Word for the Day - purblind - which I came across in a Saint short story - as in "fit to govern this purblind country". I like the sound of this word but doubt if I will ever get it into a conversation and if I did people would just give me a puzzled look. Meaning - 1) having poor vision or nearly blind, 2) slow in understanding, dull.
Get your disco dancing shoes back on! Three Bollywood disco songs all sung by the great Nazia Hassan. Nazia was born in my first stomping ground - Karachi, Pakistan in 1965 and was first discovered by actor Feroz Khan for his film Qurbani. She was fifteen years old at the time and sang Aap Jaisa Koi, which was picturized in the film by Zeenat Aman. The song and film were big hits. In the same year she sang for a film that was all disco - Disco Diwane - and the title song was an even bigger hit in the disco crazy country. Two years later she sang in Star and had a hit with Boom Boom. Interestingly, her brother Zoheb Hassan sang the male vocals for Star and Disco Diwane. Sadly, Nazia died in 2000, leaving behind quite a legacy of music but also of spending much of her time helping poor children all over the world.
Not that anyone has seemed particularly interested in these Bollywood actresses, but one of the really nice things about getting into Bollywood films and the personalities that surround it is that there is an enormous amount of information about them on the Internet - in English. After trying to diligently piece together information on Hong Kong stars for years with a snippet here and a sentence there - this is easy - most of the actors are on Wikipedia and current gossip about them is rampant on the Internet - and there are loads and loads of blogs about Bollywood - way more than on Hong Kong films. Check Beth Loves Bollywood for a great list of links. And now apparently, many of the actors have begun blogging and twittering themselves - so if you want to know what Amrita Rao had for breakfast you can do so!
If I was a betting man I would have lost a bundle on Katrina Kaif making it big in Bollywood. She showed up a few years back - half German, half Indian - not able to speak Hindi worth a damn - like an orphan in a storm. Her buoy was Salman Khan who grabbed her after his Aish fiasco and paraded her around Mumbai like a prize cocker spaniel. With his clout he was able to get his girlfriend into some films in which she looked quite awkward I thought and I figured she would be gone before my dinner was digested - but in fact she has become a big star with a number of box office successes. So I admit to knowing nothing. And she has thankfully outgrown Salman like a bad haircut and moved on. So good for her.
The best actress in India? Almost by universal accord it is Kokona Sen Sharma. She began her career in what is termed the "parallel cinema" of India - i.e. films with no musical numbers. You may know her for Amu, which had a small theatrical release in the states or Mr. and Mrs. Iyer which received huge accolades for its story about two people caught up in a Hindi-Muslim communal riot. But she made the move eventually to Bollywood films, while still keeping one foot outside in "parallel" films.
Most of you HK film fans must recall Mallika Sherawat for her short but memorable part in Jackie Chan's The Myth back a few years. At that time she was topic number one in the Bollywood rags, but they have moved on to some degree to new actresses coming down the turnpike. Whether deserved or not, Mallika got a reputation of being a cute nitwit who exposed much more cleavage than talent - but cleavage usually works for me.
Finally for today, another actress who is just on the scene who I know nothing about other than what I read on the Internet - she started off making films in the Tamil and Telugu industries before coming to Bollywood and having a big hit in an Aamir Khan produced film - Jaane Tu . . . Ya Jaane Na. I just like her waifish anime doll look - something you don't see a lot of in Bollywood.
Nothing much watched other than a Psycho film deja vu moment. Picked up the DVD with the 1937 and the 1952 versions of Prisoner of Zenda on it. The first one has the stronger cast - Ronald Coleman, Madeleine Carroll, David Niven, Douglas Fairbanks Jr., Mary Astor, C. Aubrey Smith and a forbidding Raymond Massey (this guy is so dark and creepy sometimes that it amazes me what an incredible Abraham Lincoln he was) - and while the second is no slouch with Stewart Granger, Deborah Kerr, Jane Greer and James Mason it doesn't feel quite on the same star power level.
But what is so weird about these films are they are really one film - only one is in color and has a taller leading man. It's the exact same film - the exact same script - the same everything. Talk about lazy and trying to cash in on a classic - because the first one is highly recommended if you haven't seen it - a true Hollywood classic adventure romance film that is dashing and heroic - that old fashioned stiff upper lip duty thing - a man has to do what a man has to do - and Coleman and Carroll send off real sparks. Coleman was a huge star back in the 1930's but seems largely forgotten these days - but I love his clipped British accent, his restrained acting style and a sense of real decency in films like Tale of Two Cities, Lost Horizon, Random Harvest, The Talk of the Town and If I Were King.
Here is a factoid I was unaware of till last night. I began reading some of the short stories of The Saint written by Leslie Charteris back in the early 1930's. So I looked him up on Wiki and found out his real name was Leslie Charles Bowyer-yin, born in Singapore to a Chinese father and English mother. He later moved to the US but get this:
"However, Charteris was excluded from permanent residency in the United States because of the Chinese Exclusion Act, a law which prohibited immigration for persons of "50% or greater" Oriental blood. As a result, Charteris was forced to continually renew his six-month temporary visitor's visa. Eventually, an act of Congress personally granted him and his daughter the right of permanent residence in the United States, with eligibility for naturalization which he later completed."
Not one of our proudest moments in history.
Here is the song for today. It is not exactly a classic and it's from a film that you probably want to keep your distance from - a 1985 Bollywood version of Tarzan - called in fact Tarzan! During this song Jane (actually Ruby) does everything in her bag of womanly tricks to let Tarzan know she is available to swing on his manly vine but he is oblivious to all her come-ons.
The pictorial line-up for today begins with the lolitaish Jiah Khan. She came to prominance as a discovery of director/producer Ram Gopal Varma, who does all those great crime films - kind of the Johnny To of India - but not quite as consistent. For many years Varma's muse was the wonderful Urmila and he starred her in many films - but at some pont they went their own ways and since then Varma has "discovered" a number of young starlets wanting to get into show business and he gladly showcases them, tries to be a Svengali character to them and then drops them and moves on to his next "discovery"- with all the gossip rags making it clear that the girls paid for their brief moment of fame with as much effort off stage as on. Jiah was one of those.
and just for the heck of it - Urmila who has gone on to do the finest acting of her career post-Varma.
An Urmila vs Jiah dance off.
