Zhang Yimou’s directorial style in Da hong denglong gaogao gua perfectly reflects the content of his film… The camera is not a witness; it is a chronicler, and this story of Fourth Mistress is an allegory that reaches beyond the familial structure to China itself. Da hong denglong gaogao gua is the tale of a beautiful young woman (Gong Li, also the star of Ju Dou, the director’s previous film) who becomes the fourth wife of a rich man and, in her own words, a concubine. She and her “sisters” (the other wives) are subject to meaningless rituals which depend for their perpetuity on oppression and suspicion. Every evening the women are reminded of their primary duty, as the red lanterns are hung throughout the courtyard of the mistress whom the master has chosen. The women are even robbed of their given names, referring to themselves by number, and to their “sisters” as “First Sister,” “Second Sister,” etc.
All of their relationships are defined by their primary relationship to the master, whose face we never see. The master is a paternalistic authority figure who robs his wives of any vestiges of individuality. His relationship to them is symbolic of the use of filial piety by the state (filial piety is sacrosanct to the Chinese) as an instrument of oppression. It is an idea that Zhang Yimou also explored in Ju Dou. Almost every frame of Da hong denglong gaogao gua is in long shot. For an audience accustomed to understanding films through a sympathetic character, often seen in closeup, this technique is disquieting. It also distorts our perception of space and, therefore, time. We cannot escape the sense that all we are seeing and are about to see is preordained, that the events of this story unfolded in an indeterminate time and place; it was then and is now.
Zhang Yimou’s directorial style, like the French director Robert Bresson’s, is pushing through to a new film aesthetic, one which expresses (not unlike Bresson’s) an overwhelming lament for the state of mankind. Da hong denglong gaogao gua possesses Bresson’s sense of inevitability, too, but not his faith in divine redemption. There is no martyrdom here: people go mad when they can no longer stand the world; Bresson’s characters return to their maker.

Maria Garcia, “Films in Review”, no. 5-6, June 1992