FILM SYNOPSIS/BRIEF REVIEW:
One of the earliest cinematic adaptation of Chinese classic novel Journey to the West. When seeking for food alone, Tang Xuanzang was kept prisoner by seven spider monsters who took the form of seven beautiful women. The Monkey King and the other two of Xuanzang’s disciples managed to rescue him with the help of Avalokitesvara Bodhisattva/Guanyin. They renounced the desire for lust and continued the quest for Buddhist Scriptures.
The Cave of the Silken Web (Chinese: 盘丝洞; pinyin: Pan Si Dong) a.k.a. Journey to the West – the Spiders Cave (西游记-盘丝洞) a.k.a. Spiders is a 1927 Chinese film directed by Dan Duyu and starring Yin Mingzhu as the first spider spirit.[1] It is based on an episode of the shenmo fantasy novel Journey to the West, a Chinese literary classic written in the Ming Dynasty.
The ten-reel silent film was produced by Shanghai Yingxi Company.
It was thought to be a lost film, until 2013, when an original copy of The Cave of the Silken Web was discovered in the archives of the National Library in Mo i Rana, Norway.The film was presented at the Films from the South 2013 festival in Oslo. Roughly three quarters of the film is preserved, the first reel and a section in the middle is lost. The Norwegian copy has retained the original Chinese intertitles, but includes additional jokes in Norwegian written for the local audience.
Quote:
The original film is 100 minutes long and now only has 60 minutes of fragments.
639MB | 59 min 46 s | 768×576 | mkv
https://nitro.download/view/9D0090263EF1EC2/Cave.of.the.Silken.Web.1927.576p.WEB-DL.H264.mkv
https://nitroflare.com/view/15C751AF96C8CF0/Cave.of.the.Silken.Web.1927.576p.WEB-DL.H264.eng_02.srt
Language(s):None
Subtitles:English
Thanks very much ! Watched another of the titles the other night that I wasn’t previously aware of, which were mentioned in that documentary — https://worldscinema.org/2018/01/herbert-g-ponting-the-great-white-silence-1924/ . Amazing stuff ! Your site is a treasure, a beacon of light for devotees of cinema. All the hard work you put into it is greatly appreciated !
Only learned of this thanks to your post of https://worldscinema.org/2023/08/film-the-living-record-of-our-memory-2021/ — a great and essential documentary for film and film history enthusiasts. The Pan Si Dong link here is down. Possible to reinstate it ? (If it’s not for some reason, I’ll look around elsewhere.)
enjoy!