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 Price of Love

There are few movies that have successfully tackled love amongst the handicapped. Too often these films fall into easy sentimentality, or excessive moral posturing. The films become about handicaps instead of love.

The advantage given The Price of Love is that it comes from a genre known for excessive tragedy, absurdly overblown trauma and hanky-wrenching finales. Compared to these melodramatic gyrations, the stars' physical impairments are almost minor.

After Jui Fang (Chin Ping), a blind woman in an abusive household, meets hunchbacked musician Wu Shang (played by real-life hunchbacked musician Teddy Robin), a fairly standard wenyi weepie unfolds. Love gained, love lost, tragedies, musical numbers, etc.

The Price of Love's biggest surprise is that it offers very few surprises. Instead of bending the rules of romantic melodrama for its handicapped characters, it never waivers from the Show Brothers formula.

Because it’s so faithful to the blueprint, there’s not much to recommend the film. Beyond Teddy Robin’s folky-crooner songs of love lost and found, there’s little in The Price of Love that really stands out.

The Price Of Love
Dir: Wu Chia Hsiang
Released: November 6, 1970

A Time For Love

Another madcap ‘comedy’ replete with singing, brief nudity and largely unwatchable zaniness. Honestly, when the comic highlight of a film is a sexually aggressive robot, there’s not much to laugh at.

On the plus side, the film does have some moments of fine satire, especially in the opening scenes when the servants of the rich Old Lau sing about how great it is to rob the old man blind. And Lily Ho as Pearl, the servant’s daughter who falls for the Lau scion, shows some decent comedic instincts.

While A Time For Love is slightly better than its predecessor, Guess Who Killed My 12 Lovers, it still runs out of steam about 45 minutes into its 90 minute length. By the time the film introduces the rapist robot, it’s clear that they are stretching for anything to keep the movie moving. It succeeds, if only because it’s so jaw-droppingly mind-boggling.

A Time For Love
Dir: Kuei Chi-Hung
Released: November 16, 1970

Guess Who Killed My 12 Lovers?

During the 1960s, Shaw Brothers transformed from a Female-oriented film studio to a Male-oriented one. The romances and operas that began the decade gave way to swordplay, spy films and war dramas.

Tho sole holdout genre from Shaw’s more feminine days was the wenyi drama — weepy romances usually adapted from novels. But as the 60s came to a close, so did the wenyi drama.

Never one to abandon an audience, the studio tried other ways to bring women to the theater. But instead of appealing to the older women that flocked to wenyi and haungmei opera, Shaw targeted teenage girls with pop musicals like Guess Who Killed My 12 Lovers.

The quality of Guess Who and other teen girl films from the early 70s indicate that Shaw didn’t put a very high priority on these films. Put simply, these films are horrible. With about 15 minutes worth of plot, Guess Who pads itself out to 90 minutes with songs that recap the silk-thin plot, and bizarre digressions.

But as long as the films brought audiences into Shaw-owned movie theaters, I doubt the studio cared that much about the movie’s quality.

Poor Jenny Hu, a star that Shaw Brothers never figured out how to sell, sings and smiles her way through Guess Who, looking only mildly embarrassed to be stuck in an orange bathing suit for most of the movie. It should not come as a surprise that Guess Who was her last film with Shaw Brothers.

Guess Who Killed My 12 Lovers?
Dir: Wu Chia Hsang
Released: September 11, 1970

Sons of Good Earth

Who would expect a rousing, flag waiving pean to patriotism to begin with a 30-minute remake of An American In Paris? Not me, that’s for sure. But that’s exactly what the first third of Sons of Good Earth is, all the way down to the incidental music that sounds straight out of the MGM vault.

Struggling painter Yu Ri narrates the opening, introducing his town and its residents. Unlike Gene Kelly film, Yu Ri’s not worried about being broke, but about the weightier matter of the imminent Japanese invasion of China.

After helping a pretty girl, He Hua (Betty Loh Tih), out of trouble with an abusive mistress, Yu Ri, his sidekick friend Guan Shan Sheng (Lee Kwan) and He Hua all settle into a cosy lighthearted life; at no point to they sing “Good Morning,” but the local kids do entertain them with a patriotic song about crushing the Japanese.

