[1] Notable for its extremely critical view of corrupt Nationalist bureaucrats, the film was made as Chiang Kai-shek's Nanjing-based government was on the verge of collapse, and was not actually finished and released until after the Chinese Civil War had ended.
[2][3] The film takes place in Shanghai, and it revolves around a group of tenants struggling to prevent themselves from being thrown out onto the street due to a corrupt party official's attempts to sell their apartment building.
In the winter of 1948, the Kuomintang of China (KMT) is losing in the Huai Hai Campaign with Chinese Communist Party (CCP) during the Civil War.
Mr. Kong and Mr. Hua try to find a place to stay at their workplaces respectively, while Mr. and Mrs. Xiao hope to invest in black market gold in order to buy the apartment building from Mr. Hou.
As the remaining KMT members all run off from Mainland China, the tenants celebrate Chinese New Year in 1949, promising to improve themselves in the face of the coming new society.
Actors and employees of the Kunlun Film Company discussed a potential script over dinner, highlighting the political and social difficulties of recent events.
Fighting between the KMT (Kuomintang) and CCP (Chinese Communist Party), which had been paused in 1937 at the start of the Second Sino-Japanese War, resumed in 1945 following the surrender of the Japanese.
Although the KMT began with a significant military advantage, the CCP effectively leveraged guerrilla tactics and assistance from the Soviet Union, and by 1948 the war had tipped in their favor.
Since currency was unable to effectively store value, individuals and merchants alike had to quickly move to offload money in favor of goods which wouldn't lose their value.
Compounding this, wages were often tied to cost-of-living indexes which were several days behind the rapidly increasing market prices, causing a reduction in their real value.
[9] Given the Nationalist government's mismanagement and economic blunders, many of Shanghai's intellectuals and lower classes eagerly awaited what they suspected was an imminent Communist victory.
By early 1949, the Communist army had begun what would be its final campaigns of the war, and many in Shanghai felt that a major transformative moment was approaching.
Among these hopeful intellectuals were a number of Shanghai filmmakers, and as the war drew to a close studios began making films which specifically addressed these developments.
[11] This was likely intentional, as Director Zheng Junli embraced the Communist Party from beginning to end, never questioning their validity over his creative power.
Despite the Communist Party's support for Zheng Junli's "leftist" films, the Red Guard would eventually punish him during the Cultural Revolution.
The film displays a simple ideal sentiment with a touch of the era, and moreover, a frank technique and a swaying oriental aesthetic characteristic of the early days of Chinese cinema.
The film represents a shaky state of society and gives the audience an attitude of uncertainty, trepidation, expectation and class struggle.
[12] During this period, as Shanghai was still in control of the Nationalist Party, films and other cultural productions had to go through heavy censorship, often referred to as the “white terror”.
However, during the production, the hidden version was discovered by the censorship department and was compelled to stop as it “disturbed the social security and damaged government prestige” (“扰乱社会治安，破坏政府威信”).
[15] Following the change in overnance, the director, Zheng Junli, sped up the production of the film, Crows and Sparrows, and reintroduced much of the content that had been previously removed by censors.