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National celebrations of "Learn From Lei Feng Day," which was observed last Tuesday, turned into something of a public relations debacle after the party icon's celluloid resurrection in not one but three films about his life was thwarted by a distinctly capitalist weapon: the box office bomb.

In cities across the country, many theaters were unable to sell even a single ticket, an embarrassment for the Communist Party, which has been seeking to burnish its moral luster during the annual legislative sessions of China's rubber-stamp Parliament taking place in the capital, where Lei Feng was venerated as an inspiration for all.

Also last Tuesday, the octogenarian photographer famous for taking 200 photos of Lei Feng suffered a fatal heart attack after giving his last of over 1,260 speeches honoring Lei Feng to a roomful of military personnel in China's northeast. Chinese media widely reported his dramatic death, featuring footage of the photographer slumped in his chair and receiving CPR, and finally a photograph of his corpse reverently draped with a Communist Party flag.

The unwelcome developments in the Lei Feng narrative subverted the carefully scripted celebration of the Communist role model. By the time Lei Feng died at 21 — in 1962, slain by a falling telephone pole — a slew of government paparazzi had captured him fixing military trucks, darning his fellow soldiers' socks or diligently studying the works of Chairman Mao by flashlight. After his death, a diary detailing his many selfless acts was supposedly discovered and then swiftly disseminated among the masses to be studied and, it was hoped, emulated.

As the Communist Party formally orchestrates a transfer of power to a new generation of leaders, the nation has been fixated on what many say is society's declining morality, highlighted by a seemingly incessant flood of government corruption scandals replete with bribes and mistresses.

Last month, a Beijing woman was caught using a silicone prosthesis to pretend she was pregnant and fool subway riders into giving her their seats. Last week, a fresh round of outrage erupted after news spread that a carjacker in the northeastern city of Changchun had strangled a baby boy he had found in a stolen vehicle and then buried him in the snow. After thousands took to the streets for a candlelight vigil honoring the infant, the authorities banned further media coverage of the episode.

The evolving cult of Lei Feng — from the man to the myth — opens a window into how the Communist Party has sought to adapt ideologically while remaining firmly in control of a rapidly changing society. While Mao used him as a tool for inspiring absolute political obedience, propaganda officials have been struggling to rebrand Lei Feng and make him relevant to a nation where smartphones vastly outnumber copies of Mao's Little Red Book.

Today, social media apps include Micro Lei Feng, meant to inspire good deeds among the technologically adept. The state media has been championing him as "a role model for Chinese society today as the government is trying to improve the social moral environment."

But experts agree that the relentless portrayal of Lei Feng as a panacea for China's social ills has rung hollow for those who have doubts about the party's moral authority.

"The Chinese government no longer enjoys high credibility among people," said Zhang Ming, a professor of political science at Renmin University in Beijing. "It begs the question: the government keeps bringing up the Lei Feng spirit and calling on people to be more helping to others, but what has the government done to follow the Lei Feng spirit?"

At a time when China's incoming president, Xi Jinping, has begun a highly publicized campaign against corruption that cynics say is largely cosmetic, many wonder whether Lei Feng the saint should be buried once and for all. For them, the box office disaster of the Lei Feng-themed films is the nail in the coffin.

In the central Chinese city of Taiyuan, in Shanxi Province, an employee of a cinema confessed that it had pulled the films — "Young Lei Feng," "Lei Feng's Smile" and "Lei Feng 1959" — after the theaters remained empty on opening day.

The films suffered a similar fate in coastal Nanjing. Reached by telephone, a Nanjing International Cinema employee said the cinema had not sold a single ticket for "Young Lei Feng" and had canceled further screenings. An employee at another theater, the Nanjing Xingfu Lanhai Cinema, said, " 'Young Lei Feng' has been on the screen for four days but no tickets have been sold so far."

Even in Beijing, where thousands of delegates to the National People's Congress were gathering, the films were doing poorly. One local cinema reported it had sold only 43 tickets for "Young Lei Feng" in four days — compared with over 450 for "Les Misérables."

When Chinese media reports revealed that the public was largely ignoring the films, the studio behind "Young Lei Feng" denied it was a dud, saying an article in The Yangtse Evening Post about dismal ticket sales in Nanjing was incorrect. "This story has imposed irreparable negative impacts on this movie and has misled people into believing it's lousy," the Xiaoxiang Film Group said in a statement.

Ardent Lei Feng supporters are eager to portray the films' poor performance as a problem with form, not content. "Lots of people think the 'Lei Feng spirit' is a 50-year-old cliché," said Wang Wei, director of the Lei Feng Spirit Research Institute in China's northeastern Liaoning Province. "Once they hear about those movies, they instantly decided that they are not worth seeing. These films should have adopted new propaganda angles to attract audiences."

The government is instead resorting to old-school tactics to fill theaters. The State Administration of Radio, Film and Television has ordered film studios and cinemas to better promote the films and has exhorted party cadres to organize group viewings, particularly by rural audiences.

But the tattered hagiography has lost more than just its cinematic appeal. At the "Forever Lei Feng" exhibition in Beijing on Friday, almost all visitors were government workers or schoolchildren, even though municipal officials had sent a text message to millions of cellphone subscribers announcing the show.

Strolling past large propaganda posters of a uniformed Lei Feng grinning at the camera while polishing cars, and display cases filled with Lei Feng's image on lighters, backpacks and T-shirts, the crowd of sailors and city maintenance workers — all of them had been dispatched by their government employers — posed for photos before heading quickly for the exits.

Zhen Lifu, a professor at Peking University who was volunteering as a docent on Friday, spent the day lecturing about Lei Feng's generosity toward his comrades. But away from the crowds, Mr. Zhen admitted that he thought Lei Feng himself would have been depressed by the moral decay that plagues modern Chinese society.

"Frankly, Lei Feng wouldn't be the only one," he said. "These days, we're all pretty dissatisfied, which is why we need Lei Feng."