I’ve seen An American in Paris and Singing in the Rain countless times, and it was disconcerting to see them remolded so drastically. Not that King Hu does a bad job, in fact he captures the MGM spirit quite well. But I never expected to see Gene Kelly’s joie de vive mixed with anti-Japanese jingoism.

Eventually the movie has to address the war, and the MGM homage is dropped in favor of a more standard WWII drama plot. Collaborationist conspire against Yu Ri and He Hua; the lecherous Japanese general rapes Chinese women and brave Chinese men form a guerilla army.

Eventually the film devolves into all out warfare, with Yu Ri mounting the barricades and wielding a rifle like a lifelong soldier. Rousing, no doubt. But the best aspects of the film and completely discarded. Betty Loh Tih disappears for the last third of the film and Peter Chen Ho, a gifted comic actor, looks quite out of place gutting a Japanese soldier with a sword.

Sons of Good Earth was King Hu’s solo directorial debut, and it’s most unlike his later films. But its mixture of the genial and the brutal can be seen in his wuxia films like Come Drink With Me and Dragon Inn. But he never made another musical.

Sons of Good Earth
Dir: King Hu
Released: May 6, 1965

Songfest

Essentially a low-budget remake of the previous year’s The Shepherd Girl, Songfest drives the folk musical idea into the ground by failing to find any new ground in the genre.

Swapping the excellent Juile Yeh Feng for the barely palatable Margaret Tu Chuan is only one of Songfest's many faults. The singing is badly dubbed, the story is barely fleshed out and the lead couple irritated me enough that I wished them eternal misery.

Songfest does have some redeeming qualities; the music is more varied and its male lead, Chiao Chuang, is capable of acting (unlike Kwan Shan in Shepherd Girl). The singing competition between Song Yu Lan (Margaret Tu Chuan) and a half-dozen suitors is fantastic, bizarre and hilarious. After defeating a series of singing ringers, Yu sings against a motley crew of Chinese caricatures s including a dwarf, a hunchback and an inbred fisherman.

If only Songfest had ended there, instead of tacking on another fifteen minutes of pointlessness. Even then the movie only manages a sparse 75 minute running time.

Songfest essentially killed the folk musical. As far as I know, it would be two years before Shaw would try the genre again with 1967’s Moonlight Serenade.

Songfest
Dir: Yuan Chiu-feng
Released: February 19, 1965

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 Lark

If you like Mandarin pop from the early 60s, then you’ll likely enjoy The Lark, which is nothing more than than the barest framework of plot thrown up around song after song by chanteuse Carrie Ku Mei.

A simple tale—bumbling journalist Liu Shitai (Peter Chen Ho) trying to cozen a bit of dirt from singer Xiaoyun’s (Carrie Ku Mei) past in order to please his editor (a particularly ludicrous looking Tien Feng)—fills the gaps between the musical numbers. You get no points for guessing what happens after Xiaoyun & Liu spend a day gazing into each other’s eyes.

The plot’s irrelevance is underlined when all its loose ends are wrapped up 20 minutes before the film’s end—twenty minutes that are filled with four cameo-laden song & dance numbers.

The film’s songs and plots rarely overlap; unlike Western musicals from the 50s & 60s, the songs don’t advance the story and usually aren’t motivated by the characters. This is generally true of Shaw musicals, but it’s especially true for The Lark. In this respect The Lark is closer to the Mandarin chaqu musicals of the 1950s, in which the songs were wholly separate from the story—they even put the lyrics on screen to encourage sing-alongs.

The Lark’s musical scenes don’t include lyrics or a bouncing ball, but the songs were likely familiar enough to the audience that such aids were unnecessary. I’m sure that everyone had heard the theme song from Love Without End at least once before.

Indeed, the musical bits of The Lark are good enough that the plot becomes a bit of an irritant, especially the unending slapstick between Liu’s sister (Go Bo Shu) and her husband (Cheng Kwong-Chao). Both are funny, but the film relies on them too heavily. At two hours long, The Lark would have done well to ditch either some story or some songs; I vote for story.

