Shaw Brothers

The Comedy of Mismatches

Don’t let the title fool you, A Comedy Of Mismatches is not what you expect. Remember when you read Shakespeare in high school and couldn’t figure out why the plays weren’t funny? Then the teacher explained that in Shakespeare’s time ‘comedy’ meant a play in which everyone got married, not a play in which Ben Stiller got kicked in the testicles.

There’s absolutely no testicle kicking in A Comedy Of Mismatches, but there is a lot of marrying and a lot of confused couples. After a chance meeting in a temple, two couples exchange tokens of affection. Unnerved by their screaming parents, the couples muff the hand-off — each girl gets the wrong boy’s fan and each boy gets the wrong girl’s hanky.

And since the tokens are monogrammed, each lover ends up with the wrong name. This would not be a problem, if the boys didn’t immediately arrange to marry the women they thought they met — hence the mismatches. Instead of being engaged to true love Liu Weiliang (Pat Ting Hung), the scholar Sun Yulang (Chin Feng) is actually engaged to a woman whose hanky he got by mistake.

Shenanigans with a third couple, who are mostly kept in the background, lead to the marriage of the Sun and Liu anyway. But thanks to a set of baroque coincides that only happen in romantic comedies, Sun is dressed up as a woman and Liu is wearing the groom’s robe.

While all these miscommunications and wacky situations could develop into comedy, they never quite do. Instead of pushing humor, A Comedy Of Mismatches sticks to romance. And even that never really fills out, thanks to the shapelessness of the characters. Beyond Liu’s desire for a good match, and Sun’s goofy humor, we never learn much about the couple or what they see in each other.

Instead of characterization, the film spends its final 10 minutes recapping in painful detail exactly what happened in the previous eighty minutes. Just in case it was unclear, I guess.

With a little more wit, or some development of its numerous couples, A Comedy Of Mismatches would be more memorable. Instead, I used it a cheap way to mention kicking Ben Stiller in the testicles.

The Comedy of Mismatches
Dir: Hsieh Chun, Law Chun
Released: May 14, 1964

The Female Prince

A cloistered woman denied true love by status-hungry parents? Yes. A man wrongly accused of a crime? It’s in there. Wait, isn’t this the same story as The Crimson Palm, a film that came out just six weeks before The Female Prince?

For about 20 minutes, it seemed that the Shaw studio was simply going to recycle the exact same story — again — and wait for the haungmei-hungry audiences to pay to see Ivy Ling Po cry her way through a grim tragedy — again.

Thankfully, The Female Prince instead of diving deeper and deeper into tragedy escalates this plot into an entertaining farce. Every time things look bleak for our heroines, Qin Feng Xiao (Ivy Ling Po), and her maid, Chun Lan (Li Ching), they simply lie cheat and charm their way out of the hangman’s noose, smiling all the while.

And with each lie, the pair find themselves in a more improbable situation and celebrating an other unlikely success — quickly followed by a new life-threatening crisis. The more Feng Xiao lies, and the more she rebels against the gender roles that have held her back, the brighter Ivy Ling Po shines. I’ve always enjoyed Ling Po’s comedic work more than her weepie work in films like The Crimson Palm — and The Female Prince gives full rein to her mischievous skills.

Ling Po’s undeniable charm is also the film’s most curious aspect. The Female Prince was the second of two haungmei films made by director Chow Sze-Loke and scriptwriter Chang Cheh. Chow came from the world of Cantonese filmmaking, where he worked in a huge variety of genres. Chang Cheh, not yet a famous director, had just joined Shaw Brothers as a screenwriter. His first film for Shaws, The Amorous Lotus Pan was a bold break from the female-focused films that Shaw Brothers had been making; instead of sympathizing with the female lead, Chang vilifies her and champions her revenge-hungry brother-in-law Wu Song.

