New Year Sacrifice (1956)
In a mountain hamlet in eastern China, a poor woman faces trial after trial. Sold into marriage as a child, she is left a young widow and enslaved by her mother-in-law, who sells her to a poor peasant. Her second marriage turns out to be happy until fate takes away her husband and son. Now seen as a bearer of bad luck, she becomes a social outcast.
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This movie is a generally well made, occasionally melodramatic story of a peasant woman in China who is widowed twice, and betrayed by both the strict confines of society and by the cruel nature of her neighbours.The original tale by Lu Xun is more complex, and compelling, but the elements that the movie retained are convincing and solid (probably more than they could've been with all the stories elements).A special note: the narrator's voice makes only three appearances, and are either redundant and useless, or party of the propaganda of the time period. For what its worth, the film depicts the real ills of China that its later inhabitants are still struggling with...the old ways and the solutions they chose.