Two Modernizations: Widescreen Cinema, Film Art Discourses, and U.S. Aid in 1950s Taiwanese Film Culture

This article examines the contradictions inherent in the modernization of the film industry through a case study of government-owned film studios in postwar Taiwan. Between 1955 and 1958, under the framework of economic aid, the U.S. government sought to modernize and restructure film studios owned by the ruling authoritarian Kuomintang (KMT, the Chinese Nationalist Party) party-state in Taiwan. Through grants and loans from the U.S. government, Taiwanese film studios were able to renovate outdated facilities, repair and acquire equipment, and send technicians to the United States and Japan to learn the latest filmmaking technologies. Yet Taiwanese film bureaucrats also resisted the more radical reform projects proposed by their U.S. counterparts.Drawing on government archives, the first part of the article analyzes the emergence and eventual termination of the U.S. aid program. The second part further illustrates the dual dimensions of the modernization of the Taiwanese film industry: the pursuit of cutting-edge technologies—particularly widescreen formats—and the pursuit of film knowledge and theory. Through a close reading of film critic Bai Ke’s formalist critiques of widescreen cinema written during this period, I demonstrate how these two aspects of modernization often stood in tension.