But in The Female Prince, clever women are put center stage, bamboozling the bumbling men that threaten them with loveless marriages — very much a return to the traditional Shaw story that Chang railed against in his film critiques. Did Chang want to show Shaw that he could write a film in their style, or did the Shaw management ask him to tone down the blood? Maybe Chang just wanted to be faithful to the story’s operatic source. Regardless of the why, comparing the films provides an intriguing contrast between the Shaw styles of the early 60s and the style that would emerge in the late 60s — and this one’s fun to watch, to boot.

The Female Prince
Dir: Chow Sze-Loke
Released: December 10, 1964

The Crimson Palm

Film genres tend to follow a cyclical life-cycle: first, a film or two introduces a new genre; then, if the introductory films are successful, more films follow in the trailblazers’ wake. These first-wave films can be simple recreations of the original films — success begets imitation, after all —  or they might tweak the formula slightly, looking for an even more profitable result.

Eventually, the genre settles into a predictable rhythm. Producers find out what works and stick to the safe bets. As the genre begins to age and wear out its welcome, filmmakers begin to experiment, mutating the tried-and-true formula hoping to evolve it into something new. If this works, a new genre appears and the life-cycle begins anew. If not, the genre fades away.

Introduced in 1958, by 1964 the haungmei opera genre had settled into its quiet middle age; while some exceptional opera films were being made — Lady General Hua Mu Lan, for example — many more were simply following the successful huangmei formula.

The Crimson Palm falls into the latter camp, unfortunately. Despite the presence of hauangmei superstar Ivy Ling Po, little in the film elevates it above the mass of haungmei films released in the mid-60s. It’s never bad, it’s just lifeless.

Part of the problem may be the unavoidable familiarity of the plot. Most of the “star-crossed-lovers betrayed by the justice system” story-line mirrors 1963’s The Adultress. Even that film’s climactic ending reappears here — and it would be used again in 1965’s Inside The Forbidden City.

1964 would be the end of haungmei’s complacent middle age. In 1965, slightly more adventurous haungmei films began to appear: The Mermaid pushed special effects; The Grand Substitution reflected the growing trend of manly violence in Shaw films;Inside the Forbidden City kept the haungmei structure, but explored darker themes of revenge. None of this experimentation worked, however. Haungmei never managed to evolve into a new genre, and largely disappeared from Shaw Brothers by the late 1960s.

The Crimson Palm
Dir: Chen Yu-hsin
Released: October 28, 1964

Lovers' Rock

A refreshing change from Shaw Brothers' normally over-dramatic dramas, Lovers' Rock delivers the drama, but keeps the hysterics to a minimum. Instead of the usual credulity-straining trials of a star-crossed couple, director Pan Lei focuses on small town characters and a mostly believable love triangle.

Lovers' Rock was Pan Lei debut film with Shaw Brothers, but he wasn’t new to filmmaking. As a writer and director Pan had worked in the Taiwanese film industry since the late 1950s. To Shaw Brothers, Pan probably seemed the perfect package — an intelligent, literary director that had connections with a group of Taiwanese actors and experience working under Taiwan’s single-party, martial-law government. Could there be any better combination for a studio looking to expand their market share in the island nation?

And so Pan’s first film for the Hong Kong studio was filmed in Taiwan, with an almost all-Taiwanese cast (mostly actors that had, I expect, previously worked with Pan Lei) about a Taiwanese fishing village. Gee, I wonder who this film was made for?

Regardless of why Shaw Brothers hired Pan Lei, the studio ended up with a smart, flexible and talented filmmaker with some serious writing skills. While at Shaws, Pan worked in worked in nearly every genre. And with films like Lovers' Rock and The Fastest Sword, he beefed up normally thin genre films with thoughtful scripts and smart acting.

The plot of Lovers' Rock was pretty common fare in the early 1960s — doomed lovers and family dramas were the building blocks of most Shaw Brothers weepies. So when outsider Qin Yu (Chiao Chuang) falls for the coquettish but confusing Lin Qiuzi (Cheng Pei Pei), everything feels very familiar.

