But in the end very few original scenes were cut

"city of life and death" probably deserves a place in the Pantheon of the great war movies. In China, the film, who met a huge success, is called "Nanjing." Nanjing! "It tells the tragic story of the last bag, in 1937, in the Chinese capital, Nanjing by Japanese troops, brought by prince Asaka, the nephew of Emperor Hiro-Hito. The Japanese offensive starts December 1: two hundred thousand soldiers, or a half of Corps, are moving towards Nanjing. Chinese resistance, demoralized by the fall in Shanghai a few weeks earlier, Withers.

Generals fled, leaving their troops without defence. The soldiers leave their uniform to blend into the population. But the Japanese generals decide to drop their dogs in Nanjing devastated. They give to their young recruits, exhausted and fanatical, the order to clean up the city. "We must stop all the young people because it is certainly of Chinese soldiers in civilian," proclaims the Japanese staff. "All prisoners of war must be executed." Execution method: divided by group of 12 prisoners. Shoot to kill on each group separately.

The soldiers will exceed these levels. Of the worst ways. Thousands of prisoners are buried alive, drowned, decapitated the sword or bayonet. The Japanese generals are open brothels of campaign for the rest of their warriors. More than twenty thousand women, Chinese or Korean, are raped. The number of deaths will be, according to sources, to two hundred thousand and three hundred thousand people.

Chuan Lu film recounts the slaughter by the eyes of a Japanese soldier who attends, sickened but liabilities. A bias that shocked a part of the Chinese spectators. Yet "city of life and death" has passed all the stages of censorship that detailed. But in the end, very few original scenes were cut. "My goal was to show the massacre so that anyone in the world can understand what happened rather than in me taking the image snapshot of Japanese cruel and ruthless", justifies Chuan Lu. "By creating these characters of Japanese soldiers, I had ambivalent feelings." Japanese soldiers are common types, there is no reason to make monsters. Me I wanted to show Japanese soldiers dancing, wash, chat, will see prostitutes, without never demonize.

Filmed in black and white, these strong images, shot in the emergency, are never complacent in violence (no body dismembered and disemboweled, nor flood of hemoglobin). They are only more persuasive. Following the fate of several actors of this tragedy, Chuan Lu key truth of sentiment, courage, cowardice, cruelty, perversity, anguish, madness, spirit of sacrifice. It will forget soon these men and these women in a so-called safe area of four square kilometres where two hundred fifty thousand persons have found refuge. "Safety" any further, since the Japanese, despite the agreements, violate repeatedly this sanctuary.

At the heart of this more or less protected from the abuses of the military delivered to itself, three "fair" will pull on the death of thousands of Chinese: an employee Director of the University for girls in Nanjing, German firm Siemens, John Rabe, an American missionary Minnie Vautrin, and an American pastor, John Magee, who recorded 16 mm the six weeks of the destruction of Nanjing. Its images under the coat, will be published in "life" and will force the Japanese generals to stop the massacre.