An All-Consuming Love is a film about impossible returns — a return to pre-war Shanghai, to moral purity, to young love, to national unity, and even to a voice preserved on a gramophone record. It is also a film in which music plays an exceptionally important role, and whose structure places it within the once enormously popular genre of gewu pian. The musical numbers performed in it function not merely as accompaniment to the events depicted but as a substantive commentary on the production’s message, revealing it as a story about media serving as repositories of memory and recollection — though ones that not only preserve the past for the future but also distort it.
Years of Splendour Like a Flower / Shanghai Nights
For this reason, before turning to the film itself it is worth first listening more closely to the songs performed by Xuan Zhou, one of the most popular and culturally significant singers and actresses in Hong Kong’s history. The song Huāyàng de Niánhuá (Years of Splendour Like a Flower) sung by her — its canonical status confirmed among other things by Kar-Wai Wong’s use of it in In the Mood for Love (2000) — constitutes a commentary on the prevailing political order. The composer was Gexin Chen and the lyrics were written by the film’s screenwriter Yanqiao Fan. The lyrics of Huāyàng de Niánhuá are:
Years of splendour like a flower
The spirit bright as the Moon
The mind sharp as ice and snow
Life so beautiful
The bond of tender feeling
Family whole and complete
But suddenly this solitary island
Was surrounded by bitter mist and sorrowful clouds
Bitter mist and sorrowful clouds
Ah…
When shall I return to your embrace?
When the mist clears, the clouds depart
And I see you shining with light once more?
The splendour like a flower, or splendour resembling a flower, symbolizes the ephemeral beauty of youth and peace. The solitary island is a symbol of isolated Shanghai during the occupation, but also under the control of foreign concessions. The bitter mist and sorrowful clouds symbolize Japan’s occupation of China, and most likely also the post-war disintegration of society.
The second song worth listening to before analysing the film itself is Yè Shànghǎi (Shanghai Nights). It shares its authors with the previous song and was intended to capture the paradox of Shanghai during the Second World War. Below are the lyrics.
Shanghai nights, Shanghai nights; you are the city that never sleeps
Bright lights rise, music plays, singing and dancing in peace
We see her smiling face, who knows what sorrow lies in her heart?
Nightlife exists only for food, clothing, shelter, and survival
Wine does not intoxicate — people intoxicate themselves
Reckless days and nights squander youth
In misty mornings we wake suddenly and scatter to our homes
Our souls chase the spinning wheels of cars
Let us move to a new world, find another environment
I reflect on the nightlife as if waking from a dream
On one hand the metropolis is characterized here by decadence, while on the other — beneath the surface of a frequently immoral splendour — the anxieties of its inhabitants lie hidden. The song points to the moral compromises that poverty forced upon people. This is a recurring theme in both pre-war and post-war cinema, in Hong Kong (and earlier in China) inextricably bound up with the music industry. The gechang pian (song films, a category that also includes An All-Consuming Love) and gewu pian (song-and-dance films) genres are testament to this connection; I analyse both in the first volume of the Panorama of the Hong Kong and Taiwan Cinema. The songs performed by Zhou were made in the shidaiqu genre, a synthesis of classical Chinese music, jazz, and Hollywood film music. The genre was particularly popular in China in the 1920s–40s. In 1952 the Communist Party banned nightclubs and the production of popular music. Shidaiqu then migrated to Hong Kong, where it developed considerably and retained its popularity until the late 1960s. Those interested in the genre are invited to listen to this compilation.
The themes of pleasure, alcohol, and so on invoked in Yè Shànghǎi point to escapism as an attempt to flee from reality — but an attempt that yields no benefit. The lyrics also express a yearning for freedom and hope for a better world, as well as a critique of hedonism. The dual “face” of Shanghai presented in the song — of nightclubs and everyday suffering — is also one of the central threads of An All-Consuming Love. The song later became one of the symbols of nostalgia for the old Shanghai. In cinemas, you may have heard it in Ang Lee’s Lust, Caution and in Kar-Wai Wong’s The Grandmaster. A popular cover of the song was recorded in 2006 by singer and actress Karen Mok.
Shanghai → Hong Kong
In Hong Kong until the early 1970s there were in fact two film industries operating in parallel: Cantonese and Mandarin. The first was local; the second was driven by filmmakers, originating primarily from Shanghai, who had taken refuge in the colony to escape the war or political repression. In their eyes Hong Kong was a poor substitute for the metropolis they had called home only a few years earlier, and so their films continued the productions of Shanghai cinema both stylistically and thematically. Very frequently, therefore, their action was set in Shanghai — reflected through sets of varying degrees of fidelity — and they were directed primarily at audiences composed of migrants. An All-Consuming Love, which premiered in 1947, belongs to this current.
