I've lived in China for more than a decade now, and one of the things that struck me early on was which Western movies are popular, and which ones just really aren't. We all know at this point that Star Wars isn't something many Chinese people care about, perhaps because they most banking on nostalgia for films that didn't come out here until decades later than the West. But there's also strange things like The Legend of 1900 - a film it seems in the West only Italians have ever heard of - being an essential beloved classic that everyone has seen. Or how Titanic is somehow even more of a beloved classic here than back in the West. Or Leon being seemingly bigger than Pulp Fiction. Or etc etc.
But that led me to realize that we very likely do the same in the West. We've all seen Indian users here posting in confused bemusement about the recent obsession with RRR, when so many Tollywood movies are largely the same thing but have been ignored by the West before and since. So what about Chinese films? The standard recommendations appear to be Crouching Tiger, Hero, Kung Fu Hustle and Shaolin Soccer (over any other films directed by or starring Stephen Chow), Raise the Red Lantern and Farewell My Concubine, Yi Yi, Infernal Affairs, A Touch of Zen, and some selection of Wong Kar-Wai movies. So I wanted to see how that selection lined up with what Chinese audiences tend to think are their best movies.
For this, I went to the Top 250 movies on Douban - China's rough equivalent to IMDB - and picked out only the Chinese films (here including not just mainland China but also films made in Hong Kong and Taiwan), and compiled the results here - I'll also list them and their positions in the Douban Top 250 in this post below so skip to the bottom if you just want to see the list.
My observations:
First off, it appeared that perhaps Douban's Top 250 may have begun as the IMDB Top 250 from a previous year, and then been adjusted from there, maybe due to importing profiles etc. This suspicion of mine comes from things like Shawshank being at #1, despite me anecdotally never having heard anyone talk about it here. So that may have influenced some of the order and inclusions with Chinese films here too.
But some classic cartoons (Havoc in Heaven, Nezha) made it through that IMDB-ish ranking, and are clearly hugely popular in China - though we would never really come across them in the West, being too early to hold up all that well aesthetically while not being attached to any nostalgia here.
Recency bias hasn't had a huge impact on the list (with only a few films from the 2010s and none from the 2020s), but a millennial user base seems apparent from the vast number of 90s movies here - for although that also coincides with the resurgence in Chinese cinema following the mainland's opening up and reform policy, we also see a lot of 90s Taiwanese and Hong Kong movies, so it can't be entirely put down to that.
As for differences with the West's view of Chinese films - no Hero or Crouching Tiger, for one, with Wuxia preference going to adaptations of Jin Yong's stories like Eagle Shooting Heroes or New Dragon Gate Inn. And there's a far wider variety of directors on the list than you'd normally get from a Western list, even if most are only listed once.
Personally, I'm a little disappointed An Elephant Sitting Still didn't make it on. But perhaps it hasn't had time to build up enough word of mouth, as a more 'artsy' niche film. Or perhaps it's doomed to be a Western festival circuit crowd favorite, and won't ever win a strong following in its homeland.
Are any of these new to you? Are you surprised at any exclusions or inclusions? Do you think you can theorize or shed light on the reasons behind any of these?
Format: [Film name], [Film year], [Director] ([Position on the Douban Top 250])
Farewell My Concubine, 1993, Chen Kaige (2)
Infernal Affairs, 2002, Andrew Lau & Alan Mak (17)
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