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Should They Marry? (1951)
Should They Marry?aka Spoiling the Wedding Day(Wù jiā qī; lit. The Missed Auspicious Date or The Delayed Wedding) Directors: Zhu Shilin, Bai ShenScreenplay: Lu YuCinematography: Cao JinyunMusic: Li Houxiang, Ye ChunzhiAsst. director: no infoStudio: Longma (Dragon-Horse)Premiere: 05.08.1951Genre: Romance, drama, comedy Cast: Han Fei, Li Li-Hua, Jiang Ming, Lan Qing, Liu Lian, Li Ciyu and others.…
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The Kid (1950): Childhood and Hong Kong Cinema in the Early 1950s
Issues surrounding childhood and portrayals of children repeatedly appeared in Hong Kong cinema during the early 1950s, in both the Cantonese and Mandarin film industries. They served as a metaphor for a changing, migratory society. In order to understand this metaphor more fully before examining individual films, it is first necessary to outline the cultural…
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The Story of Wong Fei-Hung, Part 2 (1949)
In the past, film posters served not only as promotional graphics but partially fulfilled the function of today’s theatrical trailers, and therefore had to contain more information than they do today. The poster for The Story of Wong Fei-Hung is an excellent example of this. The large inscription on the upper left reads: The crimson…
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Sorrows of the Forbidden City (1948)
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…
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An All-Consuming Love (1947)
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…
