ecologies. Through a close reading of Lü’s comedy film triad and an examination of his role as an auteur, I argue that Lü’s reflections on socialist modernity and formal experiments in film amounted to an as yet unacknowledged socialist comedic modernism.