Bollywood is legendary for having the children follow in the footsteps of their acting parents. It is almost expected of them - I think they already have a script ready for the not yet conceived children of Aishwarya and Abhishek Bachchan - and when their debut finally makes it to the screen the hype is totally nutty. One of these children of the Stars was Esha Deol - daughter of two legends - Hema Malini and Dharmendra. The expectations were gigantic and there was no way she could match them and most of her early films bombed. As time has gone by though I came to like her as her acting improved and she began looking better as the dream machine took over. Many actors in Bollywood are basically just thrown in to headlining films with zero acting experience or training due to family connections or looks - and they either sink or swim. She is still treading water.
Another child of a big star who is just about to make her bow is Sonakshi Sinha, the daughter of Shatrughan Sinha. Fortunately for her, she must take after her mother.
Her father:
As you no doubt know, India has a number of different film industries, the biggest and best known coming out of Mumbai formerly Bombay and so Bollywood. Down south there are other industries with their own actors, directors and language - and whenever an actor who has started down south comes to Bollywood to make their debut it is a big deal and the magazines are full of articles on whether they will make it - often with an underlying subtext that Bombay is where the big boys play. But many famous actresses took this path - Waheeda Rehman, Jaya Prada and Sridevi to name the ones I know. The latest is Asin, who was chosen by Amir Khan to star with him in Ghajini. It was a big success as his films tend to be and she is now on her way.
I watched a few more Euro Spy films yesterday, both from 1965. Agent 077 of the CIA. There were a series of three of these films starring Ken Clark, who interestingly is an American who appeared in Hollywood films like South Pacific and Attack of the Giant Leeches, but when he could not make it big he moved to Europe where he became a star of action films in the 1960's. This migration to Europe happened with a number of American actors - either former stars past their prime or young actors unable to hit it big in the USA. The most famous was of course Clint Eastwood who became such a big name after his Spaghetti Westerns that he was able to return to Hollywood and become what he is today.
Most of them though are like Clark who you never hear of again really if you are from here. These two films would be really terrific except for two big drawbacks - the dialogue is insufferable and Clark's character is constantly hitting on women in this really glib, I am too cool, manner that it is really off putting. That may have played well back in the 60's but now it seems so tiresome. The plots are ok - one of them a clear ripoff of Thunderball - but what makes them enjoyable is the action which for 1960 white man stuff is quite good and the location shooting is terrific as 077 whizzes around from Paris to Madrid to Athens to Istanbul - all cities I love. There is a great rooftop chase that takes place in Paris with the Eiffel Tower in the background. And there is of course lots of the prerequisite eye-candy on hand in the form of lovely European actresses.
In From the Orient with a Fury a.k.a. Fury on the Bosphorus, Malloy (077) has to track down a scientist who has invented a ray gun that makes everything disappear. Girls pop up all along the way and in the end the cavalry in the form of the co-operative Turkish police save the day. In Mission Bloody Mary, a nuclear bomb is stolen and is being sold to the Chinese. Again many girls pop up along the way! Fun enough that I ordered the third in the series, Mission Lady Chaplin.
I am not sure if Deadlier than the Male (1966) would count as Euro Spy though it came out of England - written by Jimmy Sangster of Hammer fame - as it clearly has a Hollywood sheen to it and excellent production values. It is tough getting old - you forget things - like that I had already seen this film - which I realized as soon as Elke Sommer and Sylva Koscina come out of the ocean in bikinis and shoot some fellow with a spear gun. They are assassins - part of a female union of assassins - but all reporting of course to a male, who remains in the shadows for much of the film. Richard Johnson who hits just the right notes in this, investigates. Colorful and fun.
Since I know of at least one person from Istanbul who reads this Blog, here are a few captures of Istanbul. In one you may notice the two posters in the background - always curious I Googled them - Safiye Filiz was a Turkish actress and Zennube seems to have either been a 1965 Turkish film or a song.
And just because this is my Blog - here are two photos I took in Istanbul some ten years ago. It is an amazing city to wander around in. Highly recommended as a place you get to some day.
Tragically, India had its disco era as well - I guess there was no escape from this - but some of the music and movies that disco influenced are a lot of fun. The most famous is Disco Dancer - a total hoot if ever there was one. Not to be missed by man, plant or animal. Here is the disco anthem that I dance to before going to sleep at night - I am a Disco Dancer.
And here are a few more Bollywood actresses who are hitting the silver screen these days.
Bipasha Basu almost singlehandedly brought steamy sex back to Bollywood a few years ago. During the 1990's Bollywood had gone very family oriented, but Bipasha was able to turn that on its head - sometimes playing the heroine and sometimes the villain. Many have followed in her lustful footsteps since.
Mugdha Godse is very new to the scene but made a big splash in last year's film, Fashion. A film which Beth Loves Bollywood has these kind words to say about "Fashion is among the worst films I have ever seen, any language, any culture, any decade, whatever. It's dreadful". Sadly, I already own it and I can't decide if that review makes me want to see it less or see it more!
Preity Zinta is just a doll - giant dimples you could fall into and a sparkling personality that shows up on screen. She also was one of the few gutsy actors who stood up and spoke out against the crime gangs who were trying to infiltrate the industry. I first crossed paths with her in Dil Se and I was mystified that Shahrukh turns her down to date a terrorist - but I guess eveyone has different taste.
Here is a cute video of her from the film Soldier, in which she falls unknowingly for an assassin. The dating scene is getting very difficult these days.
Another new face on the Bollywood scene is Neetu Chandra who has gotten the right wingers in India raging against her for doing a few risque photo shoots - one intertwined with another woman. But I would not say anything to her face as she has represented India in the International Taekwondo Championship. I say get her over to Hong Kong where she will be appreciated.
On to a few YouTube videos I tripped on yesterday. I have always had a weakness for the girl groups of the 1950's and 1960's - The Chiffons, The Ronettes, The Shirelles, The Crystals, The Shangri-las - lovely harmonic vocals about broken hearts and newfound love. But now I realize that there were Japanese girl groups as well and I am totally torn between joining the fan club for the Triangles or the fan club for the Candies. I feel all a dither!
So yesterday I go into a local barbershop for a well-needed haircut and all three of the Russian barbers are glued to the TV set watching Ong Bak 2. In Thai with English subs. Cool. I am impressed - Thai film and Tony Jaa are actually reaching an audience here. Then we start talking about the film and one of them goes "those Chinese sure can fight". Chinese, I ask? "Ya, that's Chinese they are speaking and that's Jackie Chan". I go back to getting my hair cut.
