7 Color Culture and Science Journal Vol. 13 (2) DOI: 10.23738/CCSJ.130101 

Zhang Yimou: great master of color 
Lia Luzzatto

1
, Laura del Zoppo

2
 

1 
Color and Colors, Milan, luzzattolia@gmail.com 

2 
Film Director, London, lau.dz@libero.it 

Corresponding author: Lia Luzzatto (luzzattolia@gmail.com) 

 

 

ABSTRACT 

As a pioneer of Chinese cinema, Zhang Yimou, has directed a number of films spanning various historical 
periods, genres and techniques, but if there is a style or technique that really defines him, this is the skillful, symbolic 

and communicative use of color. Many critics claim that red is the color that voluntarily characterizes his films, but he 
himself tells how this distinctive preference of his first films was due to the environment in which he grew up in Northern 
China, in which red for centuries has not only been the bearer of meanings, but also a cultural heritage, a 
representative sign of a past to be rediscovered and preserved. In fact, many aspects of the culture of this great 
country converge in red and in the term that translates it, so much so as to be a metaphor for customs, traditions and 
feelings. In this research we have tried to go beyond this cliché by taking into consideration the whole of his film 
production. We analyzed five films: two wuxia (a narrative genre, typical of Chinese cinema, which mixes martial arts 
with fantastic and adventurous elements), the first Hero (2002), where the color of the clothes, draperies and sets 
changes according to the unfolding of the story and the last, Shadow (2018), in which the color belongs directly to the 
set design and costumes, and which brings us back to the black and white painting that inspired generations of 
Chinese writers. Then we analyzed three other historical-social films, Red Sorghum (1987), Ju Dou (1990) and Raise 
the Red Lantern (1991) which represent Chinese society in the 1920s and 1930s. In the analysis of these films we 
have been able to identify three different ways of using color: one narrative, one symbolic and one that we can define 
as historical-aesthetic. 

 

KEYWORDS China, cinema, communication, art 

 

RECEIVED 05/02/2021; REVISED 29/03/2021; ACCEPTED 04/05/2021 

 

 



Zhang Ymou: great master of color 

8 Color Culture and Science Journal Vol. 13 (2)  DOI: 10.23738/CCSJ.130201 

1. Introduction 

Zhang Yimou director, screenwriter and cinematographer 

of many of his movies is perhaps the most important 

director in contemporary China. His training passed 

through Mao’s cultural revolution, which saw him working 

first in the countryside and then in a textile company, to 

arrive, after Deng Xiaoping’s reform, at the Beijing Film 

Academy in the photography department. After 

collaborating with several directors as camera operator, 

set photographer and actor, he made his directorial debut 

with the movie Red Sorghum (1987) and became part of 

that large group of filmmakers defined as fifth generation. 

As a pioneer of Chinese movie making, he has directed 

a multitude of films spanning various historical periods 

and genres, but if there is one style or technique that 

defines him, which connotes his works and is part of his 

poetic journey, it is the particular artistic, symbolic and 

communicative use of color: a tool that has always been 

used in traditional Chinese theater to communicate 

situations, personalities, feelings, both in the courtly and 

popular culture, as well as in communist China with new 

meanings and new representations. 

A paradigmatic example and covered in every aspect in 

many of Zhang Yimou ‘s movies is the red color: in the 

past a precious dye obtained from cinnabar and since 

the time of the Song dynasties used to color the seals 

placed by the literati on painting and calligraphy works. 

Later it was the color of the revolution, of the red flags, 

of the little red book, and last but not least of the ‘red 

sun’, which is still the symbol of Mao. 

We like to think that the director uses it to sign, as if with 

a seal, many of his works, even if he himself says that 

this color is simply that of the traditional culture in which 

he was born, a cultural heritage of northern China 

where he grew up and a representative sign of a past to 

be rediscovered and preserved. 

In this research we have considered the three movies 

with a social-historical character(Red Sorghum 1987, Ju 

Dou 1990, Red Lanterns 1991) that tell the story of 

China in the 1920s and 1930s and two wuxia
1
 films, the 

first and the last: Hero (2002) and Shadow (2018). 

Looking at the work as a whole, we identified three 

different ways of using color: symbolic, narrative and 

aesthetic. 

