Abstract:  Legend is a holistic narrative paradigm of various genres in ancient Chinese literature, which is also inherited in Chinese films. In the early Chinese films, old-style ethics and aesthetics were the distinct characteristics of legendary narratives. However, since the new period of reform and opening-up, the pre-modernity narrative paradigm has acquired obvious modernity characteristics in terms of aesthetic and ideographic expressions with changing historical contexts. It is essential to combine the contexts of ideological history and cultural history to examine how the legendary narrative of Chinese contemporary films has evolved along with Chinese narrative poetics which has always attached importance to historical writing, and to explore some modernity symptoms from this evolution.

Key words:  Chinese films, the new period, legendary narrative, modernity turn