Before turning to the film itself, it is worth first drawing attention to its poster. As is clearly visible, it contains — beyond the title and information about the cast and crew — a considerable amount of text. At the very top, on the left, written in red characters:
“Sorrows of the Forbidden City” is a representative Chinese work that last year participated in the International Film Festival in Paris. It was widely recognized by French film critics as a rare and outstanding work, earning among oriental films the distinction of best direction, best set design, best costumes, and best acting. Furthermore, at the beginning of this year the film was screened continuously for three months at the most exclusive Parisian cinema, the RITZ. From this one can easily infer how enormously popular this film was in France.
Hong Kong film studios loved to present themselves before local audiences as internationally recognized, which was intended to serve as an assurance of the high quality of their product — one capable of competing with Hollywood, European, or Japanese cinema. This process intensified in the 1960s and early 1970s at the Shaw Brothers and MP&GI studios, but it is clearly visible in the 1940s as well, as the above text demonstrates.
The Yonghua studio invested a colossal budget in the making of Sorrows of the Forbidden City and imported modern equipment and film stock from the United States. It therefore opted for so-called reverse marketing — boasting of success in Europe, and specifically in Paris, in order to elevate the film’s status in the eyes of the domestic audience. The French had a reputation as discerning film lovers, so the fact that they had watched the film for three months was meant to signal high production quality. It is worth noting — for those interested in the Mandarin language — the unusual term used for set design: 裝置 (zhuāngzhì), whereas today the standard term is 美術指導 (měishù zhǐdǎo).
Below this text, in black, appears another:
Production of the Yonghua Film Studio. A work created with ten times the scale of an ordinary hit! Fully conveying the luxury and magnificence of the great palace halls [A Mandarin-language monumental film]
BEHIND THE SCENES OF THE IMPERIAL COURT
— Bold exposure of the facts and meticulous historical reconstruction — — A powerful cast of actors unrivalled in the world — DOUBLE FEATURE
The Yonghua studio, founded by tycoon Zu-Yong Li, harboured ambitions of dominating Asian markets. Placing the studio’s name before the film’s title is a device borrowed from Hollywood. The note that the film is in Mandarin was intended to enhance the prestige of the production. At the time, the Cantonese film industry — in the eyes of migrants — was associated above all with cheap, quickly made productions. Yonghua employed Shanghai emigrants and positioned Mandarin as the language of elevated, artistic cinema.
The words used in the text — nèimù (behind the scenes / secrets) and bàolù (to expose / to reveal) — were a marketing device. Since China was then in the grip of civil war and severe political censorship, Hong Kong was being presented as a place where the decline and corruption of the Qing dynasty, which had ruled China until 1911, could be shown in an open and uncompromising manner.
The double feature — or shuāngliào (double programme / double benefit) — is of course an announcement that Sorrows of the Forbidden City would be screened together with another production, but for the price of a single ticket. This aspect is continued in the vertical text on the left side of the poster:
At every screening we additionally show: “The Almighty Detective”. Starring the Three Great Masters of Laughter: Han Langen, Guan Hongda, and Yin Xiucen. A sensational, madcap comedy! A haunted house terrifies the detective! The Great Immortal appears and talks utter nonsense!
The weighty, intellectual Sorrows of the Forbidden City was paired with an escapist comedy. Distributors wanted to draw as many viewers as possible to the cinema and so offered something as a “sweetener” after serious productions. This practice was known as 合映 (hé yìng) — slapstick comedies were added to dramas, in this case featuring a popular comedy trio of the period.
Finally, it is worth noting the smaller, vertical, red text at the bottom:
Preview screening on Saturday the twenty-eighth day of the month. One showing only, at 7:30 PM.
This is of particular interest in that the word used to denote the day is 拜六 (bài liù) — a colloquial, dialectal term for Saturday (an abbreviation of 禮拜六) used almost exclusively in southern dialects, primarily Cantonese. This demonstrates that despite the promotion of Mandarin, or even contempt for Cantonese, in a commercial and promotional context distributors had no reservations about using Cantonese when trying to attract the largest possible audience to the cinema.
Sorrows of the Forbidden City
Qing gong mi shi (lit.: “Secret History of the Qing Palace”)
Direction: Shi-Lin Zhu
Screenplay: Yao Ke (in Cantonese: Hak Yiu)
Cinematography: Kuo-Chun Chuang
Music: Zheng-Fan Zhang, Zhong-Ren Lu
Asst. director: Bai Chen, Cen Fan
Studio: Yonghua
Premiere: 11.11.1948
Cast: Shi Shu, Xuan Zhou, Yeuk-Ching Tong, Li Xu, Qi Chen, Bo Hung, Jing Lin, Ming Jiang, Wei Lo, and others.
