Commentary 1

Second, in the phase of competing studios (1956 to 1965), the two largest companies in Hong Kong – Cathay-owned MP&GI and Shaw Brothers – had evolved into arch-enemies engaging in fierce competition to dominate the Hong Kong and Southeast Asian markets. In addition to cultivating their own stars and production personnel, they invested in modern musicals, opera movies and youth romances that appealed to a wide spectrum of audiences. Female stars prevailed in the era of singing and dancing known as ‘Mandarin pop’ (shidai qu), and screen fashions became a major attraction for a society that gradually moved from poverty and scarcity to sufficiency and affluence. Meanwhile, Cantonese cinema enjoyed its ‘golden age’, its opera movies as popular as ever and its urban melodramas attaining a new level of sophistication.

Third, in the phase of reinventing genres (1966 to 1978), the Cultural Revolu- tion in the PRC spelled box-office disaster for the pro-PRC companies, while the termination of Cathay’s feature production and the emergence of Golden Harvest in the early 1970s heralded a time of reinvention in studios and genres. The new-style martial arts film represented by Zhang Che’s visceral swordplay and Bruce Lee’s heroic gongfu fights dominated the screen, and masculinity and violence replaced femininity and romance as male stars eclipsed their female counterparts. By the mid-1970s the Hui brothers’ comedy became a serious contender to martial arts pictures, and Cantonese cinema was revived after a dreadful decline in the early 1970s. The inauguration of the Hong Kong Inter- national Film Festival in 1977 declared the significance of Hong Kong cinema in the world, and the thriving television industry cultivated a group of young artists who would soon make a major impact with Hong Kong new wave cinema. ‘Since the 1970s, [Hong Kong] has been arguably the world’s most energetic, imaginative popular cinema’ (Bordwell 2000: 1).

FROM SHANGHAI TO HONG KONG, 1945–55

The postwar transition from Shanghai to Hong Kong involved not just two waves of migration into the territory but also the new immigrants’ psychological adjustment to make Hong Kong their new home as well as the new focus of their cinematic experience. Inasmuch as film history is concerned, the relationship between Hong Kong and Shanghai has long been a fruitful one and can be traced to the early twentieth century (HKIFF 1990: 102–15).

Highlights of early Hong Kong cinema, 1896–45 Hong Kong’s film history started in 1896 when the Lumières sent its staff to shoot documentaries in this exotic British colony. As mentioned in Chapter 2, Brodsky’s Shanghai-based Yaxiya managed to produce short features in Hong Kong, thus making Stealing a Roast Duck, directed by Leung Siu-po (Liang Shaopo) in 1909, the first feature in Chinese film history. In 1913 Brodsky

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established Huamei in Hong Kong and produced its only release, Zhuangzi Tests His Wife, with the assistance of Li Minwei and Li Beihai. In 1923 the Li brothers founded Minxin in Hong Kong but had to relocate its operations to Shanghai due to a prolonged labor strike in 1925–6, which involved 250,000 out of 600,000 Hong Kong residents.2 From then until 1930 no film was produced in Hong Kong, whereas about a dozen came out in Guangzhou (Fonoroff 1997: xiv).

The revival of filmmaking in Hong Kong began in 1930, but the real driving force was the founding of Lianhua in Hong Kong and the opening of its Hong Kong studio (headed by Li Beihai in 1931), which produced six features. Inter- estingly, the first two full-sound Cantonese talkies were made outside Hong Kong in 1933: White Gold Dragon came from Tianyi in Shanghai and Romance of the Songsters (Gelü qingchao, dir. Chiu Shu-sen) from Grandview in San Francisco (Fonoroff 1997: xiv–v).3 Hong Kong ceased silent film production in 1935 and the era of Cantonese sound cinema came into being.

The success of the two talkies in Hong Kong and the overseas Chinese communities convinced Tianyi to set up a sound studio in Hong Kong, and

Figure 5.1 Zhuangzi Tests His Wife (1913): a Hong Kong short feature, with Li Minwei

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Grandview to relocate its production to Hong Kong, both in 1934. Chiu Shu-sen originally agreed with Luo Mingyou to operate under the name ‘Over- seas Lianhua’, but he resumed the name ‘Grandview’ when Lianhua closed its Hong Kong studio in 1934 due to financial problems. A significant player in Hong Kong, Grandview was innovative and projected new images on the Hong Kong screen. Life Line (Shengming xian, dir. Moon Kwan, 1935) was a ‘national defense’ picture produced ahead of its Shanghai counterparts, which was temporarily banned by the Hong Kong censors (Law 2000: 53).4 After leading patriotic film productions in the late 1930s, Grandview completed the construction of its Hong Kong studio in Diamond Hill in 1940, which was unfortunately destroyed in the 1941 Japanese bombing. During the war Grandview relocated its production to San Francisco and produced twenty-one films in black and white and four in 16mm, color.

Hong Kong filmmakers refused to cooperate with the Japanese invaders and no Chinese-funded feature was produced inside Hong Kong from the end of 1941 to the beginning of 1946.5 Local movie theaters, estimated at twenty- eight in 1938, had no access to Hollywood films and had to show Cantonese features produced prior to the occupation as well as a limited number of Japanese films and Shanghai Mandarin titles whenever available (Fonoroff 1997: xvi).