 

2. The symbolic color 

Many commentators claim that red is the hallmark of 

Zhang Yimou’s movies. In the works we have chosen to 

see and that describe a period that takes into 

consideration the 1920s and 1930s of Chinese history, 

red is indeed one of the main protagonists. In red we 

find a symbolic and communicative complexity linked to 

the millennial history of this country, a history that is part 

of the tradition, beliefs and collective imagination. We 

have analyzed the various aspects of red in three 

movies, two of which also carry this color in their titles: 

Red Sorghum, Jou Dou, and Red Lanterns. 

These three movies are known to critics as the “Red 

Trilogy, both because they share the predominant use 

of this color in a palette reminiscent of that of ancient 

China where red and yellow and gray dominated 

imperial and popular culture, and because of a common 

concern for national identity, political engagement, and 

the human and natural landscape. 

"The dominant red of these movies has a double 

significant value: if for the Western audience it becomes 

the main stylistic feature of the author... for the Chinese 

it constitutes the occasion to recover, perhaps 

unconsciously, a heritage of symbols originally present 

in their own culture but later lost" (Colamartino and 

Dalla Gassa, 2003)and the reds illuminate the screen, 

capturing the attention in the traditional silk dress of the 

Chinese bride, draped inside the sedan while the 

conjugal procession crosses the fields, in Red Sorghum; 

they become dramatic in Ju Dou where, in the 

dyehouse, strokes of fabric from yellow to red unfold 

before the eyes of the spectator like strokes of paint on 

a canvas; and they permeate every scene of Red 

Lanterns, lighting up on the gray of the courtyard and 

becoming claustrophobic in the interiors. 

2.1 Red Sorghum (1988) 

“Red Sorghum  is one of the most important movies of 

the Fifth Generation for several reasons: it is the first 

Chinese film to win a prestigious award, the Golden 

Bear in Berlin in 1988." (Colamartino and Dalla Gassa, 

2003). It tells the story of the young and beautiful Nine 

Flowers sold as a bride to the old leper, owner of a red 

sorghum distillery and her love affair with the young Yu, 

whom she marries after the death of her husband and 

with whom she has a son; the plot takes place against 

the backdrop of the Japanese invasion of the '30s and 

will see Nine Flowers heroically fight for her country and 

die. Red, the color that speaks of the immutability of the 

spirit and of Chinese tradition, marks the opening scene 

of the film where the young bride is seated in a sedan 

chair covered with a fluttering fabric of this color and 

marks the end, where a solar eclipse accentuates the 

tragic dimension and red spreads across the screen. 

In the initial phases, intense red is used in the traditional 

sense, as a color linked to marriage, luck, love and 

wealth: red is the sedan chair, red is the dress of Nine 

Flowers, an intense red that occupies the scenes of the 



Zhang Ymou: great master of color 

9 Color Culture and Science Journal Vol. 13 (2)  DOI: 10.23738/CCSJ.130201 

wedding, wanting to hide the unhappiness of the bride 

and capturing the attention and the gaze of the viewer. 

A red that runs through the tragedy of the sold woman 

and with which Zhang Yimou launches the social 

denunciation of a period that the revolution has now left 

behind. Behind this color lies the tragic fate of many 

women anchored to the customs of a feudal society 

where red, from a symbol of love and happiness, 

became a sign of male power. 

In this color, so rich in shades and meanings, tragedy, 

violence, sin and war also unfold: when Japanese 

troops invade China, including the village where Nine 

Flowers lives, she will organize the resistance, dying for 

the freedom of her country in an apotheosis of warm 

and dramatic orange and red tones. 

In this movie the symbolism of red is clear: on the one 

hand it underlines revolutionary commitment and on the 

other hand passion and love. By presenting itself in a 

recurring way - dress, liquor, fire, blood - it captures and 

guides the attention of the spectator. 

2.2 Ju Dou 

Also in this movie, the director denounces the medieval 

custom of buying wives. Ju Dou is the wife bought by 

Jinshan, an old and impotent dyer, and she engages in 

a romance with Tianqing, a nephew of her master who 

works as an apprentice in the dye shop and with whom 

she has a son. The movie is set in a rural textile mill. 

Throughout the movie, Ju Dou and Tianqing are 

oppressed by Jinshan 's tyrannical, suffocating, and 

vigilant behavior, and even after his death, Ju Dou and 

Tianqing cannot live as they wish because they struggle 

to appease cultural expectations and hide their illicit 

relationship. The movie ends in an extremely dramatic 

way: Tianqing is murdered by their own son and Ju Dou 

kills herself by burning the mill around her. 