In the 1960's western rock music influences began invading Bollywood film music and some of it is actually pretty fun in a retro way. Here are two such songs - one could almost have come from a group like Herman Hermits and the other from the King.
I got a request from the peanut gallery for some pictures of Akshay Kumar. Akshay is Bollywood's number one action star and has been around for nearly two decades. A lot of Bollywood males pretend to be action stars full of swagger and roundhouse cuts that miss by a mile, but Akshay is the real deal - very athletic and often doing his own stunts.
And now back to the Babes of Bollywood.
Kangana Renaut is a fairly recent addition to Bollywood - hitting it big quickly with a few revealing (by BW standards that is) performances.
Deepika Padukone hit it big in her Hindi debut Om Shanti Om with Shahrukh Khan. Beginning your career playing opposite Shahrukh is like hitting the lottery. Born in Copenhagen, a former model and very good badminton player. She is a beauty.
Malaika Arora is famous primarily for one item number in Dil Se. An item number being a big dance number by a woman who is brought into the film specifically and only for that single dance. Dil Se was one of my first BW films and I was unaware of all of their film concepts and recall being totally confused by this song because it transitions from a scene at a railway station with Shahrukh flirting unsuccessfully with a girl right into the top of the train number. And I was trying to figure out if it was the same girl he had been flirting with and how the hell they they landed on top of a moving train!
and in case you are the only person on earth not to have seen this video, here it is.
And here are two photos of Amrita Rao, one of the rare cleavage impaired cuties of late. Her best film was also with Shahrukh Khan - though not as a love interest - in Main Hoon Na - a very fun film.
and here is a silly video from MHN. College just the way I remember it.
Lately, I have been dipping my toes into the murky pool of Euro spy/heist films from the 1960's and 1970's. Enjoyable stuff on one level, but often mediocre on another level as so many of them were basically low budget imitations of what was coming out in the USA and the UK. I came across these two heist films the other day and enjoyed them probably more than I should have. They are more about pop style than anything else with silly plots and sillier characters, but there was a lot of that going on in the 60's. The films are Seven Golden Men (1965) and Seven Golden Men Strike Again (1967). These Italian productions star Phillippe Leroy as a dapper criminal mastermind and Rossana Podesta as his sultry minx of a girlfriend and partner in crime. In the first film they (and their gang of six men) steal a mountain of gold from Credit Suisse in Geneva and in the second film they kidnap a Latin American Communist dictator and steal a boat full of gold. Light as a molecule with a catchy lounge music soundtrack and a swath of mod fashions adorned by the marvelous Rossana who changes outfits and hairstyle in about every scene.
Here is a sampling of the soundtrack of the first film:
and the trailer for the second film:
I admit to developing a bit of a crush on Rossana. And why not?
I am going into cruise control for a few days and primarily just putting up some pictures. When I went for Indian buffet last week I did my usual stop for the latest Bollywood gossip rags. These magazines are total rubbish for the most part and in general consist of stars ratting each other out or denying that they are having sex with their co-stars. I get them for that reason of course because I need to know who Kareena Kapoor is sleeping with (Saif Ali Khan if you need to know) but mainly for the pictures of the stars. The female stars. Now I could post some of the pictures of the men like Sanjay Dutt . . .
but I admit to prefering pretty pictures of pretty women and I still stand by my assertion that India has the best looking actresses in the world as of now. So over the next few days I am going to be very lazy and post some photos gathered from these magazines. But before I do that, a few other items of note. In the comment section of the Cinema Epoch post, Brian Hu was kind enough to mention an article he wrote on these DVD's two years back and knowing you probably don't read the comments as religiously as I do, I thought I would give the link here. It's an excellent article and gives a good map on which ones to buy.
By the way you may or may not note that much of the music that I had on this Blog has vanished for reasons I went into earlier - but through an amazing coincidence it has all shown up on another Blog run by who knows. So if you ever want to listen to some of that music, you can still find it here. And as musical company on this read, here are two fun songs from Bollywood.
I read over on Glenn's A Pessimist is Never Disappointed Blog that The Twins are reuniting for a concert in April. There is a God. We can only pray that Twins Effect 3 is in the works. Or maybe Just One Look . . . Again. The scary thing is that Glenn mentions that they are approaching 30 years old! How did that happen. One day you are a summer breeze, ten years later you may as well have a death curse. But wait a second. If they are almost 30, how old must I be? Let's not think about that. The Twins will be forever young. And forever cute. I figure if this is happening, world peace is not far behind and who knows maybe the Republicans will vote for health care reform! Nah. Let's not get crazy. Any way I for one am happy that Gillian is on her way back - what happened to her was a bad rap - I mean who hasn't video taped themselves having sex with Edison. Right? Right?
And then over on Asian Fanatics Forum, someone posted that Gigi Lai is two months pregnant and after having trouble conceiving for a while one thing she did was change her name to "Li Jia Er" which apparently phonetically comes close to meaning "my ovaries are open for business". A few other folks seem to think this story may not be true but most people were shocked that she changed her name. But this is what cracked me up. Her husband is Ma.
"Ma reportedly decided to buy another luxury residence for Lai as a gift after Lai was found to be pregnant and will bring her to pick out a place once the their child's condition is stable. Ma had previously bought his wife a villa, a yacht and a luxury car worth a total of about HK$17.2 million (S$3.1 million), spent HK$20 million (S$3.6 million) to expand his brother-in-law Lai Ying's beauty salon business."
What the hell. He clearly doesn't want a crying baby anywhere near him! Anyway, it is good to know that Gigi married well. Hong Kong actresses have their own 401K plans - marrying rich. Btw, I am changing my name to "Win Lottery".
Back a post or two I mentioned in the comments section that Dev Anand became very un-cool in the 1970's. One reason for this is he began an awful habit of wearing terrible head gear like this from Hare Rama Hare Krishna. Take a toke man. Your hat will look like a garden.
I made it to my first film of the year in a theater - $8.50 matinee showing! Sherlock Holmes. Ya, it's a bit late to talk about this film. Practically the only person in there. I enjoyed the film certainly even if the whole homosexual subtext was a bit much (wink wink). I mean, what is the big deal. Of course they were gay. Holmes and Watson were products of the British school system. Cricket and showers. But though I was caught up in the very neat reproduction of late 1800's London, I still had a nagging annoyance whispering inside my head - why is it that every film just has to get louder and louder and faster and faster to please audience goers. Frigging video games are killing thoughtful film. This wasn't at all a smart film and Holmes was all about being smart in real life terms. A few weeks ago I sat down to watch some of the old Sherlock Holmes TV shows from 1954 starring Ronald Howard (son of Leslie) and there is actually more smarts in a 30-minute episode then in all of this film - but not quite as many explosions. Yet I liked the film and hope for a sequel, so what can I say? Best Sherlock Holmes film in my opinion - Murder By Decree. There are actually a bunch of Russian Sherlock Holmes films made in the late 1970's/early 1980's that I have been tempted to buy but have not been able to pull the trigger.
