{ "id": "epc7v932k5", "slug": "troubled-laughter", "title": "Troubled Laughter", "updated": "2026-11-01", "topic_path": [ { "id": "culture", "label": "Arts and culture", "api_url": "https://www.edgepedia.org/api/v1/topics/culture" }, { "id": "culture.performance", "label": "Screen and stage", "api_url": "https://www.edgepedia.org/api/v1/topics/culture.performance" }, { "id": "culture.performance.screen", "label": "Film and television", "api_url": "https://www.edgepedia.org/api/v1/topics/culture.performance.screen" }, { "id": "culture.performance.screen.films", "label": "Films and standalone screen works", "api_url": "https://www.edgepedia.org/api/v1/topics/culture.performance.screen.films" }, { "id": "culture.performance.screen.films.films.individual-works", "label": "Individual films by title and year", "api_url": "https://www.edgepedia.org/api/v1/topics/culture.performance.screen.films.films.individual-works" }, { "id": "culture.performance.screen.films.films.individual-works.drama-biographical", "label": "Drama and biographical films (individual works)", "api_url": "https://www.edgepedia.org/api/v1/topics/culture.performance.screen.films.films.individual-works.drama-biographical" }, { "id": "culture.performance.screen.films.films.individual-works.drama-biographical.drama-films-1970s", "label": "Drama films 1970s", "api_url": "https://www.edgepedia.org/api/v1/topics/culture.performance.screen.films.films.individual-works.drama-biographical.drama-films-1970s" } ], "geo": [ { "id": "geo.chn.t1946.culture.performance.screen.films.films.individual-works.drama-biographical", "label": "China · 1946 to 2000: Drama and biographical films (individual works)", "api_url": "https://www.edgepedia.org/api/v1/geo/geo.chn.t1946.culture.performance.screen.films.films.individual-works.drama-biographical", "path": [ { "id": "geo.chn", "label": "China", "api_url": "https://www.edgepedia.org/api/v1/geo/geo.chn" }, { "id": "geo.chn.t1946", "label": "China · 1946 to 2000", "api_url": "https://www.edgepedia.org/api/v1/geo/geo.chn.t1946" }, { "id": "geo.chn.t1946.culture", "label": "Arts and culture", "api_url": "https://www.edgepedia.org/api/v1/geo/geo.chn.t1946.culture" }, { "id": "geo.chn.t1946.culture.performance", "label": "Screen and stage", "api_url": "https://www.edgepedia.org/api/v1/geo/geo.chn.t1946.culture.performance" }, { "id": "geo.chn.t1946.culture.performance.screen", "label": "Film and television", "api_url": "https://www.edgepedia.org/api/v1/geo/geo.chn.t1946.culture.performance.screen" }, { "id": "geo.chn.t1946.culture.performance.screen.films", "label": "Films and standalone screen works", "api_url": "https://www.edgepedia.org/api/v1/geo/geo.chn.t1946.culture.performance.screen.films" }, { "id": "geo.chn.t1946.culture.performance.screen.films.films.individual-works", "label": "Individual films by title and year", "api_url": "https://www.edgepedia.org/api/v1/geo/geo.chn.t1946.culture.performance.screen.films.films.individual-works" }, { "id": "geo.chn.t1946.culture.performance.screen.films.films.individual-works.drama-biographical", "label": "Drama and biographical films (individual works)", "api_url": "https://www.edgepedia.org/api/v1/geo/geo.chn.t1946.culture.performance.screen.films.films.individual-works.drama-biographical" } ] } ], "excerpt": "Troubled Laughter (苦恼人的笑) is a 1979 Shanghai Film Studio drama directed by Yang Yanjin and Deng Yimin, a landmark Chinese \"scar film\" about a journalist imprisoned for telling the truth during the Cultural Revolution.", "snippet": "Troubled Laughter (苦恼人的笑) is a 1979 Shanghai Film Studio drama directed by Yang Yanjin and Deng Yimin, a landmark Chinese \"scar film\" about a journalist imprisoned for telling the truth during the Cultural Revolution.", "node": "culture.performance.screen.films.films.individual-works.drama-biographical.drama-films-1970s", "markdown": "# Troubled Laughter\n\n**Troubled Laughter** (苦恼人的笑) is a 1979 Chinese drama film directed by Yang Yanjin and Deng Yimin for the Shanghai Film Studio, about a newspaper journalist in the late [Cultural Revolution](https://www.edgepedia.org/cultural-revolution) who is tormented by the choice between writing propaganda lies and telling the truth.