“Can a film be too beautiful? It is not a question that gets asked much these days,
but the revival of Raise the Red Lantern at Film Forum should resurrect the debate.”
– Anthony Lane, The New Yorker. Click here to read full review

“DON'T MISS! This color-coded tragedy prompted China’s resurgence on the art-house scene
and thanks to Film Forum’s new print, those lanterns burn redder than ever.”
– David Fear, Time Out New York

“The most esteemed movie by the best-known filmmaker that mainland China has ever produced.”
– Rob Nelson, The Village Voice. Click here to read full review.

“Perhaps the greatest Chinese film ever made!”
– S. James Snyder, The New York Sun. Click here to read full review

“A film of voluptuous physical beauty and angry passions.” – Roger Ebert.

“A BRAVE, PASSIONATE AND HIGHLY ENTERTAINING WORK OF ART.” – Richard Corliss, Time

(1991) “She has the face of Buddha and the heart of a scorpion.” 1920s China: As the red lanterns are raised before a mistress’s quarters inside the unseen Master’s larger compound — denoting the one he’s picked to be tonight’s bed mate — new girl Gong Li, sold by her mother into concubinage straight from college to become Mistress #4, must learn the ways of a rich older man’s harem in a hurry. A serene, seemingly-above-the battle first wife; a gentle, seemingly resigned #2; the jealously competitive former opera singer #3; an uppity, ambitious servant: the intra-harem rivalries proliferate, including false pregnancies and discreet infidelities — and what’s that mysterious shack doing on the roof? But eventually there’s going to be a reckoning, and another girl waiting in the wings. Originally banned in China, this was the last of Zhang’s color-drenched, dazzingly-photographed triumphs of style (the first lighting of the lamps as dusk closes in is an Eisensteinian tour de force) and his second straight Oscar nomination for Best Foreign Film, winning top honors from the London, New York, Los Angeles and National Society of Film Critics. “The emotional anchor for all Zhang’s films is Gong Li — her face a map of cool insurrection, her figure proud and voluptuously western. But Red Lantern offers other, more exalted orders of ogling. As it plays out its melodrama, it radiates a ravishing color scheme; it delights in the symmetrical framing of gorgeous objects, human and architectural.” – Richard Corliss, Time. “Zhang Yimou is as great a director of interiors as Ozu or Mizoguchi — the dye works in the household in Red Lantern become superb stages for the melodrama.” – David Thomson. “Can no doubt be interpreted in a number of ways and yet it works because it is so fascinating simply on the level of melodrama. . . Entirely apart from the plot, there is the sensuous pleasure of the architecture, the fabrics, the color contrasts, the faces of the actresses. But beneath the beauty is the cruel reality of this life, just as beneath the comfort of the rich man’s house is the sin of slavery.” – Roger Ebert.
AN MGM RELEASE.

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ZHANG YIMOU INTERVIEWS
edited by Frances Gateward