The postwar revival, 1946–9 Large-scale migration occurred during and after the war. The onset of the resistance war brought an influx of refugees to Hong Kong, where the popula- tion swelled from 0.98 million in 1936 to 1.64 million in 1941. A reverse trend started in December 1941 when Japan occupied the city and Hong Kong residents headed for China’s hinterland or overseas. By the time of Japan’s surrender in 1945, Hong Kong had a population of 0.6 million. A second wave of migration to Hong Kong followed and the city’s population increased to 1.75 million by 1947. A third wave of refugees poured into the territory in 1949, and by 1 May 1950 when the PRC officially closed its border, Hong Kong’s population exceeded 2.23 million (Jarvie 1977: 58) (see Table 5.1).

A film production boom matched the postwar population boom: 419 titles were produced between June 1946 and December 1949, compared with 571 titles between March 1930 and December 1941.6 Unlike the 1930s, the postwar period was characterized by a significant increase in both Cantonese and Mandarin cinema. From five in 1946, the number of Cantonese features jumped to 154 in 1949, while Mandarin features grew from four in 1946 to twenty-five in 1949. Indeed, in 1948 Cantonese cinema already broke its 1939 record of 120 titles (see Table 5.2). Most postwar Cantonese films were Cantonese opera movies; they accounted for 30 per cent of all Cantonese titles produced in the 1940s, with fifty-eight released in 1949 alone. Obviously, such production

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capacity had surpassed the pre-occupation era when Cantonese opera movies constituted 24 per cent of all Cantonese titles produced in the 1930s, with thirty-three released in 1939 (HKIFF 1987: 18–19). As in the 1930s, leading male stars Sit Kok-sin and Ma Sze-tsang (Ma Shizeng) returned to the screen, accompanied by their protégés and younger colleagues from the opera world. Significantly, several postwar Cantonese dramas resembled their Shanghai counterparts in that both reenacted wartime traumas and re-staged family separation and female suffering.

On the other hand, the increased Mandarin-speaking population and new film talents from Shanghai ushered in a new era in Hong Kong cinema. Not surprisingly, when the first postwar Hong Kong film was released in December 1946, it was a Mandarin title because many producers believed that, with access to mainland cities now, Mandarin cinema commanded a larger market than Cantonese cinema (M. Yu 1998: 87–9). Like most postwar Mandarin companies,

Table 5.1 Theaters, attendance and population in Hong Kong, 1926–96

Year Theaters Attendance (million)

Visits per capita

Population (million)

1926 — — — 0.6 1936 — — — 0.98 1938 28 — — — late 1930s 31 — — — 1941 — — — 1.64 1945 — — — 0.6 1947 — — — 1.75 1948 33 — — — 1950 — — — 2.23 1955 64 — — 2.5 1959 — 66 22 3 1960 67 — — — 1961 72 — — 3.1 1965 — 90.54 — — 1967 — 100 27 3.7 1971 — — 21 4 1975 — 54 — — 1977 75 60 — — 1979 80 65 — — 1982 89 66 — — 1985 104 58 — — 1988 133 66 12 5.5 1993 — 44 — — 1995 — 28 — — 1996 — 22 — —

Sources: Bordwell 2000: 34, 66, 75; Chan 2000: 69; Cheuk 1999: 11–20; Fu 2000a: 205; HKIFF 1982: 18; HKIFF 1991: 72; Jarvie 1977: 58; M. Yu 2001: 41.

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Table 5.2 Annual number of feature productions in Hong Kong, 1913–2002

Year Total films released

Cantonese films

Mandarin films

Amoy- dialect films

Other

1913 1 — — — 1 silent short 1914 2 — — — 2 silent shorts — — — — — — 1925 6 — — — 6 silent 1926 1 — — — 1 silent — — — — — — 1931 3 — — — 3 silent 1932 2 — — — 2 silent 1933 5 5 — — — 1934 15 15 — — — 1935 32 32 — — — 1936 49 49 — — — 1937 85 85 — — — 1938 87 83 4 — — 1939 125 120 5 — — 1940 89 84 5 — — 1941 80 74 6 — — 1942 3 3 — — — 1943 6 5 1 — — 1944 2 2 — — — 1945 1 1 — — — 1946 9 5 4 — — 1947 89 72 16 1 — 1948 141 123 18 — — 1949 179 154 25 — — 1950 187 169 17 1 — 1951 169 141 17 11 — 1952 217 163 44 10 — 1953 183 132 42 6 3 3-D films 1954 159 116 28 14 1 widescreen 1955 210 169 22 18 1 Chaozhou 1956 252 167 64 20 1 Chaozhou 1957 240 142 58 39 1 Chaozhou 1958 286 156 57 70 3 Chaozhou 1959 343 169 76 89 9 Chaozhou 1960 276 202 71 — 2 Chaozhou, 1 Shanghainese 1961 257 211 45 — 1 Chaozhou 1962 233 200 31 — 1 Chaozhou, 1 Shanghainese 1963 251 203 38 — 8 Chaozhou, 2 others 1964 224 175 43 — 5 Chaozhou, 1 Shanghainese 1965 205 169 32 — 4 Chaozhou 1966 166 125 40 — 1 Shanghainese 1967 172 105 67 — — 1968 149 87 61 — 1 Chaozhou 1969 135 71 64 — — 1970 118 35 83 — —