But Pan surrounds this plot with a mostly scruffy-looking assortment of character actors, many of whom worked with Pan Lei throughout his career, that provide the small fishing town with a believable population and a solid foundation for the action. This sort of attention to small roles was uncommon at the star-focused studio, as was Pan’s focus on strong, realistic acting.

Well, mostly strong acting. Lovers' Rock's main stumbling block is its male star, Chiao Chuang. I’ve never cared for his abilities as an actor and in Lovers' Rock he’s required to channel a James Dean attitude that he never achieves. The gruff, flawed character of fisherman Da Gui (Huang Chung Hsin) is always more interesting than Qin — it’s a shame he’s missing for one-third of the movie.

The third star, Cheng Pei Pei, would become a major Shaw actress after Lovers' Rock. But after 1966’s Come Drink With Me, it was rare to see her in modern-day roles. She acquits herself well here as the confused and confusing modern teenager Lin Qiuzi.

With Lovers' Rock, Pan Lei established himself as a unique voice at Shaw Brothers. Currently, only a smattering of his films are on DVD; I’m looking forward to seeing more.

Lovers' Rock
Dir: Pan Lei
Released: October 17, 1964

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 Story of Sue San

As a director, King Hu will be remembered mostly for his swordplay films — Come Drink With Me, Dragon Inn, Touch Of Zen; he did more than make classics of the genre, he helped to define the vocabulary and rules that would be used by hundreds of films.

Bu Hu didn’t start his career with wuxia flicks. His first film for Shaw Brothers was The Story of Sue San, a Haungmei opera that stands out by having very little singing and a wide variety of unlikable characters.

After catching a quick glimpse of Sue San (Betty Loh Tih), the smitten Wang Jin Long (Chao Lei) discovers that his new love is a prostitute in a local brothel. Undaunted by her current job, Wang quickly drains his family fortune just to catch her attention. Once the locals see the money flowing like water, they quickly get in on the action and scam the oblivious Wang out of every last penny.

Unsatisfied with fancy dinners and ruinously expensive dates, Wang decides to 'marry' #8216;marry 'marry' #8217; Sue San. This bit of the movie confused me and is likely to confuse others. Although she’s a paid companion, Sue San is still a virgin. When Wang 'marries' #8216;marries 'marries' #8217; her, all he’s really doing is paying for the right to take her virginity. It’s not a real marriage, more like a long-term lease with crippling payment schedule.

Wang’s expensive fantasy eventually collapses and various tragedies befal the young lovers, as is the tradition of Haungmei films. But, although the plot follows the basic Haungmei structure, it’s filled with a variety of greedy, shortsighted chararcters, which not as traditional.

Only the put-upon Sue San stands out as a pure-hearted victim. She struggles on while the film takes every opportunity to lambast the pampered and naive Wang. This criticism may have been King Hu’s idea, or maybe it came from Haungmei innovator Li Han-siang, credited as a co-director on the film. Li’s touch shows in the movie’s rich design and bright musical numbers. Han-siang was no stranger to critiquing lust-blinded men (see Beyond the Great Wall, for example), so it’s hard to pinpoint the genesis of Sue San's pessimistic moments.

But that distinction is largely unimportant. The film remains entertaining both as a unique haungmei and as an early effort of King Hu. The always entertaining presence of Betty Loh Tih only makes the film that much more pleasurable.

The Story Of Sue San (aka The Story of Su San)
Dir: King Hu, Li Han-siang
Released: October 1, 1964

Note: Other sources place the film’s release in 1962. It’s possible this film was made in 1962, but not released until 1964. That wasn’t uncommon with Shaw Brothers films. But I think it’s more likely that this was a 1964 production, a chance given to King Hu after his work on The Love Eterne.

