By blending elements of romance, comedy and melodrama into the storyline, the characters find themselves in a variety of difficult situations as they try to navigate the hardships of the city during the 1930s.

[2] Taking place during a time of national tension within the country, issues such as economic policy and military conflict are explored to raise awareness about some of China's most pressing concerns.

[3] Additionally, the depiction of an impoverished neighborhood in the midst of a contemporary city is a compelling examination of how modernization had affected China during this era.

Although initially still upset, Chen Shaoping comes to realize that Xiao Hong only has eyes for him, and after mending their relationship, he agrees to let her seek refuge with him and Wang.

After hearing of the impending transaction involving Xiao Hong, Chen Shaoping and Wang go to consult Lawyer Zhang (Sun Jing) to see if they can do anything to stop it.

These visual features serve to contrast the succeeding display of areas of Shanghai marked by narrow streets and neighbourhood poverty.

[8] As one of the early sound films in China, Street Angel is often praised for its innovative use of music, as well as its unique mix of melodrama and comedy.

She became known as the "golden voice", and after she performed the two aforementioned songs in the film, they became popularized and have come to be recognized as musical expressions of turbulent 1930s-era life in China.

“Song of the Four Seasons” offers an insight into the Chinese situation of the 1930s, especially the suffering of people: it entrances the audience with its lyrical description of a maiden driven away from her home, the musical tale accompanied by a montage of war images that evoked Japan's invasion of Manchuria.

[12] Because the footage was played alongside the performance of a love song, the film was able to deliver a message condemning the Japanese invasion without falling foul of censorship restrictions.

In late 1930s Shanghai, the National Party exercised strict control over cultural production, meaning that any reference to the Japanese invasion was prohibited, to avoid provoking the masses into rising up against Japan's military aggression.

Street Angel constructed a theatrical-style mise-en-scène by using the distinctive element of a back alley, known as a lilong (⾥弄) or a longtang (弄堂) in Shanghai.

[14] This type of composition can be seen in periodicals from the 1880s onwards, as well as in collections such as 'An Illustrated Explanation of Local Customs' (⾵俗志圖說,) and 'A Hundred Beauties of Shanghai' (海上百艷圖,).

Many shots in Street Angel are from second-storey windows, reminding viewers of the composition of the lithographed illustration and the view from the box seats in stage theaters.

“Left-leaning theater activity”, states Tarryn Li-Min Chun (陳琍敏; Chén Límǐn), “is mostly taken out into the streets and tailoring its exigencies of political transformation than on stage techniques.

The realist demonstration of voicelessness amongst the common people surviving in Shanghai let Street Angel lay a foundation of thought and art for the rapid restoration of post-war Chinese film.

[18] The male lead Zhao Dan described Street Angel as "a film about the lowest strata of society in Shanghai” that has now become one of the classics of the "leftist" filmmaking period in China, which reached its peak in the 1930s.

The film successfully "describe[s] the wide gulf between rich and poor in the city" by presenting both bourgeois and proletarian in the Shanghai urban society.

In addition to the clear American inspiration, the notable Soviet influence appears in such formal choices as the extensive use of quick cuts of close-ups, and in the visually-captivating opening sequence.

[22] Accordingly, the dazzling three-minute opening sequence of Street Angel displays “a key trope of the cinematic portrayal of 1930s Shanghai: the simultaneous existence of competing forces from different colonial powers.” Moreover, film scholars such as Guo-Juin Hong emphasized that the “tensions among various visual and aural elements are arranged in an ostensibly chronological order, a form also popular in the European avant-garde cinema of the 1920s.”[23] Alexander Des Forges of the University of Massachusetts-Boston argues that Xiao Chen, not Xiao Hong, is "the primary recipient of the heterosexual gaze".

Some capitalist film studio owners and petty bourgeois filmmakers had the idea to resist Japanese aggression and change society, to a certain degree paralleling the paradigm of the left wing.

[25] With the sensitivity of political messages within the film and its ability to evoke “calls to action”, Street Angel was not publicly distributed until the end of the Cultural Revolution.