So the pretty pictures. Let's start off with Kareena Kapoor, grandaughter of the great Raj Kapoor. She used to be all curvy and seductive but for whatever reason has gone on the Cecilia Cheung diet.
Next we have Kajol, the actress who really got me into Bollywood films. She married, retired, had kids and has come back but without quite the splash I was expecting. That final picture is of her and her hubby - an actor. His watch must weigh as much as Kareena now.
One trend in Bollywood over the past few years is actresses who are willing to flaunt it and actresses who have the bodies to do so. Celina Jaitley and Sameera Reddy as proof in the pudding.
and finally we end with a touch of class as I like to on this oh so classy Blog! Aishwarya.
Cinema Epoch has released nearly 20 pre-1949 Mainland Chinese films onto DVD over the past few years. Not being particularly knowledgeable about this period in film, I can’t really access whether most of these films are considered classics or not – though even I have heard of a few of these such as Song at Midnight, Spring in a Small Town, The Spring River Flows East and Street Angel. A list of their available films can be found here. A number of the DVD releases contain two films which isn’t a bad deal at all. From the two films I have watched so far, it seems evident that the print sources were not cleaned up and so there are plenty of scratches, occasional poor contrast and missing frames as one might expect from old films like this. It does appear that a few of the DVDs have essays within, but that wasn’t the case with the two I looked at which is a shame because knowing so little about the films, the directors, the actors and the industry it would have been nice having some context given. It especially would have been great if they had translated the credits so I could name the actors, but no such luck. Still it is obviously a terrific opportunity to see many films that have never been available and to get a small peek into the dream machine that was once Shanghai. If anyone has seen and enjoyed some of the other films on the label, feel free to recommend them to me.
Both films that I looked at starred the legendary Zhou Xuan, who was born in 1918 and died at the age of 39 in 1957 in Shanghai. Her life was rather a sad one full of broken relationships, broken promises and mental breakdowns. But she is still cherished today though not so much for her acting as for her singing and is nicknamed “The Golden Throat”. Though she was not the first actress/singer to appear in Chinese film, Xuan is credited by many for popularizing Mandarin pop music in films. Her acting ability seems in dispute – Stephen Teo refers to her as a “rather poor actress” but I thought she had great presence in a film I saw at the HKIFF two years ago, Secrets of the Forbidden City (1948), which was one of her final films and I think she is charming in Street Angel. I admit though that in Dream of the Red Chamber, her character nearly disappears in a state of ennui. The best write-up I found on her was on the Chinese Mirror site.
Here are two quickie reviews on these last two films that have been released by Cinema Epoch.
Dream of the Red Chamber a.k.a. Dream of the Red Mansion Director: Bu Wancang 1944
Previously, I had already seen two film versions of the classic 18th century Chinese novel by Cao Xueqin about the lives and eventual downfall of a privileged Beijing family. It is a book that is near and dear to the Chinese soul and even has a term for the study of it, Redology. There have been many other film versions of the novel as well as TV series and Chinese Operas about the subject. From what I have read about the book, it contains numerous plot lines about a large number of family members, but the three film versions I have seen – this one and the two from the Shaw Brothers (1961, 1977) – focus primarily on the tragic romantic triangle between Jia Baoyu, the young heir of the family, and two of his female cousins – Lin Daiyu and Xue Baochai. These three films for the most part ignore the rest of the family except as to how they impact this trio.
The story is I am sure familiar to most of you in one form or another so I will be very brief. Baoyu is a very immature young man who very much prefers the company of the women and female servants in his family (“woman is made of water, man is made of mud”). A cousin, Daiyu, comes to stay with the family after her mother dies and she and Baoyu are attracted to one another though in a teasing flirtatious manner. Later the other cousin Baochai shows up as well and a mild pouty competition breaks out between the two women for Baoyu’s attention, but he clearly has been won over by Daiyu. But Baochai’s mother connives to set up a marriage between her daughter and Baoyu and the inevitable tragedy ensues for one and all.
This version unlike the two Shaw films is a straight on drama – not a Huangmei Opera as were those two films (though Zhou Xuan who portrays Daiyu does sing two snippets of songs) and thus it has more time to explore a little around the periphery of the story – in particular showing and strongly hinting at Baoyu’s sexual relations with his female servants and the trouble this causes. Interestingly though, as in the Huangmei versions Baoyu is played by a female. The world shown in the film is completely feminine – other than Baoyu, men rarely intrude and their presence is clearly not wanted. So in that respect it is a rather fascinating glimpse into what goes on behind the private walls, but overall unfortunately the film is much too slowly paced and generates little passion at all. The actors all look too old for this adolescent love story and Baoyu is such a spoiled petulant brat that it is hard to take his love seriously – or that of the women for him. He tragically is unable to grow up until it is too late leading to an ending which is actually the strongest part of the film. Zhou Xuan appears to basically sleepwalk through her role and her fate brings out little emotion from the viewer. I’d recommend either of the Shaw versions over this one. One other version that I would love to see is the 1952 Modern Red Chamber Dream directed by Yue Feng and starring Li Lihua as Daiyu , Ouyang Shafei as Baochai and Yan Jun as Baoyu and is according to Teo a modern day Marxist interpretation of the classic story.
As you may have noted, the film was made in 1944, well after Shanghai was occupied by the Japanese in 1937. Many actors and directors fled Shanghai for other parts of China/Hong Kong or simply refused to work for the Japanese who attempted to continue the film industry. The Japanese set up a coalition of film companies that was called Huaying and the company produced over 100 films during the war years. After the war ended there were many charges of collaboration thrown at many actors and directors who had continued to work under the Japanese, but many of them such as Zhou Xuan, Li Lihua, Ouyang Shafei, Nancy Chan and Bai Guang seemed to have escaped unscathed for the most part – but often wisely moved to Hong Kong.
