The Plunder of peach and plum = Tao li jie [NTSC]

China’s first talkie offers a grim picture of the fate awaiting young job-seekers in Shanghai society of the mid-1930s. An idealistic newlywed couple, recently graduated from university, find good white-collar jobs but both quit rather than submit to corruption and coercion in the workplace. However their desire to do the ‘right’ thing, takes them on a downward spiral which eventually leads to tragedy. The film is famous for a sequence which involves a single long tracking shot from an arriving taxi across the pavement, into and across a hotel lobby—an extraordinary feat for the time. Cast includes Yuan Muzhi and Chen Bo’er. In Mandarin with English subtitles.