Allied Reinforcements Topical Budget 810-1

Shanghai
1927-03-03
Silent
1m

Allied forces vigorously parade their strength in China's commercial capital in a bid to protect European interests.

Crisp images match the crisp uniforms of allied sailors and soldiers marching Shanghai's streets. These well-turned-out troops must have seemed alien to locals. American forces had arrived in late February 1927, primed for immediate combat, but at this point Shanghai was calm. Within weeks, however, the seeds of civil war were sown with the massacre of communist sympathisers in the city.

Crisp images match the crisp uniforms of allied sailors and soldiers dominating the Shanghai streets. These well-turned-out troops seem alien to locals witnessing the pomp. This animated newspaper was shot just before the Shanghai Massacre in April. American forces had arrived in late February expecting to engage in immediate combat. They were disappointed. At this point Shanghai was calm.

Shanghai - Pearl of the Orient

Western filmmakers captured the first moving images of one of the world's great cities. These remarkable films preserve a metropolis whose streets and waterways teem with life.

When cinema first came to China's shores, Shanghai was one of the most cosmopolitan cities in the world. The new technology was exhibited at the city's Xu Gardens in August 1896 (just months after the Lumière Brothers' first demonstration in Paris), and the earliest ever filmed images of the city were captured - by Western filmmakers - soon after.

Some of the oldest surviving footage of Shanghai was shot by a British war correspondent, dispatched to China to cover the 1900 Boxer Rebellion. It captures the teeming multi-national traffic on the central Nanjing Lu thoroughfare, from gliding bicycles and rattling rickshaws, to a Sikh police detachment and German soldiers enjoying a cigarette. Shanghai's famous waterfront, the Bund, captivated numerous filmmakers in the 20s and 30s, and several films here show a remarkable thronging harbour life, with sampans clustering beneath the Bund's baroque temples of commerce and leisure.

Also featuring in this collection of newsreels, travelogues and home movies are scenes of the Japanese occupation of the city in 1937, and the death and destruction that followed. These are sombre, even harrowing scenes, but a crucial chapter in Shanghai's history.