A NIGHT AT THE OPERA WITH MADAME MAO.

Byline: Bob Strauss Film Critic

During China's Cultural Revolution of the 1960s and '70s, Mao Zedong's wife, Jiang Qing, took control of the ``cultural'' part. Basically, the onetime actress banned just about every form of entertainment except her specially commissioned communist operas, some of which were filmed.

``Yang Ban Xi: The Eight Model Works'' is an odd, nostalgic look back at those propaganda artifacts. Primarily documentary in nature, it includes snippets from such overlit, proscenium-framed, um, classics as ``The Red Detachment of Women'' and ``Taking Tiger Mountain by Strategy.'' There are also interviews with dancers, actors and writers from the era, some of whose careers were throttled by the mercurial Madame Mao and others whose vast success was turned against them after the Chairman's death, when Jiang and her Gang of Four were denounced and imprisoned.

But director Yan Ting Yuen also moves beyond strict documentary practice. An angry, insinuating Jiang Qing figure comments from the shadows on real subjects' revelations and spins the historical record. In other segments, young Chinese in funky (and pricey) Western dress hip and hop to electronica renditions of the old revolutionary songs.

I'm not sure that this adds much to the proceedings, other than to reinforce Yan's shaky appraisal of the Yang Ban Xi films as terrific kitsch. Not that she sidesteps the horrors of the Cultural Revolution -- the most bizarre clip depicts smiling soldiers and peasants doing high kicks to celebrate a landowner's execution -- but Yan seems to think that it wasn't necessarily the worst of times, either. Easy for her; she grew up in Europe.

The interviewees tell a different story. Xue Qinghua, one of the genre's great dancers, still moves like a champ despite having been beaten down by both her own doubts and the heavy hands of post-Mao regimes. And amusingly enough, the cheerful landlord-killer married a wealthy real estate developer. Writer Jin Yong Qin bemoans the era's lack of free expression, but doesn't seem too thrilled with the idiotic soap operas he's working on now, either. Then there's the artist Xu Yi Hui, who fondly (and somewhat pathetically) recalls getting off on those leggy Detachment women as an adolescent -- a showwoman as much as an ideologue, Madame Mao made sure that her revolutionary babes looked hot.

Contrasting the waking sleepwalk culture of Maoism's final decade with the freer modern China's rave clubs and heavy-metal bands, ``Yang Ban Xi'' comes to some obvious conclusions, but for the most part is pretty fascinating. It might have been even more so had it acknowledged how China has grown one of the world's most powerful and gorgeous national cinemas since being released from Jiang Qing's deathgrip.

Bob Strauss, [phone]

bob.strauss(at)dailynews.com

YANG BAN XI: THE EIGHT MODEL WORKS - Three stars

(Not rated: violence)

Director: Yan Ting Yuen.

Running time: 1 hr. 30 min.

Playing: Music Hall, Beverly Hills.

In a nutshell: Interesting documentary about the propaganda opera films Madame Mao produced during China's Cultural Revolution. In Mandarin with English subtitles.

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``Yang Ban Xi'' puts a modern edge on old songs from the Cultural Revolution.