Beyond The Great Wall

Based on true story (that likely grew to the almost mythic tale used in the movie), Beyond The Great Wall is another Li Han-hisang “Yellow Plum Opera” with the requisite songs, tortured heroine and beautiful moralism.

It’s also, perhaps surprisingly, an astonishing critique of Shaw Brothers and movie studios in general. Linda Lin Dai plays Wang Chiang, a naive beauty who desires the title of Emperor’s favorite concubine. But the Emperor, a womanizer with no restraint, has hundreds of concubines—even he can’t remember them all.

Enter the royal artist, Mao. He paints portraits of each concubine and the Emperor picks his night’s companion by looking through the portraits—kind of like a thumbnail gallery. Mao knows the power of his art and charges the concubines a small fortune to make their portraits flattering. Refuse to pay and the Emperor will never visit.

This lesson about the power of the artist as the mediator between life and society is a minor, but interesting sub-plot of Beyond The Great Wall, and it certainly has applications to Shaw Brothers studios, which for years immediately offered a contract to beauty pageant winners. Linda Lin Dai, perhaps Shaw’s greatest star of the late 50s and early 60s, was hired because her photo ended up in the hands of an assistant director. If the photo were only slightly altered perhaps

Shaw Brothers fed on beauty; the high production values, the widescreen image, the endless parade of Hong Kong’s most attractive people—all these presented a picture as inaccurate as Mao’s bribery-funded portraits. Beyond The Great Wall’s brief assault on the hand that feeds entrances more than its standard operatics.

Beyond The Great Wall Released: 1964 (or 1964, depending on the source. I think 1959 is accurate. If it were released in 1964, it would have appeared primitive compared to other films. The 1964 date is likely from a re-release of the film after Linda Lin Dai's suicide) Further research has shown that the movie was made in 1959 but not released until 1964. The reason for the delay is unclear, although I'm sure it was finally released because of Dai's suicide. Dir: Li Han-hsiang hkmdb