 |
Screenplay: |
Summary Berlin 1938. Fleeing from persecution by the Nazis, Alex, age 24, finds refuge in Shanghai, the only city where Jews are not required to have a visa to emigrate. Synopsis Berlin, November 10, 1938. It is Kristallnacht. The Feldman family watches helplessly as the city’s Neue Synagogue burns. More than a hundred Jewish places of worship would be ruined or burned down, and more than seventy-five thousand Jewish shops would be destroyed and looted. The Feldmans cannot even hope to emigrate. Every door has been closed, to France, England, the United States or Palestine… A single glimmer of hope remains: Shanghai, the only city left on earth where an entry visa is not required. Financially ruined, Nathan Feldman cannot afford to send his whole family, so he sends his son, Alexander, a 22-year-old architect, as a scout to this Promised Land of the East. Alex leaves Berlin for Shanghai on the Transiberian railway via Moscow. He is to take a boat to Kobe, then another to Shanghai, but an incident forces him to leave the train before it arrives in Vladivostok. Alex must cross China alone. In the course of his journey he meets Li Wu, a Chinese journalist. After the taking of Nanking - then capital of China - and the ensuing massacre of 300,000 civilians by the Japanese, Li Wu was deported as a political prisoner and sent to work in the Manchurian coalmines. Li Wu has escaped from the prisoner of war camp and together the two young men arrive at last in Shanghai. Alex joins the twenty thousand Jewish refugees, mainly from Germany, Austria, Poland and Russia, who have fled to Shanghai. He meets up with his traveling companions from the Transiberian, one of whom, a beautiful divorcee called Elsa, is to become his lover. Li Wu joins his sister, Li Ting, and Shuxi, the woman who will become his wife. Alex finds work at a building site, but he needs to learn to speak Chinese. Li Ting becomes his teacher. A delicate relationship slowly builds between these two lonely young people who have lost everything. War is fast approaching. Shanghai is plunged into an economic crisis and Alex loses his job at the building site. Meanwhile the news that reaches him from Germany is catastrophic. His father has been arrested. He is desperate to leave Shanghai and return to Germany to find his family. He cooks up a scheme to escape as a stowaway for Sweden via South Africa, and make his way from there to Germany. Li Ting supports Alex in his crazy scheme and helps him stowaway. But the attempt fails, and Alex is arrested and thrown into jail. It is Li Ting and Shuxi, who uses her family connections, who manage to get him out of jail. Thrown into a world of dreadful suffering Li Ting and Alex are brought together, forced, in different ways, to experience the tragedy of war. In the process of learning what it means to be free from family ties, they fall in love with each other, despite the fierce opposition of those around them. In December 1941, on the night of Li Wu and Shuxi’s wedding, Alex and Li Ting consummate their love. The next morning Pearl Harbour is attacked, Japanese tanks invade the International Settlement and take power in Shanghai. Li Wu is wounded as his newspaper offices come under fierce attack. He manages to escape and hide at the hospital where Shuki works as a doctor. But Shuxi herself is arrested. When she refuses to denounce her husband, she dies under torture. Li Wu realizes he must escape from Shanghai and begs Li Ting to escape with him. But the love between Alex and Li Ting is strong enough to resist his demands. Li Ting and Alex realize that they have been brought together by the war, and that they will stay together in spite of it. |
||
| Back | ||