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Great China, established in 1946, appointed on its board such illustrious Shanghai producers as Yan Youxiang, Zhang Shichuan and Zhou Jianyun. Its production staff included leading Shanghai artists like Zhu Shilin and Dan Duyu. Great China leased Nanyang’s facilities and produced thirty-four Mandarin titles

Table 5.2—Continued

Year Total films released

Cantonese films

Mandarin films

Amoy- dialect films

Other

1971 86 1 85 — — 1972 87 — 87 — — 1973 94 1 93 — — 1974 101 — — — — 1975 97 — — — — 1976 95 — — — — 1977 87 — — — — 1978 99 — — — — 1979 109 — — — — 1980 116 — — — — 1981 110 — — — — 1982 106 — — — — 1983 87 — — — — 1984 86 — — — — 1985 88 — — — — 1986 87 — — — — 1987 76 — — — — 1988 115 — — — — 1989 117 — — — — 1990 120 — — — — 1991 125 — — — — 1992 215 — — — — 1993 242 — — — — 1994 181 — — — — 1995 150 — — — — 1996 116 — — — — 1997 84 — — — — 1998 89 — — — — 1999 100 — — — — 2000 133 — — — — 2001 133 — — — — 2002 92 — — — —

Sources: Chan 2000: 547; HKFA 1997b; HKFA 1998; HKFA 2000; HKIFF 1984; HKIFF 1986; HKIFF 1987; HKIFF 1989; Z. Qi 2002: 84; Shackleton 2003; M. Yu 2000; M. Yu 2001. Notes: The figures here exclude those features produced but not exhibited in the given year or those exhibited for the second time. The 1926 film was produced before the labor strike in 1925–6 and films released between 1942 and 1944 were produced before the fall of Hong Kong in December 1941.

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before it ceased operation in 1949 (HKIFF 1995: 92–104). An All-Consuming Love (Chang xiangsi, dir. He Zhaozhang, 1947; Mandarin), set in wartime Shanghai, articulates the postwar pathos of separation and lost love, and Zhou Xuan’s famous song ‘Shanghai at Night’ (Ye Shanghai) intensified the emotional ties between Hong Kong and Shanghai. Also set in Shanghai, two other Zhou Xuan vehicles from Great China, Orioles Banished from the Flowers (Huawai liuying, 1947) and Song of a Songstress (Genü zhi ge, 1948), both directed by Fang Peilin in Mandarin, further underscored the obsession with Shanghai. Most of Great China’s Mandarin productions were exhibited in Hong Kong with separate Cantonese soundtracks and sold better than their Mandarin prints. As a result, Great China also ventured into Cantonese cinema and produced nine such titles.

A lesser-known company was Longma (Dragon-Horse), which Fei Mu founded in 1949 with support from Wu Xingzai, another powerful Shanghai producer. After Fei Mu died in 1951 at age 45, Zhu Shilin took charge of production and directed seven Longma releases celebrated for their distinct realist style. With his focus on ordinary urbanites in films like Spoiling the Wedding Day (Wu jiaqi, 1951; Mandarin), an acclaimed comedy, Zhu gradually directed the attention of postwar Mandarin cinema from its ‘mainland complex’ – especially its Shanghai obsession – to a humane examination of social realities in contemporary Hong Kong. For film scholars like Lin Niantong, Zhu surpassed Italian neo-realism and took the tradition of 1930s and 1940s Chinese film comedy to new heights (ZDZ 1998: 54).

Another noteworthy postwar company was Grandview, which reopened its business in Hong Kong in 1947 and released All That Glitters (Jinfen nishang, dir. Huang Hesheng, 1942), a 16mm color feature produced in San Francisco. Under Chiu Shu-sen, Grandview made remarkable technical advancement, producing the first 35mm full-color Cantonese feature in 1948, the first 3-D feature in 1953 and the first widescreen format film in 1954. Like most Cantonese companies of the time, Grandview stayed out of postwar politics in Hong Kong.

Of business and politics, 1949–55 The postwar battles between the KMT and the CCP were carried far beyond the military fronts and lasted long after the division of China into the PRC and Taiwan in 1949. For political reasons, numerous former leftist filmmakers, such as Cai Chusheng, Ouyang Yuqian, Shi Dongshan, Yang Hansheng and Yu Ling, had moved to Hong Kong and were active in film production and criticism there in 1948. In 1949, while most of these leading leftists had returned to the PRC to assume leadership positions, a group of remaining Shanghai artists organized the Fifties Company (Wushi niandai) in Hong Kong and collectively produced two films. Wang Weiyi had already directed an acclaimed Cantonese feature for Nanguo, Tears Over the Pearl River (Zhujiang lei, 1949), which dramatizes class

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conflict and female oppression in the tradition of postwar Shanghai critical real- ism. For Fifties Wang directed Fiery Phoenix (Huo fenghuang, 1950; Mandarin), a title that might have inspired the name for Phoenix (Fenghuang), a company founded in 1952, the year when Fifties was disbanded after most of its members had departed for the PRC. Phoenix also recruited several Longma personnel and appointed Zhu Shilin as head of production, a post he held for the next fifteen years. Known in particular for its Mandarin comedies poking fun at the petit-bourgeois mentality, Phoenix served as a left-wing base in Hong Kong in the following decades.