The Shepherd Girl

In the musical-filled days of the early 60s, Shaw Brothers had a musical style to fit every occasion. There were modern, stylish romantic comedies like (Love Parade); haungmei operas replete with nostalgia for an idyllic China (Love Eterne); wenyi dramas wrapped around a sorrowful soundtrack (Love Without End) and the short-lived genre of folk musicals.

There weren’t many folk musicals, I’ve only seen three, but they all followed the same plot. A rural girl and boy fall in love through the power of folk singing. Although the girl is pursued by a number of unwanted wealthy suitors, the couple eventually triumphs and sings their way into the sunset.

Lighter and faster than the drama-laden haungmei and wenyi, folk musicals are closest in style to Shaw’s modern-day musicals — only without all the hip music and revealing clothing.

Each genre had its fans. Kids and young couples gravitated to the modern films. Housewives loved haungmei opera and wenyi dramas. But who was the audience for folk musicals? Judging by their location (they are all shot in Taiwan) and their endless peans to the good, old-fashioned rural ways, I’d guess that the folk musical was aimed at the grandparents of the Chinese diaspora.

The Shepherd Girl was Shaw’s first folk music film, and it shines, gleaming as only a new idea can. Star Julie Yeh Feng, in her first Shaw Brothers film, stars and the Xiuxiu, the shepherd girl of the title. Rising romantic lead Kwan Shan co-stars as the boatman Dalong. Through 90 minutes of singing, more singing, pirate invasion and even more singing, the film sells the folk musical idea for all its worth.

Juile Yeh Feng, as always, is fantastic. She had mastered the ability to act while lip synching, a skill not shared by Kwan Shan. If there’s a lead weight in this air-puffed film it’s Kwan Shan, who sings like a terrifed boy forced into his first spelling be. Frozen stiff, face rigid, Kwan Shan looks like he would love to flee every time he sings. But since the film is 90% singing, Kwan has no where to hide.

Kwan Shan aside, the rest of the movie is a joy. The folk-singing speed dating competition is a particular treat; and it’s a scene that simply wouldn’t work in any of Shaw’s other musical dramas. Only the folk musical featured these kinds of group sing-alongs. Even as a short lived genre, the folk musical added its own unique notes to the Shaw Brothers melody.

The Shepherd Girl
Dir: Lo Chen
Released: July 15, 1964

The Amorous Lotus Pan

Tales are shaped by the tellers. Like Shaw’s other haungmei films¹, The Amorous Lotus Pan was based on a familiar story, the tragic tale of a woman forced into a loveless marriage, carried away by illicit desire for her brother-in-law and led to commit murder. While the amorous wife, Lotus Pan, is never absolved of her crimes, the story at least gives her some psychological depth and motivation.

But when this woman’s tragedy is told by Chang Cheh, the man most responsible for removing women from the center stage of Hong Kong filmmaking, the tale will not emerge unaltered.

Is it a surprise that Chang Cheh couldn’t care less about Lotus Pan’s psyche? Or her sad past? The Amorous Lotus Pan could be easily retitled The Righteous Wu Song since, with the exception of the movie’s middle third, he’s the film’s star. Chang, perhaps counting on audience knowledge, neglects to reveal Lotus Pan’s backstory until the film’s end, long after it could have helped shape the audience’s opinion of her. In effect, Chang converts Pan from a lonely loveless wife to a catty hussy. When Wu Song calls her a whore, it’s a justified epithet instead of an unfair accusation.

Only when Lotus Pan (Diana Chang Chung-wen) is tricked into an affair with the womanizing Ximen Qing (Pai Yun) does the film allow her a bit of sympathy; she only acquiesces to the affair because of her unrequited love for Wu Song. But when Ximen Qing and his crony, Wang (Hung Wie), plan to murder Pan’s husband, Wu Da (Huang King), Pan rejects the plan but is surprised when she becomes an accessory to murder. Instead of a wife trapped between the desires of her heart and the duties of marriage, Lotus Pan becomes a remarkably stupid woman.

