These films often focused on contemporary social issues such as feminism and adaptations of Western literature.
These included Night Inn (1947), an adaptation of Maxim Gorky's The Lower Depths, and starring Zhou Xuan.
During this early period, however, the company is perhaps best known as the producer of Fei Mu's masterpiece, Spring in a Small Town (1948).
Yet many of these postwar films, particularly 1950s Peaceful Spring, were also criticized as hewing too close to Wenhua's pre-Communist humanist tradition.
[3] By 1952, Shi Hui had fallen out of the Party's favor, and Wenhua, like the other remaining private studios in Shanghai, was consolidated under state ownership.