Breaking with Old Ideas (1976) User Reviews

Check it out

[hummus · 8/10 · 23 January 2008]

This well-acted and well-directed film was promoted as a "model work" by the cultural revolution group within the Chinese Communist Party in 1975, one year before the death of Mao and the reversal of the cultural revolution.

It is a good example of both the orientation guiding the cultural revolution (in this case, how to 'revolutionize' the educational system) as well as how the cultural revolutionaries approached popular culture (e.g. this screenplay and the direction of this film).

In some ways, the film is reminiscent of 'On the Waterfront', but with a decidedly different, and more hopeful, resolution.

A worthwhile feature although rarely shown currently.

Standard political propaganda crap of late Cultural Revolution era

[zzmale · 16 February 2004]

The literal translation of the title of this film is: Split (or Separation, Departure). Big Thumb Down.

This movie is the standard political propaganda format of the late Cultural Revolution: In addition to the eulogy of the Cultural Revolution like those movies made in the earlier era of the Cultural Revolution, and the craps of Anti-Field Marshal Lin Biao (who tried unsuccessfully to assassinate Mao in 1971) theme of those made in the middle of the Cultural Revolution, there is the addition of Anti-Deng Xiaoping theme.

Once you have watched a movie like this one, you need not watch others made in the same era because you can predict exactly what happens in others. Big thumb down.