Shaw Brothers

The Dancing Millionairess

Can a film honestly be called a musical if it contains no signing for the first ninety-percent of the movie? What if it also contains almost no dancing? Maybe defining a musical more a question of style instead of content.

For 97 minutes of its 109 minute running time, no one sings in The Dancing Millionairess. And the film’s first dance routine isn’t until minute 45 (yes, I kept track). And while the movie ends with a celebration of singing and dancing, the film still feels pretty barren when it comes to musical numbers.

But yet The Dancing Millionairess still feels like a musical, even in its talkiest moments. The tone is light, the pace bouncy, the colors bright and the stars polished. It’s got everything a musical needs — except for the singing.

One of the tricks to making a musical, at least a musical in the Hollywood style, is to create a world in which people breaking into song is not abnormal. For example, the highly artificial set-design used in classic Gene Kelly films helped to create a sense of other-worldliness that helped make the singing more normal. West Side Story opens with a perception-changing top-down view of Manhattan, in the hopes that singing gang-members will seem less bizarre.

Perhaps after watching tons of MGM musicals, I’ve come to associate their visual aesthetic with the musical genre. So any film that apes this style, which The Dancing Millionairess frequently does, becomes a musical in my mind — even if there’s almost no signing.

And so Doe Chin recreates the successful style he used in the earlier, more musical musical Les Belles, dropping most of the singing in favor of poetic narration and replacing complicated dance routines with light, poppish boogieing — leaving much of the movie’s charm in the hands of real-life couple Peter Chen Ho and Betty Loh Tih.

The pair does well, especially once they are allowed to unite on-screen — a gratification that is delayed far too long. The film’s highlights are their scenes of content relaxation.

Sadly, those scenes are few. Most of the film is muddled by an exceedingly complex romantic-comedy plot that I could not explain even if wanted to. All that really matters is that there’s a dance troupe that wants to put on a show and corporate president Betty Loh Tih has the money they need — cue the misunderstandings, cute meetings and jaunty music.

Although The Dancing Millionairess ends on a crowd-pleasing high, there’s not much positive to say about the preceding 90 minutes. The film never really hits a comedic stride; instead it just bumbles along until its stars can finally share the screen. Musical or not, the film is far from Shaw’s, or Doe Chin’s, best.

The Dancing Millionairess
Dir: Doe Chin
Released: February 12, 1964

The Adultress

Like the previous year's Yang Kwei Fei, 1963's The Adultress adapts a famously tragic story into a showcase for Li Li-hua. Unlike Yang Kwei Fei, The Adultress doesn't have to excise chunks of its source material in order to make its star likable. The result is not only a more coherent film, but a far better performance from its prolific star.

Adapted from an opera, and maybe from an even older story, The Adultress retains is musical heritage, but it's hard to think of it in the same category as Shaw's other early 60s musicals. Although classified as a haungmei film, The Adultress' songs are few and far between, usually only appearing at the moments of strongest emotion. The rest of the film is plain-spoken drama, free to focus on its story of corrupted justice and the painful sacrifices of unrequited lovers Xiao Bai and Yang Nai Wu.

Sold into marriage as a child, Xiao Bai (Li Li-hua) pines for her brief but unfulfilled love affair with the gifted scholar Yang Nai Wu (Kwan Shan). Though she loves Yang, Xiao Bai remains faithful to her sullen husband, Xiao Du (Zhu Mu). Not that the gossipy villagers care, their endless taunting only enflames Xiao Du's jealousy.

After catching the eye of Liu (Peter Kang Kwan), son of the local magistrate, Xiao Bai is drugged and raped by her spoiled stalker. Shamed and afraid, she won't tell her husband about the attack. But the jealous husband spots the evidence of Liu's attack and immediately blames Yang.

After Xiao Du is killed by an increasingly creepy Liu, Xiao Bai and Yang are accused of murder and thrown onto the non-existent mercy of the Chinese courts.