[1](https://movie.douban.com/subject/1304143/comments) • [2](https://hkcinema.cn/film/16324) It is one of the two \"scar films\" of 1979 that drew particular attention, the other being *The Living Trembling* (生活的颤音) from the Xi'an Film Studio.[3](https://ent.sina.com.cn/x/2005-02-24/1218661240.html)\n\n| Key fact | Detail |\n|---|---|\n| Chinese title | 苦恼人的笑; Russian release title Смех сквозь слезы[2](https://hkcinema.cn/film/16324) |\n| Release | 1979, mainland China; Mandarin dialogue; drama genre[2](https://hkcinema.cn/film/16324) |\n| Directors and writers | Directed by Yang Yanjin and Deng Yimin; screenplay by Yang Yanjin and Xue Jing[1](https://movie.douban.com/subject/1304143/comments) • [2](https://hkcinema.cn/film/16324) |\n| Studio | Shanghai Film Studio[2](https://hkcinema.cn/film/16324) |\n| Lead cast | Li Zhiyu as the journalist Fu Bin; Pan Hong as his wife; with Qin Yi, Qiao Qi, Shi Jiufeng, and Yuan Yue[1](https://movie.douban.com/subject/1304143/comments) • [2](https://hkcinema.cn/film/16324) |\n| Setting | 1975, when the \"Gang of Four\" enforced cultural dictatorship and newspapers served as its mouthpiece[4](https://i.ifeng.com/c/8Aeyxet9BWN) |\n| Award | Ministry of Culture's 1979 Outstanding Film Award[5](https://bkso.baidu.com/item/%E6%9D%A8%E5%BB%B6%E6%99%8B/8871497) |\n| Reception | Douban rating 8.2 from about 5,091 voters; runtime listed at 90 minutes[2](https://hkcinema.cn/film/16324) |\n\n## Spoilers\n\n### Plot\n\nThe story is set at the end of the Cultural Revolution, when the media was filled with ultra-left rhetoric and layer upon layer of lies. Fu Bin (傅彬), a journalist newly transferred back to the newspaper from a cadre school, is deeply troubled by this. His colleague Reporter Li (史久峰 饰) advises him to let everything pass and not take things too seriously, but his conscience as a journalist keeps tormenting him.[2](https://hkcinema.cn/film/16324)\n\nOne day, on orders from Song, the newspaper's party secretary (袁岳 饰), Fu Bin and Reporter Li go to a medical college to conduct an interview and witness an absurd scene that shocks him deeply. At a loss, he consults his old teacher (乔奇 饰), who was nearly driven mad for telling the truth. At home he and his wife recall the days of their first love, when people lived purely and honestly. He decides to ask Secretary Song to relieve him of writing deceptive articles; his wife, afraid he will invite trouble, gently tries to dissuade him, and in frustration he slaps her. The upright Fu Bin is arrested and imprisoned for speaking the truth, but he remains convinced that the country will not go on this way forever.[2](https://hkcinema.cn/film/16324)\n\nThe ifeng.com retrospective adds a detail from the story: an examinee who arrives at an interview is a doctor of biology, yet is asked questions he \"cannot answer\", one of the film's images of institutionalized absurdity.[4](https://i.ifeng.com/c/8Aeyxet9BWN)\n\n## Historical context\n\nThe film's background is the year 1975, when the \"Gang of Four\" practiced cultural dictatorship. For ordinary people, the question of whether to speak truth or lies was no longer a simple test of conscience but a matter of survival. Fu Bin's post at the newspaper had changed hands three times in two months; his immediate predecessor had been placed under isolated investigation for contradicting a leader.[4](https://i.ifeng.com/c/8Aeyxet9BWN) A baike.so synopsis frames the same period: at the end of 1975 the \"Gang of Four\" launched the so-called campaign to \"repel the Right-deviationist reversal-of-verdicts wind\", the political environment worsened, newspapers became the Gang's puppet, and upright journalists dared to be angry but not to speak.