In this movie red recalls its very archetypes: blood and 

fire. With blood it shares the sense of life in the most 

intense and transgressive parts of sex and death, with 

fire that of purification and destruction. It is the red dye 

poured into the dyeing tub that heralds the final drama 

of the death of two of the male performers pushed and 

drowned in that tub, one almost by accident and the 

other by revenge; both Ju Dou 's husband and her lover 

lose their lives in this colored water. It is a red that 

marks loss: loss of purity during the sex scenes, loss of 

honor, loss of husband and lover, loss of the murderous 

son, and marks the unfolding of the drama by 

accompanying the viewer, as in Red Sorghum, in the 

red light of the expiatory fire. 

Once again, color becomes a fundamental element of 

the story, underlining its emotional phases: from purple 

red to golden yellow in the clandestine relationship, 

turning into dark and livid tones in the tragic finale, a 

single color presented in different shades to portray 

passion, jealousy, revenge and ‘crime’. 

2.3 Red Lanterns (1991) 

In this movie, the last of the trilogy, which earned Zhang 

Yimou the Silver Lion at Cannes, the director once 

again puts the Eastern patriarchal order under 

indictment. The setting is pre-revolutionary China, and 

the theme is the relationship between sexes. 

The story takes place in the 1920s and is about the 

young and beautiful Songlian who is forced to abandon 

her studies due to the death of her father and marry 

Chen, a rich landowner who already has three wives. 

The plot takes place inside the gray and cold courtyard 

on which the doors of the rooms of the concubines and 

that of the owner open. The only colorful element is the 

red of the lanterns that are lit near the door of the 

concubine with whom the man decides to spend the 

night. The women compete for exclusivity over the 

husband and a fierce rivalry arises that results in a bitter 

ending.(Moviestruckers, 2017). Songlian, in order to 

gain her husband's favor, lies about being pregnant and 

when she is discovered, after a series of dramas, she 

goes crazy. The lighting of the lanterns is a sign of 

status for the concubines because whoever wins her 

husband's favor receives an elaborate foot massage 

and the right to decide the menu for the entire family the 

following day. It is therefore the red of the lit lanterns or 

the black of the drapes that cover them to mark the 

moments of the tragedy, and it is always a radiant red 

light, diffused in the rooms together with the furnishings 

and the clothes of this color to mark the desire, the love 

and the tragic destiny of the protagonist, a red symbol of 

wealth, dominion, power, sex that in the denunciation 

becomes also a symbol of oppression. 

2.4 Red in the trilogy 

In these three movies, red defies any narrow 

interpretation, because it indicates both a rejection of 

tradition and its heritage. It is no longer a celebratory 

color as in ancient China or revolutionary as in modern 

China, it could be described as a state of mind, as a 

feeling. As Zhang Yimou once said, “We Chinese have 

been too moderate, too reserved... the boundless red of 

sorghum fields arouses sensory excitement... it 

encourages the joy of living." (Gateward, 2001). 

In his movies, red becomes the primary color of life and 

in the course of the events of the trilogy it becomes a 

commemoration of freedom, exuberance and the most 

primitive and natural desires and aspirations. 



Zhang Ymou: great master of color 

10 Color Culture and Science Journal Vol. 13 (2)  DOI: 10.23738/CCSJ.130201 

3. Narrative color: Hero (2002) 

Hero is the first wuxia film made by Zhang Yimou in 2002. 

The story takes place in China in the historical period 

called 'of the Fighting Kingdoms'. Indeed, the Chinese 

territory was divided into seven kingdoms that fought for 

supremacy, the most powerful of which was the kingdom 

of Qin. The plot, simple and complex at the same time, is 

based on the true story of Jing Ke (Nameless) a 

swordsman who prepared for ten years to kill the king of 

Qin (227 BC). 

In the movie Jing Ke is Nameless,  an unknown 

swordsman who one day presents himself to the king of 

Qin saying that he has succeeded in killing all those who 

plotted against his life. 

Nameless refers to Sky, an assassin, unbeatable with a 

spear, to Flying Snow, a woman and a skilled swordsman 

whose family was exterminated by the king, and to her 

lover Broken Sword, an extraordinary master both in 

swordsmanship and in the art of calligraphy. However, 

during the story, the king realizes that Nameless is 

deceiving him and that this was a way to get close to him 

and kill him. 

The complexity comes from the director’s choice to 

narrate the events seen from different angles with 

different levels of truth, so that the audience can learn 

about facts and characters from different standpoints. A 

choice made by other directors before him, such as 

Quentin Tarantino and Akiro Kurosawa, but what makes 

this choice different, unusual and original is the use of 

color. Indeed, it is the color of the scenes, of the clothes, 

of the furnishings, in which the characters act that marks 

the unfolding of the narration in a discontinuous 

continuity that leads from deception to truth. 