The ideological battle between the KMT and the CCP was best illustrated in the postwar career of Zhang Shankun, a controversial industry leader in occu- pied Shanghai. In 1947 Zhang cooperated with Li Zuyong, a Shanghai–Hong Kong industrialist who had a master’s degree in literature from the US, and together they set up Yonghua (Yung Hwa Motion Picture Industries – ‘Yong’ from Li’s given name and ‘hua’ from Zhang’s former Xinhua). Li poured in US$3 million, built two studios in Kowloon Chai and purchased up-to-date equipment. He was ambitious and, with Zhang’s help, enlisted first-rank artists from Shanghai. Produced on a budget of over HK$1 million, Soul of China (Guohun, dir. Bu Wancang, 1948; Mandarin) was an acclaimed patriotic histor- ical film. Its success was followed by Sorrows of the Forbidden City (Qinggong mishi, dir. Zhu Shilin, 1948), a drama of imperial court intrigues that was shown in China and exported to Japan, Europe and the Middle East (M. Yu 2000: 66). Remarkably, Yonghua also released films by noted leftist or progressive artists that dramatize class conflict in a more radical way than its contemporary mainland counterparts. Evidently, postwar Hong Kong was a place where clearly demarcated political camps had yet to emerge and where filmmaking was primarily a business.

A market-savvy businessman, Zhang withdrew from Yonghua in 1948 because he was worried that, with extravagant production standards and the uncertainty of the mainland market, the company would soon encounter finan- cial problems. Zhang accepted the invitation of Yuan Yang’an, a former presi- dent of the Shanghai Attorneys Association, who raised money and established Great Wall Pictures (Changcheng) in 1949. With Zhang serving as production manager, Great Wall released two Mandarin features directed by Yue Feng in 1949. Even with Great Wall’s early box-office success, Zhang was immediately plagued by financial problems and was forced to quit Great Wall on account that he owed the company HK$3 million. According to his wife Tong Yuejuan, the real reason was Zhang’s refusal to accept the CCP’s invitation – conveyed by his Shanghai acquaintances like Xia Yan – to return to the PRC, but nonetheless Zhang borrowed cash and settled his debts (G. Zuo and Yao 2001: 90–5).7

After Zhang’s departure, the company was restructured as Great Wall Movie Enterprises in 1950. In spite of its alleged PRC affiliation, Great Wall ran a suc- cessful business in the 1950s, promoting directors like Tao Qin and cultivating

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new stars like Xia Meng. In fact, Lin Dai (Linda Lin), four-time winner of the best actress award at the Asian Film Festival, first signed with Great Wall in 1950. Great Wall’s releases were consistently popular and topped the annual Mandarin box-office in 1951–2. A Night Time Wife (Jinhun ji, dir. Li Pingqian, 1951; Mandarin), a light urban comedy, brought in HK$133,000 in first-run revenues and sold briskly overseas, although it was banned in the PRC for its alleged bourgeois ideology. Modern ‘Red Chamber Dream’ (Xin honglou meng, dir. Yue Feng, 1952; Mandarin), a reinvention of the classic novel set in a present-day city, featured Yan Jun and Li Lihua and grossed HK$214,000. Nonetheless, it is not certain whether this film made a profit since the production lasted almost a year and cost HK$1 million (M. Yu 2000: 44–7, 90–3) (see Table 3.2, p. 90).

By 1951, Yonghua was short on cash and owed its employees salaries for as much as three and a half months, which resulted in a strike organized by Shanghai artists. In December 1951 Yonghua fired fourteen employees. In a radical move in January 1952, the Hong Kong government expelled more than twenty left-wing film people to the PRC, including Bai Chen, Liu Qiong, Shen Ji, Shu Shi and Sima Wensen, without giving them an adequate reason or advance notice (M. Yu 2000: 66–7, 98–9).