Corrupt judges, bribed witnesses and confessions extracted via torture--these and other various brutalities of the Chinese judicial system consume most of the rest movie. It's all very dramatic and nerve-wracking, and excellent work from both Kwan Shan and Li Li-hua makes the already compelling story more engrossing.

Unlike many Shaw Brothers weepies, its very hard to guess how The Adultress will end. Most Shaw dramas clearly telegraph their stories, relying on the over-the-top emotion to draw audiences in. I imagine that the story was familiar enough to Chinese audiences that they would already have known the ending. But it was all new to me and I was glad that the film kept me on my toes.

In Yang Kwei Fei, Li Li-hua had to work against the abbreviated film in order to deliver an appealing performance. But in The Adultress she could work with the strong story and dramatic direction to deliver a great performance.

The Adultress
Dir: Ho Meng-hua & Li Han-siang
Released: August 9, 1963

Return of the Phoenix

One of the few huangmei diao comedies, Return Of The Phoenix delivers a light alternative to the genre’s usually overwrought plots — and romance, of course. You can’t have huangmei diao without romance.

As with most huangmei films, the plot is whipped-foam light. Mu  (Chin Feng), a young fighter from a disgraced family, is engaged to Xue-e (Lee Heung-gwan), beautiful youngest daughter of a former general. But through the machinations of Xueyan, the general’s oldest and least attractive daughter, Mu believes that he’s engaged to a deluded, slutty reject.

Meanwhile, Xue-e’s also being pursued by another admirer, Prince Chu (Cheung Kwong-Chiu), the moronic bucktoothed nephew of the Emperor. Let the comedy begin!

Most of the comedy comes from mistaken identity and the unattractiveness of the Xueyan and Chu. And, for the most part, it’s pretty simplistic stuff. Unlike The Bride Napping, another comedy with huangmei roots, there’s nothing very witty about Return of the Phoenix, despite the presence of two of Shaw’s best comic actors, Go Bo Shu and Cheung Kwong-Chiu.

At least there was nothing that witty in what I saw. But I’m severely handicapped when it comes to huangmei films. With their simple music and familiar plots, one of the main draws of huangmei films was their lyrics. Since I don’t speak Mandarin, I’m going to miss any puns, allusions or bon mots that might be hiding in the words. I’m entirely dependent on the subtitles, and subtitles have a way of hiding humor.

So it’s possible that Return Of The Phoenix may be the funniest thing since a drunk Oscar Wilde. I wouldn’t know.

Return of the Phoenix
Dir: Kao Li & Li Han-hsiang
Released: July 24, 1963

Yang Kwei Fei

One of my main goals in writing about the Shaw Brothers films is to talk about why they made the films they made. To me this is more interesting than talking in the typical platitudes of the film critic — “A thrill a minute! Two ears up! Etc”. Because of this I love watching Shaw’s adaptations of classic Chinese literature. Of the common Shaw Brothers genres none do a better job of illuminating the ideological engines that drove the studio’s output.

Audience familiarity with the source material was a big bonus for Shaw Brothers; just like today, most audiences are more willing to watch known quantities than unfamiliar stories. So Shaw Brothers frequently adapted novels, poems and pulp serials to the big screen. Few sources would have been more familiar to audiences than the classics, stories that had been memorized and retold for centuries.

And the classics had the advantage of flexibility; when Shaw Brothers adapted popular modern novels they probably had much less freedom when adapting the story to suit their tastes. After all, the studio expected that most of their audience had read, or heard about, the novel. Thus the film needed to deliver what people expected.

But with classical stories these restrictions mostly disappeared. While the stories were well known their descent through the oral tradition resulted in many different, conflicting versions. Like languages, these stories had evolved into an array of dialects.

Take the story of Yang Kwei Fei. If you google the name right now, the top results will contain at least three different versions of her story. These stories will mostly agree on the historical particulars — her name, who she married, how she died — but will disagree on almost everything else.

To Shaw bosses, this divergence was perfect. Since there was no single story to adhere to, the films could deliver characters that everyone knew, while the studio could still adjust the story to meet their needs — be those needs marketing, moral or cultural.

