Spring Silkworms (film)

Spring Silkworms is a 1933 silent film from China. It was directed by Cheng Bugao and was adapted by Xia Yan, who was credited as Cai Chusheng, from the novella written by Chinese author Mao Dun, also called by the same name.
The film stars Gong Jianong, Yan Yuexian, Xiao Ying, Gao Qianping and Ai Xia and was produced by the Mingxing Film Company.
Today the film is considered one of the earliest films of the leftist movement in 1930s Shanghai.

Cast

Gong Jianong as Old Tong Bao – the family patriarch struggling to sustain his silkworm business.
Yan Yuexian as Lotus – a neighbor’s wife, who becomes a scapegoat for the family’s misfortunes.
Xiao Ying as Ah San's Wife – the supportive daughter-in-law who works alongside her husband.
Ai Xia – supporting role as a family member or villager.
Gao Qianping – supporting role as a member of the village community.
Zheng Xiaoqiu – supporting role, possibly a relative or silk trader.
Wang Zhengxin – supporting role as an elder or villager.
Gu Meijun – supporting role as a family or community member.
Zhang Minyu – supporting role as a villager or business associate.

Plot

The film tells the story of a family of poor silk farmers in Zhejiang province, who suffer hardship and deprivation when their crop of silkworm cocoons die off. The film criticizes not only the harsh market conditions that have forced the family into poverty, but also the family's own superstitions, internal conflicts, and selfishness.
Old Tong Bao is the patriarch of a silkworm-rearing family in Zhejiang. Determined to preserve traditional practices, he refuses to buy foreign breeds of silkworms for his coming crop, believing local varieties to be more reliable and morally proper. The family invests heavily in purchasing silkworm eggs and mulberry leaves, often relying on credit from local merchants. However, bad weather, disease outbreaks among the silkworms, and the unstable silk market leave them unable to recoup their costs. Despite the family’s tireless labor, the cocoons fail to fetch a good price, pushing them further into debt and financial ruin.
The film also features a subplot in which Lotus, the wife of a neighboring farmer, is accused of bringing misfortune to the family after the silkworms die unexpectedly. Driven by superstition, Tong Bao's family ostracizes her, reflecting the destructive role that fear and scapegoating play in the community's crisis. The story ultimately portrays the struggles of rural peasants trapped between oppressive economic systems and the limitations of their own traditional beliefs.

Title

The title Spring Silkworms metaphorically represents the self-sacrificial labor of the rural peasant family portrayed in the film. In traditional Chinese culture, silkworms are seen as creatures that work tirelessly, spinning silk until they die, which symbolizes dedication and suffering. The film uses this image to comment on the economic exploitation and cyclical poverty faced by silk farmers in 1930s Zhejiang. The silkworm metaphor also reflects the broader fate of Chinese peasants caught in feudal systems and emerging capitalist pressures.
Scholars such as Zhang Zhen have noted that the film’s title functions as a critical lens for understanding how leftist cinema aimed to expose class struggle through naturalistic allegory.

Influence & Inspiration

The film was directly inspired by Mao Dun's 1932 short story of the same name, part of his acclaimed trilogy. Its adaptation was driven by the urgent social climate following Japan’s 1931 invasion of Manchuria, which devastated the film industry and led studios like Mingxing Film to seek socially relevant content.
On January 1, 1933, Mingxing Film published a major advertisement outlining two projects: one on 5000 years of Chinese history, and another producing documentaries highlighting key national industries like silk, tea, coal, and salt. Mao Dun's story about silkworm farmers perfectly aligned with this second industrial project. As left-wing intellectuals increasingly focused on film, Mao Dun's realistic novels became the natural choice.

Reception

When the film first came out, it sparked a lot of discussion and debate among viewers. However, despite the filmmakers hoping the movie would change what the audiences wanted to see, it didn’t sell many tickets. Director Cheng Bugao later talked about this box office failure, saying he felt he had "let the company down," but added that he “still felt he’d done the right thing for himself”.
This financial disappointment led the Star Film Company to change direction. They decided to focus on making “new citizen” cinema. Using the popular family stories and moral themes from older, successful movies to guarantee audience interest but also including some of the left-wing elements that the changing culture demanded

Cinematic Techniques

Framing - The individual rectangular photographs on a strip of motion picture film which, when run through a projector, yield the impression of movement owing to slight variations in the position of the objects being photographed.

