Shaw Brothers

Rear Entrance

You’d be easily forgiven for thinking that Rear Entrance wasn’t made by Shaw Brothers; shot in black and white, using academy ratio (1.33:1, same as a regular TV), it looks nothing like the usual mental image—spacious and colorful—associated with the studio.

The actors, too, are unfamiliar. Wang Jan spent most of the 50s with MP & GI, as an actor, director and writer. After Rear Entrance, he went right back. Butterfly Wu worked for the first Shaw studio, Tianyi (Unique), in the 1920s, but had retired from the screen in the late 40s; Rear Entrance was her return to acting.

This stranger in a strange land is not so much a Shaw Brothers production as it is one of the last remnants of the Shaw And Sons studio, which ceased to exist in the late 1950s, when Run Run Shaw transformed it into Shaw Brothers.

During the 50s and 60s, the battle between MP & GI and the Shaw studios for cinematic dominance was fought with films like Rear Entrance; simply shot black & white family melodramas that focused on stories of home and belonging—topics vital to Hong Kong’s Mandarin-speaking expatriates.

Critical consensus is that MP & GI made these films better than Shaw And Sons; but when the studio converted to Shaw Brothers they also shook up the battlefield by releasing colorful musicals like Diau Charn and The Kingdom And The Beauty, films with which MP & GI could not compete.

But they didn’t abandon the genre, and when they did produce the occasional old-style melodrama it was feted like a star pupil, given all the top stars and talent necessary to heighten the nostalgia that filled seats and won awards.

The strategy certainly worked. The film performed well and won best picture at the Asian Film Awards. But it also suffers from the same problems that blight many Oscar contenders: a bland plot and simplistic emotional manipulation.

When Mr. and Mrs. Tsui (Wang Jan and Butterfly Wu), happily married but childless, adopt Ling (Wang Ai-ming), their neighbors unwanted daughter, the situation is ripe with possibilities for stress, conflict and drama. Instead, the trio ascend into an ever-sunny idyll.

That sort of marshmallow-sharp conflict typifies Rear Entrance, whose notions of family rarely move beyond the stereotypical: a mother’s love triumphs over all; children are the sole point of marriage and new children always supplant their siblings.

The stress-free plot aside, it’s hard to say anything authoritative about the quality of Rear Entrance. During the last 45 years, the film’s music and dialog recordings have been lost. The redubbed voices DVD are of decent quality, but they can’t replace the original. The music, while not awful, is simplistic and overly electronic. Also, there are hints that part of the film is missing—the ending comes abruptly and the DVD menus feature a scene that’s not in the film. The DVD may be better than nothing, but it’s certainly not showing the film that Shaw Brothers intended.

Rear Entrance
Dir: Li Han-hsiang
Released: May 27, 1960

Enchanting Shadow

If this movie used any more Theremin music, it would have exploded in a spooky, tonal mess. Theremin abuse, along with the overused “howling wolf” sound effect, make it pretty clear that Shaw Brothers was coping US style for their first (to my knowledge) horror film.

However, it’s a classic example of HK films using a style without understanding the reasons behind the style; when Enchanting Shadow combines the Theremin music and the wolf effect it goes beyond coping and jumps directly to hilariously misguided.

Frights, of course, don’t reside in the music or the sound effects, but in the timing and the execution. Shadow’s scare shots largely fall flat, giving away the “jump” far too early and the make-up effects are far behind the work being done at Hammer studios.

While Shaw may not have known horror, they certainly knew romance; the tender moments between Ning Chai Chen (Zhao Lei) and Nieh Hsiao Chien (Betty Loh Ti), especially their poetry recitals, are far more effective than the un-spooky frights.

Enchanting Shadow’s story was also used for 1986’s A Chinese Ghost Story, starring Leslie Cheung and Joey Wong (sometimes listed as Joey Wang). The Tsui Hark-produced film is far more effect-laden and plays up the supernatural aspects. Shadow, either for technical or aesthetic reasons, doesn’t care too much about the supernatural. The villainous ghosts look more like a bingo club than man-eating tree demons.

Hark also tries to end the film with a bang, staging a battle against the royalty of the underworld. Shadow avoids such excesses and lets the romance carry the tale. Both are films of their times; Tsui Hark would have been as hard-pressed making a tender romance in 1986 as Li Han-hsiang would have been making a effects-laden over-the-top blockbuster in 1960.

Enchanting Shadow Released: August 8, 1960 Director: Li Han-hsiang HKmdb