EILEEN CHANG’S SHANGHAI STORIES

Eileen Chang (Zhang Ailing, 1920–1995) is a literary giant whose cinematic work is less well-known. Celebrated for her essays, short stories and novels centred on women’s lives in middle-class Shanghai of the 1940s, Chang wrote her first screenplays in Shanghai after the war in 1947 at a time when the literary scene was dominated by debate on the social role of intellectuals and artists. Long Live the Wife 1947, her second script collaboration with director Sang Hu, explores middle-class relationships and infidelity. Chang fled to Hong Kong in 1952, and then moved to the United States in 1955, over the following years writing a series of scripts for producer Stephen Soong at the new Hong Kong MP & GI Company. She wrote more than ten scripts, which were mostly romantic comedies but they also incorporated elements of melodrama and farce. Her characters combine cultural influences; Chang believed in internationalism and in the individual’s ability to transcend a specific social or cultural context. June Bride 1960, a romantic comedy with Grace Chang, is staged against the backdrop of modern Hong Kong. Film writer Stephen Teo notes that 'June Bride actually marks Mandarin cinema’s transition from a conscious nostalgia for Shanghai to a fuller integration with Hong Kong and its environment’. Two of Chang’s screenplays and four film adaptations of her novels by Ann Hui, Stanley Kwan and Fred Tan are featured in Hong Kong, Shanghai: Cinema Cities. Chang’s interest in social convention and individual psychology generated richly interior stories that are sometimes satirical and have universal resonances. Her interest in social convention and individual psychology generated richly interior stories that are sometimes satirical and have universal resonances. Academy Award-winning director Ang Lee (Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon 2000, Brokeback Mountain 2005) has announced that he is filming an adaptation of Eileen Chang’s World War Two spy story, Lust, Caution, for release in 2007.

Long Live the Wife (Taitai Wansui) 1959 All ages
3.00pm Saturday 19 May / Cinema A

35MM, 90 MINS, B. & W., MONO, HONG KONG, MANDARIN (ENGLISH SUBTITLES) / DIRECTOR: SANG HU / SCRIPT: EILEEN CHANG / CINEMATOGRAPHY: HUANG SHAOFEN, XU QI, GE WEIQING / ART DIRECTION: WANG YUEBAI / SOUND: SHEN TIEMIN, ZHU WEIGANG / MUSIC: ZHANG ZHENGFAN / CAST: JIANG TIANLIU, SHI HUI, SHANGGUAN YUNZHU, HAN FEI, ZHANG FA / PRODUCTION COMPANY: WENHUA FILM STUDIO / PRINT SOURCE/RIGHTS: CHINA FILM ARCHIVE

Long Live the Wife, a lively and well-acted comedy, is Chang’s second script. Following immediately from Love without End (Bu Liao Qing) 1947, it proved to be another financially successful collaboration with director Sang Hu for Wenhua Film Studio. An examination of marriage and convention, it uses humour to question male authority. The central character, Chen Sizhen (Jiang Tianliu), is married to Tang Zhiyuan (Zhang Fa), who convinces his father-in-law to fund a small business. However, Zhiyuan’s preoccupation with his mistress, Shi Mimi (Shangguan Yunzhu), ruins his business. To Shi Mimi, Zhiyuan is just another gullible small fish in a big city, and yet she is oppressed by a vicious husband. The film’s powerful final sequence draws the spectator into complicity with her position. Sizhen wears a cheongsam at home to emphasise her loyalty and traditional values but dons European clothes when she goes out. Sizhen also questions patriarchal authority when she leaves her marriage. In the film’s climax, the less conventional social possibilities are reined in but their possibility and attraction are nevertheless open ended. Chang’s screenplay quite radically underlines the ambiguity of moral choices.

Production
still from Battle of Love (Qingchang ru Zhanchang)

Battle of Love (Qingchang ru Zhanchang) 1957 All ages
6.00pm Friday 18 May / Cinema A / Live electronic subtitling

35MM, 91 MINS, B. & W., MONO, HONG KONG, MANDARIN / DIRECTOR: YUE FENG / SCRIPT: EILEEN CHANG / ORIGINAL STORY (PLAY): MAX SHULMAN / CINEMATOGRAPHY: FAN JIE / MUSIC: LI HOUXIANG / CAST: LINDA LIN DAI, ZHANG YANG, PETER CHEN HO, NELLIE CHIN YU, LIU ENJIA / PRODUCTION COMPANY: MP & GI FILM STUDIO / PRINT SOURCE: HONG KONG FILM ARCHIVE / RIGHTS: CATHAY-KERIS FILMS / SCREENING FORMAT: DIGITAL BETACAM

Battle of Love is Chang’s first script produced in Hong Kong, and the first comedy of new production house MP & GI, who specialised in contemporary family melodramas, romance and comedies of manners, as well as musicals and teen dramas. Linda Lin Dai plays Ye Weifang, a rich young woman who toys with the male attentions she attracts. When her handsome writer cousin Shi Rongsheng (Zhang Yang) proves impervious to her charms, she weaves a web of seduction, even temporarily annexing her sister's romantic love object. Although director Yue Feng seems to have reined in elements of Chang’s screenplay, particularly in Weifang’s final recognition of Rongsheng’s authority, Lin Dai’s character remains bold and cynical. Unusually for the time she does not have to be punished for these qualities. Lin Dai committed suicide in July 1964, causing the greatest display of public mourning since Ruan Lingyu’s suicide in 1935.

