Dan Duyu was born Dan Zuling in Nanchang, Jiangxi on 19 September 1897, with ancestral roots in Guangshun, Guizhou. He graduated from the Shanghai College of Fine Arts, made a living painting calendar portraits and magazine covers, and taught himself cinematography. In June 1920, with Zhu Shouju, Guan Ji'an and Zhou Guoyi, he founded the Shanghai Film Company, personally combining the roles of screenwriter, director, cinematographer, processing technician and art designer; his debut The Vow, filmed in the spring of 1921 and premiered at Shanghai's Olympic Theatre on 23 January 1922 with Yin Mingzhu in the lead, told of a poor painter and a rich girl who pledged their love and met with many turns, and was one of China's earliest three feature-length films and its first feature-length love story. In 1923 he made Gu Jing Chong Bo Ji, regarded as an early Chinese tearjerker. In 1926 he married Yin Mingzhu, and their company, run as a family operation with his nephew Dan Erchun among its players, was later called the earliest 'mom-and-pop' studio in Chinese film history. In 1927 he directed the fantasy film The Spider's Web, adapted from Journey to the West with Yin Mingzhu as the spider spirit and partly shot at the Sword Pool on Tiger Hill in Suzhou, noted for the care lavished on its props, costumes and sets; it played to packed houses in Shanghai and set a box-office record for a Chinese film in the city, and, a landmark of early Chinese fantasy cinema, it was long thought lost until a print was found in a Norwegian archive in 2011. Other works include Qi Er, Chuan Jia Bao, Returning Home, Tofu Xi Shi and Yang Gui Fei, marked by fantasy, mythology and elaborate sets. After 1931 the company was merged into Lianhua and then Yihua, though he made Nanhai Meiren and Guose Tianxiang, and in 1934 Yin Mingzhu helped him set up the Shanghai Talkie Company. Following the fall of Shanghai in 1937 the family moved to Hong Kong, where he later supported himself by drawing, and he died there on 6 May 1972.
Dan Duyu was a pioneer of early Chinese cinema who combined writing, directing, shooting and design in one person. The Shanghai Film Company he ran with his wife Yin Mingzhu was the earliest family-run studio in Chinese film history, and his The Spider's Web, blending mythology with carefully built sets, stood out among contemporary adaptations of Journey to the West, its rediscovery after decades making it a film-history talking point.
Achievements
- 1920 · Co-founded the Shanghai Film Company with friends
- 1921 · Directed his debut The Vow, one of China's earliest feature-length love stories
- 1927 · Directed the fantasy film The Spider's Web