Love and Duty

Directed by Bu Wancang and starring the luminous Ruan Lingyu, Love and Duty (Lian'ai yu yiwu, 1931) is one of the great rediscovered treasures of silent cinema — a sweeping melodrama that follows a Shanghai woman across four decades as she abandons an arranged marriage for true love, only to face a lifetime of poverty and social exile. Ruan Lingyu, already the most magnetic screen presence in Chinese cinema, plays her protagonist at three distinct ages with heartbreaking naturalism, her expressive face carrying the full weight of a society in moral transition. Produced by the leftist Lianhua Film Company and fluent in the visual language of Hollywood melodrama — its cross-cutting, chiaroscuro lighting, and intimate close-ups — the film is equally rooted in the contested ethics of Republican-era China, where love and duty pulled in opposite directions and women bore the cost of choosing between them. Long believed lost, a complete print was discovered in Uruguay in the 1990s and restored in 2K by Italy's L'Immagine Ritrovata; what survived is essential.