This article discusses the mutual illumination between Chinese opera, cinema and poetry on the eve of the Chinese Communist Revolution. I focus on two films made by the "poet-director" Fei Mu in 1948, "Eternal Regret and Spring in a Small Town". The former is an adaptation of the Peking opera of the same title, starring Mei Lanfang, the most popular female impersonator of traditional theater; the latter is a contemporary melodrama allegedly inspired by the song lyric of Su Shi (1037-1101). The two movies cannot be more different in style and background. But the fact that they both deal with wartime romance and were produced back to back points to something more than a coincidence. It tells a compelling story of how Fei Mu, with the inspiration of Mei Lanfang and traditional poetics, negotiated a new way of screening China.