Fei Mu
费穆
Chinese director, 1906–1951. He worked in Shanghai through the 1930s, on films including Night in the City and Confucius. In 1948 he made Remorse at Death with Mei Lanfang, the first Chinese colour film, and completed Spring in a Small Town the same year. He died in Hong Kong in 1951, aged forty-five.
Career
Fei Mu began directing for Lianhua in 1932; his early films include Night in the City, Sea of Fragrant Snow and Song of China. He remained in Shanghai through the war and made Confucius in 1940. In 1948 he filmed Mei Lanfang in the Peking opera Sheng si hen, the first Chinese colour feature.
Spring in a Small Town, finished the same year, opened in the closing months of the civil war and was criticised for standing apart from politics; it was rarely shown for the next thirty years. Fei Mu moved to Hong Kong in 1949 and died there in 1951, aged forty-five. After the film returned to circulation in the 1980s it placed at or near the top of successive polls of Chinese-language cinema.