In 1946, having arrived from Shanghai, Boying Jiang established in Hong Kong the film studio Great China Film Company (Dà Zhōnghuá diànyǐng qǐyè yǒuxiàn gōngsī). As its name suggests, the productions made there carried a patriotic tone; they were also usually set in Shanghai, and their mode of production was transplanted from pre-war cinema. It was at this studio that work began on An All-Consuming Love, which was to be directed by Shichuan Zhang, a director of considerable prestige and importance to the development of Chinese cinema. Unfortunately, in the course of production he was extradited to Shanghai in connection with accusations of collaborating with the Japanese occupier; Zhang died shortly afterwards of a heart attack. The film was ultimately directed by his son-in-law Zhaozhang He, with the support of the Huaxing studio. Following its premiere, the production was well received — both critically and commercially — but subsequently fell into obscurity and was considered lost. Fortunately it was rediscovered in 1994. The Hong Kong Film Archive lists its running time as 92 minutes, but the only widely available version is one cut — most likely by Chinese censors — to just under 80 minutes. All references and allusions to the Kuomintang (KMT) government, which had fought the Japanese invasion but later lost the civil war in China to the Communists and relocated to Taiwan, were removed.
Furthermore, at the time of writing, the film has never received an official (or unofficial) English translation. I produced my own translation of the official Mandarin subtitles for personal use.
Love and Occupation
In one scene of In the Mood for Love, the two main characters — Lizhen Su (Maggie Cheung) and Mo-wan Chow (Tony Leung Chiu-wai) — listen to a radio broadcast. They do so separately, each in their own apartment, yet both sit absorbed in listening to the same piece of music: Huāyàng de Niánhuá (Years of Splendour Like a Flower), performed by Xuan Zhou. On the surface, the song’s words concern their own troubles and their fleeting youth, but at the metatextual level Wong also offers a connection to post-war nostalgia for Shanghai and for the homeland, and points to the repetition of history — linking his film to An All-Consuming Love, where music likewise serves as a medium of memory.
Zhaozhang He’s film has a frame narrative structure. It opens with a scene in which the main male character, Zhijian Gao (Shi Shu), sits on rocks by a river along which a classically Chinese boat glides. He shortly produces a portable gramophone and removes a record bearing a recording of a song performed by a woman still unknown to the viewer. The song awakens in him memories of the time of occupation, but also of a past love. In this way the main body of the film begins — an extended flashback — after which we return to the opening scene, though this time the man resolves to destroy the gramophone records. In so doing he signals that a return to the past is impossible, and that nostalgia is a trap that yields no benefit.
The flashbacks unfold primarily in Japanese-occupied Shanghai, during the so-called “orphan island” period, when the city was almost entirely cut off from the rest of the world. In the film this isolation is confirmed by the presence of the Japanese military police and by the repeated information that radio and newspapers are not conveying true information to the city’s inhabitants.
Following the opening scene, we meet the characters just before the occupation, on the birthday of the main female character, Xiangmei Li (Xuan Zhou). When she first appears on screen she is performing Huāyàng de Niánhuá. Gathered around her are, among others, Zhijian Gao, her husband Xinming (Zhi Liang), and his blind mother. When war breaks out, Xinming is sent to the front and disappears without trace, and the Li family sinks into poverty. Gao — who works secretly as a teacher of China’s true history and of patriotic values — provides them with material assistance. The need for money, combined with guilt, leads Li — at the prompting of a friend who lives off the money of her wealthy lovers — to take work as a singer in a nightclub. The first song she performs there is Yè Shànghǎi (Shanghai Nights).
The production thus juggles several storylines. Gao’s patriotic activities meet with the resistance of the Japanese authorities and he is arrested. The Japanese are — as is customary in such films — portrayed in an excessively caricatured light: as unintelligent, ugly, loud-mouthed barbarians devoid of human impulse and artistic sensibility. The second storyline concerns Li’s singing career. Performing in nightclubs was, in the eyes of public opinion, a reprehensible and immoral activity. The question of how the profession was perceived was one of the classic narrative axes of gechang pian and gewu pian productions, in which a girl or young woman of pure heart (the archetype of the singer-angel) must frequently use her vocal talent to earn a living but is met with social ostracism and accusations of sexual licentiousness. In An All-Consuming Love, Li is severely rebuked by Gao and their friendship nearly falls apart. His criticism is all the harsher because many of those who frequent the clubs are collaborators with the occupier.
As the lyrics of Yè Shànghǎi suggest, however, the city has two faces: decadent, but also sincere. “The pure will remain pure; the corrupt will drown themselves,” Li says at one point, indicating that judging others without knowing their true character is improper conduct. This thread is continued through the character of her friend, who uses her position — and the position of her lovers — not only to live comfortably but also to help Chinese prisoners and those close to her. It is thanks to her that Gao is released and is able to revise his views.
Yè Shànghǎi also touches on the problem of committing morally reprehensible acts that poverty forces upon people. In the film this is reflected both through the conduct of Li and her friend, and also, for instance, through the mother of the missing soldier, who decides to sell the only keepsake of her deceased husband in order to buy rice.