But when Wu Song (Paul Chang Chung) strides into town, full of piss and vinegar over his brother’s death, heads roll, blood spurts and skulls are cleaved. Chang Cheh is in his element and Wu Song takes over as the film’s focus, a position I’m sure Chang wanted him to have for the entire film. In his one haungmei film, Chang got to show exactly what he thought of the female-centered genre.

Watching Chang vigorously remold the tale into his own image makes for an interesting 80 minutes, even if the film’s disregard for Lotus Pan’s story makes the experience a frustrating one. Those interested in Chang’s auteur themes will find Lotus Pan more fun than those looking for a traditional Shaw opera film.²

The Amorous Lotus Pan
Dir: Chow Sze-loke
Released: April 9, 1964

¹Although it's classified as a haungmei opera, I’m not entirely comfortable calling this a haungmei film. Many of its songs, sung in a Rex Harrison talk/sing style over wooden clappers, are not typical haungmei. But I lack the knowledge of Chinese opera to accurately classify the film.

²As a side note, the film’s also interesting to those who want to know more about Cantonese filmmaking of the 50s and early 60s. Chow Sze-loke, the film’s director, was a prolific Cantonese director during the 50s, and much of the film’s supporting cast came from the Cantonese industry. With the DVD re-releases of Shaw and MP & GI’s films, we’re getting a great overview of Hong Kong’s Mandarin films; but, as of yet, there’s been no movement to rerelease the Cantonese films of the same era. Until then, film’s like Lotus Pan are as close as we can get.

Lady General Hua Mu Lan

By 1964, it was common practice at Shaw Brothers to rework popular legends into luscious musicals. Love Eterne, released the year before, was a massive hit and launched the career of Ivy Ling Po. It must have taken one look at the throngs of film goers to decide that a follow-up was necessary.

One problem though, Love Eterne doesn’t really set up a sequel. A film about frolicking butterflies would hold very little interest. So Shaw Brothers did the next best thing, adapt a different legend for the screen and include as many Love Eterne-esque moments as possible.

Familiar to Western audiences—thanks to the Disney film—the original story of Mu Lan is a spare poem from around the 5th century with a very straight forward story: Mu Lan’s dad is too ill to join the army and defend China from invasion so Mu Lan dresses as a man and goes in his place. Ten years later, and after many battles, she returns home, her army comrades unaware of her true gender.

With a plot so thin, every film version has had to beef it up a bit (i.e., adding a wise-cracking dragon). Shaw filled out the running time by recreating Love Eterne. Mu Lan (Ivy Ling Po) dresses as a boy and tricks her father into allowing her to join the army, just like Ying Tai in Love Eterne. And when Mu Lan falls in love, she, just like Ying Tai, drops a series of increasingly obvious hints about her gender to her secret, yet obtuse love, General Li (Chin Han). When not remaking scenes from Love Eterne, the characters talk about Love Eterne.

All of this is typical Shaws, repeating a successful formula until the public grows bored. But in between these pre-packaged bits, Lady General Hua Mu Lan explores the conflicts and sub-texts hidden in the Mu Lan story. For Shaws, that is very atypical.

Shaw Brothers is often called a “non-political” studio, since they avoided the often strident pro-Communist or pro-Nationalist positions taken by other Hong Kong studios like Great Wall. Shaw films usually create a mythical, but largely apolitical China—films designed for expatriates of all political stripes. Only their WWII films, which lauded the Nationalist army and were mostly set in (and made for) Taiwan, took a strong political stand.

Instead of political sub-text, Shaw filled their films with their all-consuming studio style. Make it pretty, make it fun, don’t make it controversial. The result of this, from what I’ve seen of their catalog so far, is a lot of films with great looks but very little psychological exploration.

