Abstract:

 The influence of Qiong Yao' s film on Taiwan's film history has not been giving a full confirmation in critics. Also in the studies of Chineselanguage films, scholars' research for Taiwan's film history often shows a leap, directly from the early Taiwaneselanguage film through the healthy realist film to Taiwan's new film, ignoring Qiong Yao' s drama that has once created a boxoffice miracle in 1960s and 1970s. In fact, Qiong Yao's film is important, not only because it helps Taiwan' s film open a distinctive type of melodrama, thus inheriting a strong popular tradition of commercial films that has been developing since the incept of the film, but also because it interprets, by using a mode of popular melodrama, China' s traditional ethics, thus playing an enlightening, appeasing role in the society. It has always been the tradition of China' s film to trace the history of the Chinese cinema and combine the form of popular melodrama with the Chinese ethics, politics and cultural reflection. The usage of popular melodrama in Qiong Yao' s film not only displays its strong roots in traditional Chinese films, but also indicates its close relation to the traditional Chinese culture. Besides, Qiong Yao' s film, while describing the romantic love kingdom, also refracts Taiwan' s image of an era. In Taiwan' s film history, Qiong Yao's film sets off two longer viewingbooms. And in these two periods, its story background, character relationship, plot setting and so on produce relatively a definite change, which reflects the changing time of Taiwan's society and the changing idea of Taiwan' s people.

Key words: Qiong Yaos films; Qiong Yaos drama; melodrama; Chineseness; Taiwan Image