Shaw Brothers

Diau Charn

When does Shaw Brothers begin? It would seem to be an easy question. According to the Hong Kong Film Archive, the first film released by the Shaw Brothers studio was probably The Magic Touch, released in December of 1958¹.

But to only look at the name preceding the film is to simplify a more complex question. The Shaw Brothers company didn’t just spring into existence fully-formed in 1958. The Shaw family had been making films in Hong Kong since 1952 under the name “Shaw and Sons”. And even that company was a new-comer in the Shaw family’s filmmaking history. Their first Hong Kong studio, Nanyang, was formed in 1933. Before Hong Kong, the Shaws made and distributed films in Shanghai.

The name above the titles is a largely arbitrary division, so we should look elsewhere to find the legendary ‘first’ Shaw Brothers film. Maybe we should look for the first film made by the man most identified with Shaw Brothers — Run Run Shaw.

Until 1957, Run Run Shaw mostly worked in Singapore, running the distribution side of the Shaw industry². But Shaw and Sons was facing increased competition from MP & GI, and Runde Shaw’s super-economical productions were paling in comparison to more stylish films. Run Run moved to Hong Kong, took over the running of Shaw and Sons, changed the name to Shaw Brothers and, for the next 25 years, produced the films that made Shaw Brothers an internationally-known name.

But determining exactly when Run Run’s influence supplanted Runde’s is a nearly impossible task. Run Run’s first producer credit is also the first film to be released under the Shaw Brothers name, The Magic Touch³. But Runde’s name continues to appear on film credits through 1959. And it’s hard to believe that in an industry that turns out movies in a matter of months that it took over a year for Run Run to get involved in the filmmaking process.

The official Shaw Story complicates this question by firmly attaching the ‘start’ of Shaw Brothers to 1959’s The Kingdom and the Beauty, even though it was released months after The Magic Touch.⁴

Maybe it’s less about the name or the producer, and more about the style that made the studio famous. The rich colors, the widescreen image, the attention paid to costumes and beauty. With that criteria in mind, The Kingdom and the Beauty comes to the top again. It wasn’t the first color film made by a Shaw studio⁵, it may not have been the first widescreen film⁶, and it wasn’t the first to present a mythically beautiful ‘historical’ China. But it’s the first to really combine all of the elements that made Shaw Brothers famous in the early 1960s.

But The Kingdom and the Beauty could never have been made if the studio hadn’t made Diau Charn the year before. Whether that makes Diau Charn the ‘first’ Shaw Brothers film a ‘proto-Shaw Brothers’ film makes little difference — Diau Charn is one of many links in the filmmaking chain between Shaw and Sons and Shaw Brothers.

Diau Charn was not the first haungmei opera film, but it was the first haungmei made by a Shaw studio. It’s unclear who approved the idea, Run Run or Runde Shaw⁷. Since a previous haungmei film had done well at the box office⁸, it seems likely that either producer would have approved of the idea.

Diau Charn shows the studios shift to more elaborate productions under Run Run Shaw’s leadership. Filmed in color and replete with fantastic costumes, the film still shows much of Runde’s penny-pinching ways — the sets are uninspiring, the camera movement limited.

What pushes Diau Charn from the realm of “interesting documentation of a studio in transition” to a Shaw classic is the performance of Linda Lin Dai as Diau Charn, an orphan girl tasked with bringing down a corrupt official and his son, who she loves. Coquettish, conflicted and crestfallen Lin Dai won her second Best Actress for Diau Charn, and it’s the best performance I’ve seen her give in a Shaw film.

If it weren’t for Lin Dai, I doubt that Celestial Pictures would have gone through the trouble of restoring this film for DVD. To date, it’s the oldest Shaw film that they have released on DVD. And I don’t expect that they’ll release anything that pre-dates it. As far as Celestial is concerned, Diau Charn is the first Shaw Brothers movie.