In Mu Lan, however, director Yue Feng delivers all of the pomp and style but manages to underpin them with some clever analysis of gender, tradition and Confucian thought. Mu Lan rationalizes her behavior with Confucian philosophy; she joins the army not to prove her strength, but out of filial piety—defending her family’s honor and protecting the well-being of her extended family, the Chinese people.

But Confucian scholars also praised the traditional gender roles that Mu Lan shatters. So while upholding Confucius with one hand, Mu Lan strikes him with the other.

Mu Lan is never worried about the repercussions of breaking the hierarchy of family and gender. And she needn’t be. That no one ever takes Mu Lan to task for being 'un-daughterly' #8216;un-daughterly 'un-daughterly' #8217; shows how little Yue Fang though of the importance of traditional gender roles; what matters is the spirit of the law, not the rituals that surround it.

Yue Feng doesn’t just praise Mu Lan; soldiers that fight for less pure motives, such as greed or blood-lust, are equal heroes in the film’s eyes. In the end, Confucian morality, filial piety and family tradition don’t matter at all. All that counts is fighting for China.

Yue Feng can slip in these little assaults on gender and politics because, by the film’s end, they are irrelevant. Mu Lan is the perfect Shaw heroine; a strident, beautiful and talented solider who, in the end, happily returns to the role of daughter. With the battles done, the sword is forgotten and mythical, ritual, traditional China can resume and Shaw’s style can reign again.

The Grand Substitution

Revenge. Sacrifice. Imperial intrigue. Corrupt government officials. These are the vital ingredients, not just of Shaw Brothers, but of Hong Kong film. But as the tastes of Hong Kong audiences have changed, these ingredients have been mixed in different ways. Take, for example, The Kingdom And The Beauty, in which the emperor wasn’t corrupt as much as he was extremely childish; it took the sacrifice of a good woman to teach him a lesson. Compare this to the Fong Sai Yuk films of the early 1990s in which government officials were pure evil; only righteous ass-kickings could restore the people’s rights.

In the mid-1960s, tastes were shifting in Hong Kong and other Shaw markets. Stories of female sacrifice were still popular, but more violent, and male, forms of revenge were gaining ground. The Grand Substitution, although a Yellow Plum opera like Kingdom and The Beauty or Love Eterne, illustrates this shift with its mix of classic ingredients, maternal love and male revenge.

Two officials, the extremely pure Chiu and the absurdly evil Tu are vying for the control of China’s destiny under a profoundly stupid Emperor. Tu, with his exaggerated shoulders, giant eyebrows, shifty eyes and duck-pimp walk makes even the most melodramatic of villains look multi-faceted. Only an unprovoked puppy-kicking could have made him more hated.

Chiu, who believes in China’s beauty and potential, struggles against Tu’s attempts to oppress the masses. When Tu retaliates, wiping out most of the Chiu family, the only hope for survival—and revenge—lay with an infant, the last of the Chiu clan. Tu, like the biblical pharaoh, tries to hunt the child down. The heir is saved thanks to the painful, selfless sacrifices of Chinese revolutionaries who, judging by Hong Kong films, apparently existed under every dynasty.

Much of this sounds like any number of later Shaw films, or even the historical kung fu films popular in the 1990s. But The Grand Substitution is very much of the 1960s, and exemplifies the transition Shaw Brothers was undergoing at the time. Notable because it does not star a woman (although Ivy Ling Po does play a man, again), The Grand Substitution is remarkably male, a significant change from the female-oriented films Shaw made in the late 50s and early 60s.

But even with the emergent themes of filial piety, a concern that would quickly come to dominate Shaw Brothers, the film saves its biggest scenes for the mothers, whose maternal sacrifices drive the film’s emotional impact. By contrasting theatrial scenes of beautiful opera and cinematic scenes of gore and torture, The Grand Substitution straddles the line between the Shaw that was and the Shaw that would be.

The Grand Substitution
Released: April 15, 1964
Yen Chun
HKmdb