And the most important need of Yang Kwei Fei was that its star, Li Li-hua, look good. So the morally conflicting story of China’s great beauty, a woman who nurtured and loved the man that overthrew a dynasty, thus causing her own death, becomes an oddly disjointed glamour film about the tragic, tearful scapegoat of a nation.

In the early 1960s, when Hong Kong films featured and were made for women, it would have been hard to portray Yang Kwei Fei, or Li Li-hua, in an completely unflattering light; although Yang starts the film as a cruel and jealous concubine, she quickly and mysteriously softens by the film’s halfway point.

Yang’s character development isn’t helped by the film’s extreme brevity. At just over an hour long the film feels like it’s missing its entire middle act. In order to get to the tearful ending, it was probably just easier to skip over the parts of the story where Yang behaved less glamorously.

And, in the end, this film is really all about glamour. Director Li Han-hsiang features Li Li-hua in every way possible, surrounding her face with appropriately lush backdrops; Yang is Li’s film, from her steamy introduction, to her tearful end — and there’s no way that she would be shown in anything but the most positive light.

Yang Kwei Fei (sometimes called The Magnificent Concubine)
Dir: Li Han-hsiang
Released: May 31, 1962

The Swordmates

Another almost entirely forgettable low-grade wuxia film starring people who have done better work in better films. Shaw Brothers made so many of these in the late 60s that it’s honestly hard to figure out which one is which, or come up with something new to say for each review.

What makes writing about these films even trickier is that they are so incredibly bland. Far from creative, but also far from terrible. They just coast along in the muddy, uninteresting middle of the road. Blah.

But, for a few minutes at least, Swordmades looked like it was going to break out from the mediocre pack. After establishing a traditional “swordsman chasing a secret message” plot, the film quickly veered off in a new direction, tentatively exploring the petty jealousies that drive the women of the bandit clan; it appeared that the film’s second act would be instigated by hatred that bandit mistress Hsin-yin (Chiu Sam-Yin) feels towards her stepdaughter, the film’s hero, Yan-niang (Chin Ping).

But that story is quickly supplanted by more by-the-book plotting — vicious criminals, long-lost siblings, etc. Nothing new to see here, move along.

However, even unoriginal movies can be made well. But Swordmates never strives for that sort of quality. It’s content being a jambalaya of cliches — filling the time, but leaving no impression.

Swordmates appears to be the only Shaw Brothers movie directed by Cheung Ying, about whom I can find very little information. An actor by trade, Cheung Ying directed a few Cantonese movies in the '50s and '60s. Although he acted in films for over 50 years, The Swordmates was the last film he directed.

Cheung’s Cantonese background, along with that of co-director and writer Poon Faan, highlight Shaw Brother’s evolution from a northern, Mandarin-style studio to a southern, Cantonese one. Had the film been better, and a touch more Cantonese, perhaps it would be as well remembered as The Chinese Boxer.

The Swordmates
Dir: Cheung Ying
Released: October 18, 1969

Twin Blades of Doom

As swordplay movies moved from cutting edge cinema to an over-saturated cliche, other genres withered and died. And directors who’d made their careers in these newly-extinct genre either had to change with the times or fade into obsolescence.

Doe Chin, who had spent over 20 years directing and writing romantic dramas and comedies, ended his classic-studded career with Twin Blades of Doom, a film that is neither romantic, funny or good.

I’m not suggesting that directors should be restricted to a genre. Every artist should have the freedom to explore. But considering the rigorous contract system in place at Shaw Brothers, I doubt that Doe Chin directed this film out of a strong desire to make wuxia films. Most likely a swordplay film needed to be made, and Doe was without a project. Thus Twin Blades of Doom was born.

A thoroughly standard wuxia story buried under dozens of layers of dead ends and plot twists, Twin Blades of Doom fails to generate much interest at any level. Even the romance between its leads, Chang (Ling Yun) and Yin-erh (Cheng Lee), fizzles. Despite Doe Chin’s previous experience with romantic films, there’s not much he can do with a script as muddle-headed as this one.