In the HKIFF book, “Cinema of Two Cities: Hong Kong – Shanghai” there is a fascinating article on the Shanghai film industry during this period. Though the Japanese (with one intriguing exception) tried to force the film industry to focus on films with a pro-Japanese view, for the most part the films made were basic genre entertainment films. One Japanese critic disdainfully wrote “70-80% of the films were about triangular love and family affairs” – Red Chamber fitting this description fairly well. The director Bu Wancang did not fare quite as well. He had been a very popular director for years. One of his hits was Mulan Joins the Army in 1939 starring Nancy Chan. It was a patriotic film about repelling foreign invaders but it was made in the foreign concessions of Shanghai – films that were termed “Orphan Island” films. But once the Japanese took over those areas in 1941, Bu made two propaganda films for the Japanese and after the war his career never got back on track because of the dark cloud he was under. Interestingly, the Japanese attempted to do the same thing once they occupied Hong Kong but everyone refused to co-operate and no films were made.
Street Angel Director: Yuan Muzhi 1937
Street Angel was a real hook to the cranium from right field as I wasn’t prepared for what an amazing film this is. Not so much for the story which likely falls very neatly into the leftist social realism films of the period, but for the marvelously inventive technique and cinematic eye of the director Yuan Muzhi. This is particularly impressive in that he was only 28 years old at the time and that Street Angel was only his second film – the first by the way sounding more than a little compelling – a dark urban musical called Cityscape (1935). Yuan came from a theatrical background as an actor and this clearly influences his use of the actors in this film. Cinematic influences pile up as well – primarily from the silent era – from the Russian directors to the German expressionists to the sly comedy of Chaplin are all mashed together in this visually delicious potluck. It almost seems as if Yuan is making a silent film with sound – many scenes play out in wordless pantomime and the strongest moments are those of dramatic gestures or stark expressions caught in the amber of the lens. He neatly uses sliding frames sometimes to transition from one scene to another or in one wonderful instance the camera zooms up the opening of a trombone to come out in another location. After the Japanese invaded, Yuan left for Yanan where he joined the Communist Party and after the Civil War, he became quite a big honcho in the film bureaucracy in China. I am not sure if he directed any other films before he died in 1978.
The film begins in a chaotic montage of neon signs, street scenes and nightclub carousing until it settles first on a tall grandiose building only to slowly pan down to the slums of Shanghai where a festive wedding parade is making its way through a narrow crowded street with a marching band leading the way. One of the trumpet players is Chen (Zhao Dan) who is having trouble with the water in his instrument and having his friend Wang (Wei Heling) accidentally stepping on his feet. The shots careen around some more in a montage of onlookers sticking their faces out of windows and doors until the camera settles on a young woman waving to Chen. This is Xiao Hong (Zhou Xuan) who soon has to quickly rejoin her accompanist Wen inside a tea house where she is a singsong girl looking for customer requests. She is clearly not thrilled to be doing this or being with Wen as she plays constantly with her hair and seems totally uninterested in her song. Nevertheless, the songs became giant hits and Zhou Xuan was on her way to being a legend. The lyrics of the songs are shown on screen and were apparently done karaoke style back then so that the audience could sing along and we can happily watch the bouncing ball!
Whether it is not clear from the subtitles on the DVD or whether scenes are missing I can’t say, but from reading other sources it seems that Xiao Hong and her older sister Xiao Yun (Zhao Huishen) have escaped from the Japanese in Manchuria and have settled in Shanghai – but in a circumstance where they are clearly very subservient to a married couple who put them up. This couple makes Hong sing and makes Yun do even worse – she is a street walker always in the dark and on guard from police arrest. How this all came to be I am not sure. Yun’s profession has made her extremely bitter and something of a pariah to her neighbors – but Hong still loves her deeply and Yun is very protective of her little sister.
Gu, a gangster, shows an interest in Hong and her “guardians” set out to sell her to him. Chen though takes her away to another part of town along with his friend Wang and they try and plan their future. Yun later joins them as well and Wang begins to fall for her, but Gu and Wen track them down and tragedy occurs in a strangely abrupt and somewhat inconclusive ending. The final shot is another pan of the statuesque building where the film began as if to say the little lives down below on the street just don't matter.
Wow, some good news for me. Yesterday I received $40 for Jury Duty! That’s my first paycheck in four years! How many DVDs will that buy I wonder?
And I just have to throw in how pleasant it was seeing Obama take the Republicans to school the other day and give them a spanking that should make them sore for weeks. What a bunch of pasty robots in that room with the personality of a lead pipe. I love the way they whined about all the great plans they had to solve everything that no one was paying attention to. Obama had to be polite of course to some degree but I kept hoping he would say – well you guys were in power for 8 years – where were those great plans then? As Ralph Kramden would go "Hummmana Hummmana Hummmana".
I will get to the paper panties later. First a quick announcement. I think I will have to take down some of the songs I have put up. I always figured that as long as they were not downloadable, no one would really care and maybe no one will. Or more likely no one will notice. But I read on another Blog (with a different Blog hoster) that several sites that did similar things were shut down without even giving the Blogger a chance to remedy the situation. Everything gone. I don’t think I have to worry about the older music but I think this weekend I will delete the music from Milkyway and the music from the Blue Hearts and Linda Linda Linda. So if you want to listen to that stuff one last time, do it soon.
Hey, how come no one told me that Patrick Galloway had a Blog going? He wrote a couple books on Asian cinema that I have read – Asia Shock and Stray Dogs and Lone Wolves – and quite enjoyed. He seems to update it regularly as well and not just use it as a marketing tool. I’ll add it to my Blog Links. Am also going to add, The Chinese Mirror, which I guess has been around for quite a while but I just never noticed it. There is a ton on early Chinese cinema and I think it is really exciting seeing Blogs like this one and Durian Dave’s that focus on the old films and old actors. A few years ago there was nothing around about this stuff. I hope there is much more in the future. If there is anything else out there I should add let me know – I just don’t focus sometimes.
Talking about music that I probably should not put up, as soon as I saw this still from a 1956 film titled Sunrise I thought of In the Mood for Love for some reason and thought about the music that plays as Maggie walks towards the room where they are playing mahjong and smoke is swirling in the air.
