The Fake Prop in a Spy Movie based on a True Story

                    By Shenghua Tu, June 2020

   第14页开始《真实故事的影片中的假道具--1958年电影《永不消逝的电波》揭秘》

The Chinese spy movie entitled The Eternal Wave is based on the life of Li Bai, a revolutionary. The movie lasting 1 hour 49 minutes and 59 seconds was made in 1958. Since its debut the audience must have reached 1 billion, among whom people with radio telecom knowledge may have the following questions.

Why Li Xia, the hero in the movie, took his radio set to the attic upstairs for his radio operation? Why the hero was writing down the received signals by his right hand while his left hand was fine tuning the frequency or volume knob of his radio set? Why the heroine rushed with the radio set down from the attic back to their bedroom the moment the Japanese police were breaking in? Was this radio set also a signal receiver?

A simple answer to the above questions is: that radio set, while a family radio set in daily life, could indeed function as a signal receiver during radio operations. The movie does not disclose the technical reason for the release of the hero. The Japanese police found the transmitter but not the signal receiver thus no evidence for an active radio operation. Neither does the movie tell the political reason for the release of the hero. The historical truth was that the guarantor for Li Bai happened to be Zhou Fohai, the number 3 man in the Chinese quisling government under the Japanese occupation in 1943.

Anyone interested in knowing more details, please read on — The Fake Prop in a Spy Movie based on a True Story.

Technically, a radio set and a signal receiver both can receive signals, but the signals they receive are different. What the radio set receives is the amplitude wave coming from the broadcasting station that is for general public while what the signal receiver receives is the iso-amplitude wave coming from a specific or exclusive transmitter. The fundamental difference between the two is that the signal receiver has a beater or beat frequency oscillator to receive the iso-amplitude wave, and that the radio set does not have this beater to receive the iso-wave.