Storytelling gets into action: the film 'Dushi fengguang' or a Shanghai phantasmagoria through Western lenses

The analysis of Cityscape (Dushi fengguang, 1935), the film directed by actor Yuan Muzhi and produced in the cosmopolitan Shanghai of the 1930s, could reveal interesting aspects of the early discourse on the city space. Moreover, it confirms how the position and the status of the author (or the filmmaker) was an important factor in the early cultural scene; as much as today it plays an important role in the Chinese cultural scene affected by a fast-paced process of economic and cultural transformation.