Few silent film stars beyond Hollywood achieved their fame, cut short by a premature death in a life overwhelmed by events. His last scene on screen turned out to be a premonition of his end.
Ruan Lingyu stood out as a leading actress in the China of the years before World War II that would transform a country weighed down by its colonial past after millennia of imperial civilization.
The young star acted in 29 films in just 9 years of film career. On and off screen, Ruan broke with the aesthetics imposed until the 1930s, replete with feminine figures arranged in Western fashion.
She dressed in the traditional ‘qipao’, embodied the popular pride, virtue and generosity of the golden times of the East.
Her mere presence on her screen alleviated the suffering of a population humiliated by the war that was going to devastate her territory and the Japanese threats, which ended up having the character of genocide.
Meanwhile, the life of the great film star of that country ran parallel to that of her characters in titles such as Love and Duty (Love and duty) (1931) and The Goddess (Goodness) (1934).
She was a mother, a wife, a lover, an intellectual, an activist, a heroine. And in each performance she seemed to release a part of herself. “To live happily accompanied by a good man”, she aspired. Ruan thus summed up all her ambition, in which millions of women recognized themselves.
However, from her first marriage, when she was only 16 years old, she was associated with unfaithful and abusive loves, with those who only sought their own benefit in her. She left her husband of youthful years and sought refuge in another relationship, but nothing changed.
His unsubmissive sentimental life scandalized high society and the Chinese tabloid press harassed Ruan until his collapse. I suffered cruel harassment. He was a victim of his time and of a press fueled by archetypes and reproaches.
In its penultimate premiere, New Women (New women)(1935), the pressure drove her character, inspired by the story of another actress, through a slow agony until she fell into a suicide attempt. Between breaths, the protagonist of the fiction resisted, she wanted to stay alive, despite the fact that the newspapers announced her death ahead of time.
The film integrates ‘New Women’
And after filming she confessed her desire to become that new woman in the film, capable of regaining control and overcoming her fragility.
But months later, Ruan decided to end his life at the age of 24.He left some notes that read: “Unfounded rumors are scary.” Another silent cry before his burial, in an ending like the last scene, where a crowd marched stepping on the pages of a newspaper with his obituary.