Today I went to Lexington and 28th street where there is a block of Indian stores and restaurants. Had Indian buffet and afterwards could barely walk across the street to the DVD store where I actually picked up some new Bollywood movies. I haven’t watched much new from India for the past year or two – focusing more on older films from the 60’s and 70’s. And I haven’t blogged at all about those recently – mainly because the ones I have chosen primarily by the cover have been dull affairs and not worth the effort. Like Baazi from 1968. Dharmendra plays a cop righting wrongs, the damsel in distress is Waheeda Rehman and Helen twinkles her toes – it sounded great but is an enormous bore and just plain stupid. The only interesting factor – and a doubtful one really – was that it was my first brush with the legendary comic Johny Walker who appeared in about 100,000 films during his very long career. He was discovered while driving a bus and chatting humorously with the customers. A producer thought he was funny, introduced him to the director Guru Dutt who had Walker test as a drunk – he did it so well that Dutt nicknamed him Johny Walker. I mean this guy is famous like Chaplin is famous over here, but if this was an example of his comedy I don’t get it. Clearly, comedy travels less well than any other film genre but this made me wonder if I was still on planet earth.
But buying these DVDs today got me thinking about all the lists I have come across of late – greatest movies and so forth. I know I could never list my top 100 films but if I tried the one Indian film that immediately popped into my head was Guide from 1965. Simply an amazingly thought provoking film with some stunning musical sequences. It too stars Waheeda. Her snake dance is lovely. I wish this clip was better quality.
Here by the way is a picture of snake charmers that used to come into our back yard in either India or Pakistan way back when to entertain the kids.
On the other hand my guess is that the film, Khawb-e-Hasti from 1934 would probably not make my Top 100 but I wanted to put the picture up anyway.
Last week I made another plunge into the Brooklyn Library’s video films and came out with these. Some comments.
“Why does your husband call you Lambchop?" "Because sometimes I wear paper panties." I am not sure I even get that but it is one of a barrage of leering, smirking jokes in one of the most peculiar films I have come across in a good while. On its surface one might expect that this 1964 Billy Wilder film would be your conventional romantic comedy with perhaps a little more buzz than you would get from say a spunky Doris Day “I really just want a husband” film that people were used to back then. Most of these early 60’s romantic comedies were as dangerous and taboo as a day game at Wrigley Field – in the end all the conventions were met head on and marriage was in the wings waiting. But Kiss Me, Stupid starring Kim Novak, Dean Martin and Ray Walston is a salacious pizza in the face of everything tasteful and expected. Wilder was taking a crazy swing at Hollywood’s morality code with this insidious and subversive look at marriage and sexuality. Back in 1964 large studios just didn’t take chances like this, but either Wilder’s reputation got it through or someone forgot to read the script. I can see almost see Takashi Miike doing a remake of this but with a lot more bodily secretion. But Wilder misjudged his market badly – first the Catholic Decency League did one of their massive protests against the film basically saying anyone who saw it would end up in Hell and then the critics savaged it like a bloated piñata and finally no one showed up to see it. But seeing it today, it is a gas – a really weird totally amoral one because you can’t help watching it through the time prism of 1964 and thinking what the hell were they thinking.
Dean Martin plays a Vegas crooner and actor who likes the dames a lot but a conveyor belt of cocktails even more – and the character’s name is Dean and he is part of the Rat Pack – so basically Martin is playing a rancid parody of himself and doesn’t seem at all embarrassed by it. He has to drive to Hollywood for an appearance on a TV show. He makes the mistake of stopping off in a small town called Climax (get it) where two frustrated song writers (Ray Walston and Cliff Osmond) sabotage his car so that they can get a chance to sing their songs to Dean. But they know Dean likes women and Walston worries that he will go for his very pretty wife (Felicia Farr – who was married to Jack Lemmon, who Wilder really wanted to play Walston’s part but he was busy). Walston picks a fight with his wife – on their wedding anniversary – so that she will go stay at her mothers and in her place he brings in a waitress/part time hooker from a nearby dive – this being Kim Novak who will do anything you want for the whole night for $25. $25. Talk about inflation. So he tries to pawn off his made-up-wife on Martin to have sex with in a really really creepy way – meanwhile his wife comes back and thinks he is fooling around and so sets out to have her own fun. And she does. With Dean. And Walston ends up in bed with Novak. And everyone is better off for it. No nodding to the Hollywood code back then that you have to be punished in some way for infidelity. And smutty innuendoes throughout. I think my mouth was agape much of the film. Interestingly, after Lemmon turned down the role Wilder brought in Peter Sellers to play it and he did until he had a heart attack. Some say it was just an excuse to get off the set because he was going crazy with the script.
Elizabeth Taylor sure was a knockout back in 1952 when Love is Better than Ever was released. I know her basically from her 60’s films – Cleopatra, Taming of the Shrew, Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf – when she was on her forth or fifth husband, had become more Rubenesque in her form and had become something of a celebrity caricature – but back in 1952 she was exquisite. Just perfect. This film was directed by Stanley Donen in between Royal Wedding and Singin' in the Rain, but this one doesn’t approach either of those classics on any level. It is kind of a frivolous romance about a tough New York agent who is only committed to good times finding himself falling in love with an innocent Connecticut dance teacher of little urchins. It plays out pretty much as one expects – older man gets young hottie. Off the set some not so nice things were happening to the leading man, Larry Parks. He had been called up in front of the House Un-American Activities Committee and forced to admit that he had once been part of a communist cell. And he gave names. He was ratted out in turn by none other than Lloyd Bridges. Bridges of course went on to Sea Hunt fame and to spawn Jeff and Beau – Parks basically never worked again except for a little bit in television.
I had to do it one of these days. Not because I really wanted to but because these films are a part of film history and in their time they were enormously popular. I am speaking of course about the teaming up of Jeanette MacDonald and Nelson Eddy in seven musicals during the 1930’s and early 1940’s. This style of musical – her rich operatic soprano and Eddy’s rich formal baritone – has been parodied hundreds of time – in particular the film (Rose-Marie) in which Eddy plays a Canadian Mountie and they sing to each other in the wilderness. Before this, MacDonald had appeared in two Lubitsch musicals – Love Parade and The Merry Widow – that were huge hits as well. So I co-incidentally picked their first film – Naughty Marietta (1935) – in which Jeanette plays a French princess before the guillotine started doing away with aristocratic heads and she is so loved by the peasants that they cheer her and join her in song. But her evil uncle wants to marry her off to some old obese Spanish lord and so she skips off in disguise as a commoner to New Orleans – which the French hadn’t sold yet. There she meets a rugged mercenary and sparks fly, songs are sung and of course eventually love comes. In the meantime though, Louis the XIV has sent his army after her because he too wants a little bit of fun with her. Actually this wasn’t so bad after all – no true Gitmo material here – rather corny fun. Don’t sue me if you play this and it damages your eardrums! Sweet Mystery of Life.
