Mainland Chinese works of art from the “Seventeen Years” period of 1949 to 1966 have been routinely dismissed as propaganda by the same Western scholars and critics who periodically “discover” and celebrate masterpieces of Chinese cinema from the preceding Republican era or the later post-Mao era. This article counters some of the erroneous assumptions underlying the indifference with which these films are regarded by the general public and the hostility that has long been directed at them by sinologists in the Western academy.