[6](https://baike.so.com/doc/115128-121469.html)\n\n1979, the year of release, was itself a turning point. Reform and opening had just begun, and the film appeared in the first wave of works that returned Chinese cinema to realist aesthetics after the Cultural Revolution, alongside *Tears* (泪痕), *The Living Trembling*, *Little Flower*, and others.[7](https://cndo.cn/library/chapter/886145/2.html) That year the national cinema market set a record of 29.3 billion admissions, an average of 28 visits per person, and the year's important realist titles included *The Living Trembling* and *Troubled Laughter*.[8](https://xn--fiqs8sr9gzmd215a.net/UploadFiles/file/20190807/201908071108233911.pdf) Critics group the film with the \"scar\" and reflection films that responded to the national discourse of exposing the Cultural Revolution and setting things right; where scar literature emphasized painful reflection, scar film leaned toward the expression and release of emotion.[9](https://www.virtualshanghai.net/Asset/Source/bnBook_ID-1950_No-01.pdf)\n\n## Style and technique\n\nThe film is noted for how it tells its story as much as for what it tells. The director intercuts fantasy, dream, and reality, making the protagonist's psychological activity the thread that unifies the film, an experiment in how cinema can represent the inner world.[3](https://ent.sina.com.cn/x/2005-02-24/1218661240.html) A later survey of Yang Yanjin's work lists the film's exploratory devices: freeze frames, image distortion, split-screen and multi-image division, high-speed and variable-speed camera work, sound-image counterpoint, montage within and between shots, and the use of hallucinated imagery.[10](https://ptextold.nju.edu.cn/bc/1e/c12146a244766/page.htm)\n\nSome of these images carry a deliberately nightmarish quality. The ifeng.com essay points to a birthday-celebration scene that seems to take place in the underworld and an electric-chair sequence made with improvised effects, reading them not as horror for its own sake but as metaphor under the eerie surface.[4](https://i.ifeng.com/c/8Aeyxet9BWN) Film historians credit the film with being among the early works of the new period influenced by Western modernist art, using dream sequences and sound-image separation to challenge traditional film form, making it a landmark case in the transformation of Chinese film language and narrative.[9](https://www.virtualshanghai.net/Asset/Source/bnBook_ID-1950_No-01.pdf)\n\n## Place in Chinese film history\n\nThe film marked its director. Yang Yanjin, born in 1945 in Ningdu, Jiangxi, graduated from the Shanghai Theatre Academy in 1968 and joined the Shanghai Film Studio in 1973 to study directing; *Troubled Laughter* won the Ministry of Culture's 1979 Outstanding Film Award, and he followed it with *Little Street* (小街, 1981) and other features.[5](https://bkso.baidu.com/item/%E6%9D%A8%E5%BB%B6%E6%99%8B/8871497) At the 1987 \"New Period Ten Years Film Awards\" he received an honorary directing award for the film.[6](https://baike.so.com/doc/115128-121469.html) A Sina retrospective on Shanghai Film Studio's sixtieth anniversary calls it the representative work of that period and credits it with giving a strong push to the recovery and development of Chinese cinema after the Cultural Revolution.[11](https://ent.sina.com.cn/m/2009-11-15/ba2770286.shtml?from=wap)\n\nFor the cast, the film was a career-making event. Pan Hong, who played Fu Bin's wife, became famous overnight with the film in 1979, appeared as that character on the cover of issue 9 of the revived *Popular Cinema* (大众电影), and went on to collect multiple Golden Rooster and other best-actress awards.