A few posts back I mentioned the magazine article listing what they thought were the Top 100 Spy films and I was able to cross one off the list that I had never seen – The Mask of Dimitrios starring Peter Lorre and Sydney Greenstreet. Both of these actors almost always played character roles – Lorre the small sweating “don’t turn your back on him” dangerous man while Greenstreet was the larger than life snake charmer. Both were together most famously in the 1941 Maltese Falcon trying their best to stab Bogart in the back. Here though they are in the lead roles. A body washes up on the shores of the Bosphorus and is identified by the police as Dimitrios – a swindler, a blackmailer, a killer, a smuggler and everything bad. Lorre is a Dutch writer of detective novels and he gets it into his head to track down the details of Dimitrios‘s life which takes him all over eastern Europe and finally to Paris. He meets the mysterious Greenstreet along the way who also wants to find out how Dimitrios died. Shadows and odd camera angles abound in this nifty noir that seems part Maltese Falcon and part The Third Man. Initially, I had assumed that it was very influenced by the style and story of TheThird Man until I noted the date it was made – 1944 – and realized that it came out five years prior to that film.
And just a quick mention of three other musicals I watched. Flirtation Walk has the two big co-stars of many of those Busby Berkely films – 42nd Street, Footlight Parade, Gold Diggers of 1933 - Dick Powell and the big sweet eyed Ruby Keeler – and I was expecting a lot of fun musical bits. But this film is a bust with some fairly lame musical numbers and a lamer dramatic narrative. By the way, if there are any noir hounds reading this – watch Dick Powell in Murder, My Sweet (1944) – one of the best ever and his Marlowe is one of the best as well. But if Flirtation Walk was a disappointment that was nothing compared to Yolanda and the Thief (1945) starring Fred Astaire and directed by Vincent Minnelli. When you talk about the history of Hollywood musicals, these two names are at the top of the list – so how could this film be such a celluloid abomination. Well first you create an absurd story about a rich young woman just out of the convent believing that a conman (Fred) was her guardian angel – then you basically don’t let Astaire dance much – and when you do they are in these gaudy god awful pretentious big numbers that put me to sleep. And of course once again the old guy gets the young hottie. Ain't life wonderful. Ay, just awful. I still love Astaire though and always will. The trailer for a film that is “the most spectacular ever conceived”!
Thankfully I left what turned out to be the best of these three musicals for last – I Love Melvin – just a simple New York City tale with lots of location shooting (especially Central Park) that starred two of the three legs from Singin’ in the Rain – Donald O’Connor and Debbie Reynolds. There is nothing fancy here – just a plain old love story that is mild and sweet – but Reynolds is adorably cute and O’Connor sure can dance. He never really made it to leading man status because of his average looks but few people could dance (or skate) better in Hollywood in the 50’s. This came out right after Singin’ in 1953. One early number in which Debbie – who plays a dancer on Broadway – is a football being tossed, carried and kicked around is pretty amazing. It appears that the film is available from the Warner Archives. Here is a much too long trailer.
Finally, just a picture my father took somewhere in India back in the late 1950’s. Note the film poster way in the back.
Probably not, but I sure want to see it and find out for myself! It's been a rainy day here and so I have been bored. So I went wandering on the Internet - looking for music by Helen Li Mei on CD with no success - and that accidentally led me to three Youtube videos of this Shaw Brothers Malaysian film from 1953. As most of you probably know, the Shaw Brothers had a film operation going in Singapore/Malaysia before they did in Hong Kong. They owned a large chain of theaters and produced films for the local Malays and imported Chinese films for the Chinese population. This whole world of Shaw films is extremely unknown to most of us, but apparently some of them must be playing on Malaysian television or put out on VCD there because there are various clips on YouTube of some of them.
Initially, most of the directors were of Indian descent. One of the most important ones was B.N. Rao who began working for the Shaws in 1953 (the film company was called Malay Film Productions) and made Hujan Panas in that same year. Rao was also the first director to make a horror Pontianak film. What also makes this film interesting is the song writer, choreographer and performer, P. Ramlee. Ramlee wrote hundreds of songs for the screen but he also became the first successful Malay director, beginning in 1955 until his early death in 1973 at the age of 44.
Here are three musical videos I found of the film - the first is a wonderful attempt at a girl's high school Busby Berkely stage number, then a lovely nightclub performance from one of Malaysia's legendary singers Siput Sarawak and then finally Ramlee himself doing a funny little song that I can't get out of my head.
All this info is from the excellent book, Singapore Cinema by Raphael Millet.
For the past few months I have been in a total retro mood - old movies, old music, old mystery novels, old pictures. I think I know why I have sunk into this deep pool of nostalgia to explore the past but I won't get into that. Just a sense of time passing too quickly. Steve was nice enough to send me the link to this Blog of historic photos and I have enjoyed looking at them. And it made me think of some photos my grandfather took back in 1962 on a trip to Las Vegas. Kind of interesting to see just how much it has changed since then. I just wish we had the same cars now though! I never was very close to my grandfather - partly because my family lived overseas for most of my first 17 years but also because he was a tough old bird who didn't have a lot of kind words for anyone. But he was a fanatic Boston Red Sox fan and I recall during home leaves listening to the games on the radio with him on hot summer days on the porch looking out on the backyard and sipping lemonade. My grandmother though was an angel. Not a cross word crossed her lips in her 89 years. For no particular reason, here are the photos I found of his trip to Vegas. I wish I had known them better.
I was cleaning up my kitchen cabinets the other day and came across a PR package that Cathay had been shopping around the film markets a few years ago. At that time they still had some mild hopes that they could get the same buzz for their films that the Shaw Brothers were getting for theirs. Not a chance of course. No foreign distributors were interested in old Hong Kong dramas, musicals and comedies which is what 90% of Cathay's catalogue of films are. Not too long after that film market, they ceased even releasing any more films to DVD. I guess there wasn't even much of a market among the Chinese for these old films.
From 1956 till they stopped production in the early 1970's, Cathay produced over 250 films. Initially, Cathay claimed that they would release 150 of these onto DVD, but in the end only around 45 films made it to that medium. To people who love film and in particular love Hong Kong film it was a real shame because in many ways Cathay was the crown jewel of Hong Kong film studios for about a decade until their main competitor the Shaw Brothers (both primarily Mandarin language studios) overtook them with their martial arts films. Cathay wasn't able to adjust to the audience's changing taste and so slowly became irrelevant. But for a few years they had some of the best directors, best composers and best scriptwriters in the business - and in my opinion an astonishing array of charismatic and talented actresses that the Shaw Brothers never equalled. From today's perspective, the Cathay films may feel very old-fashioned and at times a bit hokey, but they still have a sentimental heartfelt elegance, charm and verve about them that I really take to.