Figure 5.2 Sorrows of the Forbidden City (1948): postwar Mandarin cinema in Hong Kong

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The expulsion was radical because the colonial government had not imposed film censorship as strictly as the KMT had in postwar China. Due to relative freedom, postwar Hong Kong had become a perfect site for the former leftists to create their idealistic works of art with financial support from capitalists. A significant number of postwar Mandarin titles exposed official corruption (set in the early Republican era or during the resistance war), class oppression (disguised as sexual exploitation or forbidden love) and the collapse of the feudal family. In spirit, these postwar Hong Kong productions continued the leftist film move- ment of the 1930s and resembled their postwar Shanghai counterparts. A May 1950 Hong Kong news report claimed that, ‘almost without exception, all Hong Kong film producers were manipulated by the Communists’. Since then, the Hong Kong government had formally instituted its censorship operations and stepped up pressure on ‘Communist’ films. In any case, the 1952 expulsions were meant as a warning signal to Hong Kong producers and artists alike. Ironically, exactly around this time, even ‘left-wing’ companies had begun to lose their mainland market as their releases, such as Fiery Phoenix, were criticized by the new socialist regime as spreading petit-bourgeois ideology and containing poisonous ingredients (M. Yu 2000: 24–5, 63).

Meanwhile, Zhang Shankun had resumed filmmaking with his Hong Kong Xinhua (Hsin Hwa) in 1951. Little Phoenix (Xiao Fengxian, dir. Tu Guangqi, 1953; Mandarin), a romance set in the early Republican revolution, was one of ten Xinhua films in which Zhang cast Li Lihua, who was paid HK$75,000 per film or half of the film’s budget (see Table 3.1, pp. 64–5). Li’s high fee was considered the beginning of the expensive star system in Hong Kong and its effect was debated in the media (Du 1988: 535–6).

To strengthen their political ties, Zhang and his wife twice joined the Hong Kong film delegation to visit Taiwan and met with Chiang Kai-shek in 1953 and 1954. Zhang also cooperated with his wartime friend Kawakita Nagamasa in producing an Eastmancolor film. Traveling between Taiwan and Japan while making several films at the same time, Zhang was exhausted and died in Tokyo in January 1957 at age 52.

After Zhang’s death, his wife Tong Yuejuan continued Xinhua’s productions until 1962. She had managed an anti-PRC association in Hong Kong following her 1953 visit to Taiwan and in 1957 renamed it ‘Hong Kong and Kowloon Cinema and Theatrical Enterprise Free General Association’ (Ziyou zonghui, ‘Free Association’ hereafter). At the height of the cold war, Free Association had demarcated artists and film companies into ‘left-wing’ and ‘right-wing’ groups. Since the pro-KMT businessmen controlled the overseas markets, Free Associ- ation had considerable influence on Hong Kong film productions, and many artists were forced to declare their political allegiance publicly. The size of the Hong Kong film and theater delegations to Taiwan grew from eighteen in 1953, to sixty-four in 1954 and 110 in 1956, and their members included Chen Hou, Hu Die and Li Lihua. An ideologically opposite case, however, was the decision of Hung-hsin Nui (Hongxian Nü), a leading actress of Cantonese opera and a

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rising film star, to return to Guangzhou with her husband Ma Sze-tsang in 1955, preceded by Sit Kok-sin’s similar move to the PRC a year before.

Film historian Law Kar (Luo Ka) questions the validity of political labeling. He cites the fact that Li Zuyong turned to the KMT regime in 1955 only after Yonghua was financially insolvent. Unfortunately for Li, Taiwan’s loan of HK$500,000 through CMPC accelerated Yonghua’s demise because an ensuing anti-Communist film made in 1957 could not sell in Hong Kong and major Southeast Asian cities for political reasons. Li died in 1959 at age 56, far from realizing his initial dream of building a Chinese movie empire. The inadequacy of political labeling is further evident in the releases from Asia Pictures (Yazhou), founded in 1953 with the support of the US-based Free Asia Association. Reputedly an ‘anti-Communist’ operation, Asia Pictures produced Half Way Down (Ban xialiu shehui, dir. Tu Guangqi, 1955; Mandarin), which promotes solidarity among a group of poverty-stricken mainland intellectuals stranded in a Hong Kong slum and criticizes the corrupting forces of money and the bourgeois lifestyle. Ironically, by portraying individual dignity, traditional ethics and alienation in Hong Kong society, Half Way Down resembles many contemporary ‘left-wing’ releases from Great Wall (HKIFF 1990: 10–20).

Between Cantonese and Mandarin cinemas, 1950–5 In 1950 Cantonese film production reached an all-time high of 169 titles, out of which 109 films were produced by the same number of one-picture companies – an indicator of a speculative trend in filmmaking at the time. One reason for such a surge in production was the addition of a new theater chain dedicated to Cantonese cinema, which translated into an increase of five to six theaters and a new demand for fifty more films per year in order to feed the theaters. In com- parison, Mandarin-spoken productions dropped to seventeen titles in 1950, in part because Great China had folded due to the closure of the mainland market, but also because Yonghua’s production was suspended due to the loss of its key staff to the PRC. But a lack of exhibition venues continued to plague Mandarin cinema. In 1951 only six theaters showed Mandarin films, and out of forty-two Mandarin titles released in 1953, twenty-four of them were actually produced in 1952. Nonetheless, Mandarin production could sustain itself because the advances from overseas sales alone were nearly sufficient to fund the production costs of HK$80,000 per title. In 1953 and 1954, Cantonese productions declined to 132 and 116 respectively, and the United Nations’ economic sanc- tions imposed on the PRC and Hong Kong in the wake of the Korean War were cited as a direct cause. For film critics, however, the decrease in Cantonese pro- ductions was a good thing because it was matched by an increase in production values and artistic quality (M. Yu 2000: 5–127).