The story relies on flashbacks, wonderful pieces of 

dazzling colors that involve the viewers and guide them 

into the complexity and ambiguity of the events. Black, 

red, blue, white and green are the five colors chosen by 

the director to mark the timings and to identify with 

immediacy the direction of the story: colors that also 

involuntarily expand their allegorical dimension and 

influence the perception of time that in the red seems to 

flow faster, while in the blue, despite the action, it 

becomes slower and contemplative. 

The author, in the interviews following the film’s release, 

excluded that he wanted to use color in its symbolic 

dimension and that he had given it more simply the task 

of separating and unifying the story in an immediate, 

easy, safe and aesthetically involving way, so as to guide 

the spectator across the film’s complex plot. In reality, 

given the intrinsic characteristic of color to express 

universal meanings and emotions deriving from its 

archetype, we can observe how the chromatic 

alternations are in harmony with the contents of the story. 

Different colors to represent the inner worlds and 

situations of the different characters. Because in Hero 

there is everything: love, hate, revenge, resentment, art, 

gracefulness, elegance and violence. 

Black is the color that marks the beginning. Black are the 

palace, the garments of Nameless, the soldiers’ armor, 

the king’s dress; a black emphasized by the fixity of the 

image with the main character at the center of the scene. 

And black concludes the movie, a hard, contracted black 

that promotes an aesthetic of cold-blooded, fearless 

death. Between these two blacks the colors of the story 

unfold. 

Red marks jealousy, betrayal, revenge, love and passion, 

and pride among the fighters that unleashes a centrifugal 

force underscored by the flight of leaves and flying sand 

that permeates the scene. It is the fire of jealousy that will 

bring death to the swordsmen. 

The blue following the red shows us the story as seen 

from a different angle. In this color it is the outdoor space 

that dominates the action and gives the scene a sense of 

calmness and serenity emphasized by the camera that 

slowly follows the movements of the swordsmen and 

emphasizes the lightness of their clothes and the air. 

White, color of mourning, death, but also of purity wants 

to assert the actual innocence of the swordsmen: in 

ancient times in China it was thought that a change of 

dynasty was not a mistake, but it was necessary when an 

emperor did not rule according to the Confucian rules of 

good governance. In this way, the end of a dynasty 

preluded to a new and better life for the empire. 

When the story is colored with green, the feeling is that 

this color is the most suitable to describe the feeling of 

peace and joy that breathes in the hearts of the second 

and third swordsmen. In addition to marking the final 

change in the story, this shade of green reminiscent of 

jade, for the Chinese since ancient times a rare material 

with esoteric virtues, symbolically reveals victory over 

death. Nameless dies, but he will be given the solemn 

funeral that is usually arranged for heroes: the promise 

and guarantee of a long life in the memory. 

 

4. Aesthetic color: Shadow (2018) 

Based on the Novel of the Three Kingdoms, a classic of 

Chinese literature, Shadow tells the story of an ambitious 

king determined to regain a part of the kingdom and his 

great general, Commander Zi Yu, a visionary man driven 

by the desire to win, but forced, since he lacks the 

strength, to use a double to fight in his place: his shadow, 



Zhang Ymou: great master of color 

11 Color Culture and Science Journal Vol. 13 (2)  DOI: 10.23738/CCSJ.130201 

a peasant who resembles the commander and replaces 

him when necessary and with whom he also shares his 

wife, but not the nuptial bed. Both characters are played 

by Deng Chao. The plot is complex, full of intrigue and 

references, dominated by the sign and metaphor of yin 

and yang, the two opposing principles that involve, in 

addition to motion and stillness, a long series of 

contrasting elements: light and darkness, hot and cold, 

expansion and cohesion, evolution and involution, activity 

and rest, life and death, male and female (Luzzatto, 

2019)whose image is proposed in more than one 

occasion to narrate the light and "shadows" of the 

protagonists. 

