ZHOU XUAN AND BAI GUANG

Archetypal songstress of Mandarin cinema Zhou Xuan (1920–1957) is best remembered for her performance in the classic Street Angel 1937. In her popular Hong Kong production Song of a Songstress 1948 (dir: Fang Peilin), she performs ‘Songstress of the world’ (‘Tianya genü’), which became her signature song. Tragically, her final years were spent in a Mainland mental hospital, where her death was possibly suicide. Many of her songs are still popular today; one features in the soundtrack of Wong Kar-wai’s In the Mood for Love 2000 (see Mirror Cities: Fascination and Nostalgia). Launching her singing career at 22, Bai Guang (1920–1999) quickly became a successful singer–actress in Japanese-occupied Shanghai, and then, like Zhou Xuan, her star continued to rise in Hong Kong after the war. Bai was known as the most sultry and sensuous of the songstress stars, nicknamed both ‘Standard Alto’ for her low voice and ‘Bewitching Beauty of all Ages’ for her enduring stage appeal. In Songs in the Rainy Nights 1950 (dir: Li Ying), she plays a country girl who moves to Hong Kong and achieves success as a nightclub singer, while her cousin works more respectably in a factory.

Street Angel (Malu Tianshi) 1937 All ages
2.00pm Saturday 24 March / Cinema A / Live electronic subtitling

35MM, 86 MINS, B. & W., MONO, CHINA, MANDARIN / DIRECTOR/SCRIPT: YUAN MUZHI / ORIGINAL STORY (NOVEL): MONCKTON HOFFE / CINEMATOGRAPHY: WU YINXIAN / CAST: ZHAO DAN, ZHOU XUAN, WEI HELING, ZHAO HUISHEN, WANG JITING, QIAN QIANLI, YUAN SHAOMEI, LIN JINYU / PRODUCTION COMPANY: MINGXING (STAR) FILM COMPANY / PRINT SOURCE/RIGHTS: CHINA FILM ARCHIVE

Hong (Zhou Xuan) and her sister Yun live in a desperately poor part of Shanghai, having fled Manchuria after the Japanese invasion. Yun works as a prostitute to support them, while Hong sings in the streets with her tutor, who one day decides to sell her to a gangster. Friends from her neighbourhood help her to escape. Love-struck trumpeter Chen Xiaoping (Zhao Dan) takes her to live in another part of the city but her sister is found by gangsters and tragedy ensues. It is diva Zhou Xuan’s most celebrated role. A classic of the Shanghai cinema, the film is said to have been inspired by the 1928 Frank Borzage film of the same name as it features dramatic lighting and Soviet-style editing techniques. Director and scriptwriter Yuan Muzhi joined the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) in 1940 and established the Northeast Film Studio in the same year, after the CCP took over Manchurian Motion Pictures. In 1949, after the creation of the People’s Republic of China, he was chosen to head the Film Bureau in the Ministry of Culture.

Night Inn (Ye Dian) 1947 All ages
1.00pm Sunday 1 April / Cinema A

35MM, 107 MINS, B. & W., MONO, CHINA, MANDARIN (ENGLISH SUBTITLES) / DIRECTOR: HUANG ZUOLIN / SCRIPT: KE LING / ORIGINAL STORY (PLAY): MAXIM GORKY / CINEMATOGRAPHY: ZHUANG YUANJUN, XU QI / CAST: WEIWEI, ZHOU XUAN, ZHANG FA, SHI HUI, TONG ZANGLING / PRODUCTION COMPANY: WENHUA FILM COMPANY / PRINT SOURCE/RIGHTS: CHINA FILM ARCHIVE

The occupants of an inn owned by the ruthless and unpleasant Mr and Mrs Wen include a petty thief, a street vendor, a prostitute, a garbage collector and a street performer. Mr Wen demands rent payment from a sick tenant, while Mrs Wen plots to manipulate the thief into murdering her husband. Night Inn is an adaptation of Maxim Gorky’s play The Lower Depths: Scenes from Russian Life, first produced in Moscow in 1902 by Konstantin Stanislavski. Gorky’s play shows the relationships among the working-class tenants of a boarding house and explores whether it is better to live happily with illusions or to grasp the full, often miserable truth. Jean Renoir adapted the play in Les Bas Fonds 1936 and Akira Kurosawa transposed it to Edo-period Japan in Donzoko (The Lower Depths) 1957.

Orioles Banished from the Flowers (Huawai Liuying) 1948 All ages
2.00pm Saturday 21 April / Cinema A / Live electronic subtitling

35MM, 84 MINS, B. & W., MONO, HONG KONG, MANDARIN / DIRECTOR: FANG PEILIN / PRODUCER: XIE BINGJUN / SCRIPT: HONG MO / CINEMATOGRAPHY: CAO JINYUN / EDITORS: SHEN YUQI, CAO SANNONG / ART DIRECTION: YI GUANGFU, YAN SHI / SOUND: SUN BINGYUN / MUSIC: CHEN GEXIN / LYRICS: CHEN DIEYI / CAST: ZHOU XUAN, YAN HUA, LÜ YUKUN, LI LULING, HU XIAOFENG / PRODUCTION COMPANY: DAZHONGHUA / PRINT SOURCE: HONG KONG FILM ARCHIVE / RIGHTS: KONG CHIAO FILM COMPANY

A situation comedy involving an accidental trip to Shanghai, Orioles Banished from the Flowers features extraordinary passages of music and images with songs from Zhou Xuan who plays Zhou Ying, a young girl with a gift for singing,. Her singing disturbs the tutoring sessions that university student Ding Qiushi (Yan Hua) gives her neighbours. When they finally meet they fall in love and only quarrel when Ying wants to help Qiushi financially. When Ying runs away and hides in the neighbour’s car, she ends up in a compromising situation. After early work in set design, Fang Peilin began directing in 1936. Remaining in Shanghai during the Japanese occupation, he made successful musicals and continued in this vein in Hong Kong after the war. He died in a plane crash when travelling to Shanghai.