Characters are often framed within window frames or doorways, suggesting to the viewer their lack of freedom within society. This is apparent when one scene shows the farmer behind, at first glance, could be jail cell bars, alluding to being a prisoner of societal pressures and rules, but it is actually just the window to his house. The next scene confirms this with a panning shot of everyone inside working on some part of the silkworm harvesting process.

Shot- the basic element of filmmaking—a piece of film run through the camera, exposed, and developed; an uninterrupted run of the camera; or an uninterrupted image on film.Low-angle shot: a shot taken from a camera that is positioned much lower than the subject being filmed, so that the effect is that of looking up at the subject.High-angle shot: a shot taken from a camera that is positioned much higher than the subject being filmed, so that the effect is that of looking down on the subject.

To establish power dynamics, the use of angled shots helps tremendously. At one point during the film, using a medium shot, the farmer hears that some of the silkworms have gone bad, and he turns his body, squared, chest open towards the camera. He menacingly stares at the woman, then pushes her to the ground. At, there is a close-up low-angled shot of the man staring down at the woman and berating her for her inability to keep the silkworms alive. Following this, a medium high-angle shot shows the power dynamic between the man and woman for a moment, having her pitifully on the ground, collecting her thoughts and recovering.

The film is heavily made up of static, medium to long shots, often held for a long period of time. Shortly into the film,, the audience receives their first example of this as it roughly takes 40 seconds for the audience to watch the farmer gather his possessions, get off the ground, and then start to walk away, ending the shot. The use of this technique emphasizes the slow nature that is rural, poverty stricken life.Pan: when the camera itself is stationary but pivots on its axis from side to side, it’s called a pan. This movement reveals new information, follows a character, or adds energy to a shot.

We see this at the beginning of the film when the farmer is being shown his two options for his future. The scene starts with a shot of the farmer slowly turning towards the mulberry leaves, the next shot is a still image of the mulberry bushes looking full and worthy of his choice in career. Then it cuts back to himself giving a look of pride and excitement in his future selling mulberry leaves. The next shot holds the image of a building across the water, a pan camera movement reveals the building is the location where one can buy "Spring and Fall Silkworm Cocoons". The use of the pan technique is for the audience to see that we are being introduced to something important and that it hold meaning.
There are other times throughout the film where film makers used a panning to establish something. Many times, it is to show the families dynamic and what labour they participate in.
At, the scene pans back and forth from each side of the river where the community are washing woven trays used in their silkworm harvesting. The use of the pan movement helps to reveal a sense of community and family dynamics explored throughout the film.

Set design - Often seen in the house, there is lots of clutter and things around them, while they themselves look to be cramped in the space they live. The usage of cramped and tight spaces with an abundance of things around them filling space, reads to the audience that they live in tight confinement due to their economic situation. This also alludes to how dire their situation is, if they do not get enough silk this season, their living conditions will worsen.

The mise-en-scène accurately portrays how a southern Chinese village would look like, using realistic props, costumes they wore, and natural elements to create authenticity. We see this in the silk harvesting production, the tools they use to achieve their goals, and in how they dress as well.

Montage - To a film sequence that relies on editing to condense or expand action, space, or time. The effect is often that of a rapid-fire series of interrelated images. There are the occasional use of montages throughout the film. Mostly they are short and used to represent the collective labour of the group when they are tending to their silkworms. These sequences are used to help the audience create empathy towards how hard they have to work in order to survive until the next season. There always feels to be a level of high risk and stakes throughout the film, but the montages sometimes will mask that through the use of upbeat music.

A short montage occurs at after it is suggested they all get rest because they have been awake, working for 5 days taking care of the silkworms. The montage uses short, low-light shots of the household sleeping, or resting in various locations. It gets interrupted by a fast paced pan over the women suggesting that something sneaky will occur.