"The main theme is that of the double: the original and its 

shadow, the true and the false, but also the masculine 

and the feminine. A game of pairs that is extraordinarily 

marked on a chromatic level by black and white, with the 

photography of Zhao Xiaoding  that almost exclusively 

uses shades of gray"(Balsamo, 2018). The story unfolds 

in the beginning in a measured and dare I say guarded 

way to then accelerate with dramatic contours in the final 

in a claustrophobic landscape where rain continues to 

pour down. We are a long way from the masterful colors 

of Hero: the fiery reds, the tranquil blues, the purifying 

whites... In this movie the palette uses the many shades 

of gray between a sometimes dazzling white and a deep 

black, turning also to ‘colored grays’, those shades that 

carry the memory of a hue. After the first scenes, the 

colors sneak in, they are those of the skin, the dark red of 

blood, the memory of the green of the vegetation... the 

characters live, plot, attack, defend themselves and die, 

in incredible varieties of a sometimes unnerving gray - a 

choice that the director claims to have been inspired by 

Chinese brush painting, the one that Shitao, a painter 

and poet who lived during the Qing dynasty (1642/1707), 

wrote about: "The one stroke carries within the totality of 

beings. The stroke receives the ink, the ink receives the 

brush, the brush receives the pulse, the pulse receives 

the spirit." (Shitao, 2008) (Luzzatto, 2019 page 77). A 

monochrome painting obtained from the dilution of black 

ink, by which
 
generations of artists-literates have been 

inspired, submitting themselves to a strenuous spiritual 

exercise aimed at recreating the cosmic and natural order 

where “everything is in relation and where the One, the 

void, the creative power that contains everything, 

becomes Two originating the pair Yin (black) and Yang 

(white): the opposite and complementary movements that 

enable every form of life and according to which reality is 

expresses itself" (Luzzatto, 2019). 

So in this work of his maturity Zhang Yimou, who has 

always looked to the aesthetic-symbolic tradition of his 

country, deeply anchored in its ancient history and in 

the Confucian and Daoist tradition, tried his hand at the 

artistic tradition deriving from Buddhism, painting the 

scenes with a meticulous and monochromatic choice of 

places, environments and furnishings and with masterful 

framing, camera movements and photography. The 

yin/yang symbol often appears on the ground during 

filming and refers to its philosophical complexity: it is a 

fighting arena for the commander and his shadow, it is 

the preparation of the shadow that, in order to train for 

the fight, takes possession of the feminine side of his 

lover, making his own the axiom that nothing can be 

completely yin or completely yang because both contain 

the seed of their opposite. There are many references, 

especially in the landscape, to the scrolls of the ancient 

masters with the contours of the hills that emerge from 

the mist, the pouring rain and the dark tones of a gray 

that turns to black sometimes emerging from an intense 

white, like ink on white paper. The feeling is that the 

events take place in a darkness that from the rainy 

exterior spreads to the interior like an immense shadow. 

The eye gets lost in the formal and chromatic 

refinement, which is not absence, but reduction and 

follows the unfolding of the representation as in the 

ancient paintings painted on vertical scrolls that were 

hung on the wall and whose vision was accomplished 

slowly in their unfolding, as a succession of images on 

the screen. 

For a general discussion of the topics covered in this 

article (Zehou, 2004). 

 

5. Conflict of interest declaration  

The authors declare that nothing affected their objectivity 

or independence and original work. Therefore, no conflict 

of interest exists. 

 

6. Funding 

This research did not receive any specific grant from 

funding agencies in the public, commercial, or not-for-

profit sectors. 

 

7. Authors Short Biography 

Lia Luzzatto 

Essayist, publicist and chromatic consultant. Professor of 

Color Theory in university faculties, she participates and 

organizes seminars and courses in Italy and abroad. She 

is the author of numerous historical and educational 

books on color, an interest that she started from the 

lessons of Luigi Veronesi at the Brera Academy of Fine 

Arts. 

 



Zhang Ymou: great master of color 

12 Color Culture and Science Journal Vol. 13 (2)  DOI: 10.23738/CCSJ.130201 

Laura Del Zoppo 

Graduated from the Brera Academy of Fine Arts, she is a 

director and art director. She has made numerous 

broadcasts and commercials for various television 

networks. She has had teaching positions in several 

private academies in the history of contemporary art and 

fashion show production courses. 

 

Notes 

[1] With wuxia we mean a narrative genre, typical of Chinese cinema, 

which mixes martial arts with fantastic and adventurous elements. 

 

References 

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scelta cromatica straordinaria [recensione]’, Anonima Cinefili, 2 
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(Accessed: 5 February 2021). 

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Genova: Le Mani Ed. 

Gateward, F. (ed.) (2001) Zhang Yimou: Interviews. Illustrated edition. 
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Luzzatto, L. (2019) Cina: cronaca dei cinque colori. 1° edizione. Franco 
Angeli. 

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Shitao (2008) Sulla pittura. Sesto San Giovanni: Mimesis. 

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