Sadly, Doe Chin never even got to finish Twin Blades of Doom. He died of stomach cancer before completing the film. Maybe he could have made the transition from romances to wuxia, given a better script and more time. Instead, all we have the rather ill-fitting eulogy, Twin Blades of Doom.

Twin Blades of Doom
Dir: Doe Chin/Yue Feng
Released: January 1, 1969

King Eagle

If I were to try to sum up Chang Cheh’s films in a single word, it would be 'erratic'. Before watching one of his movies, there is no way of telling what you’re in for. The same team of director, screenwriter, action directors and actors could turn out masterpieces just as easily as they could stinkers.

So I flipped the Chang Cheh coin with King Eagle and thankfully it came up heads—the team delivers a fun swordplay wuxia built on strong performances from Ti Lung and Li Ching and a host of entertaining weapons.

After the leader of a martial arts clan is assassinated, wandering hero Jin (Ti Lung) learns the killer’s identity, but refuses to get involved. Stoic and aloof, Jin’s only interested in events that affect him personally. Clan business is not his concern.

When the killer’s henchmen slaughter some of Jin’s friends, it would appear that the hero will finally meddle in the clan’s affairs. But no, he only wants to kill the henchmen. Then it’s back to his normal state of disinterest.

It’s not until he meets and falls for Yuk Lin (Li Ching), 8th chief of the clan and sister of the evil Bing Er (also Li Ching), that Jin’s heart stirs him action.

It’s Ti Lung’s unflappable stoniness, and his evolution to heartbroken hero, that makes King Eagle one of Chang Cheh’s good films. More often than not, the work of the lead actors indicates if the film will be a good Chang effort or not. Perhaps inspired by Chang’s enthusiasm, his favorite actors put out the extra effort that makes a film shine. Or maybe it’s the actors that inspired Chang. In a collaborative medium like film making, it was probably a bit of both.

King Eagle
Dir: Chang Cheh
Released: January 1, 1971

The Singing Killer

What’s strange about The Singing Killer is not the musical numbers, or David Chiang’s laggardly lip-synching. It’s that Chang Cheh took his most dynamic, charming star and turned him into a nearly lifeless lump. For most of the film, Chiang’s gold lamé pants are ten times more exciting than the man wearing them.

Granted, Johnny, the titular singing killer, is supposed to be moody and preoccupied; as his singing career launches him to stardom, Johnny longs for the girl he lost and worries that his criminal past will destroy his life. But Chiang takes this conflicted character and drains him of energy. Even during his upbeat musical numbers, he looks dreary and static.

Without Chiang’s dynamism, there’s very little to prop up the film’s factory-standard plot. Chang Cheh continues the migration from swordplay films to kung fu films with the film’s early action scenes, which feature some nice fisticuffs. But by the film’s end, most of the fighting is done with guns, and is not nearly as interesting.

Even for die-hard fans of David Chiang/Ti Lung pairings, the film has very little to offer. Ti Lung has one line in the film and appears, briefly, in two scenes. Vengeance! this is not.

The Singing Killer
Dir: Chang Cheh
Released: December 22, 1970

The Chinese Boxer

Critics love ‘firsts,’ we love finding the headwaters of whatever genre strikes their fancy. The first Velvet Underground recording, the first cubist painting, the first modern kung fu movie.

It‘s fun identifying these moments of conception, to find the moment that divides the ‘before’ from the ‘after;’ but in all the excitement of finding a genesis, we sometimes get a little bit overzealous and misidentify a small evolution for major revolution.

The Chinese Boxer was Shaw‘s first kung fu film, the first to feature fists instead of swords. But, in typical Shaw Brothers fashion, The Chinese Boxer wasn‘t cut from whole cloth. It‘s not so much a first as it is a small step in a larger transformation.