Song of a Songstress (Genü zhi Ge) 1948 All ages
6.00pm Friday 20 April / Cinema A / Live electronic subtitling

35MM, 93 MINS, B. & W., MONO, HONG KONG, MANDARIN / DIRECTOR: FANG PEILIN / PRODUCER: XIE BINGJUN / SCRIPT: WU TIEYI / CINEMATOGRAPHY: CAO JINYUN / EDITORS: SHEN YUQI, CAO NONGPING / ART DIRECTION: YI GUANGFU / SOUND: SUN JINGHAI / MUSIC: CHEN GEXIN / LYRICS: CHEN DIEYI / CAST: ZHOU XUAN, WANG HAO, MENG NA, WEI PENGFEI, GU YELU / PRODUCTION COMPANY: QIDONG FLM COMPANY / PRINT SOURCE: HONG KONG FILM ARCHIVE / RIGHTS: KONG CHIAO FILM COMPANY

Fang Peilin’s last film, Song of a Songstress, is also his best known. Cabaret singer Zhu Lan (Zhou Xuan) is pursued by arrogant playboy Ye Chunhua (Wang Hao) but she is in love with an impoverished painter, Fang Zhiwei (Gu Yelu), and resists Chunhua’s advances. Zhu Lan puts herself fatally in Chunhua’s debt when she asks him to find a job for Zhiwei. The climactic sequence uses parallel editing to heighten the pathos and tension; as Zhu Lan sings in a nightclub revenge is enacted for past wrongs. The tone is light and entertaining but balances elements of melodrama in Zhu Lan’s tragic past and romantic life and in the final dramatic revelations. ‘Songstress of the world’ (‘Tianya genü’), which Zhou Xuan performs here, is her best known song.

Flower Street (Hua Jie) 1950 All ages
12 noon Wednesday 25 April / Cinema A / Live electronic subtitling

35MM, 70 MINS, B. & W., MONO, HONG KONG, MANDARIN / DIRECTOR: YUE FENG / PRODUCER: SHEN TIANYIN / SCRIPT: TAO QIN / CINEMATOGRAPHY: DONG SHAOYONG / EDITOR: WANG ZHAOXI / ART DIRECTION: BAO TIANMING / MUSIC: LI HOUXIANG / CAST: ZHOU XUAN, YAN JUN, GONG QIUXIA, HAN FEI, LUO LAN / PRODUCTION COMPANY: GREAT WALL PICTURES CORPORATION / PRINT SOURCE: CENTRE DE DOCUMENTATION DU CINÉMA CHINOIS / SCREENING FORMAT: BETACAM SP

Flower Street follows the fortunes of a family of performers in Shanghai from the 1920s through the Japanese occupation and the war. Xiao Hulu (Yan Jun) is a storyteller at the Triumph House, a tea house in Flower Street; his wife Bai Lanhua (Luo Lan) sings in the same establishment and his mother sells flowers in the street to help make ends meet. Little Taiping (Zhou Xuan) will follow her mother to become a singer, but not before the family has been torn apart by war in the panic of bombardment and evacuation. Further hardships are in store, even when they manage to reunite, with Taiping wooed by a local crook and Xiao Hulu beaten up when he takes liberties with propaganda songs during a performance for the Japanese. Great actors and a superb script from Tao Qin, as well as six songs from Zhou Xuan, make this a memorable slice of Shanghai amid tumultuous events, and a tender portrait of family ties. The film was re-released in 1952 following the news of Zhou Xuan’s attempted suicide early that year.

Songs in the Rainy Nights (Yuye Gesheng) 1950 All ages
2.00pm Sunday 22 April / Cinema A

16MM, 101 MINS, B. & W., MONO, HONG KONG, MANDARIN (ENGLISH SUBTITLES) / DIRECTOR: LI YING / PRODUCER: ZHANG SHANKUN / SCRIPT: SU CHENG / CINEMATOGRAPHY: WANG JIANHAN / EDITOR: SHEN YUQI / ART DIRECTION: LI HANXIANG / SOUND: GUO QIANG (KWOK KEUNG) / MUSIC: SITU RONG / SONGS: LI MING, YAO MIN / CAST: BAI GUANG, YAN HUA, LAN YINGYING, YOU GUANGZHAO, QUI PING / PRODUCTION COMPANY: FAR EAST MOTION PICTURE COMPANY / PRINT SOURCE/RIGHTS: CHINESE TAIPEI FILM ARCHIVE

Songs in the Rainy Nights follows the fate of Ah Qiao (Bai Guang) and Ah Yu (Lan Yingying), two sisters who move to Hong Kong to find work. Their cousin sings in a dance hall and Ah Qiao decides to follow in her footsteps, taking the stage name of ‘Hong Hong’ and appearing as the ‘Beauty of the Southern Kingdom’. Attracting many suitors, she soon becomes the mistress of wealthy manager Ma (You Guangzhao). Ah Yu finds work in a factory and meets up with Ah Bing, who comes from the same village and is a handyman at the dance hall. Ma leaves Ah Qiao after he discovers she is having an affair with Taipan Feng (Yan Hua), then tragedy strikes when Ah Qiao is crippled in an accident and only Ah Yu and Ah Bing stand by her. Songs in the Rainy Nights was Li Ying’s first Hong Kong film. For a few days after the film’s release at the Roxy and Liberty Theatres in Hong Kong, Bai Guang appeared on stage accompanied by the Far East Music Band.