[12](https://www.meipian.cn/3llr73i9)\n\nThe film's theme has stayed in circulation in Chinese criticism. A 2022 commentary on the television series *Zhang Weiguo's Summer* invokes the film's stance of answering the \"wild laughter\" of a special historical period with the resolve that \"people should live honestly and work honestly\", treating \"the troubled person's laughter\" as a lasting model for stories about middle-aged people laughing in the face of hardship.[13](https://www.whb.cn/zhuzhan/xinwen/20220817/481133.html)\n\n## Note on the co-director's name\n\nSources disagree on the second director's name: Douban and the Sina retrospective write 邓一民, while the hkcinema database writes 邓逸民.[1](https://movie.douban.com/subject/1304143/comments) • [3](https://ent.sina.com.cn/x/2005-02-24/1218661240.html) • [2](https://hkcinema.cn/film/16324) The two forms appear to refer to the same collaborator on the film.\n\n## References\n\n1. [苦恼人的笑 短评, Douban](https://movie.douban.com/subject/1304143/comments)\n2. [苦恼人的笑 (Troubled Laughter, 1979), hkcinema.cn](https://hkcinema.cn/film/16324)\n3. [累累\"伤痕\"化为力量的源泉, Sina Entertainment (2005)](https://ent.sina.com.cn/x/2005-02-24/1218661240.html)\n4. [迷幻而残酷的电影《苦恼人的笑》与当代反思, ifeng.com (2021)](https://i.ifeng.com/c/8Aeyxet9BWN)\n5. [杨延晋, Baidu Baike](https://bkso.baidu.com/item/%E6%9D%A8%E5%BB%B6%E6%99%8B/8871497)\n6. [苦恼人的笑, 360百科 (baike.so.com)](https://baike.so.com/doc/115128-121469.html)\n7. [《现实主义与八十年代中国电影》第2章, cndo.cn](https://cndo.cn/library/chapter/886145/2.html)\n8. [中国电影报, 新中国成立70年现实题材影片大事记 (2019)](https://xn--fiqs8sr9gzmd215a.net/UploadFiles/file/20190807/201908071108233911.pdf)\n9. [伤痕与反思电影 chapter, SSReader book scan](https://www.virtualshanghai.net/Asset/Source/bnBook_ID-1950_No-01.pdf)\n10. [没有忧伤，没有哀愁——重温电影《小街》, Nanjing University (2006)](https://ptextold.nju.edu.cn/bc/1e/c12146a244766/page.htm)\n11. [上影成立60年佳作之《苦恼人的笑》, Sina Entertainment (2009)](https://ent.sina.com.cn/m/2009-11-15/ba2770286.shtml?from=wap)\n12. [《大众电影》再回首纪念篇: 1979—1989, meipian.cn](https://www.meipian.cn/3llr73i9)\n13. [文艺评论丨评《张卫国的夏天》, 文汇网 (2022)](https://www.whb.cn/zhuzhan/xinwen/20220817/481133.html)\n\n---\n*Topic: Encyclopedia › Arts and culture › Screen and stage › Film and television › Films and standalone screen works › Individual films by title and year › Drama and biographical films (individual works) › Drama films 1970s*\n\n*Initially written Oct 3, 2026 · Reviewed: Oct 25, 2026 · Edited: Oct 15, 2026; Oct 25, 2026; Nov 1, 2026 · Last review: Oct 25, 2026*\n\n*Copyright 2026 EdgeChat AI, a subsidiary of Biostate AI.*\n\nLicense: Edgepedia Community License 1.0, https://www.edgepedia.org/edgepedia/license\n", "same_as": [], "url": "https://www.edgepedia.org/troubled-laughter", "markdown_url": "https://www.edgepedia.org/troubled-laughter.md", "license": { "name": "Edgepedia Community License 1.0", "url": "https://www.edgepedia.org/edgepedia/license", "summary": "Free with credit, commercial use included. AI training is open to everyone. For other uses, organizations over USD 100M in revenue or 100M monthly users license separately.", "spdx": "LicenseRef-Edgepedia-Community-1.0" }, "credit": "\"Troubled Laughter\", Edgepedia (EdgeChat), https://www.edgepedia.org/troubled-laughter. Edgepedia Community License 1.0.", "credit_md": "\"[Troubled Laughter](https://www.edgepedia.org/troubled-laughter)\", Edgepedia (EdgeChat), [https://www.edgepedia.org/troubled-laughter](https://www.edgepedia.org/troubled-laughter). [Edgepedia Community License 1.0](https://www.edgepedia.org/edgepedia/license).", "credit_html": "\"Troubled Laughter\", Edgepedia (EdgeChat), https://www.edgepedia.org/troubled-laughter. Edgepedia Community License 1.0.", "speakable": "Troubled Laughter is a 1979 Shanghai Film Studio drama directed by Yang Yanjin and Deng Yimin, a landmark Chinese \"scar film\" about a journalist imprisoned for telling the truth during the Cultural Revolution." }