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In the world of English-language scholarship, the study of Chinese cinema has developed in close connection with the study of modern Chinese literature. Many specialists in Chinese cinema started as students and scholars of literature, applying methods from literary studies to the newly discovered object of cinema. By now, however, it is clear that Chinese cinema can and should be considered from a variety of other perspectives as well: as art, as industry, as technology, and so on. Some of the best recent scholarship negotiates fluently among different perspectives, resulting in work that is comparative not in the schematic sense of bringing together different geocultural objects but in the sense of critical interdisciplinarity. It is in the latter sense that the pointed return to a seemingly archaic topic--the adaptation of existing literary works into cinematic ones--may have a strategic value. This is the challenge of Hsiu-Chuang Deppman's book Adapted for the Screen: The Cultural Politics of Modern Chinese Fiction and Film.
The book details seven case studies of recent Chinese films. The films, listed in a neat introductory chart (p. 3), are discussed in the following order: Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon; Raise...