The last of the themes raised is the romantic one, most strongly associated with In the Mood for Love; Wong in fact made a visual allusion to the famous corridor scene that appears before the epilogue in An All-Consuming Love. Gao and Li clearly fall in love with each other, though this is never stated outright — confirmed, among other things, by their mutual acquaintances, who begin to regard them as a couple, all the more so since every indication suggests that Xinming has died at the front. The relationship between the two seems sealed when, suddenly, the woman’s husband returns to Shanghai. The meeting with him constitutes an intriguing scene. Li breaks into tears, but these appear to be the result of an almost schizophrenic conflict between her feeling for her husband and the relief at his return on the one hand, and grief over the lost chance of a life with Gao — her true love — on the other. The viewer too is left with mixed feelings, having spent the preceding time watching Li and Gao together, which has made their relationship seem more natural than Li’s with her husband. It must be remembered, however, that Xinming — having returned from the war without an arm — has grown into a symbol of national survival. Were Li to choose to remain with Gao, she would be turning her back on those who sacrificed themselves for China’s freedom; in matters of such importance, private desire must yield to the common good.
Xinming’s return leads to the aforementioned corridor scene, arguably the most celebrated in the entire film. It shows Li descending a staircase and approaching Gao’s apartment. We see only her shadow and her feet, indicating her uncertainty and her awareness that she is committing a transgression against those close to her and against the social order as such. She stops before the man’s door and freezes motionless for a moment, perhaps even contemplating running away with Gao. After a moment she steps back — but instead of returning to her own apartment she makes her way to the roof, where the camera finally shows her face. At that same moment Gao emerges from his apartment and, visibly saddened, leaves the building with suitcases in hand. He pauses for a moment on the street as the song Li is singing from the rooftop reaches him: Yànyàn yú fēi (Swallows in Flight). Its lyrics are based on the Ode to the Swallows, one of the oldest known Chinese poems, written between the eleventh and seventh centuries BCE. The lyrics of the song read as follows:
Swallows soar in flight,
Their wings uneven in the light.
This lady returns home,
I bid her farewell far in the wilderness.
As I watch her until she vanishes from my sight
My tears fall like unrestrained rain.
Swallows soar in flight,
Now rising, now descending.
This lady returns home,
I escort her through the long night.
As I watch her until she fades from my eyes
I stand alone, sobbing in distress.
Swallows soar in flight,
Their voices echo above and below the mountain.
This lady returns home,
I send her southward, our hearts heavy and slow.
As I watch her until my gaze loses her
My soul suffers a cruel blow dealt by sorrow.
Zhongshi, noble and faithful,
Her heart deep, her virtue pure.
Gentle, kind, and wise to the core,
Her grace and composure will endure.
“Remember our ancestors,” she sighs,
“And let this lonely soul of mine grow strong.”
The song’s lyrics ultimately confirm her decision to remain with her husband and his family, and to fulfil her duty towards her ancestors (the continuation of the family line). They also show that her decision brings her no happiness, and allow Gao to understand that Li truly loved him. The swallows invoked in the song are a symbol of a freedom unavailable to the woman; in the film this fact is underscored by the image of Li standing on the roof of a building she cannot leave. Musically, too, the song signals her return to tradition. Unlike the more modern shidaiqu arrangements that have appeared in the film up to this point, this one draws on a traditional Chinese melody.
This scene is followed by a return to the present, as Gao decides to discard the gramophone records — which we now know contain recordings of Li’s singing. In destroying them, however, he does so not solely as a gesture of romantic resignation but as a symbolic rejection of nostalgia for Shanghai and, in a broader sense, for China itself — a choice to live here (in Hong Kong) and now (looking towards the future).
An All-Consuming Love is undeniably a rather archaic film, and its focus on the romantic storyline may not win it the admiration of many contemporary viewers. The production is, however, not merely a melodrama of unfulfilled love but one of the first Hong Kong films in which Shanghai popular culture is treated as an archive of a lost world: the song, the gramophone record, and the voice of Xuan Zhou preserve both private feelings and the collective trauma of war, occupation, and migration.
I will add in closing that at the time the film and music industries in Hong Kong were very strongly intertwined — more on this in the book edition of the Panorama — as evidenced, among other things, by the visible EMI logo on the record Gao listens to. That record could in fact be purchased; it may even have been sold in the cinemas screening the film, which was a fairly common practice at the time.
Below is a list of all seven songs performed by Xuan Zhou in An All-Consuming Love:
- 《花樣的年華》 (Huāyàng de niánhuá / Years of Splendour Like a Flower)
- 《夜上海》 (Yè Shànghǎi / Shanghai Nights)
- 《長相思》 (Chángxiāngsī / An All-Consuming Love; the song from which the film’s title is taken)
- 《凱旋歌》 (Kǎixuán gē / Song of Victory; appears in the scene depicting the Japanese surrender. Removed by censors in contemporary China.)
- 《黃葉舞秋風》 (Huángyè wǔ qiūfēng / Yellow Leaves Dancing in the Autumn Wind; on impermanence and the passing of time)
- 《星心相印》 (Xīngxīn xiāngyìn / Hearts Matched to the Stars; the only song performed as a duet between Li and Gao, underscoring their bond at the moment of their greatest — and final — shared joy)
- 《燕燕于飛》 (Yànyàn yú fēi / Swallows in Flight)