Despite its popularity, postwar Cantonese cinema had a rather poor critical reputation, mainly due to its fast pace of production – seven to ten days for an opera movie or a martial arts picture and twelve to twenty days for a drama

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(Fonoroff 1997: xviii). To change the situation, 164 film artists signed a public manifesto in April 1949 and declared their intention to stop making films detri- mental to the national interest and social morale, to unite and stand firm in their position and to bring glory to Cantonese cinema (M. Yu 1998: 211). The result was the third ‘film purification’ campaign in Hong Kong, which, more than the previous two, successfully brought new images to Cantonese cinema.8 In July 1949 Ng Cho-fan (Wu Chufan) and several other Cantonese film artists organized the Southern China Film Industry Workers Union (Hua’nan yinglian, ‘Workers Union’ hereafter) and dedicated themselves to raising artistic standards and promoting social welfare for filmmakers in the region.

In 1952, following a much publicized separation of Cantonese opera and film stars in Hong Kong, a collective of twenty-one Cantonese film artists founded Union Film Enterprises (Zhonglian), which best exemplified the spirit of ‘film purification’. In spite of a sluggish market, in which more than sixty Cantonese movies had been abandoned in mid-production during 1952–3, Union Film Enterprises released five features in 1953 to critical and popular acclaim. One of their strategies in elevating artistic standards was adapting well-respected literary works in Cantonese, most eminently Ba Jin’s triology. Family (Jia, dir. Ng Wui [Wu Hui], 1953) reached a quarter of the Hong Kong population, Spring (Chun, dir. Lee Sun-fung [Li Chenfeng], 1953) won an honorary prize from the PRC government in 1957 and Autumn (Qiu, dir. Chun Kim [Qin Jian], 1954) topped the box office, making HK$250,000. With his additional Cantonese adaptations of modern Chinese literature, Lee Sun-fung emerged as a master of the melodrama in the 1950s (HKIFF 1986: 67–83). Another strategy of Union Film Enterprises was to expose social problems, in particular those of unemploy- ment and housing shortages. In the Face of Demolition (Weilou chunxiao, dir. Lee Tit [Li Tie], 1953), which cast teenager Bruce Lee, encouraged the urban poor to help each other and influenced a great many subsequent films.

As members of a collective, Union Film Enterprises’ artists received one-half to one-third of the income they normally did when working for other companies. In order to make ends meet, they also formed several branch groups, each of which raised production money on its own and distributed its products under the name of Union Film Enterprises. Due in part to its ideological position and also in part to its members’ active role in the Workers Union, Union Film Enterprises was classified by Free Association as ‘left wing’, its name was black- listed by Taiwan and its access to overseas markets was limited (HKIFF 1982: 39).9 However, the artists learned to evade the political labeling by establishing their own companies in subsequent years and carrying on Union Film Enterprises tradition.

The divergence of Cantonese and Mandarin cinemas in Hong Kong was con- spicuous in the early 1950s since their respective production staff rarely mixed, they served two separate audiences in Hong Kong and overseas, and their charac- teristics could be contrasted in opposite terms. Indeed, a scholar furnishes this list of opposing terms: for Cantonese cinema, cheap, simple, unpretentious, folk

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roots, southern, energetic, whereas for Mandarin cinema, expensive, arty, pre- tentious, urban roots, northern and stiff (Jarvie 1977: 86). The two-track industry practice was evident in 1952 when Huang Zhuohan founded two companies in Hong Kong. His Lingguang Company specialized in distribution in the 1950s and would venture into Cantonese production in the 1960s. His Liberty Company (Ziyou) was dedicated to Mandarin productions and later was renamed First Film and based in Taiwan, where it rose to prominence as the fourth largest Chinese production company in the 1970s. A boss of two com- panies, Huang thus envisioned Hong Kong as a city of two cinemas for many years.

If divergence characterized the film industry in Hong Kong, convergence was sometimes found in genres and themes shared by Cantonese and Mandarin cinemas. Like Union Film Enterprises, several Mandarin companies also emphasized literary adaptations. Union Film Enterprises’ 1953 success might also explain the predominance of twenty-one literary adaptations and nineteen ethical dramas in Cantonese productions of 1954. Previously in Cantonese cinema, martial arts pictures dominated in 1950, comedies in 1951 and 1953, and singing films (gechang pian) in 1952. Another point of convergence between Cantonese and Mandarin cinemas was the attention to serious – and often tragic – social issues. A Mother’s Tears (Cimu lei, dir. Chun Kim, 1953), a Cantonese release based on an ‘airwave novel’ (tiankong xiaoshuo) or radio storytelling and featuring Hung-hsin Nui,10 explored ethical questions and set a box-office record of 450,000 tickets and HK$400,000 in revenue. In March 1954, a newspaper report indicated that Cantonese cinema had made great progress and films of immortals and demons had disappeared from the screen (M. Yu 2000: 5–158).

