The backdrop of this handsome film from the Chinese director Anna Hu is so interesting it's a shame that it has to be burdened with such a tepid plot. The film, set in Imperial Peking in 1902, is a fictionalized account of how foreign traveling cameramen-showmen first brought motion pictures to China, and how the Feng Tai Photo Shop eventually came to produce China's first films. Abandoned by his wife and children back home in England, Raymond Wallace (Jared Harris) arrives in turn-of-the-century Peking hoping to make his fortune with a sure-fire attraction: moving pictures. Raymond sets up shop in a dusty old store front under a banner promising "Shadow Magic," but ...
Released:
2001
Rated:
PG
Length:
118 mins