June Bride (Liu Yue Xinniang) 1960 All ages
12 noon Wednesday 9 May / Cinema A / Live electronic subtitling

35MM, 100 MINS, B. & W., MONO, HONG KONG, MANDARIN / DIRECTOR: TANG HUANG / PRODUCER: ZHONG QIWEN / SCRIPT: EILEEN CHANG / CINEMATOGRAPHY: HUANG MING / EDITOR: WANG ZHAOXI / ART DIRCTION: FEI BOYI / MUSIC: YAO MIN / CAST: GRACE CHANG, ROY CHIAO, ZHANG YANG, SU FENG, TIAN QING, DING HAO, LIU ENJIA / PRODUCTION COMPANY: MP & GI FILM STUDIO / PRINT SOURCE/RIGHTS: CATHAY-KERIS FILMS / SCREENING FORMAT: DIGITAL BETACAM

One of Eileen Chang’s best screenplays, June Bride is a fast-paced romantic comedy with a strong female lead, Wang Tanlin (Grace Chang), who has little concern for social convention. Wang Tanlin arrives on an ocean liner from the mainland with the intention of resolving any uncertainty about her prospective marriage to Tung Chifang (Zhang Yang). Suspicions of infidelity, the disappearance of the bride, a greedy father and the groom’s erstwhile mistress all provide stock elements but the handling of the material is contemporary and psychological. A sequence exploring the intoxicated Tanlin’s unconscious fears and desires in a fantastical all-singing, all-dancing dream is a highlight. The excitement of flirtations with a Chinese–Filipino musician (Tian Qing) and sailor (Roy Chiao) is reined in for the 1960s audience when Wang Tanlin says she is looking for something more secure in love and admonishes the sailor, ‘You see too many foreign films’. Yet she will only go through with the wedding to Zhang Yang if all of her fears about his sincerity are allayed.

Love in a Fallen City (Qing Cheng Zhi Lian) 1984 Ages 12+
1.00pm Sunday 20 May / Cinema A

35MM, 100 MINS, COLOUR, MONO, HONG KONG, CANTONESE (ENGLISH SUBTITLES) / DIRECTOR: ANN HUI / SCRIPT: FENG CAO / ORIGINAL STORY (NOVEL): EILEEN CHANG / CINEMATOGRAPHY: ANTHONY HOPE / CAST: CORA MIAO, CHOW YUN-FAT, KEUNG CHUNG-PING, CHIU KAO / PRODUCTION COMPANY: SHAW BROTHERS / PRINT SOURCE: CELESTIAL PICTURES / SCREENING FORMAT: DIGITAL BETACAM

Bai Liusu (Cora Miao) has returned to her parental home after a divorce. The family fortunes are in decline and her situation is seen as adding to their fall. Liusu meets the wealthy Fan Liuyuan (Chow Yun-fat) and they begin a relationship, despite his arrogance and her uncertainty. When she visits him in Hong Kong in the days before it falls to the Japanese in December 1941, their tentative advances turn to passion against the backdrop of apocalyptic events. Based on Eileen Chang's novella set in the period leading up to the Japanese invasion of Hong Kong, Love in a Fallen City was seen on its release as director Ann Hui’s response to the uncertainty of living in a city about to undergo another epoch-making change in its political order. Made at a time when public debate in Hong Kong was increasingly dominated by the 1997 handover to China, the film is about the city’s relationship with Shanghai and about its transfer between imperial powers when the English ceded control to Japanese forces. A collection of Chang’s writings was published last year under the title Love in a Fallen City (trans. Karen S Kingsbury, New York Review Books Classics, New York, 2006).