Diau Charn
Dir: Li Han-hsiang
Released: May 29, 1958

1: I say ‘probably’ because the HKFA’s book Hong Kong Filmography 1953-1959 says that the first movie released under the Shaw Brothers name was 1959’s Day-Time Husband, while their other book The Shaw Screen states that it was the earlier The Magic Touch. I’m inclined to agree with the earlier date.

2: Most information in this paragraph comes from Stephon Teo’s Hong Kong: The Extra Dimensions.

3: The Shaw Screen and Hong Kong Filmography agree on this point.

4: The relevant part of the official Shaw history is here: http://tinyurl.com/272hxf

5: It’s not clear when a Shaw studio first made a color film. According to The Shaw Screen it may have been 1939’s Reunion. Like most Hong Kong studios in the 1950s, Shaw and Sons made very few color pictures. Interestingly, many of the films they did shoot in color featured either circus performers or erotic dancers from Japan^A. Make of that what you will.

5a: Hong Kong Filmography 1953-1959 is full of fascinating details like this one.

6: I can’t find any information on what film introduced Shaw’s trademark Shawscope.

7: Sam Ho in The Shaw Screen suggests that it was Runde. But the start of filming may have been after Run Run Shaw returned to take over the company.

8: The Heavenly Match according to Sam Ho in The Shaw Screen.

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

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

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.

Three Sinners

In the 10 years that Shaw Brothers produced haungmei operas, they were able to keep the genre lively by mixing up their approaches. Some films were more traditionally operatic, almost as if Shaw had left the cameras running at a local stage production. Other films, like Yueh Feng’s The Three Smiles, took greater advantage of cinema’s flexibility, mixing in special effects and other flourishes that the more traditional films never explored.

Three Sinners falls on traditional end of the bell curve, eschewing fancy effects and focusing on the singing, sleeve waving and time-honored posing that Chinese operas are known for.

To be honest, the more traditional the film, the harder it is for me to review. So many of the details go right over my head. Are the actors singing well? Did he do that sleeve flourish correctly? I honestly don’t know.

Here’s what I do know, Yan Xijiao (Li-Li Hua) sells herself to Song Jiang (Yen Chuan) in order to pay for her father’s funeral. Yan thinks she’s become Song’s concubine, but Song only paid because he was impressed by Yan’s filial piety. Instead of a concubine, he’d prefer that Yan simply get on with her life. But, for Yan, that would be even more improper (Chinese gender politics can sometimes be puzzling). Song acquiesces and buys a house for Yan and her mother (Chen Yen-yen). After months of visits, he eventually falls for Yan. When she attracts the unwanted attentions of Song’s student, Zhang Wuyuan (Mei Yan Sheng), Song accuses her of infidelity and the characters hurtle towards their just deserts.

But are they really all sinners, as per the accusatory title? Zhang is guilty of any number of crimes, from stalking to rape. Song’s crime is jumping to conclusions and treating Yan with unwavering cruelty. But what is Yan’s sin? If she can be slighted for anything, it’s being too proper; her filial piety and shame prevents her from accusing Zhang or telling Song the truth.

If Sinners needs another villain, it has one in the gossipy townspeople that doom Yan with their endless whispered innuendo. But that would change the title of the movie to Several Dozen Sinners or something even less wieldy.

For 100 minutes, Sinners sticks to its traditional approach, abandoning the technique at the end for ten minutes of cinematic flash. It’s not a coincidence that these ten minutes were my favorite part of the film. I prefer the more cinematic operas over the more traditional approaches. Not only do I feel less lost, but I figure that if you’re going to go to the trouble of making a movie, you should at least take advantage of the medium.

The Three Sinners
Dir: Yen Chuan
Released: November 23, 1963

The Mermaid

When Shaw started producing haungmei operas, their films were only the latest step in China’s millennia long cultural evolution. What began as spoken tales transformed into poems, poems into operas and operas into other operatic styles.

In the early 1900s, operas jumped onto film — much like US films, the first Chinese movies were of famous stage scenes. As films got longer, it was only natural that the Chinese would adapt their operas again, this time for the screen.