Inside this PR package were 11 by 8 photos of ten films. Here they are along with song and video.
For reasons that absolutely mystify me, when I embed individual links for the song, it always defaults to the final song on the post. So every link plays the exact same song. That makes no sense to me but I can't fix it. So I have grouped all the songs together at the bottom of the page.
Mambo Girl (1957) - this is the film that made Grace Chang a star. It is probably the best musical to come out of Hong Kong and also includes a nightclub performance from Mona Fong. It co-stars Peter Chen who seemingly made a habit of showing up in nearly every musical of Cathay's and later the Shaw Brothers - and as the young sister there is Kitty Ting Hao, who later had a rather tragic life. It is a marvelous film that made me understand why Grace Chang was a legend and so beloved.
Here is the famous opening sequence from Mambo Girl that introduced Grace to the world.
Her Tender Heart (1959) - another Cathay classic melodrama about family relationships starring Lucilla You Min. She won a Best Actress Award for this film.Wang Lai (also pictured) was to continue in films until 1992.
I don't think Lucilla was considered a singer, but here she is. This is contained in the Pathe 100 set of CDs.
Song at the bottom of the page.
Escort Over Tiger Hills (1969) - Cathay made an attempt to jump on the martial arts bandwagon that the Shaw Brothers had mastered but generally with little success as they simply didn't have the action choreographers or physical actors who could do it. This is suppose to be the best of their films in this genre (I have not seen it) and starred Roy Chiao who had been in numerous Cathay dramas and comedies since the late 1950's. After leaving Cathay, he appeared in some of his most famous films - The Arch and three films with King Hu, A Touch of Zen, The Fate of Lee Khan and The Valiant Ones. His final film was in 1999.
Cinderella and Her Little Angels (1959) - a very congenial romantic comedy starring Peter Chen and the legendary Linda Lin Dai. Lin Dai had become a star in her debut in 1953, Singing Under the Moon, for the film company Yung Hwa. Over the years she starred at both Cathay and Shaw until her suicide in 1964.
The same goes for Lin Dai - not a singer as far as I know and this duet sort of proves that. This must be from a film but I am not sure which one. This is also part of the Pathe 100.
Song at the bottom of the page.
The Greatest Civil War on Earth (1961) - this very amusing comedy tackled an issue that had become a part of Hong Kong's social fabric in the 50's and early 60's - the huge influx of population into Hong Kong from the Mainland after first the Japanese occupation and then later after the Civil War. The locals spoke Cantonese and the Mainlanders spoke Mandarin (thus leading to two separate film industries) and this as well as other cultural differences were at times points of real life conflict. This film plays with this idea and in the end concludes that no matter what, we are all Chinese. Starring two of Cathay's best characters actors as the fueding fathers (Liu Er Jia and Leung Sing Po), it also has Kitty Ting Hao and Christine Bai (the major female star of Cathay's Cantonese division) as the daughters.
Air Hostess (1958) - with its deep hued Sirkian colors and cheerful songs, this is one of the most delightful commercials for air travel ever made as the viewer follows the loves and lives of Air Hostess's serving coffee and tea in the Asian skies. In the late 1950's Hong Kong was rapidly changing from a sleepy British trading port to a major modern city and a number of Cathay films proudly showed this social and material progress. The picture below seems an odd choice as it focuses on two of Cathay's lesser stars - Kelly Lai (who popped up years later in In The Mood for Love) and Dolly Soo Fung rather than the two big stars in the film, Grace Chang and Julie Yeh Feng. Kelly Lai was an archetypal Cathay leading man - urbane and diffident - with Peter Chen, Chang Yang, Cheung Ching and Tien Ching all falling into this same pattern. This played fine as long as Cathay stuck with its contemporary settings and the genres they specialized in - and as long as the women were the focus of these films with the males basically being foils - but when it came time for Cathay to try to catch up with the Shaw Brothers in action films, they found their cupboard bare of leading men who could do that sort of film.
Grace manages to find a song to sing in just about every country - forget where this one was - Bangkok perhaps?
Our Sister Hedy (1957) - another terrific sentimental film about family and the changing attitudes of Hong Kong as exemplified by the differences of the four daughters - from the traditional to the freewheeling. The film was a breakout for both Julie Yeh Feng and Jeanette Lin Cui. Peter Chen, Kelly Lai, Chao Lei and Tien Ching are all on hand as the boyfriends who are basically background material to the female actresses.
Julie did release some music but often her singing voice was dubbed in films - which annoyed her greatly. There is an entire CD from Pathe of her songs. This is from the film It's Always Spring.
Ditto
In the film It's Always Spring, Julie and another sexy Cathay actress, Helen Li Mei are competing singers - but though the studio had Julie sing her own songs Helen was dubbed by another singer. She may not be a great singer but she did release some music and this song - from the Pathe 100 - is pretty nifty.
Ditto
Wife of a Romantic Scholar (1967) - though Cathay is known primarily for their contemporary - often middle class - settings, they produced a number of period costume films - but only a couple made it on to DVD. This one stars Jeanette Lin Cui, Annette Chang and Chao Lei, who seems to have bounced back and forth between Cathay and Shaw. Jeanette was to make her last film for Cathay the following year and soon retired after that upon marriage.
And yes, the Pathe 100 also includes a song from Jeanette who as far as I know didn't have much of a singing career. This may be from a film, but I am not sure.
Ditto
Wild Wild Rose (1960) - Grace Chang had always been the good girl, the good wife, the good person in her Cathay films so she jumped at the opportunity to take on a very different kind of role - perhaps the best in her career as a sultry nightclub singer who rips your heart out (a version of Carmen with some of the music as well). She attacks the role with a voracious sensuality that shocked her fans at the time, but the film is now considered one of the 100 Greatest Chinese Films.
Here is Grace doing her best Carmen.
Sun, Moon and Stars (1961) - this was one of the few Cathay attempts at an epic big budget movie - told over two films - it is the story of three women and their involvement in the Sino-Japanese war. The three are Grace Chang, Lucilla Yu Min and Julie Yeh Feng.
At one point in the film the character played by Grace entertains the troops with this stirring song. Ditto.