The dichotomy to keep in mind when watching The Chinese Boxer is not ‘swordplay’ vs ‘kung fu’, but North vs South. The Chinese Boxer isn‘t the triumph of kung fu, rather it‘s when the Southern residents of Hong Kong finally clambered over the walls of the Northern bastion of Shaw Brothers studio.

Kung Fu was not a new genre in Hong Kong cinemas. The Cantonese film industry had been churning out fist fighting films for decades. For example, Cantonese filmmakers released nearly 100 films about Cantonese kung fu hero Wong Fei Hung in under two decades, and they were still releasing 3 to 4 new Wong Fei Hong films per year in the late 1960s. Obviously, there was money to be made in kung fu.

Shaw Brothers studios never turned down a money making genre. So where were their kung fu films? That Shaw hadn‘t made these films before 1970 probably had less to do with economics than with geography and national identity. Most of Shaw‘s creative staff in the 1960s were not from Hong Kong, they were expatriates from the northern city of Shanghai, previous capital of the Chinese film world, and the city where the Shaw brothers started their first film studio.

As the 60s passed, the Shaw studios adapted to their new location; Cantonese locals joined the casts and crews and the city of Hong Kong became a presence in Shaw Brothers films like, A Place to Call Home. Slowly the northern studio began to reflect its southern surroundings.

Probably the biggest step in this transformation was the hiring of Tang Chia and Liu Chia-Liang as action directors. Tang, who trained in both Northern and Southern styles of martial arts, worked with Liu on the Cantonese Wong Fei Hung films before coming to Shaw where they eventually teamed up with director Chang Cheh.

The films made by this crew began to look less and less like their wuxia ancestors and more like Cantonese kung fu—films like Vengeance! could just as easily be kung fu films should the protagonists ever drop their swords, and should Chang Cheh ever drop the Peking opera imagery.

So when Jimmy Wang Yu took a standard Lo Wei script, teamed up with Tang Chia and fought with his fists, he wasn‘t revolutionary, he was just taking the next small step in the evolution that began when Shaw moved to Hong Kong. Northern-style dramas had finally been replaced by southern action. The Cantonization of Shaw Brothers was almost complete—the final step wold come a year later with the release of House of 72 Tenants, Shaw‘s first Cantonese language film.

But none of this pontificating reveals much about The Chinese Boxer as a film. Is it any good? Not so much. Jimmy Wang Yu was an erratic actor at best, and he‘s far from his best here. The fights are, of course, fun to watch. But everything in-between rarely rises above lackluster. The DVD‘s excruciating ‘improved’ soundtrack only makes the whole experience worse. Only Lo Lieh, as the villainous karate master, and his crew of exotic henchmen stand out.

The Chinese Boxer
Released: November 27, 1970
Dir: Jimmy Wang Yu

Apartment For Ladies

Thanks to movies like Apartment for Ladies, I now know how women spend their time when men are not around. Let me share my new found knowledge.

• 50% of their time is spent parading around in their underwear
• 30% is spent in catfights
• 10% is spent using their sexuality to swindle stupid men
• 10% is spent attacking men who steal their underwear

That’s pretty much it. The secret life of women in a nutshell.

Inoue Umetsugu showcased Shaw’s female stars in a way that no other director did—he made them glamorous, clever, powerful and sexy. But, in films like Apartment For Ladies he also pigeonholed and mocked them. What do the heroines do when taking revenge on a couple of swindlers and rapists? Bump them with their hips and tickle them.

While Inoue’s gender comedies are all in the spirit of good fun, they become exasperating during moments like these. Apartment for Ladies' ensemble cast includes several generations of female stars—Ouyang Shafei, Teresa Ha Ping, Lily Li and Betty Ting Pei. With all this experience and star power, tickling is the best they can do?

It might be unfair to attack a comedy for a scene it plays for laughs, but the tickling is just a symptom of a larger problem. Where Inoue once made films that showcased women (such as Hong Kong Nocturne), in Apartment For Ladies he instead showcases stereotypes. It’s much less satisfying.

Apartment For Ladies
Dir: Inoue Umetsugu
Released: November 20, 1970