LI LIHUA

The child of Peking opera performers, Li Lihua (b. 1924) began her film career in 1940, after being discovered by the head of Yihua Film Company at the age of fifteen. She made more than 20 films by the time the war ended in 1945. In 1949, she went to Hong Kong and worked for new production companies, including Yung Hwa, Great Wall and Longma (Dragon-Horse) Films, before establishing her own company, Lihua. The films she made in this period are some of her best and include important milestones in Mandarin cinema. Li was one of the first stars from Hong Kong to go to Hollywood, appearing alongside Victor Mature in China Doll 1958, but worked mainly in Hong Kong in Shaw Brothers productions in the 1960s before emigrating to the United States in 1973. Many of her early films from Shanghai have been lost. Three of the films shown in this program come from the Centre de Documentation du Cinéma Chinois (CDCC), co-founded by Marie-Claire Quiquemelle in Paris, which has an important collection of Li Lihua’s films, including some prints entrusted to the CDCC by Li herself, which are most likely the only surviving copies (The Beauty and the Dumb 1954 is one of these).

The Awful Truth (Shuohuang Shijie) 1951 All ages
2.00pm Saturday 28 April / Cinema A / Live electronic subtitling

35MM, 107 MINS, B. & W., MONO, HONG KONG, MANDARIN / DIRECTOR: LI PINGQIAN / SCRIPT: TAO QIN / ORIGINAL STORY: WU TIEYI / CINEMATOGRAPHY: ZHUANG GUOJUN / CAST: LI LIHUA, HAN FEI, YAN JUN, WANG YUANLONG, PING FAN / PRODUCTION COMPANY: GREAT WALL MOVIE ENTERPRISES / PRINT SOURCE: HONG KONG FILM ARCHIVE / RIGHTS: SIL-METROPOLE / SCREENING FORMAT: DIGITAL BETACAM

The Awful Truth is a high energy farce written by Tao Qin (later an important director in his own right) and directed by Li Pingqian. Li Lihua stars as Xue Manna, the scheming mistress of failing business man He Zhixin (Wang Yuanlong). The characters include fake government agent Pan Zhongfu (Yan Jun) who hopes to swindle He Zhixin and steal Xue Manna’s affections, and a young assistant in He Zhixin’s company who pays a large sum of money for a managerial position to impress his future father-in-law. The extremes of capitalist Shanghai in the final period of the Nationalist régime are gleefully satirised. The first comedy produced by Great Wall, The Awful Truth was immensely popular and sold out for 82 consecutive screenings on its release.

Flower Girl aka Flora (Hua Guniang) 1950 All ages
6.00pm Friday 4 May / Cinema A / Live electronic subtitling

16MM, 96 MINS, B. & W., MONO, HONG KONG, MANDARIN / DIRECTOR: ZHU SHILIN / PRODUCER: FEI MU / SCRIPT: BAI CHEN / CINEMATOGRAPHY: CAO JINYUN / EDITOR: ZHU CHAOSHENG / SOUND: DAI ZHANHAO / MUSIC: LI HOUXIANG, YE CHUNZHI / CAST: LI LIHUA, WANG YUANLONG, HAN FEI, JIANG MING, LIU LIAN / PRODUCTION COMPANY: LONGMA (DRAGON-HORSE) FILM COMPANY / PRINT SOURCE: CENTRE DE DOCUMENTATION DU CINÉMA CHINOIS / SCREENING FORMAT: BETACAM SP

Flower Girl transposes Guy de Maupassant’s short stories ‘Mademoiselle Fifi’ 1882 and ‘Boule de Suif’ 1884, to the Sino–Japanese War. Hua Fengxian (Li Lihua) has become a prostitute after losing her father and brother in the war. The ‘flower girl’ makes a trip through Japanese-occupied China in a truck that plies between Shanghai and the interior. She sacrifices herself to save her fellow passengers by entertaining a Japanese commander — a great performance by Li in a role similar to Marlene Dietrich’s Shanghai Lily in Shanghai Express 1932. This was the first production of émigré Shanghai filmmaker Fei Mu’s Longma Film Company. Director Zhu Shilin, who also emigrated in the 1940s, dominated realist cinema in postwar Hong Kong and influenced subsequent generations of filmmakers. This is one of his best.

Spoiling the Wedding Day aka Should They Marry? (Wu Jiaqi) 1951 All ages
2.00pm Sunday 29 April / Cinema A

35MM, 100 MINS, B. & W., MONO, HONG KONG, MANDARIN / DIRECTORS: ZHU SHILIN, BAI CHEN / PRODUCER: QUI YIWEI / SCRIPT: LU JUE / CINEMATOGRAPHY: CAO JINYUN / EDITOR: WANG ZHAOXI / SOUND: TAN HEMING / MUSIC: LI HOUXIANG, YE CHUNZHI / CAST: LI LIHUA, HAN FEI, JIANG MING, LIU LIAN / PRODUCTION COMPANY: LONGMA (DRAGON-HORSE) FILM COMPANY / PRINT SOURCE: CENTRE DE DOCUMENTATION DU CINÉMA CHINOIS / SCREENING FORMAT: BETACAM SP

Co-director Zhu Shilin set this story of young love in his adopted city of Hong Kong, contributing a gem to the Hong Kong cinema. A Cui (Li Lihua) is single, lives with her father and works in a factory. Her friends conspire to introduce her to an eligible young man, Xiao Laba (Han Fei), who plays the trumpet in a band. He turns out to come from the same village as her and they fall in love. However, their marriage plans are stymied at every turn by practical considerations — first and foremost, how to put a roof over their heads. This is a snappy, well-acted comedy of obstacles to be overcome in a social realist mode.

The Beauty and the Dumb (Yi Ming Jingren) 1954 All ages
2.00pm Saturday 5 May / Cinema A

35MM, 98 MINS, B. & W., MONO, HONG KONG, MANDARIN (ENGLISH SUBTITLES) / DIRECTOR: TANG HUANG / PRODUCER: LI LIHUA / SCRIPT: YI WEN (EVAN YANG) / ORIGINAL STORY (PLAY): ANATOLE FRANCE / CINEMATOGRAPHY: HUA DA / MUSIC: YAO MIN / CAST: LI LIHUA, HUANG HE, LIU ENJIA, WANG YUEN-LUNG, TANG ZHEN, YIU KWANG-CHAO / PRODUCTION COMPANY: LIHUA / PRINT SOURCE: CENTRE DE DOCUMENTATION DU CINÉMA CHINOIS / RIGHTS: LI LIHUA / SCREENING FORMAT: BETACAM SP

An astounding physical performance by Li Lihua as Xiuxiu, a mute girl whose father, Hu Darong (Liu Enjia), is determined that she marry into wealth to pay for a cure. Hu misappropriates money from the bank where he works to pay for her treatment and plots a wedding with the manager’s son, Luo Zhigao (Huang He). Li Lihua learnt sign language for the film, which is based on The Man Who Married a Dumb Wife 1912 by Anatole France.