Shaw’s 1965 version of The Mermaid is just the latest mutation of a story that is least as old as the Ming dynasty (14th to 17th century), when it was collected into a book of tales about Judge Bao, himself a mix of legend and reality from the 11th century.

Even after 10 centuries tales like The Mermaid retain a surprising vitality. While Shaw’s production never abandons the traditions of opera, it’s not afraid to take advantage of the possibilities provided by film — special effects, split screen and other tricks impossible on the stage.

The film also cemented a new tradition, the pairing of Ivy Ling Bo and Li Ching, who would take the lead roles in most of Shaw’s remaining haungmei films. Bo, of course, was already a star. Since 1963’s The Love Eterne, she’d starred in a number of Shaw’s haungmei operas. Li Ching was a new actress, only 17 when The Mermaid was released; but she was a quickly rising star. Her performance won a Best Actress award and made her a leading lady well into the 70s.

In The Mermaid the actresses take their traditional roles — Ivy Ling Bo as the poor scholar Zhang Zhen and Li Ching as the beauties Peony and the Carp Spirit, an immortal who falls for the mortal Zhang Zhen and, impersonating the spoiled Peony, marries him.

Once the Carp Spirit’s deception is discovered, the film excels, taking full advantage of split screens and other effects to have the real Peony and the carp Peony on screen. Yeah, yeah, split screen is not a fancy high-tech trick, but the film has a lot of fun with the idea of duplication, making its second half a lot more fun than its less jovial beginning.

The Mermaid
Dir: Kao Li
Released: January 29, 1965

The Three Smiles

It’s fitting that Shaw Brothers wrapped up the 1960s with the last major haungmei film they would ever make (the genre made a one-film comeback in 1977). No other genre summarizes the 60s Shaw style — light, stylish, pretty and romantic — than the yellow plum opera.

In the early 60s, as Shaw battled MP & GI, it was the haungmei films, and the luscious widescreen Shaw Scope, that set Shaw Brothers apart. Later, when the opera craze cooled and the nostalgia for old styles had faded, the same techniques that powered the yellow plum operas were applied to a slew of more modern musicals, spy films and comedies.

By 1969, Shaw Brothers hadn’t released a yellow plum opera since 1966’s The Mirror And The Lichee. I don’t know why the studio chose to make another opera after such a long break — maybe they had their own kind of nostalgia, or perhaps it was the enduring popularity of star Ivy Ling Po — but they approached the project with gusto, casting Ling Po and Li Ching, their two biggest female stars, in the leads and assigning veteran director Yueh Feng to write and direct.

Like its predecessors, Three Smiles is based on a well-known story, and the film does very little to mess with the haungmei formula that had worked so well for so many films — Tang (Ling Po), a supercilious aesthete scholar, falls for the maid Autumn Fragrance (Li Ching) after she smiles at him, you guessed it, three times. To pursue his love, he sells himself into servitude so he can work by her side.

This “Scholar and the Beauty” storyline formed the basis of the majority of haungmei films — indeed, Smiles' plot is almost an exact copy of 1967’s Pearl Phoenix — but Smiles adds a ton of subplots (idiot brothers, a coquettish maid, a jealous cousin, a singing boatman) to lessen the deja vu and increase the comedy.

The film’s standout moments are its opening scenes, filmed outdoors, when Tang and Autumn Fragrance meet. The wide-open vistas make the film more naturalistic than the usual studio-bound operas; and Yueh tries some new stylistic tricks, adapting the freeze-fame effects he used in Bells Of Death for a lighter genre.

But once Tang enters the Hua household, the film begins to choke on its familiar story and overabundance of sub-plots. It’s never bad, but it certainly doesn’t make a case for the freshness of the haungmei genre. Nostalgia can only carry a genre too far; by 1969, it was time for Shaw Brothers to move on to something new.

The Three Smiles
Dir: Yueh Feng
Released: September 25, 1969