The Great Road

The film stars Jin Yan and Li Lili, and was produced by Sun Yu specifically for Li Lili to capitalize on her image and rising popularity. The Great Road is a silent film that was designed with a soundtrack, with music and sound effects added post-production. This film is another masterpiece written by Sun Yu after Wild Rose (1931) and Little Toys (1933) as part of the National Defense Cinema with anti-Japanese elements. While it was critically dubbed as a “hard film”, Sun Yu made no explicit references to the fact that “the enemy nation” in the film was Japan, and the film contained no direct confrontation with “the enemy” on a battlefield, under the Kuomintang government’s censorship policy designed to prevent provoking the Japanese. Instead, he used the building of a road to defeat “the enemy” invaders to express the spirit of the Anti-Japanese War in an “elegant and romantic” way. Sun Yu called The Great Road his “representative work”.

The Great Road was named the 30th greatest Chinese film ever made by the Hong Kong Film Awards in 2004.

It is now up to the husband to take care of his son, named Jin, and make it through. He does his best to raise his son while working as a road construction worker. However, ten years later, he too eventually dies of fatigue, leaving the boy alone.

Twenty years later, in the 1930s, Jin has grown up and continued in his father’s footsteps as a road construction worker with his friends Old Zhang, Zhang Da, Little Luo, and Zheng Junli. As they search for employment, they meet Little Six, a former thief whom the group takes under their wing. The men decide to travel into the interior to find work in road construction and contribute to building roads to aid in the resistance to foreign invaders.

During their travels, the group befriends two vivacious and attractive women at a roadside restaurant – Ding Xiang (Orchid) and Jasmine. The group jokes around, and flirts, sings, shares meals while enjoying each other’s company. As the roadwork comes closer to the front, the situation grows more intense, requiring workers and soldiers to stay up all night together to construct the road.

The group’s antics are interrupted when Hu, a local strong man, approaches the group and attempts to bribe Brother Jin and his friend with foreign currency to stop building the road during a banquet at his estate. When they refuse Hu’s bribe, all six workers are beaten, tortured and imprisoned in Hu’s dungeon.

Dingxiang and Jasmine suspect something may have happened when the men do not return to the restaurant the following day. The pair attempt to infiltrate Hu’s estate to discover what has happened to their men. After getting Hu drunk and seducing him as a distraction, the women locate the dungeon by threatening a servant with a pair of scissors. Jasmine throws the scissors to Brother Jin to cut himself free as Ding Xiang retreats to get help from Chief Liu and the army. Brother Jin frees his friends, but before he can cut Old Zhang free, a guard throws a knife and mortally wounds Old Zhang. The construction crew and army rally and storm Hu’s house to complete the rescue. The women prove Hu’s betrayal by exposing his possession of the large sum of foreign currency.

With the group’s victory over the conniving Hu, work on the road resumes. However, an enemy plane appears and strafes the road crew killing many of the workers, along with Brother Jin and all his friends. After the carnage, Ding Xiang stands alone with her father as the spirits of her dead friends rise and continue their labour while joyfully singing.