Loosely based upon a Maupassant story, A String of Pearls is among the earliest feature films, made in Shanghai in the 1920s. Much like contemporary films by Demille (such as The Cheat), the film is a cautionary tale about bourgeois consumerism that nonetheless reaffirms its characters’ materialism. It tells the story of a young couple’s downfall (instigated, as the intertitles tell us, by the wife’s womanly vanity) from middle class respectability to the humiliation of poverty and labor. Strangely, the two protagonists begin as the bearers of ornaments and commodities (exemplified by the titular pearl necklace, but also evident in their luxuriously furnished home), only to become a cog in the production of these same commodities as poor laborers. Of course, through a series of unlikely twists, the couple learns their lesson and takes back their original social status and wealth.
by Leo Goldsmith | Source: VCD
18 Jan 2005 3:16 PM | Submit Comment