Production
still from Rouge of the North (Yuan Nu)/
Image courtesy: China Film Archive, Beijing

Rouge of the North (Yuan Nu) 1988 Ages 12+
12 noon Wednesday 16 May / Cinema A

35MM, 107 MINS, COLOUR, MONO, TAIWAN, MANDARIN (ENGLISH SUBTITLES) / DIRECTOR/SCRIPT: FRED TAN / PRODUCER: LIN DENGFEI, CHEN JUN-SUNG / ORIGINAL STORY (NOVEL): EILEEN CHANG / CINEMATOGRAPHY: YANG WEIHAN / MUSIC: PETER CHANG / CAST: XIA WENSHI, XU MING, CHANG YINGZHEN, SHIRLEY CHEN, XIAO AI / PRODUCTION COMPANY: CENTRAL MOTION PICTURES CORPORATION / PRINT SOURCE: CHINESE TAIPEI FILM ARCHIVE / RIGHTS: CENTRAL MOTION PICTURE CORPORATION

The narrative of Eileen Chang’s novel Rouge of the North 1967 elaborates on that of her early novella The Golden Cangue (Jinsuo Ji) 1943. Fred Tan’s adaptation beautifully recreates family life in Shanghai from the end of the Qing dynasty up to the mid 1940s; the film is sumptuously photographed and the characters exquisitely framed within interiors. Young and full of life, Yindi finds herself trapped in an arranged marriage to a blind invalid, the second son of a wealthy family. Her disappointment and emotional isolation make her bitter and she eventually turns to opium. When her son grows up she arranges for him to marry a sickly and unattractive woman and inducts him into the anaesthetising pleasures of opium.

Production
still from Red Rose, White Rose (Hong Mei Gui Bai Mei Gui)

Red Rose, White Rose (Hong Mei Gui Bai Mei Gui) 1994 Ages 12+
12 noon Wednesday 23 May / Cinema A

35MM, 110 MINS, COLOUR, DOLBY, HONG KONG, CANTONESE (ENGLISH SUBTITLES) / DIRECTOR: STANLEY KWAN / PRODUCER: WONG HOI, WU KAO-HSIUNG / SCRIPT: EDWARD LAM, LIU HENG / ORIGINAL STORY (NOVEL): EILEEN CHANG / CINEMATOGRAPHY: CHRISTOPHER DOYLE / EDITOR: BRIAN SCHWEGMANN / ART DIRECTION: PAN LAI / SOUND: CHRIS FELLOWS / MUSIC: JOHNNY CHEN / CAST: VERONICA YIP, JOAN CHEN, WINSTON CHAO / PRODUCTION COMPANIES: A FIRST ORGANISATION, GOLDEN ENTERTAINMENT COMPANY / PRINT SOURCE: HONG KONG FILM ARCHIVE / RIGHTS: FIRST DISTRIBUTOR

Tung Zhen-Bao (Winston Chao) returns from studies abroad to 1930s Shanghai. He moves in with a friend and soon after starts an affair with his friend’s wife Wang Jiao-Rui (Joan Chen), the ‘Red Rose’ of the title. Zhen-Bao’s love for Jiao-Rui is not enough for him to consider contravening social convention but, in the second half of the film, he finds his innocent ‘White Rose’ (Veronica Yip) and marries her. Kwan harnesses Eileen Chang’s great mastery of irony, making extensive direct quotation from her original story in voice over and intertitles. Christopher Doyle’s cinematography and a great performance from Joan Chen are highlights.

Eighteen Springs (Bian Sheng Yuan) 1997 Ages 15+
3.00pm Sunday 20 May / Cinema A

35MM, 125 MINS, COLOUR, DOLBY, HONG KONG, CANTONESE (ENGLISH SUBTITLES) / DIRECTOR: XU ANHUA (ANN HUI ON-WAH) / PRODUCERS: XU ANHUA, WANG YU (JIMMY WANG YU) / SCRIPT: CHAN KIN-CHUNG / ORIGINAL STORY (NOVEL): EILEEN CHANG / CINEMATOGRAPHY: LI PINGBIN / EDITORS: WONG YEE-SHUN, POON HUNG / ART DIRECTION: BRUCE YU KA-ON, YANG WONG, YAN-KWAI, YU JIAAN, HUANG RENDA / MUSIC: YE XIAOGANG / CAST: LEON LAI, WU CHIEN LIEN, ANITA MUI, GE YOU, WANG LEI, ANNIE WU / PRODUCTION COMPANY: MANDARIN FILMS / PRINT SOURCE/RIGHTS: MANDARIN FILMS

Gu Man-ching (Wu Chien Lien) lives with her family in 1930s Shanghai and has an office in a factory. Her elder sister Man-lu (Anita Mui) has taken higher paid but socially unacceptable work as a dance hall hostess to support the family. Man-ching meets shy Shen Shujun (Leon Lai) through a friend and they fall in love, but his family opposes their marriage. Meanwhile, Man-lu regularises her social status by marrying a business man, who becomes very wealthy but has a predatory eye on Man-ching. An epic story of love, betrayal and frustrated passion, Eighteen Springs sets up a rich tapestry of hopes and relationships then unstitches them to devastating effect. Xu Anhua’s interpretation is understated rather than melodramatic.

EILEEN CHANG’S SHANGHAI STORIES