The impact of the new Cantonese cinema represented by Union Film Enterprises was both immediate and profound. In 1954 Cathay’s International Films Distribution Agency (Guoji) in Hong Kong set up a Cantonese production team. Active in Mandarin productions since the early 1950s, Shaw and Sons quickly followed suit with their own Cantonese production group in 1955. Also in 1955, Kong Ngee (Guangyi), the third largest film enterprise in Singapore, established Kong Ngee in Hong Kong. In addition to working for Kong Ngee, members of Union Film Enterprises also participated in Sun Luen Films (Xinlian, founded in 1952) and Overseas Chinese Film (Huaqiao, founded in 1956), and together these ‘four major’ Cantonese companies contributed to the golden age of Cantonese cinema.

COMPETING STUDIOS, 1956–65

Unlike the precarious postwar market that was crowded with small one-picture companies, Hong Kong cinema entered its studio era between 1956 and 1965, marked by cut-throat competition between Cathay and Shaw Brothers, which kept luring each other’s top artists and outpacing each other’s production plans.

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Genres were reinvented and repackaged, and melodious songs, exuberant dances and beautiful actresses enriched the screen experience.

Cathay and MP&GI: urban modernity and youth culture

As head of Singapore-based Cathay, Loke Wan Tho managed more than 100 theaters in Malaysia and Singapore and had for many years distributed Yonghua’s films. But Yonghua incurred a debt of HK$500,000 after a fire destroyed its film warehouse and a few unreleased prints in 1954. A generous loan from Taiwan in 1955 helped Yonghua temporarily when the land which Yonghua leased for its studio was reclaimed by the Hong Kong government. To build a new studio in Hammer Hill and relocate its facilities, Yonghua agreed to a restructuring plan and accepted Cathay’s additional investment of HK$2 million. From this time, Yonghua existed merely in name. In 1956 Cathay’s International Films (Guoji), which managed Yonghua’s facilities and had co-produced features with Yan Jun, was merged into MP&GI, Cathay’s fully-fledged Hong Kong production com- pany, which quickly emerged as a Mandarin cinema stronghold in the late 1950s (HKFA 2002).

The early MP&GI production staff preferred urban comedy and emphasized the integration of Chinese and Western cultures. Their films transformed Shanghai’s opposing ‘conservative’ and critical traditions and transformed Mandarin cinema (R. Huang 2001: 29–33). Directed by Tao Qin, whom MP&GI recruited from Shaw Brothers, Our Sister Hedy (Si qianjin, 1957; Mandarin) won the best picture award at the 1957 Asian Film Festival and established MP&GI’s rising reputation. The film follows four very different sisters living with their wealthy widowed father (Wang Yuanlong). The eldest sister Hilda is virtuous but traditional, and one by one her boyfriends fall for her second sister Helen, a gorgeous temptress. The third sister (Lin Cui) is pretty but mischievous and frequently intervenes on Hilda’s behalf, and her youngest sister Hazel is simply naïve. While disparaging towards both outdated Confucian morality and out- landish Western behavior, the film simultaneously encourages the preservation of family values and the pursuit of individual happiness. The upbeat mood, energetic soundtrack, funny situations and fashionable parties all highlight a new attitude toward urban modernity in Hong Kong.

The celebration of urban modernity and its attendant youth culture is even more evident in Mambo Girl (Manbo nülang, dir. Yi Wen, 1957), an MP&GI Mandarin release that established Ge Lan as ‘the number one screen musical personality of the era’ (Fonoroff 1997: 188). The film opens with a close-up of two dancing feet, and the camera pulls back to show Kailing (Ge Lan), a cheerful high school student, dancing to the applause of her swinging hipster friends. After a few rounds of songs and dances, Kailing suddenly turns sorrowful when she discovers that she is adopted. She searches the urban labyrinth and finds her birth mother working as a nightclub janitor, but her mother refuses to confirm

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their relationship. Kailing is profoundly touched by her adoptive parents, who organize a birthday party and turn Kailing back into a cheerful ‘mambo girl’.

Hailed by Stephen Teo (Zhang Jiande) as Hong Kong’s ‘first musical master- piece’, Mambo Girl also reveals the persistent question of identity in Hong Kong cinema. ‘For the Chinese population of Hong Kong, torn between living in the colony and wishing to return to the mainland, this [question of identity] is a familiar predicament on the symbolic level’. Nonetheless, in its preferred solution to the birth puzzle, Mambo Girl ends with the birth mother secretly watching a happy family reunion with Kailing from outside the house, and then shows her slowly walking away, a dark shadow in the background. The film thus embraces the modern bourgeois lifestyle at the expense of a painful memory of the unspeakable haunting past, and the attitude of ‘fun, rhythm, innocence and youthfulness’ prevails in the new generation (HKIFF 1993: 35, 40, 64).

