The “Fifth Generation” of alumni of China’s Beijing Film Academy first made their marks at home and abroad with two ’80s films — Chen Kaige’s “Yellow Earth”(1984) and Zhang Yimou’s “Red Sorghum” (1988). The color in their titles was a tell.

The hallmark style of the two leading lights of this “generation” was sumptuous production design underscored by striking Technicolor compositions — landscapes and interiors immaculately framed — with the deep, rich colors used as symbolism.

The still-repressive post-Maoist government wasn’t necessarily a fan of the “symbolism” part. Any time you see bright reds and oppressive, abusive older men in such films you can bet your bottom Yuan the filmmakers are making a statement on life in a totalitarian state. Getting such movies out of the country and into film festivals, let alone international cinemas, was difficult.

Yimou’s second landmark work, 1990’s “Ju Dou,” was the breakout film for this movement, that filmmaker and his muse and star, Gong Li. A film festival darling — I first saw it at the 1990 New York Film Festival — that would become an Oscar nominee, it was the hit that paved the way for “Raise the Red Lantern,” “Farewell, My Concubine,” “Hero,” “The Emperor and the Assassin” and the masterpiece of that generation of movie-makers, “House of Flying Daggers.”

“Ju Dou” is, on its surface, a simple love triangle, a Chinese melodrama with a hint of “The Postman Always Rings Twice” about it. But setting this story in a 1920s rural dye works, full of color and with just a handful of characters — an abusive older husband (Wei Li), the much younger wife (Gong Li) he “bought” to sire an heir and the nephew (Baotian Li) whom the old man took in and basically enslaved as his loyal, overworked servant and labor force — is our clue to dig deeper for its true meaning.

Downtrodden “nephew” Tianqing is instantly infatuated with Ju Dou, even gouging out peep holes to spy on her bathing. She picks up on this and tries to foil it, for a time. As he cannot help but notice her bruises and overhear the screams from her nights with her husband Jinshan, he doesn’t just lust for her. He fears for her.

She plays on this, eventually asking if Tianqing will “let him kill me?” As work progresses and fabrics are dyed in glorious golds and satin reds, the two give in to temptation. A baby is born, and it probably isn’t Jinshan’s.

And then the old man comes to harm and faces a paralyzed future, topped off by his bride taunting him with the news that his bloodline will die with him and that her son with his adopted nephew will inherit his business and family name.

Things turn even messier than that.

The lore surrounding these films was the currency of film festivals of the ’90s, that China was the last place on Earth to worship at the shrine of traditional Technicolor, that getting these movies made was an act of defiance and only the most subtle jabs at the Chinese dictatorship could slip by censors and out of the country.

“Ju Dou” has an attention to detail, the “mise en scene” of set dressing and filming of an ancient, human-and-animal-powered dye works, a world of folk medicine, village gossip, rites and traditions, that raised the bar for the period pieces of Zhang and Chen, their contemporaries and the Chinese filmmakers to follow. And that attention to detail reminds us that nothing is on screen by accident.

So the choices of colors, the conditions of the lives of the enslaved and those who keep them under their thumbs have meaning. It’s a life under totalitarianism allegory.

Gong Li, Zhang’s “discovery,” muse, lover, later wife and then ex-wife, became an international star thanks to her association with Zhang Yimou, making films such as “To Live” with Zhang and “The Emperor and the Assassin” with Chen Kaige, working in Hollywood and often speaking out against the Chinese regime.

Zhang once told me in an interview his secrets to making her into a beauty icon. “Never schedule scenes with your leading lady in the morning,” he said through a translator. “Sleep” was the key to getting the sort of facial perfection Gong presented on screen. Great acting came easiest for a well-rested, confident of her image star.

Most of the Chinese filmmakers of that era, even Hong Kong icon John Woo, made their peace and “learned to love Big Brother,” as Orwell put it, in their later years. They turned conservative and later interviews with Chen, Zhang and Woo and even stars like Jackie Chan would be peppered with Chinese government talking points about the importance of “order” and “getting along” in The State and with The State.

The Fifth Generation filmmakers and their peers rocked the boat, and those who followed have been more tightly controlled, so the accepted wisdom goes.

But thanks to a newly-restored and re-issued (by Film Movement) “Ju Dou,” we can still revel in the works of one of the greatest eras in modern cinema, a golden age of Chinese film, swathed in red and fraught with meaning.

Rating: PG-13, violence, sexual content

Cast: Gong Li, Baotian Li, Zhang Yi, Jia-an Zheng and Wei Li

Credits: Directed by Zhang Yimou and Yang Fenliang, scripted by Heng Liu. A Film Movement release.

Running time: 1:35