Title: Ruan Lingyu: Her Life and Career
Author: Patrick Galvan
Publisher: Cinemodyssey Press
ISBN: 979-8832237268
Pages: 229
Genre: Movie History / Women’s Biographies / Non-Fiction
Synopsis
Shanghai film star Ruan Lingyu, best known for groundbreaking classics such as Bu Wancang’s Love and Duty (1931), Wu Yonggang’s The Goddess (1934), and Cai Chusheng’s New Woman (1935), won the hearts of millions through her delicate beauty and gut-wrenching performances. She had wealth, supportive colleagues, a dedicated audience, a profession she loved—and yet, her life was unhappy to the point that she chose to end it at the age of twenty-four.
Patrick Galvan’s biography tells the story of a woman born to poor Cantonese parents, her rise to stardom in the 1920s – ’30s, and a career influenced by China’s tumultuous early twentieth-century history. As Ruan’s personal tale unfolds, major events shape both her country and the Shanghai film industry. Through a broad spectrum of characters—peasants, aristocrats, femme fatales, revolutionaries—in movies by socially minded filmmakers, she came to represent struggles known to Chinese nationwide.
The book also documents the making of her thirty films—including the twenty-one believed lost—and the tragic circumstances that resulted in a celebrated woman’s breaking point, and a death that shocked the nation.
About the Author
Patrick Galvan is a film journalist specializing in Japanese and early Chinese cinema. His writing has been published in such outlets as SYFY WIRE (the official news site for the SyFy Channel), Our Culture Magazine, Offscreen, Crooked Marquee, Toho Kingdom, Christ and Pop Culture, and John LeMay’s The Lost Films Fanzine. His first book, Ruan Lingyu: Her Life and Career, received the Literary Titan Gold Book Award in June 2023. He is part of the organizational team for the online film convention Kaiju Masterclass.