Corresponding to changes in screen attitudes and moods, MP&GI’s new urban films also illustrate changes in the representation of the female body as a cinematic attraction. If Calendar Girl (Longxiang fengwu, dir. Tao Qin, 1959; Mandarin), the first MP&GI release in Eastmancolor, is still conservative in its classic Broadway-style costumes, then Mad About Music (Yingge yanwu, dir. Yi Wen, 1963; Mandarin) takes a new direction, with its two female leads dancing in revealing dresses. Even Air Hostesses (Kongzhong xiaojie, dir. Yi Wen, 1959; color, Mandarin), a romance shot on location in Taiwan, features a scene in which the would-be air hostesses line up for a physical examination wrapped in bath towels, radiant with identical smiles on their faces. As well us displaying youthful idols with charming faces and healthy bodies, Air Hostesses is further graced by Ge Lan’s big hit, ‘I Want to Fly Up to the Blue Sky’ (Fonoroff 1997: 127, 189–91).

In addition to cultivating its contract directors and stars from Hong Kong and Taiwan, MP&GI also enlisted talent from overseas. One screenwriter who contributed to the popularity of MP&GI family dramas during this time was Eileen Chang. Her comedies of manners, which ridicule old-fashioned ideas but typically conclude in a compromise, were popular in Hong Kong and Taiwan. In Taipei’s Chinese rankings, for example, The Battle of Love (Qingchang ru zhanchang, 1957) and The Wayward Husband (Taohua yun, 1958), both dir- ected by Yue Feng, were placed second in 1957 and ninth in 1958, respectively.

Among other similar films, Chang’s sequels to The Greatest Civil War on Earth (Nanbei he, dir. Wang Tianlin, 1961), which topped Hong Kong’s Mandarin cinema box office in 1961, are worth mentioning.11 The tongue-in-cheek exaggeration of the ‘greatest’ is matched by the reversed meaning of ‘civil war’ in the Chinese title, which denotes ‘integration’ and ‘compromise’ between nanbei – the ‘south’ (Hong Kong) and the ‘north’ (the mainland) – the nuance missing in the English title. Indeed, it is this missing nuance that constitutes the focus of the comedy series: the ‘mixing’ (he) of Cantonese and Mandarin cultures in Hong Kong society. Both directed by Wang Tianlin, Chang’s Mandarin sequels The Greatest Wedding on Earth (Nanbei yijia qin, 1962; b/w) and The Greatest

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Love Affair on Earth (Nanbei xi xiangfeng, 1964; b/w) continue to present ‘mixed’ couples but emphasize ‘happiness’ (xi), ‘affection’ (qin) and ‘family unity’ (yijia). In a sense, MP&GI’s ‘south–north’ dramas represent yet another example of convergence in Hong Kong cinema – the mixing of Cantonese- and Mandarin-speaking casts in the same films. Interpreted at a symbolic level, this points to a self-confidence which Hong Kong filmmakers had obtained by the early 1960s: that by confronting rather than evading the hybridity of their cultural identity they could expect nothing but ‘happy’ endings.

The contemporary orientation in its musicals and family dramas does not mean that MP&GI disregarded history. In fact, drawing on MP&GI’s favorite plot of two or three women romantically involved with the same man, Sun, Moon and Star (Xingxing, yueliang, taiyang, dir. Yi Wen, 1962; Mandarin) achieves an epic scope in its dramatic rendition of the resistance war and its devastating effects on Chinese people. With the location shoot done partly in Taiwan, this two-part film won the best picture prize at the inaugural Golden Horse Awards in 1962 and ranked second in the 1962 Taipei box office with NT$1,755,185.

As reflected in the annual Taipei top ten listing of the time (R. Huang 2001: 50–6), MP&GI dominated the Mandarin cinema market in the late 1950s, although Shaw Brothers caught up quickly and gained an upper hand after 1962. Various personnel changes affected MP&GI operations in 1962. After the untimely death of Loke Wan Tho in 1964 and after producing 110 Mandarin features, MP&GI changed its name to ‘Cathay Hong Kong’ but gradually lost out to Shaw Brothers.

Shaw Brothers: costume dramas and Li Hanxiang When the Great China folded and returned its leased studio to Nanyang, Shao Cunren established Shaw and Sons (Shaoshi fuzi, its logos including SS) in 1950 and embarked on Mandarin productions, because a Mandarin title could be sold at a higher price than a Cantonese one. Shaw and Sons employed such directors as Tu Guangqi, Tao Qin and Wang Yin and produced seventy features, none of which achieved much distinction. By 1957, Run Run Shaw, who had up until this time given HK$250,000 per film to Shaw and Sons, was extremely upset by the popularity of recent MP&GI releases in Southeast Asia. He brought HK$5 million to Hong Kong, founded Shaw Brothers Hong Kong (Shaoshi xiongdi, its logos including SB) with his brother Runme, and relegated Shaw and Sons to the business of distribution and exhibition in Hong Kong. Run Run recruited Raymond Chow (Zou Wenhuai) as Shaw Brothers’ head of publicity, and the studio’s international outlook resulted in prominent US news coverage of Shaw Brothers enterprises. Located in Clear Water Bay, Shaw Brothers ‘Movietown’ opened in 1961 with brand new studios, standing sets, processing and recording facilities and even staff apartments. Operating twenty-four hours a day, Movietown enabled Shaw Brothers to work its 1,200 employees in ten-hour

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