The Lark
Dir: Xue Qun
Released: July 29, 1965

The Pearl Phoenix

One of the hallmarks of the haungmei film is its simple, repetitious songs. By 1967, Shaw had decided that if repeating songs worked well, they might as well repeat the style, story and shots of earlier haungmei films. Despite the fact that Pearl Phoenix features two haungmei newcomers (star Hsiao Hsian and supporting actress Chu Jing) and was directed by a haungmei rookie, Yeung Fan, it still looks, sounds and feels like earlier yellow plum successes.

One reason for this is that the singing voices for nearly all haungmei films were provided by Tsin Ting and, later, Ivy Ling Po. So, even as new directors and actors learned the ropes, the films sounded exactly the same. If it looks like a duck and quacks like a duck.

While Pearl Phoenix starts down the overly familiar path of lovelorn scholars and overwrought young women, it thankfully jigs and jogs the plot enough to keep things fresh. When our heroine, Huo Dingjin (Li Ching), is given the choice between marrying her unlikable cousin or suicide, I figured the film was headed into territory I’d seen too many times before. Instead, she decides to burn her house down and fake her own death. No duck ever made that noise before.

Pearl Phoenix is also buoyed by its supporting actors, especially Yeung Chi Hing as Dingjin’s father and Go Bo Shu as her step-mother. In his career with Shaw, Yeung alternated between two types of roles—beleaguered father and vicious jerk. In Pearl Phoenix he’s thoroughly beleaguered, and every attempt he makes at establishing authority is thwarted by his wife, played by Go Bo Shu.

Unlike Yeung, Go only had one type role at Shaw, the nasty step-mother. She was so good at it that screenwriters never had to explain that she was nasty, everyone knew from the moment she walked on screen, throwing a haughty, stiletto-laden look at her innocent step-children. Pearl Phoenix lets her grab this role by the hilt; although the film lacks the scene where she receives her just deserts.

Even though it was made towards the end of Shaw’s infatuation with the haungmei genre, when they were recycling much of their earlier films, Pearl Phoenix still manages to entertain. It’s certainly no breath of fresh air, but its familiar voices, amusing characterizations and surprising plot keep it from stagnating.

The Pearl Phoenix
Dir: Yeung Fan
Released: February 4, 1967

The Millionaire Chase

Stop me if you’ve heard this before—a trio of sexy Hong Kong performers wow the crowds with their peppy songs and colorful outfits, but what they really desire is love and marriage. As they sing their way through increasingly elaborate sets, they find the men who make their lives complete.

Inoue Umetsugu returns to the land of Hong Kong Nocturne for what could almost be mistaken for a remake of that Chang Pei Pei-starring vehicle. Even Nocturne’s Lily Ho returns, promoted from supporting actress to the starring role of Yip Fang, a singer fixated on marrying her playboy agent Peter (Peter Chen Ho, in the typecast role he could never escape, but was too old to play). Peter thinks Yip Fang’s just a kid, and his more interested in catting around with chanteuse Ying (Angela Yu Chien), who only wants to ditch her lecherous, elderly husband.

Yip Fang’s co-performers are also on the hunt for romance; Zhang Ping (Chen Ping) wants to marry for love, but wouldn’t mind a rich fiancé to show off to her shallow ex-boyfriend. Zhi Nan, however, has no illusions of a knight in shining armor; she just wants to catch the richest man she can find.

Less family oriented than Nocturne, Millionaire Chase cares only for hijinx and songs—it opens with a richly-choreographed number dripping with color that ends with a slapstick-laden pie fight, ends with a melee and stuffs its middle with wacky sexual romps and a surprising amount of cursing.* Lily Ho has a really dirty mouth. Who knew?

Chase has its fun, but it never really compares to Nocturne. The casting is a pale shadow—Lily Ho’s entertaining presence is more than offset by the horrible acting and dancing of Ting Pei—and the overall package is as cohesive as the cream pies the characters throw with such abandon.

The Millionaire Chase
Dir: Inoue Umetsugu
Released: May 22, 1969

*As my grasp of Mandarin is almost non-existent, I can’t tell if the cursing is due to a mis-translation or if it’s accurate.