Sorrows of the Forbidden City is one of the first Hong Kong box-office hits — one might even describe it as one of the first local superproductions. Upon its release it was met with an excellent reception both in the colony and in China. In China, however — despite initial enthusiasm — it began in the 1950s to be strongly criticized for its positive portrayal of Emperor Guangxu. Hong Kong cinema was, in fact, soon almost entirely banned there, with the exception of productions from a few smaller, Communist-aligned studios. Today Sorrows of the Forbidden City enjoys considerable acclaim, as attested by its placement at number 37 on the list of the best Chinese-language films compiled during the Hong Kong Film Awards in 2013.
The production was made at the Yonghua studio, and although work on set began in 1948, some sources indicate that preparations started as early as 1946. Post-war cinema in Hong Kong was made mostly by directors from Shanghai who had been active and successful before the war. Shi-Lin Zhu was one of them. He arrived in Hong Kong in 1946 at the invitation of the Nanyang studio, making him one of the first Shanghai directors to be active in the colony and thereby exerting a considerable influence on the productions of the period. The screenplay for Sorrows of the Forbidden City was written by Yao Ke, who in 1943 had written the play Sorrows of the Qing Court, which he later adapted into a film script. He himself arrived in Hong Kong in 1948, subsequently founded the Nanguo publishing house, and supported himself partly through writing and translating books and screenplays.
Sorrows of the Forbidden City cost approximately 800,000 Hong Kong dollars — no small sum, derived in part from Shankun Zhang, a private investor of dubious reputation, and in part from the earnings of the family printing business belonging to Zu-Yong Li, the producer at the Yonghua studio. The production was filmed in March and April of 1948 in a real palace complex that had been abandoned after the war — which, combined with high-quality props and costumes, created an impression of wealth and magnificence; forty-three sets were constructed for the production. In 1951 an effective promotional campaign was mounted to promote the film in China. Its premiere there took place in Beijing on 17 March, followed by screenings in Shanghai, Tianjin, Nanjing, and other cities. Audiences arrived in great numbers and critics responded with enthusiasm. The film was also presented at international festivals, making it one of the first Hong Kong films to be so clearly promoted and discussed in international circulation. The production also set a new box-office record for a Chinese film in Singapore.
Its action begins in 1889 and centres on the twilight period of the Qing dynasty, collapsing under the authoritarian and conservative rule of Empress Dowager Cixi (Yeuk-Ching Tong), who controlled state policy despite the opposition of the young Emperor Guangxu (Shi Shu), who wished to reform the country. The main protagonists are the emperor himself and his concubine Zhen (Xuan Zhou), who were united not only by political views but also by love. Sorrows of the Forbidden City draws on many historical facts, but also takes inspiration from opera and various cultural traditions. It presents its action in a realistic key, though owing to the storyline of the tragic love between the emperor and the concubine it is heavily melodramatic and frequently sentimental. It also features several scenes from the Boxer Rebellion, depicting the fighters confronting foreigners. These stand out markedly for their strongly oneiric atmosphere.
Although the historical accuracy of the production is questionable, it significantly influenced the shaping of a negative popular image of Empress Dowager Cixi and a positive one of Emperor Guangxu. He is presented as a caring, honest, and loyal ruler — yet also, in the tradition of wenyi pian, as almost entirely incapable of independent action and in effect controlled by two women: Zhen, who pushes him to fight for the good of the nation, and the cruel, self-important Cixi. While in typical wenyi pian romances such behaviour need not provoke a negative reaction from contemporary — and especially Western — audiences, in the context of a struggle for the survival of the state and its citizens, the emperor’s emotional weakness and his submission to the will of others makes him a rather frustrating protagonist. His reception was, of course, different within China itself; his deference towards his adoptive mother is a sign of filial loyalty — a very positive and desirable trait in a Confucian context, though one greatly exaggerated in the film.
This does not mean, however, that the production fails to offer at least a few suspenseful sequences. It is also successful on the acting front, looks dazzling, and is technically of a very high standard — presenting itself as considerably superior to most contemporary films, not only from Hong Kong. Thematically it is primarily a story about the collision between old and new, the necessity of reform, and the constant improvement of state policy. It criticizes conservatism and stagnation as the principal causes of a nation’s downfall, arguing that even the most magnificent country will stand on the brink of destruction if it fails to keep pace with the progress of the wider world — thereby reflecting the post-war reality of both Hong Kong and China. In this way it not only expresses the need for reform but warns that the absence of reform leads to national humiliation.
Despite certain archaisms and historical inaccuracies, Sorrows of the Forbidden City is a production decidedly worth the attention of all fans of Hong Kong, historical, and costume cinema. It is worth adding that the film was restored in 2006, resulting in very good image quality. In addition, sound was restored to the only sung scene, depicting Zhen’s prayer for the nation and the emperor.
